“I can’t believe you said that!” Jinny said. “That’s such a cliché! I can’t believe those words actually came out of your mouth! Flora! Pat said it seems like yesterday that we were babies!”
Flora came over and kissed them, carefully, so as not to mess her dress. “I love you,” she said. “Thank you for giving me this wedding, and thank you for giving me my childhood.”
“It’s old cliché week in the garden,” sighed Jinny.
28
Getting Old Is a Terrible Thing Trish 1989–1993
Trish didn’t remember the heart attack or collapsing in the classroom, just the struggle to breathe afterwards. From the time she woke in the Infirmary and was reassured that it had been a small heart attack and she was going to be fine, it never felt as if she had enough air. Helen was there, and Cathy came, and George was in space and sent a message—in many ways it felt like an action replay of Mark’s stroke, except that Doug came and brought huge bouquets of lilac and sat blubbering at her bedside. She thought it excessive, considering that they’d told her she was going to be fine. They let her out with prescriptions, diet sheets and an exercise program.
It was March of 1989. She was sixty-three. She took early retirement from teaching—it felt early to her, though standard retirement age was sixty and many people retired at fifty-five. Trish didn’t feel ready to stop teaching. Fortunately, she still had her adult education work, which she expanded. She also retired from the council, because her doctor said she should avoid stress, and she could not deny that the council was stressful. It didn’t help much with stress, as Bethany was still on the council and talked about it at home so Trish’s blood still boiled regularly.
She swam every morning, and walked down to the Kingsway and home again, close to a mile. She resolutely ate low fat foods. She took her pills. She read to Mark. She helped Alestra and Tamsin, now fourteen, study for their O Levels. She babysat for Donna and Tony. She saw her other grandchildren when she either visited them or they visited her.
In June, peaceful protests in China led to a shooting in Tiananmen Square. An unarmed girl was shot by a soldier—images went around the world, immediately iconic. The world reacted in horror. World leaders contacted the Chinese immediately—President Frank of the US was first to deplore the violence, followed by President Jahn of Germany and then by the leaders of every other country, and the United Nations. The Russian Premier, Gorbachev, happened to be in London discussing the open frontier project, so he was interviewed on the BBC. Trish was watching in Mark’s room, as she often did. Television tended to quiet him, and she felt sharing it with him was companionable. Listening to Gorbachev saying how unthinkable it was for the state to condone violence in that way and China should apologize, she spoke aloud to Mark.
“Do you remember when the Russians were the big enemy and we were all afraid of them? First they were our friends, in the war, Uncle Joe, and then in the Fifties they were built up as the villain, the Iron Curtain and all that nonsense. It was nonsense. There’s no difference between Eastern Europe and Western Europe, really, we all care about the same things, a social safety net, individual liberty, prosperity.”
Mark bellowed, and Trish patted his hand. “Are you trying to say Stalin purged people in the Thirties?” she asked. “That was a long time ago. Look at Germany. They were even more evil in the Thirties, and they’re reunited now, and everything is all right.”
The Chinese apologized and extended the freedoms the students had been protesting for, and everyone relaxed.
In September Mark died. It was another stroke which came in his sleep. Trish found him in the morning breathing heavily and impossible to rouse. She called the doctor, and he died in the Infirmary a couple of hours later. Trish went home and sat in his empty room, still full of the clutter of his last years—bedpans, pajamas, the television, his tablets, the hospital bed. It was hard to believe he was really gone.
“Nobody else would have taken him in like that,” Bethany said when she came home.
They cremated him and scattered his ashes with Trish’s mother’s in the garden. All the children and grandchildren came to the funeral, even Doug. Elizabeth and Clifford Burchell came, and Elizabeth spoke about the importance of Mark’s work. Their son Paul was with them because Mark had been his godfather. He was a doctor, and looked very dignified. Trish remembered putting him to her breast when he was a baby.
Trish did not speak. She found it hard to know what she felt. She was relieved, but also much sadder than she would have imagined.
“What are you going to do with those rooms now?” Bethany asked.
“Well, I need them when the children are all home,” Trish said.
“We could make it into a little flat and let it,” Bethany said. “There are always students looking for places.”
“I don’t want to live with strangers,” Trish said.