5
In the London suburb of Greenford, Detective Sergeant Barbara Havers slowly drove her rusting Mini down Oldfield Lane. In the passenger’s seat, her mother huddled like an unstrung marionette within the many folds of a dusty black coat. Round her neck Barbara had tied a jaunty red and blue scarf before they’d left Acton. But sometime during the drive, Mrs. Havers had worked the big square knot loose, and now she was using the scarf as a muff, twirling it tighter and tighter round her hands. Even in the lights from the dashboard, Barbara could see that behind her spectacles her mother’s eyes were large and frightened. She hadn’t been this far from her home in years.
“There’s the Chinese take-away,” Barbara pointed out. “And see, Mum, there’s the hairdresser’s and the chemist’s. I wish it was daylight so we could go to the common and have a sit on one of the benches there. But we’ll do it soon enough. Next weekend, I should guess.”
In response, her mother hummed. Half-shrunk into the door, she made an unconsciously inspired choice of music. Barbara couldn’t have named the origin of the song, but she could put the first seven words to the tune. Think of me, think of me fondly… Something she’d heard on the radio enough times over the past few years, something which her mother had doubtless heard as well and had called upon in this moment of uncertainty to give definition to what she was feeling behind the muddled facade of her dementia.
I am thinking of you, Barbara wanted to say. This is for the best. It’s the only option left.
Instead, she said with a desperately forced heartiness, “Just look how wide the pavement is here, Mum. You don’t see that sort of pavement in Acton, do you?”
She didn’t expect an answer and didn’t get one. She turned the car onto Uneeda Drive.
“See the trees along the street, Mum? They’re bare now, but in the summer think how pretty they’ll be.” They wouldn’t, of course, create that sort of leafy tunnel one often saw along the streets of the finer neighbourhoods in London. They were planted too far apart for that. But they managed to break the bleak monotony created by the line of stucco-and-brick, semi-detached houses, and for this reason alone Barbara noted them with gratitude. As she did the front gardens, pointing them out to her mother as they slowly cruised by, pretending to see details that the darkness obscured. She chatted amiably about a family of trolls, some plaster ducks, a birdbath, and a flowerbed of winter pansies and phlox. It didn’t matter that she hadn’t seen any of this. Her mother wouldn’t recall that in the morning. She wouldn’t even recall it in a quarter of an hour.
Indeed, Barbara knew that her mother didn’t remember the conversation they’d had about Hawthorn Lodge soon after her arrival home this afternoon. She had telephoned Mrs. Flo, had made the arrangements for her mother to become one of the lodge “visitors,” and had gone home to pack her mother’s belongings.
“Now Mummy won’t need everything with her at first,” Mrs. Flo had said kindly. “Just bring a suitcase with a bit of this and that, and we’ll move her in gradual. Call it a little visit, if you think she’ll take to that.”
After years of listening to her mother plan holidays which they would never take, Barbara wasn’t oblivious of the irony of packing the suitcase and talking about a visit to Greenford. It was a far cry from the exotic destinations that had occupied her mother’s disjointed thinking for so long. But the very fact that she had given herself so much to the idea of taking a holiday had made the sight of the suitcase less frightening than it otherwise might have been.
Her mother had noticed, however, that Barbara wasn’t packing any of her own things into the large vinyl case. She’d even gone to Barbara’s room and rustled through her clothes, bringing back an armload of trousers and pullovers that comprised the staple of Barbara’s wardrobe.
“You’ll be wanting these, lovey,” she’d said. “Especially if it’s Switzerland. Is it Switzerland? I’ve wanted to go there for such a long time. Fresh air. Barbie, think of the air.”
She’d explained to her mother that it wasn’t to be Switzerland, adding the fact that she herself could not go. She’d ended with the lie: “But it’s only a visit. Only for a few days. I’ll be with you at the weekend,” and with the hope that somehow her mother would hold on to those thoughts long enough to get her installed in Hawthorn Lodge without trouble.
But now Barbara saw that confusion had vanquished the moment of rare lucidity during which she’d listed the advantages of a stay with Mrs. Flo and the disadvantages of any further reliance upon Mrs. Gustafson. Her mother was chewing at her upper lip as her bewilderment increased. As if from the primary chink in a sheet of glass from which a starburst of breakage grows, dozens of tiny lines radiated from her mouth and formed a fretwork up her cheeks to her eyes. Her hands twisted in the muff of the scarf. The tempo of her humming accelerated. Think of me, think of me fondly…
“Mum,” Barbara said as she pulled to the kerb at the nearest spot she could find to Hawthorn Lodge. There was no response other than the humming. Barbara felt her spirits plummet. For a time this afternoon, she had thought this transition was going to be easy. Her mother had even seemed to greet the idea with anticipation and excitement, as long as it was labelled a holiday. Now Barbara saw that it promised to be as wrenching an experience as she had previously expected.
She thought about praying for the strength to carry her plans through to their completion. But she didn’t particularly believe in God, and the thought of calling upon Him at convenient moments to suit her own needs seemed as useless as it was hypocritical. So she garnered what little resolution she had, pushed open her door, and walked round to help her mother from the car.
“Here we go, Mum,” she said with a cheerful bravado that she summoned from a repertoire of inadequate coping skills. “Let’s meet Mrs. Flo, shall we?”
In one hand she grasped her mother’s suitcase. In the other, she held her mother’s arm. She eased her down the pavement towards the grey stucco promise of permanent salvation.
“Listen, Mum,” she said as she rang the front bell. From inside the house, Deborah Kerr was singing “Getting to Know You,” perhaps in preparation for the new visitor. “They’ve got music on. Hear it?”
“Smells of cabbage,” her mother said. “Barbie, I don’t think a cabbage-house is suitable for a holiday. Cabbage is common. This won’t do at all.”
“It’s coming from next door, Mum.”
“I can smell cabbage, Barbie. I wouldn’t book us a room in a cabbage-hotel.”
Barbara heard the growing, querulous anxiety in her mother’s voice. She prayed for Mrs. Flo to come to the door and rang the bell again.
“We don’t serve cabbage in our home, Barbie. Never to guests.”
“It’s all right, Mummy.”
“Barbie, I don’t think—”
Mercifully, the porchlight snapped on. Mrs. Havers blinked in surprise and shrank back against Barbara.
Mrs. Flo still wore her neat shirtwaister with the pansy pin at her throat. She looked as fresh as she had that morning. “You’ve arrived. Splendid.” She stepped out into the night and took Mrs. Havers’ arm. “Come and meet the dears, love. We’ve been talking about you and we’re dressed and ready and excited to meet you.”
“Barbie…” Her mother’s voice was a plea.
“It’s all right, Mum. I’m right behind you.”
The dears were in the sitting room, where a videotape of The King and I was playing. Deborah Kerr sang melodiously to a group of precious-looking Oriental children. The dears—on the couch—swayed in time to the music.
“Here we are, my dears,” Mrs. Flo announced, her arm going round Mrs. Havers’ shoulders. “Here’s our new visitor. And we’re all ready to get to know her, aren’t we? Oh I wish Mrs. Tilbird were here to share the pleasure, don’t you?”
Introductions were made to Mrs. Salkild and Mrs. Pendlebury, who remained, shoulder to shoulder, on the couch. Mrs. Havers hung back, casting a panicked glance in Barbara’s direction. Barbara smiled at her reassuringly. The suitcase she carried seemed to pull upon her arm.
“Shall we take off your nice coat and scarf, dear?” Mrs. Flo reached for the top button of the coat.
“Barbie!” Mrs. Havers shrilled.
“Now it’s all right, isn’t it?” Mrs. Flo said. “There’s not a thing to worry about. We’re all so anxious to have you join us for a bit.”
“I smell cabbage!”
Barbara placed the suitcase on the floor and came to Mrs. Flo’s rescue. Her mother was clutching onto the top button of her coat as if it were the Hope diamond. Spittle gathered at the corners of her mouth.
“Mum, it’s the holiday you’ve wanted,” Barbara said. “Let’s go upstairs so you can see your room.” She took her mother’s arm.
“It’s usually a bit difficult for them at first,” Mrs. Flo said, perhaps noting Barbara’s own incipient panic. “They get riled a bit at the change. It’s perfectly normal. You’re not to worry about it.”
Together they guided her mother from the room as all the Oriental children chimed “day…by…day” in unison. The stairway was too narrow to allow them to climb it three abreast, so Mrs. Flo led the way, continuing to chat in a light-hearted manner. Underneath her words, Barbara heard the calm determination in her voice, and she marvelled at the woman’s patient willingness to spend her life caring for the elderly and infirm. She herself only wanted to get out of the house as quickly as possible, and she despised that feeling of emotional claustrophobia.
Guiding her mother up the stairway did nothing to ameliorate Barbara’s need for escape. Mrs. Havers’ body had gone rigid. Each step was a project. And although Barbara murmured, encouraged, and kept a supportive hand fixed round her mother’s arm, it was like leading an innocent animal to its death in a slaughterhouse in those last horrible moments when it first catches on the air the unmistakable scent of blood.
“The cabbage,” Mrs. Havers whimpered.
Barbara tried to steel herself against the words. She knew there was no smell of cabbage in the house. She understood that her mother’s mind was clinging to the last rational thought it had produced. But when her mother’s head lolled back against Barbara’s shoulder and she saw the milky pattern tears made through the face powder which she had donned impulsively in girlish preparation for her long-coveted holiday, Barbara felt the crushing grip of guilt.
She doesn’t understand, Barbara thought. She’ll never understand.
She said, “Mrs. Flo, I don’t think—”
At the top of the stairs, Mrs. Flo turned and held up a hand, palm out, to stop her words. “Give it a moment, dear. This isn’t easy for anyone, is it?”
She crossed the landing and opened one of the doors at the rear of the house where a light was already burning to welcome the new dear. The room had been furnished with a hospital bed. Otherwise it was as normal-looking as any other bedroom Barbara had ever seen and, admittedly, far more cheerful than her mother’s room in Acton.
“Look at the lovely wallpaper, Mummy,” she said. “All those daisies. You like daisies, don’t you? And the rug. Look. There’re daisies on the rug as well. And you’ve got your own basin. And a rocker by the window. Did I tell you that you can see the common from this window, Mum? You’ll be able to watch the children playing ball.” Please, she thought, please. Just give me a sign.
Clinging to her arm, Mrs. Havers mewled.
“Give me her case, dear,” Mrs. Flo said. “If we pop things away quickly, she’ll settle all the sooner. The less disruption, the better for Mum. You’ve brought photos and little mementoes for her, haven’t you?”
“Yes. They’re on the top.”
“Let’s have them out first, shall we? Just the photos for now, I think. A quick bit of home.”
There were only two photos, together in a hinged frame, one of Barbara’s brother and the other of her father. As Mrs. Flo flipped open the suitcase, took the frame out, and opened it upon the chest of drawers, Barbara realised suddenly that she’d been in such a hurry to clear her mother out of her life that she hadn’t thought to include a picture of herself. She grew hot with the shame of it.
“Now, doesn’t that look nice?” Mrs. Flo said, stepping back from the chest of drawers and cocking her head to one side to admire the photographs. “What a sweet little boy. Is he—”
“My brother. He’s dead.”
Mrs. Flo clucked sympathetically. “Shall we have her coat off now?”
He was ten, Barbara thought. There was no member of the family at his bedside, not even a nurse to hold his hand and make his passing gentle. He died alone.
Mrs. Flo said, “Let’s just slip this off, dearie.”
Next to her, Barbara felt her mother cringe.
“Barbie…” A note of unquestionable defeat sounded in the two syllables of her name.
Barbara had often wondered what it had been like for her brother, whether he’d slipped away easily without rising from his final coma, whether he’d opened his eyes at the last to find himself abandoned by everyone and everything save the machines and tubes and bottles and gadgets that had been industriously prolonging his life.
“Yes. That’s a good girl. A button. Now another. We’ll get you settled and have a nice cup of tea. I expect you’d like that. A slice of cake as well?”
“Cabbage.” Mrs. Havers drew the word out. It was nearly indistinguishable, like a faint cry, distorted, from a great distance.
Barbara made the decision. “Her albums,” she said. “Mrs. Flo, I’ve forgotten my mother’s albums.”
Mrs. Flo looked up from the scarf which she’d managed to untangle from Mrs. Havers’ hands. “You can bring them later, dear. She won’t want everything all at once.”
“No. These are important. She’s got to have her albums. She’s collected…” Barbara stopped for a moment, knowing in her mind that what she was doing was foolish, feeling in her heart that there was no other answer. “She’s planned holidays. She’s got them done up in albums. She works on them every day. She’ll be lost and—”
Mrs. Flo touched her arm. “My dear, do listen. What you’re feeling is natural. But this is for the best. You must see that.”
“No. It’s bad enough, isn’t it, that I forgot a picture of myself. I can’t leave her here without those albums. I’m sorry. I’ve taken up your time. I’ve made a mess of everything. I’ve just…” She wouldn’t cry, she thought, not with her mother needing her and Mrs. Gustafson to be spoken to and arrangements to be made.
She went to the chest of drawers, snapped closed the framed photographs, and returned them to the suitcase which she swung off the bed. She took a tissue from her pocket, using it to wipe her mother’s cheeks and her nose.
“Okay, Mum,” she said. “Let’s go home.”