by Frances Vick
* * *
A new school year, and Claire was supervising the plans for the Christmas play when she got the call. This wasn’t one of those schools with a sharp-elbowed PTA, so the teachers had to do the majority of the work, along with the Reverend Gary, who usually provided some thin-lipped church-goers to put together raffle prizes. Church – in the form of Gary – and State – Miss Brett and the young guard – clashed uncomfortably during each planning meeting, with Claire trying to keep them on as amicable a footing as possible. Today they were coming to the end of a protracted debate about the crib. A compromise had been reached whereby the crib would still be given its usual place at the edge of the stage, surrounded by lights, but there would be a disclaimer in the newsletter assuring parents that at no point would their children be compelled to visit it and coo at the baby Jesus. Both sides privately claimed victory.
Lorna hadn’t been in school all week. Claire had checked the absence register, and there was no reason given. Perhaps she should call her house? Would that be strange?
‘Claire. Phone for you,’ Ruth the office manager said through a mouthful of sandwich.
‘For me?’
She nodded. ‘Police.’
Claire hurried to the office without excusing herself from the meeting. Taking the phone, she cast about for a chair in a quiet corner, but there wasn’t one, and Ruth showed no sign of giving up hers, so Claire perched uncomfortably on the edge of the desk where everything she said could easily be overheard by anyone passing the office.
‘Hello?’
‘Claire Penny?’
‘Yes. What—’
‘We have your mother. Bit of a car accident. Collision. She says she doesn’t want to go to hospital, but she’s a bit confused, so . . .’
Claire could hear Norma now, querulous, old sounding. She heard ‘Ridiculous’, ‘Perfectly fine’, and ‘Have to get to work.’
‘Just outside the doctor’s? I’ll be there,’ Claire whispered, and put the phone down.
‘Accident?’ Ruth swallowed the last of her sandwich and picked her teeth with her fingernails.
‘Yes. My mother. Had a collision. I’ll have to go.’
‘Can’t do the dress rehearsal without you.’
‘Oh, yes, that’s today, isn’t it? Well, look, you don’t need me for that.’
‘Can’t do it by ourselves. You know the lines.’ Ruth blinked slowly.
Claire felt unaccustomed anger. ‘There’s all the rest of the teachers and the support staff, I mean, you can do without me just this once. I have to take my mother to the hospital for God’s sake!’
‘Not with Fergus Coyle as narrator we can’t. You can handle him. It was your idea to have him in the first place.’
‘Oh God. Look, just be nice to him. That’s all! That’s all you’ve got to do. Be nice to him and feed him the lines if he forgets.’ Claire shrugged on her coat and dashed out of the office.
‘Just be niiiice to him!’ she heard Ruth whine at her back.
* * *
The car was a write-off. The Volvo straddled the kerb over the flattened bollard, and pedestrians had to walk in the road to avoid the broken bumper. The crumpled number plate had been incongruously propped up by the stone steps, and Norma sat next to it, crouched on a chair borrowed from the surgery, wrapped in a checked blanket. A bruise bloomed on her cheek and her careful French plait had come unpinned. She was trembling.
‘Couldn’t catch my breath.’ Norma squeezed Claire’s fingers. ‘Just couldn’t catch my breath. On the way to the doctor’s. Started coughing. Before I knew it – all this.’
‘We need to get you to the hospital.’
‘No need for that. No need. Aspirin. Rest. I’ll be right as rain.’
‘Let me get the doctor at least?’
‘Oh, I think I might have missed my appointment.’ And she tried to laugh, but it caught in her throat, and caused a coughing fit.
‘Made a decision, Norma?’ A pleasant-faced policeman leaned into the car.
‘My daughter here thinks we should go to the hospital, but—’
‘She’s got her head screwed on, your daughter.’
‘But—’
‘She didn’t just lose a fight with a bollard, did she? Get yourself to A and E. Get yourself checked out, and we’ll get the car towed.’ He eyed them both kindly, and Claire had an insane impulse to ask him if he’d heard of Pete Marshall, if he was safe to be around children. She shook her head, tried to clear it. ‘Come on Mother, let’s get you to the hospital.’
The policeman gave them a friendly wave goodbye.
* * *
Claire drove to the hospital, grim-faced, while Norma looked defiantly out of the window. The bruise on her face had grown, spreading blood-coloured tendrils over her nose, under her eyes, and seeping below the uncharacteristically dishevelled hair at her temples.
‘Don’t be severe, Claire,’ she muttered.
‘I’m not. I’m just worried.’
‘And it’s because you were worried that I made the appointment and went down there. God knows why. It’s only a cough.’
‘You couldn’t catch your breath and ended up wrecking the car!’
‘Oh. The car. It’s insured.’
‘Mother, I don’t care about the car! I care about you! You couldn’t breathe.’
‘I coughed and some air went down the wrong way, that’s all.’
Claire tightened her hands on the steering wheel. ‘When we get to the hospital, I want you to tell them about your cough. About how bad it’s got. If you don’t tell them, I will.’
‘Oh don’t be so melodramatic. I’ll tell you what they’ll say: “Mrs Penny, you’re of a certain age”,’ Norma’s voice cranked itself up into an exaggerated imitation of the local accent. ‘“Ladies your age should expect to have to slow down.” And they’ll say, “Wake up call” and “Pace yourself” and various other Americanisms.’
‘Mother—’
‘Oh all right, Claire. Yes. Enough.’
Norma was frightened, Claire could see that. She was frightened herself.
* * *
A and E was mercifully quiet, and they were seen within the hour. A young doctor with tired eyes and cold hands probed Norma’s cheek, asked about headaches, dizziness and nausea, and eventually gave her a cold compress and a couple of paracetamol. Norma looked over his head at Claire and smirked. She was about to get up and put her coat on when he said:
‘I’ve noticed your breathing is a little laboured.’
Norma reddened. ‘Yes, I have a cold.’
‘How long for?’
Norma hesitated; looked at Claire. ‘Not too long.’
‘She’s had a cough on and off for ages. The doctor gave her an aspirator.’ Claire avoided looking at Norma.
‘Do you use it? The aspirator?’
‘When I need to.’ Norma was all dignity. ‘Which is very, very rarely.’
Claire took a deep breath. ‘She was coughing and that’s how she lost control of the car.’
Norma shot her a look of betrayal.
‘I want to listen to your chest,’ murmured the doctor.
‘Why?’ Norma’s voice sounded strangled, and Claire knew she was trying not to cough.
‘Just to see if it’s in your lungs yet. We might be able to give you antibiotics. Clear it up.’
‘My doctor said it was viral.’
‘And he’s probably right. But let me listen anyway.’
Norma pursed her lips and swallowed, but couldn’t choke down the cough, which spluttered out over her clasped hands. She gasped, and coughed again, open-mouthed this time. Red-flecked mucus stained her hanky. She kept coughing, and the stains spread, grew darker. Claire stared at Norma, looked at the doctor, who gave a small, sorrowful smile.
‘I’ll get you down to x-ray.’
* * *
Later that night, when she couldn’t sleep, Claire’s mind returned to the day. Norma, bewildered and angry. At herself.
At Claire. The fresh, livid bruise, the blood-stained hanky; the old, tired eyes of the very young doctor. And what she tried hardest to forget was what stayed with her all the time. The inevitable result of the chest x-ray; Norma’s gasp as the biopsy needle slid into her flesh. The soft words in incongruous settings. The shocked cup of tea in the hospital café – The Spice of Life, it was called. She remembered the journey back home, wordless, putting Norma to bed and later that night, checking on her and seeing that she’d been crying.
* * *
Claire compliantly took the leaflets on cancer, and the web address of a carers’ support group. She negotiated working part-time ‘for the present’, and James nodded sagely.
‘We’ll-do-all-we-can-to-support-you-in-this-difficult-time,’ he said.
She was about to ask him to keep an eye on Lorna, but stopped herself. Instead she told him she’d pop in tomorrow to meet the cover teacher and brief her on the class.
‘Is that really necessary, Claire?’ James was amused. ‘We can get on without you for a while, you know.’
She spent the next few days arranging to let her own flat, and moving in some things to Norma’s house, taking her childhood bedroom, the shelves still holding souvenirs from long-ago seaside holidays. Every year they’d gone to Cornwall, to stay with cantankerous Aunt Tess, and Claire would spend happy hours on the scrubby little beach collecting stones, filling her pockets with seashells.
On days when Norma could sleep easily, Claire curled under her eiderdown, reading Famous Five books, sometimes two a day. These frolicsome, adventurous children, safe in their cocoon of perpetual summer bike-rides, lulling rivers and loyal pets . . . And she thought about Lorna, how brave and sweet she was and the terrible things that might be happening to her, even right now. It wasn’t fair. Nothing was fair. She thought about calling social services, or calling nice PC Jones and asking, casually, about Pete Marshall: had he shown up on their radar recently? But it was a silly idea and she knew it. As if they’d take her seriously enough to give her information – private information – when she hadn’t made a formal complaint. Her mind meandered around in messy circles, and the thoughts became knots, spiked burrs, that tormented her.
Claire and Norma’s days were quiet, slow and full of unspoken things. Claire signed up with Sky – classic movies, reality shows, ancient detectives and rolling news – and they’d sit together, watching it all, watching anything, until Norma would droop in her seat, and allow herself to be led upstairs.
* * *
The girls’ school sent Norma flowers and a card signed by every pupil. It stood next to the pills and tissues on her bedside table. Claire had more than once plucked it from Norma’s sleeping fingers – all those names, all those messages. Such respect, such reverence. The TV was often tuned to the Christmas movie channels, and Norma, wrapped in a blanket on her padded armchair, carefully eating satsumas, watched them all. They watched Miracle on 34th Street and Meet Me in St. Louis, and Claire fancied she saw tears in Mother’s eyes.
‘Sentimentalist.’ She nudged her. ‘Look at you, falling for cheap emotion.’
Norma stuck her tongue out. ‘Even my icy heart melts at the sound of Judy Garland. Pass me another orange. I have a bit of an appetite.’
Claire gave her two from the Denby bowl on the coffee table. ‘Oh, I got a call from Derek today.’
Norma rolled her eyes. ‘And?’
‘He wondered if we’d like to go to his and Pippa’s for lunch tomorrow.’
Norma pulled a string of pith from her lips. ‘He must be after something in my will.’
‘Mother! Don’t say things like that.’
‘Oh Claire. If you really want to hasten my end, insist that I lunch with my nephew and that ghastly wife of his.’
‘I really think he meant it. He seemed very keen on it.’
Norma shuddered theatrically, put her feet up on her new footstool. ‘No, thank you.’
‘What shall I tell him?’
‘Tell him the end is near. Tell him that I stink of death, but if he stays away I’ll leave him that sideboard he’s always hinting about.’
‘Mother!’
‘Claire’ – Norma was smiling, but her eyes were fixed and serious – ‘I’m not going to be around much longer. No.’ She put up a hand to ward off Claire’s automatic protest. ‘No, really. And I want to spend my time with you. And only you.’
Claire’s throat swelled and the tears started. She frowned at her lap so Mother wouldn’t see. ‘I wish you wouldn’t say things like that.’
Norma was mock-offended. ‘You don’t want to spend your time with a dying old lady? Most people would jump at the chance.’
‘You know what I mean. Just. Please.’
Norma peered at her own hands for a long time. Finally, she said, ‘You will be all right, Claire. Afterwards.’
‘Mother, I really don’t want to talk about—’
‘But we must. I want you to know that I’ve left nothing to worry about. My affairs are in order as they say. Even – Claire, look at me – even the money for the funeral is set aside. You needn’t worry.’
‘I’m not worried. I’m—’
‘You’ve always been a lot stronger than you give yourself credit for, Claire. I saw it, even if your father didn’t.’
Claire started. There had always been a tacit agreement never to talk about him. Norma was quiet for a long time. Perhaps she’d fallen asleep? No. No. She was staring into the fire, working her lips.
‘I’ll go to the supermarket, get you some more oranges,’ Claire babbled suddenly.
‘Claire—’
‘And some brandy? I can make tiramisu—’
‘Because the way he was with you, how strict he was. Well, it was a less enlightened time. But what he – and Claire, you have to let me say this – I didn’t know. I didn’t, and as soon as I found out, he left. I made him leave. After—’
‘I really don’t want to talk about it, Mother.’
‘No, and neither do I, but we ought to. But then, maybe we’ve left it too long.’ Norma sighed, closed her eyes. ‘There’s not a day that has gone by, Claire, that I haven’t regretted not noticing more. Not protecting you. Keeping you safe.’
‘Mother—’
‘No. There it is. That’s all I’ll say. But remember that I did say it. Remember that, after I’ve gone.’
‘Mother—’
‘But I’m not planning on going just yet. Not with It’s a Wonderful Life starting in a few hours. Listen, Claire?’
Claire took some deep breaths and managed to look up. ‘Yes?’
‘I feel very well today. Really. I could probably manage one of those chicken dinner things – the frozen ones with the green beans. And Johnny needs more food. Go to the supermarket, and take your time. Get out, have a drive around. Fresh air.’
11
Claire drove aimlessly for a while. She put the radio on. Some consumer programme with OAPs whinnying about being scammed. The weather outside was icy and grey, and the few people she saw walking were huddled like penguins in their cheap coats and Primark leggings. For no real reason, she drove through the city centre; how run-down it was now! More and more shops empty and boarded up. The scrubby little market was still clinging on, selling tired-looking fruit and knock-off football shirts, but it wasn’t a patch on the old days. Clusters of people hunkered down on their heels by the town hall steps, drinking lager, some arguing, none of them with anything in particular to do, it seemed. A drunk woman shouted at a teenager outside Cancer Research. It began to sleet. Claire sped on, past the industrial estate, past the turn-off to cousin Derek’s area of new builds, to the supermarket.
She picked up a basket. Chicken. Chicken and green beans, was it? Bland. The sort of meal that Norma would have hated before she got sick. Now the fact that she wanted to eat at all was heartening. Maybe get a few? In case she has a streak of feeling well? What else . . . ginger ale? She liked that. A nice bottle of wine? Her mouth so
res were better now after the last round of chemo. Yes. Get one. They could always give it to Derek as a peace offering if they didn’t open it. That’s the problem with these big supermarkets, you end up buying more than you came for . . . fabric softener. Another thing Norma had previously eschewed, but which was now a necessity, her skin was so sensitive nowadays. I’ll need a trolley.
She kept her head down in the shop, going straight to the freezer section and stacking ready meals neatly at the end of the trolley. Some tins. Norma managed baked beans the other day – get a few of those. Peach slices? Why not. But not pineapple – too stringy, acidic. Ginger ale, that’ll be with the mixers. The bottle of wine? I’m drinking too much. Am I drinking too much? Oh, what’s the harm.
There was more traffic in the wines and spirits aisles. Single men and large loud families clamoured round the shelves of cans. Jostled by bored children, Claire was nudged aside again and again until she found herself pushed next to the nuts and dips on the corner.
She felt a tug on her coat, and automatically apologised. Someone laughed. The tug grew bolder.
‘No, Miss. Here. Hello!’
Claire looked down. ‘Lorna?’
Lorna nodded, smiled. She was a little taller, and her teeth had grown in more. She must be nine, now? Or nearly anyway. Her fringe straggled to one side as if she’d cut it herself.
‘You’re not at school now.’ She peered at Claire’s face, concerned.
‘Well, not at the moment, no.’
‘Are you getting married?’
‘What? No!’
‘People have been saying that you’re getting married. To a really rich man, and you’ll be moving away.’
