‘I really don’t know anything about them.’
My mother had sounded impatient. ‘I wish you wouldn’t be deliberately obtuse.’ While I was spluttering she swept on. ‘I’ve just looked it up and already it’s gone. So annoying. That word to do with light – they take pictures of it.’
I felt a frisson of unease. ‘Mum, what are you talking about?’
‘Migraines! It’s not that I mind Sonia, you know I don’t, but I don’t want to sit there all afternoon, when there’s the harbour to see.’
‘Well you don’t have to, do you?’ I said, struggling to keep up with my mother’s conversational switchback technique. Was she usually as scattered as this? ‘Sonia won’t mind if you go for a walk. She can catch up with her dad.’
‘We’re not staying there. Gerald’s got us a hotel.’
‘That’s nice. Can I speak to him?’
‘He’s gone home to pack.’
I listened while she talked on, covering a myriad subjects ranging from the problems of deciding what to take when March was cold one minute and sunny the next, Mo’s dog’s possible gallstones and the squirrel in her garden who’d eaten all the bulbs.
She did sound okay – her voice was strong enough and she appeared to be wandering about the house as she told me about the nice staff at the hospital, who were forced to work such long hours with little thanks from this government, and how the doctor had been impressed with her blood pressure.
Keeping her to the point was no easy task, but then again, as I wrote to my sister, that was nothing new.
Mother’s made of stern stuff, I typed, as much to reassure myself as Alice. And it was true. She was rarely ill, still gardened and her gleamingly clean house put mine to shame. She travelled, went to galleries and the theatre, was a sterling member of Margate Operatics and had more friends than I did. Seventy-four was no age these days. Even if she has had a TIA and is keeping it quiet, I concluded, knowing that Alice would immediately Google the full implications of a Transient Ischaemic Attack and be an expert on it by the next time she wrote. It will take more than a few microscopic clots to finish her off.
I pushed away the memory of Tilly saying that when she’d last phoned, Granny sounded even more bonkers than usual and the way my mother had suddenly sounded vague and distracted and appeared to temporarily struggle to recall Ben’s name. Was she feeling unwell more often than she was letting on?
I’d been phoning daily, I told my sister instead, as I tried to still the anxious fluttering in my stomach as I imagined my seemingly indestructible parent suddenly helpless and frail. Her dear old friend Mo was there a lot; Gerald as often as he was allowed to be.
Alice was having none of it. No amount of explaining that our mother herself had actively discouraged me from going down this weekend, saying the traffic would be bad with all those other mothers being towed out to lunch, that I had a long list of household tasks to complete and a presentation to finish before Tuesday, would sway my elder sister. You need to see for yourself, she instructed. While actually numbering my duties: 1) get a proper list from Mother of all symptoms. NB What exactly was said by medics? (suggest you take notes). 2) double-check with Mo for accuracy. Have noticed Mother can be woolly of late. 3) Speak to Gerald (do not be fobbed off by Mother. I do not have a number for him. Make sure you obtain. 4) I think it would be best to phone her GP on Monday and you’ll need to be fully armed with the facts …
I growled and sighed. Years of experience have taught me that when a diktat arrives from the US, it is quicker in the long run to follow it. Alice may be three thousand miles away in Boston. But her sheer will can still fill a room.
Thus on an afternoon when I would rather be perusing my sample pots and deciding which shade of foodie yellow – I am hovering between autumn honey, golden sugar and lemon delight – to use on the dining-room walls, drinking wine with Jinni or even wielding the Shake n’ Vac in Ben’s bedroom – Tilly has complained it smells of hamsters – I am crawling around the M25, with a potted azalea and the gnawing suspicion that by the time I actually have the opportunity to start this brave new life of mine, I’ll be on a mobility scooter.
Then I hear Alice’s voice reminding me it’s the least I can do on Mother’s Day when I haven’t seen our mother since before I moved – even if she was away with Gerald on an art appreciation cruise and then spending every spare minute rehearsing H.M.S. Pinafore – when she, Alice, is sitting on the other side of the world, worrying.
‘Get on a bloody plane, then!’ I say out loud, looking at the line of traffic snaking ahead and braking sharply as the van in front abruptly stops.
‘Arse!’ I shout, as I inch forward again, shot through with guilt and resentment.
My mother’s not overly thrilled, either.
‘He’s a very clever man,’ she says, as I step across the threshold of her neat chalet bungalow. ‘But I do wish he wouldn’t go around in that dress.’
She has been to an exhibition by Grayson Perry at the Turner Contemporary, where she has admired the pots and ‘those wooden ones’ but still isn’t convinced the artist needs the frock and wig.
‘It’s the children I think about,’ she says. ‘They’ll get teased at school.’
‘I don’t think so, Mum.’ I say, handing her the plant and throwing my coat over the bannister. ‘As far as I know, he’s only got one daughter and she’s grown up now.’
‘Hmmm,’ my mother looks as though she doubts this. ‘Sonia hasn’t got any better either.’ My mother has always believed in the non sequitur to keep conversation zipping along. While I am still making the mental leap from the famous artist to Gerald’s rather dour daughter, she has moved on to her geranium cuttings having died in the frost.
‘You don’t expect it in March,’ she says. ‘Though Mo will say that May thing about casting the clout.’
‘How is Mo?’ I enquire, trying to analyse what is even odder about my mother than usual.
‘Still likes her tea.’
It is then that it hits me. My mother hasn’t moved. Usually by now I’d have been offered three different sorts of hot beverage and very probably a sandwich. But I’ve been in the house a good five minutes and she is still in the hallway in front of me.
‘Shall we go and make some?’ I suggest.
‘Some what?’
Everything in the kitchen looks as always. The surfaces shine, the sink is scrubbed, the storage jars arranged in formation. The floor is speck-free, the tea towels folded with regimental precision and the mugs lined up along the shelf have their handles pointing in the same direction.
But as I watch my mother, watching me filling the teapot, the low-level dread that started when I hit the Thanet Way, deepens further. ‘Are you okay, Mum?’ I ask, disturbed by her stillness.
She looks back at me, her face troubled, the skin on her cheeks seeming to sag. I see how old she looks and how tired.
‘Not really,’ she says.
I carry the tray to the sitting room and wait while she settles herself in her usual chair. The book on the table is the same crime thriller she told me she was reading weeks ago. A bookmark pokes out of it, barely a quarter of the way through.
The air in here feels slightly stale and the irises on the pine cupboard are curled and faded. My mother flings open windows in deepest February, will sense a dead petal at ten paces.
‘What’s happened?’ I ask. ‘You’re not well, are you?’
She shakes her head slowly. I am clutched by fear.
‘It wasn’t a migraine, was it? When they took you to hospital?’