Next morning she went to Anne’s door and was surprised when the young man opened it. ‘I just thought I’d pop in to see if Anne was all right,’ she said, slipping the skeleton key into her pocket. ‘And I brought in a wee plate of food in case she was hungry. It’s nice stuff: Italian ham and these are called sun-dried tomatoes.’ Luke brought her into the room and she immediately sensed a change.
‘How are you feeling, son, now that you’re back?’
‘Everything’s good, Mrs Ward.’
‘Call me Maureen. You’ll make me feel old.’ She blushed because the young man had travelled the world and he probably hadn’t time for neighbours. But her eye scanned the room and took in the bags and the ashtray. She didn’t know how she would cope when Mrs Quirk went into a home. ‘I’ll miss her terrible,’ she said to herself and it showed on her face.
‘I saw your family yesterday,’ Luke said. ‘Those big lads’ll cause you a bit of trouble, eh?’
‘Oh, they’re lovely boys,’ she said. ‘So well spoken. I mean, compared to how we were at that age. Very polite. They love to cook. Very busy lives they all have. They live in Edinburgh. My family’s always busy with their jobs and everything.’
‘Nice to see them, though.’
‘Oh, aye. It’s a breath of fresh air.’
Luke sat Maureen down and explained. He said Anne couldn’t look after herself any more. He knew they had tried, Maureen and the warden, to keep her here, but unfortunately the time had come to move her into a nursing home. He was going to take her down south and while they were away the flat would be cleared. As he spoke, the tears welled up in Maureen’s eyes and she pinched her lips. ‘I’m not really sure,’ he said, ‘that Blackpool’s the right place to take her. But she wants to go.’
‘Don’t mind me, son.’
‘It’s all right, Mrs Ward. You’ve been so good to my gran. And to my mum and me, as well. I want to thank you for the letters you wrote for her when I was out on service. It meant a lot.’
She cried very quietly, as people do who are used to crying and don’t think it’s a big deal. She just dabbed her eyes and pursed
her lips after everything she said. ‘Oh, it wasn’t a bother to me,’ she said. ‘She’s the best wee neighbour I ever had. A lovely lady was Mrs Quirk. And it’s true, she wasn’t herself and it’s only been getting worse, hasn’t it?’
Luke’s phone rang and he put up a finger and went into the hall to deal with whatever it was. Anne was lying awake when Maureen put her head into the bedroom. ‘Hello, Anne,’ she said.
‘Hello.’
Maureen lifted the blinds and talked about Scott and Jack and the family’s lovely visit. She tucked Anne in and lifted an empty mug and when she came back from the kitchen Anne had her eyes closed again. Maureen continued to tidy, finding plenty to say to her sleeping friend. She heard when Luke was off the phone. Before leaving the room she folded some clothes over the chair and tidied the top of the bedside cabinet, bending down to pick up something from the floor, a severed picture of a little girl.
She had good days and bad days. The rabbit was the start of it all getting worse. Luke said he’d heard about it from his mother and saw it on the chair. ‘I used to worry about the rabbit,’ Maureen said, ‘but really she wasn’t so bad at first. She was still
at herself
Still trying to put two and two together. But she’s tired now, isn’t she?’
‘She’s still with us, Maureen.’
‘I know,’ she said, wiping her eyes. ‘The laughs we used to have in here. She’d have us all in knots. I’m not kidding you. The whole place. She could tell a story, God love her.’
‘I’m gathering her things.’
‘Right y’are. I’m going to help you get her ready for Blackpool, if that’s all right.’
They spent the morning together. Luke squatted down by the fridge inspecting the stuff inside, the two shelves stacked with tins of soup and old jars of marmalade and whatever. ‘Don’t bother with that. I’ll do all this with your mum during the week,’ Maureen said. ‘We’ll organise everything. Just take what you need for the journey.’
‘We’re going to gather her work,’ Luke said, ‘the best of her photographs for an exhibition.’
‘That’s the people in Canada. The curator. I saw that letter. Has your mother come round to it?’
‘We’ll see.’
‘It’s so nice to have family, isn’t it? Like Anne has you. I don’t know where I’d be without my three. My daughter’s a therapist. She stuck in at the school and now she’s got a lovely house in Edinburgh. Ian, my eldest, he’s a wonderful father. Very high up in IBM. He’s all for computers. And the other one, Alexander, he’s a nice guy, too. A bit of a rogue. You don’t get two the same, do you?’
‘I’m sure you don’t, Mrs Ward.’
‘They all drive. My God, it’s like a car showroom out there when they all come to visit. But I often look at my three and say, well, you didn’t do too badly. It was a struggle but they turned out nice.’
They worked in silence for a while, then Luke said not to take down too many things before they went, so’s not to alarm Anne just as they were setting out. ‘You might want this,’ Maureen said, handing him the photo of George Formby that had been pinned above the kettle. It had been there during all the time she had known Anne, looking down on them at night as they heated the soup and unfolded their lives.
THE VODKAS
Anne was squinting at the light and talking about holidays she had once taken with Harry. She would make comments and then go silent for whole stretches of the road. Luke found the moments of clarity really exciting. It was hard to admit that she was probably quite content generally and not just when she was talking sense and making him feel better. She seemed to admire the passing vehicles and she pointed without words at the mist over the houses on the road to Lesmahagow.
What is an adult? He’d always wondered. Was it a person who can speak when silent and who invents life, as opposed to just living it? At the wheel, Luke told himself she was the most adult person he had ever known. Some people would argue the opposite: that she had never grown up, that she had never faced things. But he was a happy student again, learning, over the miles, how to read a person by finding what character was available. She was brazen with words and actions no matter how baffled she seemed. No matter how far away she seemed, no matter how lost, she was with him, and he was determined to go with her as she slipped through the past into some brand-new element of the present.
‘There’s a reason I like you,’ she said. She added nothing for a moment and then said it again. ‘There’s a good reason.’
‘And what would that be?’ he asked.
‘You can read into things.’
‘How so?’
‘Stop fishing for compliments.’
‘I’m not!’
‘Well, then.’
‘Well, what?’
‘Then. Some people see a painting. They don’t know what it is.
Like that one of the place where the bombs fell.’
‘What painting is that?’
‘By the man who made his girlfriends have two faces.’
‘Picasso.’
‘That’s the one. He painted a town.’
‘Guernica.’
‘Is that what it’s called?’
‘Yes, Franco bombed it.’
‘I don’t know what I was saying.’
‘About how some people look at the painting of the bombed town.’
‘They don’t see the truth. They just see the paint.’
He took a deep breath. He knew as she reached for the words that she was uncovering the old ground of their sympathy. She’d used the example to him way back in the past — of how some people looked at
Guernica