I was there the following afternoon. When I walked into the kitchen a sharp blade of shock knifed my chest. She was sitting in the Captain’s chair she’d bought from Snakey Tongue, looking into the distance. She had lost a lot of weight from her face and arms but her stomach was bigger than ever. Her hair was greasy and she was wearing an old apron covered in food stains. Her bare feet looked blueish in faded slippers. When I greeted her she looked up at me and focused but her eyes were lifeless. I’d spent enough time around sick people to know that look; in that moment I realized that she was dying. I bent to kiss her and a rank smell wafted upwards.
‘Have you not been feeling well?’ I drew a chair up.
My father was hovering in the background. ‘Will I just feed the hens and make the tea?’ he asked.
I nodded when my mother didn’t reply. ‘You don’t look too good,’ I said, taking her hand. Her nails were long and dirt-grimed.
‘No, I’m not meself at all. I don’t think I’m well.’ Her voice was low and tired.
‘Why won’t you see the doctor?’
‘Sure he only pokes me about.’
‘Yes, but you really should let him check you.’
She tightened her grip on my hand. ‘Ye won’t put me in a home, will ye?’ she whispered.
I felt a momentary impatience that I quelled. There was no pretend drama now, the question shivered with real fear. ‘Of course I won’t. What makes you think of such a foolish thing?’
‘Yeer father can’t manage. He won’t be able to look after me. Sure he’s full of aches and pains himself.’
‘Listen, you won’t be going into any home. There’s no chance of that. All right?’ I stroked her hand, feeling the veins under the papery skin.
She nodded meekly and her gaze wandered away again, as if she had lost interest.
‘I’m going to ring the doctor,’ I told her. ‘Have you been bleeding at all?’
She shook her head. ‘Just terrible tired. All the grub tastes like ashes.’
My father was throwing grain to the hens. The arthritis in his joints made his movements jerky. He looked as if a strong wind would blow him over.
‘She’s not good,’ he said to me.
‘No. Why didn’t you tell me sooner?’
‘Ah, you know your mother. She has me beat. She wouldn’t go to her hospital appointments, then she put a stop on the doctor. He came one day and she wouldn’t see him, told me to say she was asleep. I was terrible embarrassed with him driving out from Fermoy and all. She’s frightened of going back into hospital. It’s because of Nana.’ His voice was cracked with fatigue.
My grandmother, her mother, had died in hospital after a stroke. I took a handful of the grain and sprinkled it on the ground. A hen strutted and pecked by my feet. My mother loved her hens, just as her mother had. She would stand at the hen-house door, talking to them, calling them her doteys, clucking to them and asking them to lay her beautiful speckledy eggs.
‘I’ve been trying to get her to eat but she won’t. She takes a few mouthfuls. I can’t wash her properly with the old arthritis, I’m frightened I’ll let her fall. I wanted to ring you a couple of weeks ago but she sprang the old tears on me.’ He made a gesture of exasperation and scratched his thin, still sandy hair.
He’d never been able to deal with her if she cried. A blank, terrified look would come on his face and he would slope away to his woodwork or his vegetables.
‘I’ve told her I’m calling the doctor. I’ll do it now.’
He looked relieved. ‘Ah good. She’ll take it from you, she knows you’ve got sense.’
I rang the doctor, a man called Molloy, and caught him just before evening surgery. I’d never met him so I explained who I was.
‘My mother is very ill, I’d like you to visit immediately,’ I said.
He sounded truculent. ‘She’s been very naughty, missing appointments. We haven’t been able to monitor her.’
I bridled at that word, naughty, reducing her to less than adult. What did he know about my mother’s fears? ‘I realize that she has avoided medics but I’m worried about her. She’s lost a lot of weight very suddenly.’
‘No cancer was found in the tests,’ he said quickly and I thought he sounded defensive. He would know that I was a physiotherapist, my mother would be sure to have told him, and I guessed that he was wary of another professional.
‘No, I know that the original tests were clear. Can you come tonight?’
‘Yes, very well. You’ll be there?’
I confirmed that I would. I went into my mother to tell her. My father had given her a cup of tea and she was holding it, untasted, in her lap.
‘I’m mucky, Rory,’ she said. ‘Look at me, I haven’t even had a cat’s lick for a week. What will the doctor think at all?’
I smiled. ‘A cat’s lick’ was the name we’d always given to a quick rub of a flannel on the face.
‘Would you like to have a bit of a clean-up?’ I asked her. ‘I’ll wash your hair for you too. You’ve always liked your hair to look nice.’
I didn’t want Molloy turning his nose up at my mother; I wanted her to have dignity as he probed. I wasn’t sure how she would react to my suggestion. This was the moment when my mother needed a daughter and I wished for a sister to leave delicate tasks to. I was used to manipulating the limbs and kneading muscles of both sexes, but I had never been in the bathroom at the same time as my mother and the barrier of propriety was a strong one.
‘’Tis a fine state I’m in when me son has to help me wash,’ she said but she nodded her agreement.
She let me lead her to the bathroom, walking slowly and giving little groans. Inside she held onto the sink.
‘That was my life-blood draining away when I bled,’ she said flatly.
I smoothed her hair back, paralysed by this sudden insight. She knew the symptoms of cancer; a woman who lived across the road in Tottenham had died of it and my mother had watched her waste away. She had always said the word in a hushed tone, as if to invoke it might bring its wrath on her. I didn’t know what to say. I took the coward’s way out.
‘You’re not well at all, Mum, that’s for sure.’
‘I should have had that operation, years ago.’
‘Maybe. But that’s past now.’
‘Oh everything’s past now.’
There was a silence. My eyes were heavy.
‘Shall we do your hair first?’ I asked gently, pulling up the chair that they threw towels on.
‘I couldn’t be climbing on that,’ she said fearfully in a child’s voice, clutching my arm.
My heart juddered. ‘No, no. No climbing. You can sit on this and rest your head back, like at the hairdresser’s.’
She acquiesced and I helped her lower herself down. I wetted her hair and poured on shampoo, lightly massaging it in. Her temples had become concave and I imagined that if I pressed too firmly my fingers would penetrate her scalp.