‘It’s about Ellie,’ Peggy said.
She felt her heart jump. ‘What is it? What’s happened?’
‘Don’t worry,’ Peggy said quickly, ‘she’s not hurt or anything.’
Marjorie noticed that Peggy still seemed to be avoiding looking her in the eye. She slid her hands around her mug. It was colder today than she’d realised.
‘What, then? You’ve heard from her?’ She felt the familiar sting of jealousy, then a wave of guilt for feeling like that; after all, it was her fault Eleanor had become close to Peggy as a child. Her own detached mothering had pushed her daughter away and she had never known what to do to draw her back.
Peggy and Ken glanced at each other. Ken sighed. ‘I’m going to come out with it, Marjorie, because I’m not happy with all this deception. She’s . . . we’ve seen Eleanor, and—’
‘You’ve seen her? I thought she was still at—’
‘No,’ Peggy murmured, ‘she’s been back for a while.’
‘Back? Back where?’
Ken leant forward. ‘She’s staying with Peg’s sister. Thing is, Marjorie . . .’
And then she thought he said something like, Eleanor’s a sad young lady.
‘Well, yes,’ she said, but then the words started to form a different shape. ‘Sorry, what did you say?’
‘I said, Eleanor has had a baby.’
Marjorie just stared at him, wondering what stupid attempt at a joke this was. Then she saw Peggy’s face, the tears on her cheeks. There was a roaring sound in her ears and she thought she might faint. She still had her hand around the mug of tea. It was beginning to burn now, but she felt temporarily paralysed and she had to force herself to move her hand away.
Ken looked embarrassed, less confident than he was a moment ago. ‘It must be a shock. She didn’t want you to know about it, but as I said to Peg—’
‘But I’m her mother!’ It was almost a wail, full of anguish. She stood up. ‘I can’t . . . Hang on a sec, I must have left my cigarettes in the other room.’
The living room smelt cold and damp. She rarely used it now Eleanor wasn’t here, but she’d been talking to Ted’s mum on the phone this morning – Vera had no one now, so Marjorie rang her every few weeks. Her hand was trembling as she picked up her cigarettes and lighter from the phone table, but she managed to light one and take a few calming drags before she went back into the kitchen.
Peggy was crying. ‘Marjorie, I was in such an awkward position. I only agreed to this because I thought she would have told you by now. I kept telling her she should talk to you.’
Marjorie drew shakily on her cigarette. ‘Wait, I’m not quite sure what you’re saying. Agreed to what? How long—’
Ken put his hand up to stop Peggy speaking. ‘Peg’s fond of Eleanor – we both are – but she’s put us in a tricky position here, and I thought, well, I said to Peg, enough is enough. I mean, what you do about it is up to you, but I just thought you should know, that’s all.’ He stood up. ‘I’ll leave you to it.’ He put his hand briefly on Peggy’s shoulder, but she shook it off. ‘I’ll see you upstairs, Peg.’
Peggy ignored him. He hesitated for a moment, then nodded and quietly let himself out.
‘I’m sorry, Marjorie. I didn’t know what to do for the best. She asked me for help and she made me promise—’
‘When? When did she contact you?’
Peggy took a scrunched tissue from her sleeve. ‘God, I wish I still smoked. It was a while ago. She begged me not to tell you, but—’
‘But I’m her mother, Peg,’ Marjorie said, her voice catching on the tears in her throat. ‘And you’re supposed to be my friend. How could you?’
Peggy was nodding, tears streaming down her face. ‘I know,’ she said. ‘I’d be livid if you kept something from me like this. I’ve agonised over it; I told her right at the start she’d have to tell you eventually, and I really thought I could get her to talk to you about it, but she’s adamant she doesn’t want you to know yet.’
Marjorie stood up and started walking back and forth as though moving might help her to deal with what she was hearing. She’d never been as close to Eleanor as she’d have liked, but the thought that Eleanor felt she couldn’t come to her at a time like this, the thought that it was still Peggy she turned to . . . It hurt almost physically; she could feel it around her middle, somewhere between her heart and her navel. ‘And why? What does she think I’d say? Surely she didn’t think I’d behave like some Victorian—’
‘It wasn’t that. She thinks you’d be upset because of Peter; she said she thought telling you she was having a baby would be . . . Oh, never mind. The point is . . .’ She blew her nose. ‘Now you do know, what do we do?’
‘Where is she?’
‘At Rita’s. You know, my sister who runs the bed and breakfast. Rita’s keeping an eye on her. We all are.’
‘You all are; everyone’s helping my daughter except me.’ She took a long draw on her cigarette. ‘There’s so much I need to ask, but I can’t even think straight.’
‘Maybe tomorrow.’ Peggy mopped at her eyes with the already sodden tissue. ‘I’m truly sorry I went behind your back, but I was worried about what would happen if I said I wouldn’t help her. She’ll come round in the end, especially once she feels more confident with the baby. I know this is hard, Marjorie, but I think we should bide our time. I’m sure I can get her to—’
‘Go away, Peggy.’ She stubbed out her cigarette and took another from the pack. ‘Just go. I don’t want to talk to you any more.’
Peggy looked as if she’d been slapped.
‘Not today, anyway.’ She lit the cigarette.
*
She sat on her bed with the ashtray beside her, smoking her way through the remaining half-pack of John Player Specials. She looked at the half-smoked one in her hand and then squashed it into the ashtray; they weren’t even helping any more. Peggy was probably right; she should wait until Eleanor felt ready. And though it hurt to acknowledge it, Peggy was the best person to bring her round; she always had been. Peggy was her best chance of seeing Eleanor sooner rather than later. And the baby – she kept forgetting that the fact there was a new baby meant she was a grandma now. A grandmother; she thought about it. Perhaps she could make a better job of that than she’d made of being a mother – if she was ever given the chance, of course. How long would it be before she was allowed to meet this grandchild, she wondered? And then it occurred to her that Ted would never know he was a grandad. ‘Oh, Ted,’ she murmured, her vision swimming as her eyes filled up.
It was only when her stomach started to rumble that she remembered she’d made herself a sausage hotpot this afternoon. It was almost cooked when Peggy and Ken came down to drop their bombshell, so she’d put the oven on low but then forgotten all about it. She dragged herself off the bed and traipsed wearily upstairs. The smell of burnt sausages and tomatoes hit her as soon as she opened the door on the landing. She turned the oven off and opened the French doors to let the smoke out, then she took the charred hotpot out of the oven, carried it down the steps into the garden and threw the whole lot into the dustbin, casserole dish and all.
Eleanor, the present
Eleanor goes to bed smiling. She talked to Dylan on the phone for almost half an hour tonight. It’s possibly the first time they’ve ever had a telephone conversation, but he’s off to Italy next week, ready to start his job the second week in October. He’ll be gone for at least a year, and he wanted to be sure she knew he’d been serious about her coming out and staying for a while. ‘It depends on how things go with my mum,’ she’d told him. ‘But, yes, I’d like that.’ It’s odd to be making plans with Dylan, even such loose, holiday-type plans, but she feels surprisingly good about it.
She dreams that she’s back in Scalby, standing on the clifftop with the North Sea wind blowing gently over her face. The waves are thudding onto the beach below, but instead of enjoying the sound as she usually does, it irritates her. She has to get
down there and stop it, stop that annoying bumping sound. Her brain readjusts itself as she wakes to a cool breeze on her face and the sound of her bedroom door bumping against the door frame in the draught. Funny; she could have sworn she’d closed the window before she went to bed. It’s turned much chillier this last week, and so blustery it feels quite autumnal. She throws back the covers and swings her legs out, and as soon as her feet touch the carpet she feels a definite breeze. She walks across to the window and moves the curtain, but the window is closed. It is only a moment before her puzzlement turns to alarm and the adrenalin starts to flood through her body. She doesn’t even need to look in her mother’s room to know she isn’t there; she can sense it.
A memory rushes into her head. She was sixteen or seventeen and had wanted to stay out late at a party, but her mum said she had to be in by eleven. Reluctantly, she came home on time, said goodnight to her mother who was watching the late night movie and went down to bed. But then she rolled up her dressing gown, a spare bedspread and a couple of jumpers and arranged them carefully under the duvet so that it looked like she was in bed. Leaving the door ajar so her mum would see the shape under the covers, she quietly let herself out of the lower front door, tiptoed up the steps and went back to the party. She was smoking a No. 6 and dancing with a skinny boy in a studded denim jacket when her mother appeared in the doorway of the darkened front room. ‘Home, young lady,’ she said. ‘Right now.’
She can’t remember what punishment she’d been given, but much later, when they were on better terms, she’d asked what it was that had given her away. ‘It wasn’t anything you did,’ her mum said. ‘I sensed you weren’t there.’
She’d forgotten that until now.
Sure enough, as soon as she steps outside her bedroom, she can see that the basement front door is wide open. ‘Shit!’ she says aloud. ‘Shit, shit, shit!’ Barefoot and wearing only her pyjamas, she bounds up the area steps and out through the gate into the street. ‘Mum!’ she shouts instinctively. ‘Marjorie!’ She looks up and down, but the road is completely deserted. Oh, God, what now? Her heart is thudding and she can’t think straight. Police. That’s what she should do. Call the police. She hurries back down the steps and is about to dial when she thinks about what they’ll ask. They’ll want a description – what she’s wearing, where she might be likely to go. Details, they’ll want details.
She takes a breath and consciously tries to calm down. Then she goes into her mum’s room to try to work out whether she got dressed or not. There are no open drawers or wardrobes, but her mum’s dressing gown is on the back of the door and her slippers are still there. She can’t have gone outside barefoot, surely? She was only wearing a thin cotton nightie. Just then, she hears the click of the door at the top of the stairs. Her heart leaps. She’s been up to Peggy’s; of course. But then Peggy appears on the stairs in her pyjamas and dressing gown. ‘What’s going on? I heard you shouting outside.’
‘She’s gone.’
‘Oh, Christ. Have you called the police?’
*
She drives up and down every road on this side of the high street between Lewisham Park and Davenport Road. It’s surprising how many people are out and about at four in the morning. Every time she sees a figure in the darkness her hopes shoot up for a millisecond, only to plummet again immediately. She doesn’t need daylight, because after being back here for almost six months, she knows the way her mother moves; she would recognise her by her walk.
She tries the other side of the main road, behind Lewisham Hospital. She slows as she passes the entrance to the rec, or Ladywell Fields as it’s called now, thinking she sees someone at the side of the path. She used to stand on that little bridge with her mum when she was small, throwing twigs into the Quaggy and rushing to watch as the current carried them under and out the other side. She strains her eyes searching for the person she thought she saw. Big, fat drops of rain start to fall on the windscreen. ‘Shit,’ she mutters, remembering the forecast is heavy downpours overnight. Thank God they’ve built floodplains here now – the Quaggy was forever bursting its banks when she was a child, turning the rec into a vast lake. There is another movement, but she realises that what she thought was a person is in fact a large branch, broken but not entirely detached from the tree, moving in the wind.
She sighs and drives on. She’s been out for an hour now, and she has no idea how long her mum had been gone when she woke up. She heads back to the house. There’s been no call on her mobile, but maybe Peggy’s heard something.
‘No luck?’ Peggy says, moving to the sink and filling the kettle. She’s dressed now, and her Sudoku book is open on the kitchen table.
‘No. I keep trying to think where she might have gone, but it’s hard to know how her mind works now. I mean, would she head for a particular place, or would she be walking aimlessly?’
‘Your guess is as good as mine, I’m afraid.’ Peggy pours steaming water into mugs and brings them to the table.
Marjorie lives in the past these days, so perhaps she’d go somewhere she knew from when she was younger. But it’s so difficult to imagine what goes on in a brain ravaged by Alzheimer’s. Plaques and tangles, the consultant told her. She’d looked it up: Abnormal clusters of protein fragments (plaques) and twisted strands of another protein (tangles) are prime suspects in cell death and tissue loss in the Alzheimer brain. She thinks about the gap in her own memory, the empty space in Dylan’s drawing occupied by question marks. It seems nothing in comparison to what’s happening to her mum. What would Dylan draw if he could see into that crumbling brain, she wonders? Sometimes she visualises her mother’s mind as a many-roomed cellar, its chambers now empty and swathed in cobwebs, Miss Havisham-style; sometimes she remembers an image from a conversation with one of the farm helpers, a great house of a man who could lift sacks of potatoes or onions as if they were bags of flour. He was a keen scuba diver, just back from a diving trip off the West Coast of Scotland, and he was furious about how the practice of dredging was devastating the seabed. ‘I last dived up there four years ago,’ he said. ‘It was teeming with life, then: flatfish, crabs, scallops – all sorts. But this time . . .’ She remembers how his voice caught in his throat and his eyes glistened briefly. ‘The ocean floor was empty and lifeless, nothing but a few broken shells lying around. It was an underwater desert.’
There is an ominous smattering of rain on the window. She takes a hasty mouthful of tea and grabs her car keys. ‘I’ll call if I find her, and obviously—’
‘Of course. And I’ll call you if the police phone.’
The rain is cold on her head as she hurries down the steps. Marjorie is wearing nothing but a nightdress; she has to find her quickly. Just as she reaches the bottom step, a police car pulls up in front of the house and the driver’s door and rear doors open at the same time. Her heart crashes against the walls of her chest as two uniformed officers climb out. Time seems to stand still for a moment, and then she realises one of the officers is talking to someone in the back seat. He leans in and helps Marjorie out onto the pavement.
‘Mum, thank God. Are you all right?’ Her mum is dressed in a long white nightdress and there’s a blanket draped around her shoulders. She is barefoot. Eleanor can’t remember the last time she saw her mother without shoes or slippers, even in the house, and there is something about her bare, blue-veined feet that makes her appear terribly vulnerable. Her heart contracts.
‘She’s a bit upset,’ the taller of the two officers says, ‘but she seems okay. Better get her inside, though, before this rain gets any worse.’ He takes Marjorie’s hand. ‘Come on, love, let’s get you in the warm.’
Marjorie doesn’t move; she looks terrified. Raindrops sparkle on her hair.
‘It’s all right, Mum,’ Eleanor soothes, taking her other hand. ‘These are policemen.’
Marjorie looks from one to the other. ‘Policemen? Why are they here again? Told them already, I can’t remember.’
‘They brou
ght you home, Mum. They know you can’t remember – I told them when I phoned.’
Marjorie looks puzzled, but allows them to lead her up the steps.
Peggy opens the door as they reach it. ‘Oh, Marjorie, where on earth have you been? We were worried sick.’
Marjorie doesn’t answer, but her features start to relax as soon as she is in the living room, and she settles herself in her usual armchair.
‘I’ll nip down and get your dressing gown,’ Peggy says. ‘And then I’ll put the kettle on. Would you like some tea or coffee?’ she asks the officers.
‘Yes, please, love. Tea, please. We was nearly at the end of our shift when we got the call, so we’re well ready for a cuppa now. Two sugars for me, but young Steve here reckons he’s sweet enough.’
The younger officer smiles.
‘So,’ Eleanor says, turning to Marjorie, ‘where were you, Mum? Didn’t you realise it was the middle of the night?’
‘The middle of the night,’ Marjorie repeats.
‘Yes, for goodness’ sake. Anything could have happened. Do you realise—’ She stops herself. She can hear the exasperated tone in her voice and she can feel the older officer looking at her. ‘I’m sorry. It’s just that I was so worried about you.’
Marjorie’s expression is blank; she’s shutting down again.
The older police officer clears his throat. ‘Has this happened before, at all?’
‘No. At least, I don’t think so. Not unless she’s gone out and come back without me knowing.’
‘You don’t double-lock the door, then? It might be an idea, you know, from now on. They do this quite a lot. Your mum’s not the first one me and Steve have picked up, is she, Steve? Sometimes we know who they are because the family’s called them in missing, sometimes we just find ’em wandering. Found an old boy walking down the middle of the Sidcup bypass a few weeks back. Family didn’t even know he’d gone.’
‘Oh, God,’ Eleanor murmurs, ‘I see what you mean.’
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