The nurse read on. “‘Wee folk, good folk, / Trooping all together; Green jacket, red cap, And white owl’s feather!’”
A slight smile played at the edge of Nana’s lips. When Olivia saw her like this, so peaceful, it was hard to believe there was anything wrong with her at all. She looked for all the world like a happy, healthy ninety-seven-year-old. Her hair was neatly styled, her clothes smart and freshly laundered. Today’s ensemble was a pair of black trousers and a bright yellow cardigan that brought out the color in her cheeks. Her penciled-in eyebrows were as much an accessory as the string of pearls that skirted the collar of her cardigan.
When the poem ended, the nurse made sure Nana was comfortable and smiled at Olivia, indicating that she should come over. Olivia stepped into the room.
“Hi, Nana. How are you?” She kept her voice bright and breezy, bending down to kiss Nana’s cheek and squeezing her frail hands as tight as she dared. Nana seemed to shrink a little every time Olivia saw her. It was like watching melting ice—soon there would be nothing left of her, only memories frozen in time. She so desperately wanted the old Nana back. The Nana she knew and loved. The Nana who knew and loved her. “I remember that poem, Nana. It was one of my favorites.” She pulled over a chair and straightened the blanket on Nana’s knees.
Rheumy gray eyes studied Olivia in reply, not looking at her but past her, as if searching for something far away.
Nana pushed the blanket to one side, muttering to herself. “What is it this time? Temperature check?” She often thought Olivia was the nurse. Sometimes she was the minibus driver. Once she was a famous actress from the Gaiety. Rarely was she Olivia.
“No temperature checks today,” Olivia said. “Just visiting.” She passed Nana the jelly babies. “I brought you these.”
Nana eyed them suspiciously, crinkling the plastic wrapper as she turned the bag over in her hands before placing it on the table beside her. “Do I like them?”
“They’re your favorites. Especially the red ones. We used to bite the heads off them and laugh.”
Olivia told Nana about the walk she’d enjoyed up Howth Head that morning and showed her some pictures of the rhododendrons on her phone. Nana remarked on them, trying to remember if it was rhododendrons or hydrangeas she grew in her garden.
“Hydrangeas, Nana. White and pink. They’re always admired by people who pass the cottage.”
“Which cottage?”
“Your cottage. Bluebell Cottage? At the top of the hill?” Everything was a question now. Everything punctuated with doubt and uncertainty.
Nana closed her eyes, exhausted by the effort of conversation, of remembering.
The room was stuffy and airless. It made Olivia claustrophobic.
They sat quietly for a while, the occasional rattle of the approaching tea trolley and the distant tinny voices from the television doing their best to cover up the gaps in their conversation. It was these silent minutes Olivia especially hated. She filled them with inconsequential fussing: straightening piles of months-old magazines, picking browned petals from wilted carnations in a vase at the window, organizing a deck of cards into suits. None of it mattered, but anything was better than the gaping silence.
She was relieved when the tea trolley arrived and Nana perked up a little. There was something reassuring about watching Barbara pour hot tea from the large stainless steel pot while she chattered on about the wind blowing the wheelie bins over in the night and how you wouldn’t believe the mess she’d woken up to on her street that morning. Nana dunked a digestive biscuit and said what did people expect if they were silly enough to put bins on wheels? Olivia smiled. In brief lucid moments like this, she could hardly believe that life had brought them to St. Bridget’s at all.
Pappy had never admitted it, but Olivia knew he found words like dementia and Alzheimer’s frightening. “Away with the fairies. That’s all. She’ll be grand.” He’d said he didn’t want Nana to be labeled, insisting she was still the same Martha, deep down. He’d looked after her at home as long as he could, patiently making small adjustments to their routine, constantly trying to find a way to make the new Martha fit with the old Cormac as things became awkward, then difficult, and eventually impossible. He said it was like doing a jigsaw puzzle where the pieces kept changing shape. “You have to keep trying every piece until you find one that fits.” It was the closest he’d ever come to complaining.
The fire finally brought things to a head. Nana was making chips, double fried, the way Pappy liked them, but she forgot about them during the second fry and popped out to the shops to get him a bottle of stout while he was at a friend’s garden picking broad beans. He didn’t even like stout. The kitchen was a charred shell by the time a neighbor raised the alarm.
Pappy found Nana at the bookshop. She couldn’t remember how she got there or why she had a bottle of stout in her bag. Something Old was the place she’d instinctively gone to, knowing she would be safe there. Olivia thought it rather lovely that when real life was deserting Nana, it was the bookshop and the fictional lives she’d loved and lived through that stuck by her, like loyal friends. Arrangements to move her into the nursing home began the next day, and St. Bridget’s became part of their lives—a comma separating everything life was before, and everything it had become since.
Olivia sipped her tea and took a deep breath before telling Nana she would be looking after the bookshop now.
“Which bookshop?”
“Something Old?” Olivia waited, hoping for the fog to lift, for Nana to remember.
“Has he straightened that sign yet? It’s all off to one side. I suppose he’ll be wanting his tea soon. Never stops eating, that man. Hollow legs. Or worms.” Nana’s eyes fluttered as she chased a memory back over the years. She leaned forward, studying Olivia’s face. “You remind me of someone.” Olivia’s heart thumped. Please remember. Please say my name. “Hepburn. Is that it? Audrey Hepburn?” Nana looked pleased with herself and then frowned, confusion clouding her face. “What’s your name?”
“Olivia.”
“Pretty name.” She took Olivia’s left hand in hers. “Not married?”
Olivia winced at the thought of her engagement ring still in her skirt pocket. She should really put it somewhere safe. She wondered if she would give it back. What did you do with an engagement ring if you called the engagement off? “No, Nana. I’m not married.” Again she felt a rush of childlike rebellion, a truth not fully told.
“Don’t worry, dear. You’ll meet someone. When the time’s right. Or maybe when it’s not.”