Time to Let Go (13 page)

His flighty daughter had never really cared  much about  routine and discipline - even in her own life, which was probably why she was jetting around the globe for a living,
never settling anywhere, was single and was always looking for inspiration and meaning in new places and pastimes. It did not make her an expert in his eyes even if he had to admit that she knew how to make his Biddy smile.

Now she
was adding insult to injury by bringing his role as father into discredit. Would she – and also for that matter other people - see him at all as the good, loyal father and husband he was trying to be, a man who was taking care of the family and his wife? Or was he seen as the neurotic control freak and a cliché of a grumpy old man who had lost touch with reality over his own little problems? Did people still respect his lovable and remarkable wife, or did they all laugh about her behind their backs, as he feared they would? Did they respect him at all?

As his life came closer to its completion, and as he was writi
ng this chronicle, he often wondered if he could look back on it and be as proud as he wanted to be. Or was he just fooling himself: had he actually made a mess of it all?

The phone rang and forced him to leave these heavy thoughts aside. Walter almost sprinted to answer it. He hated it when Biddy’s afternoon nap was interrupted. It was that paramedic - Walter could not understand the name but he recognised the voice. He seemed to be very keen on Hanna. Only a few days ago
, Walter had learned in a romantic comedy that dating etiquette required the man to wait three days after the first date before calling the woman again, or else he was considered too keen.  Well, today was only one day after the date. What was wrong with this guy to wantonly break the rules? Hanna had abandoned a string of perfectly great men for no apparent reason whatsoever. The few boyfriends that she had introduced to the family seemed perfectly nice and suitable but then she left them and never provided a reason for the split. He handed the receiver to his daughter and ushered her up the stairs - out of earshot.

“I am sorry, Karim,” she apologised once she was upstairs. “My father is worried about waking up my mother from her afternoon nap. I hope he wasn’t rude to you?”

“No, not at all and if he was rude I would understand,” Karim said warmly.

“She sleeps like a rock and her
hearing is getting worse as it is,” Hanna was annoyed at her father. “I seriously doubt a phone call could disturb her but in his mind interrupted sleep is the worst thing that could happen.”

“He has a point
. Physical routine can be very beneficial.”

“Go and agree with him. You two would make a right pair,” she said jokingly. “So what can I do for you?” she asked.

“I have put all of my notes together from last night at the restaurant. I have constructed a document for you that sets out all the points for your defence, as it were. Legal and medical jargon included. I was wondering if you wanted to go over it with me sometime.”

Hanna inwardly
jumped for joy. The thought of such a document was very comforting.

“That would be wonderful.”

“If your mother is asleep right now, would you consider meeting me at my sister’s house? I am on ‘mother-watch’ and mine is asleep too.”

“Sure, why not!”

“The address is 18, Sion Hill.

“Oh, I know where that is. I used to have
a school friend in that road at number 31. I will be with you in about ten minutes,” she promised.

Hanna hung up and went downstair
s to tell her father about her plans.

“Dad, I am meeting up with the paramedic. If you think you can hold off with dinner until six I will be back in time to cook. I bought a lot of food that might go off otherwise.”

“Of course. Well, well. Two dates in two days,” he commented with a smirk.

“If you mind me going I can reschedule. I know I said I was going to
be here to help you out with Mum,” Hanna admitted. “I am sorry to mess up your plans.”

“Don’t worry,
Pumpkin,” Walter said with a sigh. “I managed before you came and I will have to do the same when you leave.”

The house at
Sion Hill was enormous. Detached with three floors, huge gardens and a private driveway; this was a proper mansion. Even with twelve children there would be enough space for an elderly woman.

Before Hanna got to the door Kari
m came out of the house and greeted her by shaking hands.

“You made it sound as if your mother was living in a tiny cupboard of a room with children’s toys and clutte
r everywhere,” Hanna joked.

“Sorry if I have been misleading. If you ever meet my sister you will se
e that for her this is exactly the way you describe it. She runs a tight ship.”

The interior was very modern and minimalist, cream walls and wooden floorboards. Karim led Hanna into the kitchen.

“This house is amazing,” Hanna said. “It could be featured on TV or in magazines. It is spotless.”

“To you and me it is. I agree it is impressive, but it costs them an arm and a leg. Shahnaz has just started working freelance as an accountant again. Her husband
’s company is not doing as well in the recession as it used to and they need a second income to keep the house. Having mother here is very hard for her. You know, keeping on top of the house, the children and her work.”

“Well, at least she has
you and your brother to help out,” Hanna said.

They
sat down at a large, oak kitchen table and Karim handed her a two page document.

“I’ve brought my airline manuals so that you can look at the company’s guidelines on resuscitation,” Hanna said.

Karim flicked through the manuals while she read his summary. He had managed to come up with many good points, the document was written in concise medical jargon and made each point in calm and sober statements. For the first time she felt truly that she was not guilty.

“I don’t know how to thank
you, Karim. This will be a big help for me,” she acknowledged.

“Not that you should need it, I hasten to add. You did nothing wrong, which should be pretty evident, in any case.”

Hanna gave him a brief hug and kissed him on the cheek.

“Thank you!”

Karim quickly withdrew from her and looked away.

“Would you care to meet my mother? She loves visitors, whoever they are and however briefly they stay. If you are half as good with her as you are with your own mother it will make her day,” Karim told her.

“Of course, I would love to.”

“Her room is on the first floor. She wanted to be in the centre of everything. She does not want privacy and quiet, she wants to hear the family so she does not feel so alone. They put her next to the master bathroom above the living room and on the same corridor as the boys. That is where she wanted to be. It is not what we would recommend for a stroke patient, but if you believe in mind over matter you will understand why we did it.”

When they got upstairs they found his mother fast asleep. Hanna had expected a fragile little woman dressed in black, with a leathered face, grey hair and worn out from the dramas of her escape from Iran, and from the hardships of her life. Instead, the woman looked more like Jackie Onassis in her fifties, with immaculately styled hair, carefully applied make up and a beautiful complexion.

“She has kept herself young and presentable,” Hanna stated the obvious.

“That is my sister’s doing” Karim explained. “Shahnaz does not do anything by half. Now that she has mother with her she makes sure she gets time with her every morning to doll her up. It seems unnecessary and my mother always tells her to leave it and turn her attention to more pressing matters, but I am sure she secretly likes it. Mother used to be a very elegant lady.”

“She still is!” Hanna corrected him.

“Mother used to be someone in Iran until the regime change. She lived a sophisticated life and was respected by many. She is not after privileges or special treatment, but she often feels that even after 30 years here she is still not treated as an equal,” Karim whispered.

They left the sleeping patient in her room and went downstairs.

“Do you think she is being treated as an equal?” Hanna asked on the way down.

“Yes, of course she is, at least most of the time. Where we live and in the circles we move there really are no such issues. Everyone I know has unpleasant moments in their lives. We all do. My mother is just overly sensitive sometimes and if someone is rude she instantly thinks it is because she is foreign looking.”

“What does she do all day? Can she move at all?” Hanna wondered.

“One body half has recovered most of its mobility, so she can op
erate a remote control and the hi-fi. Reading is a bit more difficult so we have bought her a lot of audio books and DVDs. She loves the radio: she never misses an episode of The Archers,” Karim told her.

“I look forward to meeting her
properly when she is awake,” Hanna said, making her way to the front door.

“Great
. Well, it was nice seeing you. Give me a call sometime to let me know how you get on,” Karim said, opening the door for her.

“I promise I will,” she said quickly.

At home Walter was torn as to
how to make the best use of his time. He looked through the living room window onto the garden. He really should get the place ready for winter but the chronicle tempted him, too. He had to take every opportunity to make sure the right information was passed on. The gardener could help outside, but only Walter could help with that other wilderness. He looked over at Biddy, who was sound asleep on the sofa, and decided to stay here with her and work on the chronicle.

What his daughter had said about him changing and evolving was still on his mind. The same could be said about everyone and most importantly about Biddy. It was horrible to think that his wife should be remembered in her current state. This new version of her had begun to dominate everyone’s image of Biddy. The picture of the capable, energetic and warm person he had married was being distorted bit by bit by memories of a confused, helpless and sometimes angry old woman. Walter had already written a large chapter on his wife which honoured her entire life and he had sworn to himself that it would not end with a sad note on her illness. He might include the few pictures they had taken, to illustrate her cheerful and happy ways beyond what a chronicle could express.

He remembered a discussion he had had with Henrik about the matter of ‘selling’ family secrets. But Walter wanted the world to know and hated to ‘compromise the truth’ by telling only the good parts. He decided to stick with the concept of a shorter official version and to expand everything privately at a later stage by adding his confidential notes. For now he had to press on.

It was time to come to anot
her black sheep in the family: his aunt Helvi.

Helvi had been the most promising star of the Korhonen famil
y. Her father had high hopes for her in terms of marriage or a professional career. Exceedingly intelligent and one of the first women to be admitted to university she inexplicably – allegedly - dropped out of her education and eloped with a Communist to Spain, where they fought on the side of the rebels – in line with the family’s political tradition. She returned to the family home as a pregnant widow after only a few months. She stayed at home while her mother went out to work to support the family but later she trained as a nurse and earned wages herself. Like Kari, she had taken to the bottle, never having recovered from her broken heart. He would have liked to describe her only vaguely as a troubled woman, but then too much information would be lost that he found very interesting and that should also fascinate future generations. Yet, he did not want to give the impression that the entire family had been a bunch of drunks and mad people.

Blond
e with blue eyes she should have had plenty of suitors, even as the ‘fallen woman’ that she was in her family’s eyes, but she seemed to have lost interest and never agreed to go out with the few men who dared to ask the unapproachable mother. 

Walter had to rely on anecdotal evidence
and had to deal with several versions that contradicted each other. According to the sources she had either been reading medicine in Oxford, mathematics in London, or biology somewhere else. Henrik had promised his father to contact the universities and find out where Helvi had been registered, but so far he had not come back with results.

• Helvi Harper, nee Korhonen
  
• Born 01.07.1910 in Helsinki
  
• Married 03.07.1936 in Barcelona to William Harper, born 07.09.1907, died 19.07.1936 in Barcelona
  
• Child:
  Jaana Harper, born 12.01.1937, died  13.02.1941 in London, cause unknown
  
• Enrolled in unknown university, no degree
  
• Never remarried
  
• Occupation: nurse
  

In his confidential notes Walter wrote that he had once overheard a discussion between his parents about Helvi’s aborted
career, and believed to remember that it was maths she had been studying, but he had been very young and could be wrong about it. Many years later Kari had boasted about his intelligent sister who would have been a doctor but who was to say that his unreliable uncle had not been misled by Helvi’s later profession as a nurse.

The wall of silence, with regards to the dead child, incited the wildest fantasies in the young Walter and even now he could not shake off the suspicion that there was more to the story than was being let on.

He could describe in detail how Helvi spent her days, her habits and her closed off personality, but was it ethical to publish that kind of information?

As he wrote the uncensored version of Helvi’s
life with all the stories and versions that he had ever heard, he tried to be very careful in his wording, to keep as ‘scientific’ in this unscientific part of his work as he possibly could.

He only wished someone of the older generation had been so far sighted and compiled a similar chronicle for him. By the time Walter had
been old enough to learn the family secrets of the grown-ups the Korhonen family seemed to have stopped speaking about the things that mattered to each other.

Biddy woke up before Walter had finished writing this latest article: time passed quickly when he wrote. He took her to the kitchen and made some tea. She was not yet fully alert and without saying anything she just sat at the table and stared into space.

Walter got the ironing board out and a basket full of clean
clothes from the utility room but before he had managed even to start on the first shirt Biddy stood up and took over from him. He kept a close eye on her to make sure she did not set anything on fire, but he let her carry on. Her continuous commitment to housework was remarkable and had made it difficult to use a ‘home help’. He had tried it once, hiring a woman to clean the house but Biddy had not liked her and so he was stuck with either doing most of the dreaded tasks himself, or ‘managing’ his wife while she did them. He was quite pleased she had taken over the ironing; it was the task above all that he really hated doing, even though it was almost just as demanding to supervise.

Fortunately
, the ‘babysitting’ was cut short by Hanna’s arrival. As soon as her daughter entered the living room Biddy forgot all about the ironing and Walter quietly unplugged the iron and put it safely back in the utility room.

Biddy was
all excited when Hanna started to unload food from the larder and the fridge in preparation for dinner, but Walter was irritated. As soon as something was put out Biddy would examine it and then she started to put things away again, making comments like: “I won’t eat that,” or “We don’t need that, do we?”

Hanna had to be on the ball to keep track of the things that were put away and where they disappear
ed to. Walter left the kitchen because it was all far too irritating: his patience was running out. As he stood in the door he turned around.

“Hanna if it fits with your plans I thought I might actually go to the pub tonight. It being a Saturday and all, would you mind?”

“Not at all. I was going to stay in with mother anyway. I thought we might watch a few more DVDs. The ones I had in mind won’t be your cup of tea, so it’s just as well if you’re not here. Are you meeting any of your friends?”

“No, I am thinking
of going to the sports pub to see what they’ve got on; just for a change of scenery.”

“You should call one of your friends to go along with you. You can’t go to a pub alone. That is sad.”

“I couldn’t care less if I am alone, Pumpkin, or what it looks like. Most of our friends are not doing evening things any more. They are either dead, in a home or they don’t want to leave their house. Anyway, I appreciate it Pumpkin. I will be back long before you go to bed,” Walter promised.

After dinner he went upstairs into the bedroom to change into something more presentable while Hanna set up the DVD player in the living room and went through the collection of films. Biddy did not recognise any of them so it was up to the daughter to make a choice. She settled for an easy option, ‘Mamma Mia’. More music and light hearted entertainment – the two of them were set for the evening until it was bed time.