“I didn’t know what had happened! I thought she needed help!”
For a moment she didn’t remember what had happened, and then she did. Bee was dead, and she had botched joining her. Thank you for nothing, St. Zenobius, she thought. She didn’t want to open her eyes, didn’t want to be alive.
“I couldn’t lose them both like that,” Jinny said.
Pat opened her eyes and tried to smile.
They packed efficiently for her move to the home. “It’s near Flora,” Jinny said.
“I think I remember that,” Pat said.
“You broke the glass in this picture of Mamma and the girls,” Philip said. “I’ll have it mended.”
“Thank you.”
She took the album of pictures of all of them that Michael had taken when he was dying, and copies of her guide books. She took all her art books and boxes of English literature. She took her Life List and her birding books. She took the old green silk scarf, hardly more than a rag, that Mark had given her for Christmas in 1948, and which Bee had clung to in hospital after the accident. She let Jinny pack clothes and her mother’s china. She picked up her binoculars.
“You won’t want those, Mum,” Philip said. “What will you do with them in a home?”
“Watch birds,” Pat said.
“Oh, let her,” Jinny said. “She might as well bring them if she wants them.”
They drove north towards Lancaster. She told them about that time in the war when she had been held up in Lancaster and gone to Barrow-in-Furness. “Did I tell you this before?” she asked.
“Maybe when I was a little girl,” Jinny said.
“I don’t remember ever hearing about it,” Philip said. “It’s fascinating.”
“I can still remember that kind of thing. I just forget new things.”
“I know,” he said. “Look, it won’t be so bad. I’ll come and see you regularly. I’ll bring you anything you need. I’ll bring the baby to show you.”
“Has it been born yet?” she asked.
“Not quite yet,” Philip said. “Any day now. That’s why you’re giving me a ride to Manchester, so I can be home with Sanchia while it’s born.”
The home stood on the moor overlooking the town and the bay beyond. It seemed clean and the nurses were friendly. Flora met them there. Pat had a room to herself, with navy blue curtains, a hospital bed, an armchair, and a little bookshelf. Jinny arranged the books on the bookshelf and Pat arranged her mother’s china on the little knickknack shelf on the wall. “I want Michael’s photo of Bee there,” she said.
“It’s broken, remember? Philip’s mending it for you.”
“Oh yes.” Pat had forgotten. “I keep forgetting things.”
“We know,” Flora said.
“It’s all right,” Jinny said, and Pat dissolved in tears because Jinny sounded so much like Bee saying that.
“Put my little Madonna of the Magnificat on that shelf,” she said, when she had recovered.
“You didn’t bring it, Mum,” Jinny said. “But it’s in the book, isn’t it?”
Jinny found it in the Uffizi book and Pat looked at it, hardly able to see. How had she forgotten to bring the print?
“We’re going to sell the Cambridge house,” Flora said.
“Yes, and divide the money between you and Philip,” Pat said, absently. That was what they had agreed.
“Well, the money may go to keep you in here. This isn’t cheap,” Flora said. “There used to be state homes for old people, but not any more.”
“Bee’s insurance will help,” Jinny said. “I’ll put it into an account for this.”
“We’re grateful,” Flora said, stiffly, her back to Jinny. “It’s very good of you.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Jinny said. “Of course I want to help as much as I can.”
Jinny went over to Pat then and hugged her. “Now Pat, you remember where the bathroom is? Just outside here to the left.”
When they left Pat alone at last she sat down and wept. She couldn’t remember if there had been a funeral for Bee, but she couldn’t forget that she was dead. Maybe she could forget? Maybe she could pretend that she was here temporarily, that Bee would come and rescue her? But she knew that was dangerous, because it wasn’t true, and she was so unclear on what she remembered now that if she started to pretend things that weren’t true she could entirely lose her grip on reality. She found her notebook and her pen. She should make a list.
“Madonna of the Magnificat,” she wrote. “Photo of Bee. Philip will bring.”