‘You’re really very well-brought-up, aren’t you, Millicent?’
‘What were you expecting, rube-face?’
‘Someone less nuanced, I suppose.’
‘And yet here you are with me.’
My mother called Millicent Lassie, and occasionally Girl, and Millicent called my mother Mrs Mercer. They would write each other weekly letters that again neither of them ever let me read; they even spoke regularly on the telephone, which mystified me. My mother hated the telephone. Strange that they should have this bond: what could Millicent know of my mother, or my mother of Millicent?
My father would openly disparage America at every opportunity, and Millicent would laugh gently, and quietly put him right. ‘No, sir, we really are no more stupid than anyone else. Education may not be fairly distributed, but that is because wealth is concentrated in a very small number of hands, sir. Surely we can agree on that?’
They never agreed, but my father liked the fact that Millicent called him sir.
Would I have worked as hard with her parents as she did with mine? It’s a question I’ve never had to answer: Millicent has never allowed me to meet them.
I heard Millicent end the call, heard her toss the phone on to the table, heard her feet cross the living-room floor and climb the stairs.
She came in and sat down on the bed.
‘OK, so I think maybe you have to face the possibility that this situation is worse than your mother is saying, Alex. I think maybe she really needs you there. She even cried a little.’
‘The timing couldn’t be worse, could it?’
‘Honey, listen to me: I think your dad had a stroke. That’s pretty much what your mom told me. They didn’t say it to her yet, I guess, because they’re still doing tests, but I think she already read between the lines. She’s scared and you need to be there.’
The fall. The electrocardiogram. It made sense.
‘Millicent?’ I said.
‘Yes?’
‘Thanks.’
‘Sure.’
‘I’d be lost without you.’
‘Sure.’
The grinding sadness of that last Edinburgh train, all shouting children and glowering men, Fruit Shoots, crisps, six-packs of beer. Millicent had bought my ticket for me; she had sent me out into the London evening, an overnight bag in my hand, long before I needed to go. Now I glowered too, alone at my table, hoping no one would sit down opposite me, hoping people could read it all in my expression. Stay away. All is not well here.
My thoughts would not settle. My father was seriously ill – Millicent was always right about these things – and my mother would be out of her mind with worry. But when I tried to picture my mother at my father’s bedside I saw only the neighbour: the swollen tongue, the red-encrusted nostril. Please, I thought, don’t let that be my father’s fate.
That blue-red tongue, I thought, pushing at my wife’s lips. That milk-white hand seeking out her breast.
She as good as pushed you out of the front door.
I sat, trying to feel the moment again. Did she want me gone? No. No, she had held me very tightly, her cheek pressed against mine. She hadn’t broken the embrace. I was the one who had pulled gently away from her.
Millicent had thrown her arms around me then, kissed me very deeply. Her eyes did not flick to some imagined lover somewhere just out of sight.
And yet, I thought. That pawing hand, that searching tongue. I worried at them; I couldn’t leave them alone.
She as good as pushed you out of the door.
My mother was not at the station. I rang her. There was no answer so I took a taxi to the hospital. Millicent had written the number of the ward on the train ticket that she had printed for me. For a moment I saw myself running from one end of the building to another, hopelessly lost, but the hospital was modern and the signs were clear.
I was surprised to find two nurses at the Gerontology desk. It was almost one.
‘Hi,’ I said.
‘Hello,’ said the younger of the two.
‘Alex Mercer,’ I said. ‘That’s my name, and it’s also my father’s name.’
The older nurse whispered something to the younger nurse.
‘Alex Mercer is a patient here,’ I said. ‘Just to be clear.’
The younger nurse was looking not at me but past me. She stood up, and put a hand on my shoulder. So much kindness. Then she put her other hand on my other shoulder and turned me. How very gentle she was.
It was then that I saw my mother, stiff-backed on a white plastic chair, immaculate in her dark blue fitted jacket and skirt. On a little table beside her was a cup of tea, two pink wafers crossed on a napkin beside it.
My mother’s dark eyes were on me, and she smiled as I approached. ‘The nurses have been very good,’ she said. ‘Tea in a porcelain cup. Hello, Laddie.’
I took her in my arms, felt her crumple a little. Then she stiffened again. She would not cry. Not yet; not here.
‘I had to, you see. They told me he wasn’t coming back.’
The young nurse touched my elbow gently.
‘Would you like me to find you a chair, Mr Mercer? A cup of tea perhaps? And for you, Mrs Mercer?’
‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘Yes, please.’ Why so kind?
‘I had to, Alex, son,’ said my mother. ‘I’m so sorry.’
My father had suffered a massive stroke. Millicent had been right. ‘I didn’t want to worry you unduly, son,’ said my mother. ‘Then they told me that he wasn’t coming back. I mean, there was a theoretical chance, or some such, but it was awfully small. And I made the consultant tell me what the percentages meant, and she said your father would never return to me, not as himself. So I took a decision. I’m so very sorry, son.
‘I know I could have waited until you came,’ my mother said, ‘but I don’t think your father would have wanted you to see him like that. I could tell that the spirit was gone from him.’
My mother insisted on driving home from the hospital. It took her some time to find a parking space, and in the end we had to walk for five minutes to reach the flat. Dark sandstone loomed behind monumental trees. No chickenshops or foot pursuits here. Residents’ associations and doors in approved colours. Pragmatic elegance.
My mother took the stairs briskly when we arrived, installed herself at the dining table still wearing her coat; she filled two tiny crystal glasses with gin, topped them off with vermouth, and handed one to me.
‘To your father.’ She drained her glass, set it back on the table. Then she exhaled heavily, seemed to become a little shorter, a little older.
‘Fifty years married,’ she said. ‘Do you know, I thought I was too old.’ She gave a sad little laugh. ‘I was twenty-eight.’
I reached across and took her hand. ‘I know, Mum.’
‘Well, that was old.’ She poured herself another drink. ‘He was a good man, but he never loved me in quite the way I loved him.’
She gave a little half-sob, then pulled a handkerchief from her handbag and dabbed at her