Is this home?
I walked, slow, taking my time, a tourist again, and let my feet carry me, a long slow journey, past my old school — the voices of my teachers, You’re not very academic, are you? — if you could see me now. The library where I took shelter those first few weeks, the taekwondo club gone, hatha yoga now, a baby-friendly session on Fridays. My parents’ house. A light on in the living room, but no one there. But wait, wait a little, watch, and someone comes in, an old man, a man grown old, who’s decided that dammit, if old is what he is then you just watch him, he’ll do the whole business, the whiskers, the cardigan, the slippers, the corduroy trousers — my dad has waited his whole life to wear corduroy trousers, and now that he’s old no one will stop him, you’ll see. He watches the TV, a medical documentary of some kind, something about food, good foods, bad foods, fatty foods, skinny foods, foods for your liver, food for your brain.
Dad’s face is neutral, quiet, serene. I study it, enthralled. Hard now, almost impossible, to imagine him chasing crooks. Did this harmless old codger grapple people to the ground, look into the eyes of bad men who knew nasty secrets, tear the truth out of them one lie at a time? Or has he always been here, in this moment, drinking tea and watching TV, and if I return again in another now, will he still be here, frozen for ever?
The door to the living room opens; Mum comes in. Her hair is bright white, cut down to the surface of her skull, and age has made her face something extraordinary. Each part of it needs an atlas to describe; her chin is many chins, still small and sharp but etched with muscle and line, layered one upon the other. Her cheeks are contoured bone and silky rivers of skin, her eyebrows waggle against great parallels of thought on her forehead, her mouth is encased in smile lines and pout lines and scowl lines and worry lines and laughter lines and there is no part of her which is not in some way written over with stories.
She says something to Dad, and Dad moves up, and she sits next to him and he puts one arm around her, not taking his eyes from the TV, and she sits with her knees tucked up, feet hanging off the edge of the sofa, a child-like posture she always chided me for, the indignity, hypocrite!
She dips her digestive biscuit into his mug — this always annoyed him, get your own tea, he’d say, but no, she doesn’t drink tea with milk, what’s the point of that, as George Orwell said, if you want milk and sugar in a cup then just put milk and sugar in a cup, why waste the tea? But milk and sugar in a cup don’t taste so good when absorbed into biscuit and so you see, she dunks her biscuits in his mug. He’s given up arguing. I watch them together, and they are happy. Still in love. Doing just fine.
A moment, a temptation. The Stasi used to be challenged by their instructors — “In five minutes I want to see you standing on the balcony of that building having tea with its owner” and in they went, bluffing their way into a stranger’s house, onto the balcony to discuss… whatever lie they were telling to get there.
I could do it. My mum was no slouch, but she was a hearty law-abiding citizen and if I come from the water company or the surveyor’s office, she’d let me in, of course she would, and I nod and hum at things only I could perceive with my excellent training, and she’d offer me a cuppa tea and trust me all the more because I was a woman, who looked, perhaps, a little bit like her little girl Grace…
… oh and how old is your daughter, Mrs Arden?
… all grown-up now. She had some difficulties as a child, but she’s doing so well now, so well, she’s our little delight, our perfect wonder. Never wanted another child, she was always so beautiful…
And perhaps in the course of my inspection, I would go upstairs to examine insulation in the roof (“I can do you more insulation, better, part of the council’s drive to have more energy-efficient housing…”) and there would be my old bedroom, a guest room now, or maybe a study, a place for Mum to sit in as she sorted out the taxes, she certainly wouldn’t let Dad do them, no head for numbers, doesn’t keep any receipts, disastrous, and I’d say,
You’ve certainly got a lovely home, Mrs Arden.
A bit big for us now Grace has gone, but then it has such memories…
And if I were memorable, this would be the moment in which we bonded. The moment in which I told her that growing up, I too had a little sister who was ill, but who was doing so much better now, and whose favourite film was Star Wars and whose favourite colour was blue, who didn’t know how to lie and she would say,
“You could be talking about my Gracie!”
and we’d have another cup of tea — “Are you sure I’m not keeping you from something?”
and I would say no, no, my last appointment of the day, if it’s not an imposition…
And she’d take my number and I’d take hers because you see, I’m interested in all the things she’s interested in too, angry at the lack of affordable social housing, angry at so many good, cheap homes being torn down and replaced with bad, expensive ones, angry at the language of prejudice and bigotry in our politics, angry at the press, the media — but hopeful for the future, for a youth raised more aware than we were, a coming generation that will do better than the one before and she will say…
“Hope is a beautiful name; if I’d ever had another child, I would have called her Hope.”
And I would say, “My mother once walked across the desert.”
And she would say, quiet now, not wanting to make a thing of it, not wanting to force a connection, implausible, amazing, wonderful, “I once walked a very long way as well. When I first started walking, I was very afraid. In the desert there is always the sound of movement, a busy silence of sand falling beneath your feet. When you are alone, even the quiet is full of monsters.”
Then she would love me, and I would love her, and we would be the best of friends and she would smile whenever she opened the door to me, and give me a hug and introduce me to Dad and say, “This is Hope, and she is wonderful!” and we would spend Christmas together and go walking in the hills and I’d help them with their errands and go on holiday and…
if I were memorable.
And considering this, two thoughts come to mind, seeping in with the quiet as I watch my parents’ house from across the street.
1. If I had Perfection, and the treatments had worked, I would be memorable.
2. If I were perfect, I could never be my mum’s friend.
Settling cold, growing dark. Watching them watching.
They are…
in their own, unspectacular way, to which no ballads are written or songs sung, in a domestic, daily, life-being-lived way,
… happy.
I walk away.
Chapter 77
There is a place, on the edge of Nottingham: a grand old house with a view of the Trent, fields that flood often in winter, oak trees shedding curling leather leaves, a dog playing in the grounds, the residents, sometimes happy, sometimes sad, sometimes in that strange place that does not conform to your meagre emotional understanding, but living — for all this — living.
A walk up the path on a blustery day, my umbrella turns inside-out, is pressed down hard by the wind from the east. Trousers soaked up to the knee with water and mud, where did you park the your car demands the receptionist, I didn’t, I reply, I took the bus and this is an outrageous notion but who is she to argue?
I sign in as me, as Hope Arden, just this once, in just this place, and climb the stairs to the second floor, while a woman, fifty, head on one hand, fingers clenched tight, descends on a stairlift on the other side, and smiles as we pass each other in the middle.