Time to Let Go (14 page)

Biddy liked it but could not quite follow the story.

“Who is he now? He was not there before.” she asked.

“That is the other man from her past,” Hanna explained. “There are three.”

“Three men,” Biddy giggled. “Well, I never. And who is he?”

“He is the boyfriend of the daughter,” Hanna said.

“But not from the past?”

“Right.
He has nothing to do with Meryl Streep. He goes out with the daughter.”

“And who is he?”

“He used to go out with…,” Hanna began but a song started and Biddy sang along to the music and slapped her thigh.

Not only did
she recognise the tune, she knew the lyrics too.

Hanna found it quite astonishing to see what could be ingrained into the mind and subconscious. Biddy could not remember names and places in her own house but she could still sing those Abba songs, and wi
thin her life span they had come relatively late. The mother had only been exposed to the music through her children, yet some of it had managed to survive as memory after all.

For Hanna this was another sign of the dedication Biddy had shown to her children and how much interest she had taken in their lives. She felt the need to hold her mother’s hand and grabbed it. The hand responded and squeezed hers back, but when the music started again t
hey moved and waved along to the rhythm of the next song.

As soon as her father had left the house, Hanna went to get some sweets from her room. Ever since a science magazine had talked about a link between Alzheimer’s disease and diabetes, her father had restricted the chocolate and sugar allowed in the house. Hanna agreed that it could do no harm to cut back on those items but she wanted some comfort food today and she also thought that her mother deserved a special treat now and again. Walter would never know.

Biddy fell asleep soon enough, even before the film was over. Hanna found her a blanket and decided to leave her t
o sleep on the sofa for a while: Biddy looked so peaceful and happy. It was nice just to sit here with her mother, a treasured moment of stability, even if only imagined.

For some reason, b
eing back at her family home made her feel quite peculiar this time. Without the punishing schedule of airline travel she was lost. With no knowledge where her next trip would be going, and if, or when, she would be flying again, her stay here seemed somehow much more real than her previous visits had been. She felt suddenly trapped in an old life but also a part of this family again: her only family.

She let her mind drift back to the past, a past that had been safe and protected by being in a family.
The longest she had dated anyone was two years. Dominic wanted her to give up her career because he missed her too much. He was notoriously jealous and offered her a position in his father’s insurance business. When she declined the offer and pointed out how much she loved her job, he accused her of cheating and soon broke off with her.

Before that she went out with Daniel, an accountant who felt so
extremely lucky to be dating a ‘hot looking stewardess’ such as her that he too developed excessive jealousy and paranoia.

Was her father correct
in accusing her of having no staying power and being too flighty, or was there such a thing as being unlucky in love?

Her friend Chris, a hobby psychologist, maintained the theory that Hanna was choosing guys who wanted her to change because she wanted to change, and that she was using these men as catalysts, only to get cold feet and run away from them.

Hanna could not see a pattern in her relationships herself but right now it did not matter. Sitting here with her mother was all she needed.

The time Walter had taken for his grooming and the choice of clothes might have made anyone think he was going on a date. Nothing could have been further from the truth. Throughout all of his married life he was too much in love with his wife to have been tempted to be unfaithful. Of course, there had been attractive women but to actually go ahead and do something about it remained too big a step to take. He was not sure if it was his upbringing that had equipped him with high moral values, or the amount of exercise that provided him with enough endorphins and hormone rushes to not crave that kick, which other men seemed to need at various crisis points in their married lives.

Tonight he had no intention of
meeting a woman or even look. The attention to his appearance was merely a ritual, to mark the occasion of a night out by himself. Early on in their married life, Biddy had often told him off for not making an effort when they were invited out to see friends, and over the years the nagging had become so ingrained that he started to hear it in his head whenever he was getting ready to go out.

At the last minute he d
ecided he wouldn’t drink, and so he got into his old Volvo and drove to a pub across town which had a huge TV screen.

The pub was busy with young people and he felt a little out of place, but at the same time he enjoyed losing himself in the crowd. The main screen showed an interview with players and managers, it was still too early for the main games to have started. Arsenal were not playing until tomorrow so there wouldn’t be a game on that interested him, but there was a repeat of a classic match showing in the smaller room at the back that took his fancy. While he ordered his orange spritzer he could hear the summary of today’s games and the conse
quent movements on the league table. The show did nothing for him, the commentators were stating the obvious as if he and all the other dedicated fans who were watching the sports show on a Saturday night didn’t already know the meaning of the results.

Sports news repor
ts were only exciting for him if they concerned the results of International Tournaments and the Cup games or perhaps during the transfer window when players were sold like cattle from one club to the other. He resented the cult around individual players and coaches, and did not buy into the gossip and the arguments some of those blown up ego’s had with each other. His love was for the game itself and not all the nonsense that was built around it. Yet the majority of customers in here were watching the show with fascinated excitement and surprising dedication.

Walter took his drink to the back room to watch the repeat game and sat down on one of the few seats that were still available. Next to him was a group of four young lads, their eyes glued to the huge screen as Manchester United faced Liverpool i
n the Premier League season from several years back. He was not interested in either team as such but he favoured Liverpool out of the two of them, and he vaguely remembered the infamous outcome of the game. It would be interesting to see how it all had unfolded, he thought. The boys on his table were also Liverpool supporters and were getting rather agitated as the game proceeded.

“I saw that game live,” one of them told Walter.

The guy couldn’t have been older than 20 but he spoke with an implied expertise of many more years. More geeky than athletic he sported a beer belly, despite his tall and lanky build, and a reddened face that implied heavy drinking. What had become of Britain’s youth, Walter wondered.

“I have not been to a game for years. The prices they charge for a ticket nowadays
has put me off,” Walter replied.

“You can say that again,” his new friend continued. “Do you know about this game? It is going to give me a stomach ulcer.”

“If you are worried about an ulcer maybe the beer is the first thing you should cut out?” Walter said with a wink.

“Yeah.
That’s not going to happen. Listen mate, which team do you support?”

“Arsenal.”

“Cool. They play good football and Wenger has a great long term strategy of training up new talent.”

“It is just a shame that there is no British player in the club any more. They are nothing more than a French team based in England,” Walter
complained.

“I don’t care so much where the players are fr
om as long as they’re good,” came the reply.

“You kind of have to support him in that case
. Chelsea is just a plastic team bought with a lot of dodgy oil money. There is no soul or continuity in the team which is why the coaches come and go like buses.”

“Yeah, I’ve heard a
bout your ABC rule: Anyone but Chelsea. Same for us. We have ABM. Anyone but Manchester United.” The guy laughed. “My name is Alex by the way.”

“I’m Walter.
Nice to meet you.”

They shook hands.

“If you’re an Arsenal fan then what are you doing in here, tonight of all nights? They’re not playing until tomorrow. Can’t be this game surely?” Alex asked, pointing at the screen.

“Yes, it is not that game
. I just fancied a night out of the house,” Walter told him. “My daughter and my wife are watching Mamma Mia tonight.”

“Oh God!
No wonder you escaped. I had to see that cheesy shite at the cinema with the girlfriend and then again when the DVD came out. Like we have not heard those songs often enough as it is,” Alex moaned.

“Well, I’m glad the two of them have something to do t
ogether. My wife has Alzheimer’s and there is not a lot of exciting stuff you can do with her now.”

“Ouch. That’s nasty,”
Alex said and took a big swig from his beer. “Mind you, I wouldn’t mind a little Alzheimer’s right now. Would be nice to erase that stupid game from my memory,” the young guy said.

“If only you could choose and pick.”

“It’s kind of interesting though, if you think about it. I wonder what it’s like inside her head,” Alex continued.

“I can tell you that right now. My wife was very unhappy when she realised her memory was playing up,” Walter explained. “She got frustrated and angry, she panicked about everything.”

“Yeah, I get all that,” said Alex dismissively. “But I mean, like, what’s it like when a thought comes to your mind, let’s say about eating. Does she still think ‘I need to eat’ or ‘that’s Bertie’, or is it just images and feelings in her head? That’s really fascinating that is.”

Walter shook his head in disbelief. He was speechless.

“I have a mate who was in a coma for a week and after he came round he was still a bit doolally,” Alex continued. “He told us that during the entire time he noticed everything around him. He could tell us what doctors had said and who had come to visit him. Only, he had experienced it like a dream or a fantasy. He thought he was on a cruise liner and was travelling as a king, or some kind of important celebrity. He thought the doctor was the captain and the nurses were the waitresses. Maybe your wife also has a fantasy or dream-world like that to make sense of everything around her,” Alex wondered.

“I hope so,” Walter said with a sigh. “I like the idea of Biddy having that kind of cushioning. I hope so much that she is happy. It is so hard to kn
ow for sure but she seems happy.”

Alex
didn’t respond but looked to the screen where the legendary controversial red card was dealt that decided the game for Manchester United. The other lads at the table started to shout angrily at the screen. Alex argued with them over the fairness of the referee’s decision and retold his own memories of that night at Anfield; Walter found it quite amusing. He had not seen the game himself but vaguely remembered the outcome.  He did not want to see the end either. He said goodbye to Alex and his mates and left the bar. The night was cold but he decided to take a stroll around town.

The streets were full with y
oung people, most of them already drunk and seriously under-dressed for the freezing nightly temperatures. Since the smokers were all on the streets in front of the bars and restaurants, the air was unpleasant as well, and the trashy screaming and giggles everywhere reminded him that he was simply far too old for all this and he made his way back to the car.

As he turned around the next corner he saw an ambulance parked in the middle of the road and two paramedics trying to wake up some youngster who was bleeding and looked like he had thrown up over himself. Walter wondered whether he would be like this too if he was a young man growing up in this decade. Had his children ever been like this, had they ever drunk that much?

He felt gloom for the future of the country if its youth was behaving so stupidly and outrageously, until he suddenly remembered that his own parents had said the same things about his generation when they were young. Walter had been caught drinking by his father more than once and he remembered how disgusted Biddy’s mother had been at some of her daughter’s ‘revealing’ dresses, which in comparison to what Walter was seeing right now, had been rather prudish choices. Had he turned into his parents, or was the new generation really taking things to an ultimate limit?

One of
the phrases that he heard frequently, and which upset him, was the boasting of “I was so drunk, I can’t remember a thing.” If the youngsters of this generation were seeing this as an achievement then they should go trade places with his wife. Youth is wasted on the young. Never had this rung more true to him than right now as he saw the young man’s body fighting the imbibed poison and struggling to survive.

Walter felt sorry for the p
aramedics who had to deal with all this trash on the streets. Maybe one of them was the mystery man his daughter was dating, or not dating.

He got into
the car and started his drive home. There were several police cars on one of the main roads out of town. Officers were signalling some of the drivers to pull over for random breath tests. Walter was one of the selected ones and had to blow into a little machine. He passed with flying colours, but the policeman looked at the licence for a long time.

“How do
you find driving these days?” he asked Walter.

“Just like I always have,” Walter
replied indignantly. He did not like this young man’s tone. 

“I am just wondering because you will have to renew your licence soon. We pulled you over because you were a little unsteady in your lane. Is your eye sight still good? Have you had it tested recently?” the policeman continued.

“Yes, thank you. All is still fine. I won’t be having problems at the renewal. From what I have seen in town you will have your hands full with drunk drivers tonight, I am not sure you are well advised to waste your time checking up on experienced drivers like myself. I was driving before you were born,” Walter snapped.

The police
man remained unperturbed by the implied sarcasm and said gently.

“Of course
sir. I am sure that someone with your sense of responsibility can appreciate that we also need to protect the roads from incompetent drivers. Statistically speaking a lot of people your age are no longer capable of being in charge of a vehicle in a way that ensures satisfactory road safety. That is no personal reflection on anyone in particular. We are also clamping down on people who speak on mobile phones or who are trying to read road maps while driving.”

Walter felt furious,
but he knew he could not disagree. At the same time he did not want to lose face, or let the man get away with feeling smug and superior.

“I just can’t see what I have done wrong in my
driving,” he simply said, holding himself together.

The policeman smirked. “I am so glad you asked. In the short tim
e we were watching you, your tires crossed the white line at least twice, for more than half of its width. As you were not changing lanes this is highly worrying because if you drift lanes you could easily cause an accident. We use driving behaviour like this as an indicator as to who might be inebriated. A different possibility, of course, would be that the wheels need to be looked at,” the policeman added.

Walter was feeling the rage building up inside of him
; it was against his own better judgement but he couldn’t help it. The officer was being very professional and argued logically with him, but somehow the flood gates had opened and long built up frustration and anger finally found a vent and Walter exploded.

“You are only checking my car because I am a senior citizen
,” he shouted. “That is age discrimination. Shame on you for accusing me of poor driving skills and wasting your time with nonsense like this! It is our money that pays your wages, you should think about that before you treat us like we are there to serve you.”

The policeman quickly looked at the licence, took a moment to compose
himself, and then said with a stern voice:

“Mr. Korhonen. From where we stood when we picked your car for inspection we could not have seen what the person in charge of any approaching vehicle looked like and certainly not how old the
y were. It is dark and your lights are effectively blinding us. There was no discrimination involved other than by appearance of the person’s driving skills. Please lower your voice and calm down or we will have to reprimand you for assaulting an officer,” he warned.