Playing for the Ashes (96 page)

“I was writing you a letter,” I said.

“A letter.”

“I must’ve fallen asleep.”

“How long have you been here?”

“Since half past ten. Something like that. Chris—bloke I live with—he dropped me off. I was waiting for you. Then I decided to write. He’ll be by in a while, Chris. I fell asleep.”

I felt thick-headed. This wasn’t working out the way I had planned. I was supposed to be at ease and in control, but when I looked at her, I found that I didn’t know how to go on. Come on, come on, I told myself roughly, who gives a shit what she’s doing with herself to keep her honey lamb interested? Be first to establish the whip hand here. Surprise is on your side, just like you wanted.

But surprise was on her side as well, and she wasn’t doing anything to make things less awkward between us. Not that she owed me an easy transition back into her world. I’d given up all rights to chummy mother-daughter chats some years ago.

Mother’s eyes held mine. She appeared determined not to look at my legs, not to notice the aluminium walker sitting next to the davenport, and not to question what my legs, the walker, and most of all my presence in her house at three in the morning meant.

“I’ve been reading about you in the papers from time to time,” I said. “You. Kenneth. You know.”

“Yes,” she said, as if my admission was only to be expected.

I could feel that my armpits were wet. I longed to blot them with a handkerchief or something. “Seems like a nice enough bloke. I remember him from when you were a teacher.”

“Yes,” she said.

I thought, Shit damn hell. Where was this going? She should be saying, What’s happened to you, Olivia? I should be saying, I’ve come to talk, I need your help, I’m going to die.

Instead I sat in a chair in front of the davenport, half turned in her direction. She stood in the corridor with the floor lamp shooting light along the hem of her silly shirtwaister. I couldn’t move to her without making an awkward scene of it. And clearly, she had no intention of moving towards me. She was clever enough to know that I’d come to ask for something. She was vindictive enough to make me crawl across coals of discomfort in order to ask it.

All right, I thought. I’ll give you your petty victory. You want me to crawl? I’ll crawl. I’ll be the artist of crawl.

I said, “I’ve come to talk to you, Mother.”

“At three in the morning?”

“I didn’t know it would be three.”

“You said you’ve written a letter.”

I looked down at the sheets of paper I’d filled. I couldn’t use a biro any longer. She’d had no pencils in the davenport. The scrawl came from the hand of an unschooled child. I raised my hand to the papers. My fingers crumpled them.

“I need to talk to you,” I repeated. “This doesn’t say it the way…I need to talk. I’ve made a hash of this, obviously. I’m sorry about the time. If you want me to come back tomorrow, I’ll ask Chris—”

“No,” she said. Apparently, I’d crawled long enough to satisfy. “Let me change. I’ll make tea.”

She left me quickly. I heard her go up the first then the second flight of stairs to her room. It was more than
fiv
e minutes before she came down again. She passed the morning room door without looking inside at me. She went down to the kitchen. Ten more minutes creeped by. She was going to make me stew for a while. She was going to enjoy it. I wanted to even the score, but I didn’t exactly know how to do it.

I got up from the balloon-back chair by the davenport, positioned myself behind the walker, and began to shuffle in the direction of the settee. I made the perilous turn-around prior to lowering myself onto the old velvet and looked up to see that Mother stood in the doorway, a tray of tea in her hands. We gazed across the room at each other.

“Long time no see,” I said.

“Ten years, two weeks, four days,” she said.

I blinked, turned my head to the wall. It was still hung with a mishmash of Japanese prints, small portraits of dead Whitelaws, and a minor old master of the Flemish school. I stared at this as Mother came into the room and set the tea tray on a games table next to the chesterfield.

“The same?” she asked me. “Milk and two sugars?”

Damn her, I thought, damn her, goddamn her. I nodded. I looked at the Flemish painting: a centaur with forelegs pawing the air, clasping a woman on to his back, his left and her right arm raised for some reason into an arch. They looked as if they both wanted it this way, the monstrous creature and the bare-legged woman who would be his prize. She wasn’t even fighting to escape him.

“I’ve got something called ALS,” I said.

Behind me I heard the comforting and so familiar sound of hot liquid splashing against a porcelain cup. I heard a clink as the cup in its saucer tapped against the table. Then I felt her near me, next to me. I felt her hand on the walker.

“Sit down,” she said. “Here’s your tea. Shall I help you?” Her breath, I thought. She smelled of alcohol, and I realised she’d fortified herself for this encounter while she was changing her clothes and making the tea. It comforted me to know that. She said again, “Do you need help, Olivia?”

I shook my head. She moved the walker to one side when I’d lowered myself to the settee. She handed me the teacup, placing its saucer on my knee and holding it there until I reached for it and steadied it myself.

She’d changed into a navy dressing gown. She looked more like a mother I could recognise.

“ALS,” she said.

“I’ve had it for about a year.”

“It gives you difficulty walking?”

“At the moment.”

“The moment?”

“For now, it’s walking.”

“And later?”

“Stephen Hawking.”

She’d lifted her teacup to drink. Over the top of it, her eyes met mine. She put the cup back into its saucer slowly, the tea undrunk. She put the saucer and cup onto the table. So careful were her movements that she made no noise. She sat at the corner of the chesterfield. Our bodies were at right angles to each other, our knees separated by less than six inches.

I wanted her to say something. But her only response was to raise her right hand to her temple and press her fingers against it.

I considered saying that I could come back at another time. Instead I said, “Two to
fiv
e years, basically. Seven if I’m lucky.”

She dropped her hand. “But Stephen Hawking—”

“He’s the exception. Which doesn’t exactly matter because I don’t want to live like that anyway.”

“You can’t know that yet.”

“Believe me, I can.”

“An illness allows one to de
fin
e life differently.”

“No.”

I told her how it started, with the stumble on the street. I told her about the physical examinations and the tests. I told her about the futile programme of exercise, about the healers. Finally, I told her about the disease’s progress. “It’s on its way into my arms,” I
fin
ished. “My fingers are weakening. If you look at the letter I was trying to write you—”

“Damn you,” she said, although the words contained no element of passion. “Damn you, Olivia.”

Now was the time for the lecture. I had wanted the whip hand. I had wanted to win. But how could I have expected either? I’d not returned to Staffordshire Terrace triumphant. I’d returned like a prodigal, ruined physically instead of financially, holding on to aphorisms like “Blood’s thicker, isn’t it?” as if they could rebuild a bridge that I had so much enjoyed destroying. I waited to live through what she believed I should hear at the moment: This is what you get…. How does it feel to have your body go to pieces…. You broke your father’s heart…. You destroyed every one of our lives….

I’d live through it, I thought. They were only words. She needed to say them. Once she had done, we could move from recriminations over the past to arrangements for the future. To get the lecture over with as soon as possible, I gave her an opening.

“I did some stupid things, Mother…. I wasn’t as clever as I thought. I was wrong and I’m sorry.”

The ball was in her court. I waited, resigned. Let her have at me, I thought.

She said, “As am I, Olivia. Sorry, that is.”

Nothing more came. I hadn’t been looking at her, had been picking instead at a loose thread in the seam of my jeans. I raised my eyes. Her own looked watery, but I couldn’t tell if the water meant tears, exhaustion, or an effort to fight off a migraine. Age seemed to be coming on her quickly. However she had appeared in the doorway a half hour earlier, she was looking close to her years at the moment.

I asked the question without knowing I would ask it: “Why did you send me that telegram?”

“To hurt you.”

“We could have helped each other.”

“Not then, Olivia.”

“I hated you.”

“I blamed you.”

“Do you still?”

She shook her head. “Do you?”

I considered the question. “I don’t know.”

She smiled briefly. “You’ve become honest, it seems.”

“Dying does that to you.”

“You mustn’t say—”

“It’s part of the honesty.” I began to place my teacup on the table. The cup rattled like dried bones against the saucer. She took it from me. She put her hand over my right
fis
t. “You’re different,” I said. “Not what I expected.”

“Loving does that to you.”

She said it without the least trace of embarrassment. She didn’t sound either proud or defensive. She spoke as if merely stating a fact.

I said, “Where is he?”

She frowned, looking perplexed.

“Kenneth,” I said. “Where is he?”

“Ken? Greece. I’ve just seen him off to Greece.” She seemed to realise how odd the remark sounded, coming at nearly half past three in the morning because she shifted in her chair before she added, “The
fli
ght was delayed.”

“You’ve come from the airport.”

“Yes.”

“You’ve done good by him, Mum.”

“I? No. He’s done most of it himself. He’s a worker and a dreamer. I’ve simply been there to listen to the dreams and encourage the work.”

“Still…”

She smiled fondly, as if I hadn’t spoken. “Ken has always made his own world, Olivia. He takes dust and water and turns it into marble. I think you’ll like him. You’re of an age, you know, you and Ken.”

“I hated him.” I adjusted the statement. “I was jealous of him.”

“He’s a fine man, Olivia. Truly
fin
e. The things he’s done for me out of sheer generosity…” She raised her hand slightly from the arm of the chesterfield. “What can I do to make your life lovely, he’s always wanted to know. How can I repay what you’ve done for me? Cook the meals? Talk over the issues of the day? Share my world? Ease the pains in your head? Make you part of my life? Make

you proud to know me?”

“I’ve done none of that for you.”

“It doesn’t matter. Because things are different now. Life is different now. I never thought life could alter as much as it has. But it does if you’re open to it, darling.”

Darling
. Where were we heading? I took a course blindly. “The barge I live on. It’s like… I’m going to need a wheelchair, but the barge is too…I’ve been trying to…Dr. Alderson tells me there’re private nursing homes.”

“And there are homes,” Mother said. “Like this, which is yours.”

“You can’t really want—”

“I want,” she said.

And that was the end of it. She stood and said that we needed to eat. She helped me into the dining room, sat me at the table, and left me there while she went below to the kitchen. She returned in quarter of an hour with eggs and toast. She brought strawberry jam. She brought fresh tea. She sat not opposite me but next to me. And while she had been the one to suggest food, she ate practically nothing herself.

I said, “It’s going to be awful, Mum. This. Me. The ALS.”

She put her hand on my arm. “We’ll talk about all that tomorrow,” she said. “And the tomorrow after that. And the next one as well.”

I felt my throat get tight. I set my fork down.

“You’re home,” Mother said. I knew she meant it.

CHAPTER
25

L
ynley found Helen in the back garden of his town house, moving among the rose bushes with a pair of secateurs. She was not gathering either buds or
flo
wers, however. Rather, she was in the process of cutting off the dead remains of roses that had already bloomed and faded. She was letting these fall away to the ground.