An Ordinary Life

by Amanda Prowse

  Molly nodded and smiled at Maisie, who was now trying to show Hubert her alphabet book.

  You’ll eat anything if you’re hungry enough . . . even if your mouth and mind crave a jacket potato with butter and salt, the crispy skin saved until last when you can put a fresh knob of butter into it, fold it over with your fingers like a charred . . . and for pudding, blackberries, so plump you put them on your tongue and push them up to the roof of your mouth, where they burst . . .

  ‘Don’t touch that, Maisie!’ Adam called to the toddler, who had jumped up and was grabbing a book from the shelf. A leather exercise book from which tumbled yellowing sheets of paper.

  ‘Oh.’ Molly walked over, glad of the change in conversation as she gathered the sheets. ‘These are poems and musings written by your great-great-grandpa, Maisie! Can you believe that? Mainly about Brussels sprouts and dancing moles!’ Maisie stared at her with a look of disinterest and started chewing the bottom of her dress.

  It had been a lovely day. Molly was tired, quite unused to the hours of continual conversation. She yawned as she waved Adam and Roz off from behind her garden gate, watching as their little car tootled off. They were such a lovely little family, her grandson, his girlfriend and her great-grand-daughter . . .

  ‘Had visitors, I see?’ Mrs Ogilvy called over from her front garden.

  ‘Yes, it’s chilly, isn’t it? Hope the rain holds off!’ Molly looked skyward and made out to have misheard rather than converse with Mrs Ogilvy, who had a knack of bettering any and every story Molly told. If Molly had bought a stamp, then Mrs Ogilvy had met the Queen whose head graced it. It was most wearing and impossibly dull.

  Molly closed her front door and pulled Hubert in for a cuddle.

  ‘People, eh, Hubert? Is it any wonder I sometimes prefer the company of you, my lovely cat?’ And, of course, he looked at her with utter disdain.

  TWENTY-TWO

  The hospital

  Chelmsford, Essex

  December 24th 2019

  Aged 94

  ‘Here we go, sweetheart.’ The bustling porter in his comic Santa hat checked some paperwork, smiled and placed the sheaf of paper on her legs. ‘Right, we’re going to move you from this corridor and get you settled in a room away from all this noise. Looks like you’ve been in the wars! I hope the other fella came off worse – eh, Charlie?’ He laughed, and Charlie released the brake from the end of her trolley and smiled at her too. They moved deftly, cheerily snaking her along the corridor and into a cavernous lift. She was wheeled along another corridor and into a small room where blinds hung vertically in strips, linked by little chains that, had there been any doubt, placed her very firmly in a public building.

  ‘Hello, Miss Molly! Now, let’s get you comfortable and I will give you a little clean-up and something for the pain. How about that?’

  The nurse was short and wide, a young woman in her thirties, but with the furrows on her brow of a much older woman, or at least one who didn’t sleep easy. She was quickly joined by a stocky male nurse who, despite his size, was gentle and patient as they carefully transferred her rather crumpled body onto the bed, taking with her the catheter and drip. Molly winced in pain at the movement and again out poured the gravelly mewl that had replaced her voice. And then came more tears, which embarrassed and frustrated her. She couldn’t seem to stop crying, but knew she needed to try. How was she going to get the letter into Joe’s hands? How? If she couldn’t say a word!

  The irony was not lost on her that she had in her life landed in a field in the dead of night, arriving in a plane with the lights turned off, flirted with the enemy, dodged Hitler’s doodlebugs – good Lord, she had even beaten cancer in her seventies! And yet here she was, crying in a safe bed a few miles from her home at a ripe old age. It was hard for her to imagine that this time yesterday she had been standing admiring the view from her kitchen window, a sight that had never grown tiresome: the back wall where the gnarled knots of her lilac nestled in an intricate pattern. With the kettle set to boil and a teabag nestling in her favourite china cup and saucer, Molly had surveyed the rest of the garden where winter now crept, spindles of bloomless branches and woody stems shooting up into the sky where only months ago bright-headed flowers had almost made her weep with their beauty. The breeze was suddenly sharp instead of gentle, as if aware that to have an effect on the reddening stems of the dogwood and the last leaves that clung still to hardy twigs it needed to ramp up its game. Birds were scarcer than they had been in the warmer months. Adam, often with his son, the eighteen-year-old Joe Junior, or JJ, as he was known, were the greatest help when it came to maintaining her precious outdoor space. They pitched up in all weathers, even the grimmest arctic day when everything was damp and soggy, waterlogged. Just this weekend, with quite a lot of leaf cover on the grass, the old chestnut shedding and the sycamore too, JJ had raked up all the leaves. And for the thousandth time he had pulled that stubborn dandelion that insisted on popping up in the middle of the patio, only for it to reappear . . .

  The porters left with the empty trolley. The male nurse, too, but not before tucking the top sheet over her legs.

  ‘This must all seem very strange and a bit scary, Miss Molly,’ the lady nurse said with a smile, ‘but don’t worry, I’m right outside the door, and if you need anything you only have to press this button.’

  What I need is for someone to get a letter to my son! But I can’t tell you and I don’t know what to do about it!

  The nurse laid the thin red pulley against her arm and over her palm. ‘Plus I’ll be checking on you every so often. I expect you’re tired, so you’ll sleep well. The doctor has reviewed your CT scan and he’ll be along at some point to discuss it all with you. You took quite a tumble, didn’t you, lovey?’ She smoothed Molly’s hair from her forehead. ‘Try and close your eyes now.’

  ‘Paws!’ she managed, irritated by the word, but also strangely glad of its clarity. The nurse quietly left the room, her soft-soled shoes squeaking a little on the linoleum.

  Molly looked around the room. It was a little depressing, but clean and quiet, and she was thankful for both. It was a moment when she very much missed her small sitting room, thinking how she would have liked to be at home, where, having refused the various invitations to go to their homes, she knew she would receive endless calls from the family over Christmas. She allowed herself to picture the log burner, the two comfy chintz-covered chairs lined with dented soft cushions to support her back and their sturdy arms, on which she liked to rest a steaming cup of tea. Also the soft, honey-coloured glow of her pretty china lamp which seemed to make even the greyest or dampest of days cosy. She fought the temptation to cry again in lament of just how much she wanted to be at home in that moment and not to have fallen down those darned stairs. To be able to say to Joe on the telephone, ‘Darling, I’ve written to you . . .’ She had made a promise. A promise!

  She parked her sadness, knowing she could cry later when her catheter was emptied and her dentures lurked in the bottom of a glass on the nightstand and when she heard the distinct thunk of the overhead strip lighting being turned out for the night. Then she would know she was quite alone and free to acknowledge her distress and able only then to vent the rather odd variety of noises that now accompanied her crying. It was thought-provoking that, in her ever-reducing world, she should now find herself in this one sparse room with none of her things around her, nothing at all. Curious, really, the importance she had placed on the collecting and maintaining of pretty objects, precious books, works of art, bits of furniture, trinkets . . . when in this, her final winter, she needed nothing more than the bed on which she had been placed, the soft pillow beneath her head and the bag of liquid that fed into the shallow vein of her arm.

  She could now at ninety-four look back at her story, every chapter, every event and all the people who had played a part, and she realised as she lay in that bed that it was in fact all she had, all anyone had at the end of the day: their story. And wha
t a story it was! Yes, she might, if pushed, admit to having one regret: the fact she had lived in a time when circumstances beyond her control had shaped her life in the way that they did. But despite everything, Molly never forgot that life was good. Precious! And the moments of joy that had taken her breath away, the moments when she looked up to the starry sky and felt dizzy at all the gifts the universe had sent her way – her first, deep and all-consuming love! Her boy! Would she have traded any of it for a guarantee of no sadness, no pain?

  Well, as her grandmother would have said: not on your nelly!

  She chuckled to herself at the thought and yawned before falling into a deep and restful sleep.

  After her morning of being pulled and shoved, Molly closed her eyes and must have fallen asleep. The door opened slowly and she silently cursed the disturbance under her breath; all she wanted was peace. She felt exhausted, which really was quite funny, considering she’d spent the best part of twenty-four hours lying in bed in a state close to dozing, and yet it was the truth. She was really awfully tired. Her broken bones caused her pain and she was mindful of her overly tender, bruised skin. The painkillers they prescribed were effective and, as long as she remained immobile, she would best describe her physical condition as ‘almost comfortable’. The door closed quietly and she could sense a presence. It felt like a chore to open her eyes. Molly feigned sleep, fairly certain that whatever pill needed swallowing, lotion applying or pressure reading taken, nothing, nothing was half as important as letting her sleep, but she was wrong.

  She became aware of the soft tread of shoes, the creeping manoeuvre indicative of someone unaware of the lack of formality when it came to entering a room here. She heard the knock of the toe of a shoe against the skirting board beneath the radiator and the slight metallic twang as the radiator made contact with something like a belt buckle or ring. Slowly, she opened her eyes and saw the back of a head, a man with grey hair. He turned around and Molly let out a mewling sound, an almost visceral reaction to the sight of Joe.

  Oh my boy! My son!

  How very, very happy she was to see his face, possibly for the last time. It filled her heart! In that moment she wished more than anything that she could go and move the hair from the ear of her younger self, as she sat broken-hearted in her bedroom with her baby boy recently whisked away by her sister, and whisper to her in her darkest hour,

  It will be all right, Molly. He will come back to you . . .

  Joe smiled at the sound she made. Her tears fell across her temple and down her nose.

  ‘Hey, Auntie M, don’t cry! I’ve come all this way to see you and the last thing I wanted to do was make you cry. Frances called to say you’d had a fall on those bloody stairs and I couldn’t let you lie here on your own on Christmas Day now, could I?’

  His voice carried the same pitch as his father’s. And Molly tried to smile. She realised that to let frustration at her lack of voice cloud this moment would be a waste. Instead, she breathed deeply, liking this new sense of calm. There was no one but her alive who knew the truth, the secret – she wondered if he would ever see the letter? And then the thought struck her that she had written to Johan, the letter informing him that he was to have a child . . . a letter he, too, was never to receive, which also lay tucked inside the pages, along with Geer’s note . . .

  Maybe Joe would find the letter and maybe he wouldn’t. What would it matter in the great scheme of things? Would it change the way she had loved and had received love? Of course not. What would be, would be . . .

  ‘Igloo!’ She spoke with as much enthusiasm as she was able.

  ‘Ah yes, Frances also told me about the igloo, paws conundrum. That must drive you plain crazy.’

  It does! It does! But I could kiss Frances right now, that’s for sure.

  Joe sat in the chair next to her bed and she wished she could stop crying, as it fogged her view and she wanted to drink in every single detail of him.

  ‘Now, Auntie M, you are obviously on the nice list this year because Father Christmas left this under our tree for you! Fancy that! What are the chances?’

  In his hand he had a present wrapped in shiny gold paper with a red ribbon tied in a beautiful bow on the top. She might have been ninety-four, but the prospect of being spoiled still ignited sparks of joy, a feeling she had quite forgotten.

  ‘I’ll open it for you.’ Sitting in the chair, he placed the box on his lap and, very carefully, in the manner of someone who had every intention of reusing the wrapping, slid his finger under the folds, removed the sticky tape and folded back the sheet to reveal a cardboard box. Molly knew that, had she still access to her words, she would have been shouting in jest, ‘Get on with it, man!’ The anticipation was excruciating.

  Joe raised his shoulders excitedly and opened the box, reaching in to pull out none other than a big fat snow globe. It was so beautiful!

  ‘Look!’ He stood with the precious glass ball in his palms. It balanced on an ornate base of gold, green and red. He shook it in his hands and tiny flecks of snow drifted. And there in the middle of the glass ball stood a tiny, stunningly decorated Christmas tree with two people in front of it who appeared to be mid-waltz. The man, handsome in a navy suit, held the woman as she dipped backwards and her full red skirt swept down to the floor.

  ‘I saw it and it reminded me of you. I know you used to like dancing – you told me.’

  Oh, I did! I really did! What a wonderful, wonderful thing to say to me. I danced with your dad.

  The snow settled in the globe and she had a clear view of the two little people dancing and the sight made her heart sing. The woman in the full red skirt looked so incredibly happy, and why wouldn’t she be? Dancing at Christmastime in the arms of her beau? Joe picked it up and shook it again. For the next ten minutes, they both watched transfixed by the couple captured in their own tiny world. Molly felt quite overcome. It was in truth one of the loveliest gifts she had ever received. And this was most fitting, as it was to be her very last.

  ‘I just really wanted to say happy Christmas, Auntie Molly.’

  Joe reached out and took her hand in his and she thought her heart might burst out of her chest; it was still her greatest joy to be in his company, to feel his touch.

  ‘Please don’t cry. I really can’t stand to see you so sad.’

  I am not sad! I am moved and so very thankful to see you one last time.

  ‘I hadn’t realised quite how much you look like my mum.’ Joe paused and swallowed, as if the thought of Joyce was almost too painful. Without understanding the full irony of his words, they were like music to Molly’s ears.

  Because I am your mum . . . I am your mum, my darling!

  ‘I still miss her.’ He smiled ruefully. ‘Silly really, but I do. She always spoke about you when I was growing up; she was so very fond of you, Auntie M. You and she were like a double act in my life when I was a kid. She was my mum and you were like a second mum.’ He chuckled. ‘She used to tell me of all the things you and she got up to when you were children, hiding away in the attic of that grand old house in Bloomsbury and the adventures you had learning to smoke!’ He wheezed with laughter. Molly pondered the fact that Joyce had supplanted their brother David in the story, and made it a tale of her own . . . Oh, Joyce, how I miss you too! My sister – my only sister! She thought of Joyce’s face on the day she had driven away with baby Joe, Molly waving after her with her heart almost dissolving with grief.

  ‘I know you were a very important part of her life, and mine too.’ He smiled at her with creases of kindness at the edge of his eyes that were just like his dad’s.

  ‘Adam and Roz send you their love, of course, as does Estelle; she wanted to come too, but is on turkey duty, as you can imagine – and did you hear, Maisie has met a chap and is moving to Eindhoven, in the Netherlands.’

  Molly thought of the little girl who had tried desperately to make friends with Hubert the cat. It felt like a mere blink ago.

  ‘She’s a cl
ever girl.’ Joe beamed with grandfatherly pride. ‘As you know, she graduated a year ago and has a fascination for all things Dutch. I thought it was the art of Rembrandt, the canals, the windmills, the tulips.’ He laughed. ‘But no, it turns out to be much simpler than that. Her fascination is for a boy called Daan to whom she’s now engaged! We found out last night and, boy, do I feel old – my granddaughter getting married! They met at college, but Holland will be their home. Her Dutch is impressive and he’s a very nice boy. Adam approves and, as you know, Roz loves everyone and JJ was wondering if he could move into her bedroom, as it’s slightly bigger, so we are all good.’

  My great-granddaughter – just wonderful!

  ‘Estelle was fretting about her being abroad, but I said to her that Maisie is loving life and if that isn’t the whole darn purpose then I don’t know what is. To find love and hold on to it.’ Again that smile . . . ‘But it’ll be strange to think of her so far away from home. I will certainly miss her, and I know Adam will too.’

  No, Joe, no! She’s not far from home, she’s gone home! She is home! The land of her great-great-grandfather! Now isn’t that something?

  ‘Oh, Auntie M, come on now, not more tears. Nothing good gets solved by crying. That’s what my mum used to say. I think she got it from her mum – your mum too, of course! I think she used to say it.’

  She did indeed.

  ‘I’ve been told by the nurse not to stay too long and I don’t want to tire you. So that just leaves me to wish you a merry Christmas,’ he said, with an obvious crack to his voice. ‘I do love you, Auntie M. I hope you know that. I hope you’ve always known that.’

  Oh, Joe! And how I love you and how I have loved you since the moment I saw you . . .

  His words were like balm to a restless soul, sincerely offered and the very sweetest gift he could have ever given her to see her on her way. It was as if the hole left in her gut when she handed him to Joyce on that terrible day was finally sealed with his perfect words. And at first she had worried that history might damn her for giving up too easily on her boy, but now she hoped history would mark her as a woman who did the very best for him and who made the ultimate sacrifice for his well-being. Joe stood slowly to leave. He pushed the snow globe forward on the nightstand so she could see it. She did her best to nod at him, gratefully accepting the gentle kiss he placed on her cheek as he left her.