‘Other people’s great deeds,’ Dr Sabin said. ‘They’re sometimes a bit hard to take. I know I find that.’
‘I was never able to ask.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘Because, you know, the truth is so obvious to some people that they don’t feel the need to share it. In fact, they resent being asked about it. They just want everyone to behave as if their story is the only story. And the people who ask questions in that situation are treated like traitors. It’s a form of control and a kind of bullying.’
‘You describe it very well.’
‘I’ve had it all my life.’
He told her to take her time. Sometimes Alice would just shudder at the memory of things. ‘Okay?’ he asked.
‘She always left me with other people. I was really brought up by the neighbours.’
‘Is that right?’
‘Yes. It’s a thing in Glasgow. Somebody should write a book about the role of the next-door neighbour. She’s got the same thing again with some woman who lives next door to her now. Maureen, she’s called. We don’t really know anything about her,
though she’s learning a lot about us, I’m sure. Same old story: the neighbour’s in charge.’
‘And you can’t speak to your mother about the past?’
‘Too late, doctor. Too late. For years I tried to please her and be more like her. She thinks I’m boring, I’m conventional, and I am those things, to people like her. Married to the wrong person. Too interested in the wrong things. You know. But the fact is, my existence threatens her story. I used to think she might love me more by realising I was all she had left of Harry. But that’s not true, Dr Sabin. My father has never gone because the great story of him only grows and grows.’
‘You feel you’ve been overshadowed?’
‘You can say that again.’
‘Really?’
‘Oh, yes. I’ve been sacrificed.’
‘You might be wrong.’
‘Maybe. I used to think it would be possible, one day, to get back to a kind of reality — you know, about her own achievements, her photographs, everything she did. But it wasn’t possible. She just transferred her worship of Harry onto my son, Luke. She always wanted a son. He’s always been close to her and now he’s coming back.’
‘He’s been in Afghanistan?’
‘He discharged himself. Or something like that. And now she’s so far gone it’s like all her fantasies coming home to roost. None of the lies were shot down or set to rights, and I didn’t get to talk. I didn’t get to ask about my father or get a grip on the past.’
‘Their past.’
‘It’s my past, too,’ she said.
‘I see.’
‘I will never be able to ask her.’
‘And that’s important to you?’
‘It was. But it’s too late.’
‘Her life’s not over,’ Dr Sabin said. ‘And yours is very far from being over, Alice. We’ll keep talking.’ He stood up and walked to the window and stood looking out at the sea. ‘We have a lot of it now, with the ageing population,’ he said. ‘And dementia presents insidiously, so that patients, carers, family — doctors, too — we all find ourselves only slowly understanding it. But it’s true that dementia can dramatise some of the issues the patient might have had with memory and so on.’
Alice stood up. ‘Dramatise. Yes. With memory. It’s as if my mother turned to something else when she gave up her photographs.’
‘Something else?’
‘Make-believe,’ Alice said. ‘Fantasy. Like all her hopes went sour and she just couldn’t take reality any more.’
‘Perhaps,’ he said.
‘I’ve always been made to feel I lack faith.’
‘I agree there’s drama in it while it’s happening,’ Dr Sabin said, ‘but I can tell you from experience, Alice, that life reveals itself, in any case. I see it every day in this room. Time shows everything.’
She lifted her coat off the back of the chair. ‘I didn’t ever think it would be so hard. So hard to face it.’ She could feel her eyes well up and her breath staggered from one sentence to the next. ‘I would love to spend half an hour with the woman who made those pictures.’
‘She hasn’t gone,’ he whispered. ‘Quite the opposite. She’s coming back. And maybe you could prepare to meet her halfway. Between the person she is now and the person she used to
be. Enter into the spirit of where her mind is going and allow her …’
‘She’s never needed my permission for anything.’
‘Well, maybe she does now.’ They sat in a state of hesitation for a few seconds and the seconds seemed long. ‘There’s been too much denial in this family,’ Alice said.
‘Maybe so. Maybe in all families. But your own counselling might mean you can help her by helping yourself. Your mother isn’t your enemy. She isn’t your only resource. She’s losing parts of herself and gaining others. And if it’s possible, Alice, you might take it less personally.’
‘I worry that her lies shaped my life. I worry that I only took up with Sean, my husband Sean, because of her war-hero thing. I was always trying to keep up. My husband was a soldier and I lost him and I used to worry I would lose my son the same way. You don’t see the connections in your life until it’s too late to disentangle them.’
‘So, Luke’s on his way home?’
‘Yes, he is. I think it’s been hard for him. He’s been through a lot out there and I want him to know, when he comes back, that he doesn’t have to talk about it if he doesn’t want to.’
The doctor turned. ‘We all have something to hold back,’ he said. ‘And maybe some of us depend on other people’s mistakes to make us feel better about our own.’
‘So, it’s my fault?’ She produced a ball of tissue from her sleeve and held it against her nose.
‘Not everything reduces itself to the question of fault, Alice. Most things don’t, in fact.’
‘Right.’
‘You’ve coped well.’
‘I don’t think so. Sean and I thought we would live for a hundred years. And when he died it was going to be me and Luke against the world. But Luke chose my mother, just as she chose Harry.’
‘You feel the men got the better deal?’
‘God, yes,’ she said. ‘What were the men really like? God knows. Because they always got top billing. The boys are the heroes in this family.’
‘She didn’t like women?’
‘She loves women. Her friends. The woman next door. The girls she knew when she was young. She just doesn’t particularly like the woman she gave birth to.’
‘Just remember, she’s not well.’
‘I think her mind’s gone. I told you about the rabbit?’
‘Yes, you said.’
‘Caring about a fake rabbit. What’s that about?’
Some smiles aren’t smiles. What he did with his mouth was more like an acknowledgement, a firm admission that some mysteries must be endured and never solved. He sat down and laid a hand on the mousepad and put a finger to his lips. ‘Nobody takes me seriously,’ he said. ‘But the thing I wish I could prescribe isn’t available in the pharmacy.’
‘What’s that?’
‘They don’t keep it in bottles.’
‘What?’
‘Time,’ he said.
She got outside and breathed the sea air, taking her time, moving on very precisely to another self. You have to dust yourself off and get on with it and that’s that, she said. Alice could drop in and out of her own feelings and now she wanted a latte. She
walked down the street to the Marina Cafe thinking of something entirely new, and, once inside, she waited. No one was there and the sweet jars lined the wall, the jukebox playing ‘Love Me Do’ to the mirrors and the clean tables.