“Time, sweetie.”
She quickly changed the subject to Nigel, how well he was doing, though his advancement at work might mean moving to Scotland. In fact, she said, Nigel had taken over paying her rent—at which Nick felt a surge of envy. He could pitch in, now that he had regular work (if only for a few more weeks).
In the middle of a sentence, she stopped cold, blanched. She looked as if she were holding her breath.
“Mum?”
She closed her eyes.
“Can I get you something?” He tried to take hold of her hand, but she’d clenched it tight, an impregnable fist.
When the pain passed, she told him that it felt as if some invisible assailant were striking her spine with a bat. The blows came without warning. If she took the powerful drug her doctor had prescribed, the pain dimmed to an intermittent ache, but then all of her dimmed, all her senses, her memory, her balance, her consciousness (even certainty) of being alive.
What could Nick say? That he admired her grace, her courage, her kindness to three children who had probably as good as scuppered her prospects of a considered life? And the time had long passed, he knew, when he might have asked her more about his father, something he had blithely expected he would do in some distant future they were clearly never to share. Nick knew the man’s name, and he knew that, last Mum had known, the blighter lived somewhere in Northern Ireland. (“Probably has a wife and kids there. Now she’s a woman I wouldn’t trade places with.”) “Are you peckish? Can I go out and fetch us the best carryout in London?” he asked, helpless.
“You know, I am,” she said, deliberately brightening. “But no curry. Anything but curry. I went off that for life a good while ago.”
“Then I’ll be back. Stay right here with Iris.” He patted the book.
Even this errand was a matter of his needs over hers. He was desperate to be out in the fickle city air—in the mean wind and temperamental skies of April—not because it would clear his head but because it would allow him somewhere to cry. He walked several blocks in a locomotive rush, wiping his face again and again with the sleeve of his mac, till he reached a small, motley park. He turned on his mobile and called Annabelle to reassure her that he had arrived, that she could take off the next two days.
“I’m pregnant,” she told him, just like that.
“Annaboo,” he said. “Oh Annie.” He found himself crying again, his sister joining in.
“I don’t know whether to tell her. I’m barely three months along.”
“You have to.”
“She’ll refuse to let me care for her. What then? Not like Nige can take time off.”
Nick was about to say that he would refuse to let her care for Mum, but what could he offer—to quit his show and move home, just as he’d found work to sink his teeth into, even if it was second tier?
“It’ll give her something to live for,” said Nick.
“You haven’t talked to her doctors,” Annabelle said coldly.
“But it’s good news, Annie.”
He heard his sister sigh. “Well, it is. For us. Michael’s on the moon.”
“Congratulations. How could I forget that bit? Congratulations.”
She promised to let him know what she decided to do.
He brought back to his mother’s flat an Italian lunch, aubergine and chicken dishes baked with tomato and cheese. He’d asked the girl to leave out the garlic. Mum ate a few bites and seemed endlessly grateful. Nick had a glass of the red plonk he found at the back of a cupboard.
Annabelle had told him that if everything went well, Mum would sleep for much of the afternoon (though seldom so well at night). That first afternoon, Nick muted his mobile and slept as well, curled up, prawnlike, on the narrow bed in the spare room off the kitchen, wearing the same clothes he’d put on before dawn in Bucharest.
He was awakened by the sound of running water, the consciousness of a sun much lower in the sky. At least the clouds had cleared.
Mum was leaning against the sink, filling the kettle. From behind, she looked even more alarmingly tiny than she had on her bed. She had always been small—in healthier times, compact and trim, nimble on her feet. More than once, she had told Nick that he was lucky to have inherited two of the three traits that drew her to his father: the man’s stature and his striking complexion. “The third, his gift for opportunistic flattery, that one I hope he kept to himself.”
“Mum, let me do that,” he said in the kitchen.
He startled her, of course, and it distressed him to see her catch herself with one hand, nearly dropping the kettle onto the dishes in the sink. Recovering her balance, she turned. “I’m done for if I can’t do a thing for myself, Nicky. But thank you.” She set the kettle on the counter and let him take over. She sat in the sole chair beside the café table in the corner.
Rummaging, he found a tin of shortbread biscuits.
“Have as many as you like,” she said. “None for me.”
“Calories, Mum. According to Annie, the doctor said we’re to stuff you like a Christmas goose with calories.”
“I have clotted cream with my porridge. How’s that?”
While waiting for the water to boil, he struggled for something to say that wasn’t about her cancer. He reached for a story about his work on the set in Romania.
His mother saved him the trouble. “Your sister’s pregnant.”
“Mum? Did she tell you that?” Had he been so dead to the world that he failed to wake at the sound of a ringing phone? What kind of useless carer was he?
Mum shook her head. “Anybody can see. Or any woman who’s been through it three times. I hope she plans to let me in on the news. Before it’s too late.”
Should he pretend he didn’t know? The plaintive look on his mother’s face reminded him, suddenly, sadly, of the look she often wore when her three children returned home from a posh lunch out with Grandfather.
“I shouldn’t say this,” Nick said, “but I’m glad Grandfather’s gone. I’m glad he’s not around to see you like this, and I don’t mean because I think it would break his heart or any of that rubbish.”
“Oh, Nick.”
The kettle began to hint at a whistle. Nick turned to put things together on a tray. “Let’s go in the other room, shall we?” He watched to see if Mum needed his help, but she stood and walked through on her own.
After they were settled, she looked at Nick in that lingering way only mothers are permitted to look at their grown sons. He thought she was about to tell him how well he’d turned out, how proud she was of him, that he seemed on a good path; he had heard such homilies from her before, and though he was always embarrassed by them, they had a surprisingly powerful effect. Sometimes he felt as if they literally inoculated him against the kind of crumping surrender that even made sense in his world (that sometimes saved a bloke from squandering a whole life on dreams).
“Nicholas, I don’t want to hear you run down your grandfather. He gave you so much.”