Penny looked exhausted, the grey pallor almost matching the grey that streaked her hair.
We’re all getting so old, Joan thought. Me, Penny, the dog.
Penny sat at the table and rested her chin on her hands. ‘She’s pregnant.’
‘Oh, no!’
‘After all I taught her, drummed into her…’ Her voice rose in frustration. ‘A one-night stand. No protection. She could have HIV as well, for all we know.’
‘What does she want to do?’ She leant against the counter, waiting for the kettle.
‘She’s all over the place, Joan. Talking about whether to keep it or have an abortion. She’s nineteen. She can barely look after herself let alone a baby. What was she thinking of?’
I was nineteen, Joan thought.
‘Oh, Joan, I’m sorry,’ Penny exclaimed.
Joan wondered whether she had spoken aloud.
‘But there’s the pill nowadays and you can get Durex all over the place. How can I help her?’
Joan grimaced, turned for cups. Put them down. ‘Stand by her, whatever she decides. That’s all anyone can do.’ She took a big breath, held it in. Christ, she thought, I’d kill for a cigarette.
Pamela
Summer 1990 Pamela spent crewing on the boat with Marge and Felix. They went from Wales to Southern Spain and into North Africa. After three exhilarating, exhausting weeks she was on the last leg of her journey home. She’d left her car at home to save bother parking and got the train to London from Portsmouth and then the London to Chester service. It was one of the old models. Shabby inside and out. There was little to see through the dusty windows. It was unreasonably hot and a peculiar stale, spicy smell filled the air as if someone had spilt curry on one of the heaters a long time ago.
She had the carriage to herself now. The couple who’d got on with her at Euston had left at Rugby. Not long to go. Taxi out to the cottage, a bath, some proper tea. Strange how it never tasted the same elsewhere, even with the same brand tea bags. It’s the water, Lilian would say, but even that didn’t seem plausible. How could all the water in every major city worldwide, and in all the other places she’d been to, be so different from home. Surely by the law of averages there’d be something similar in mineral composition or whatever in one of them.
Work tomorrow: back into drawing up plans for their strategy in Germany now that reunification was imminent, and there’d be all sorts of fallout linked to the Guinness scandal; they’d need to ensure their own house was in order so they weren’t open to fraud on such a scale. Enough. She would not think about that now. Still on leave. She would think about Carlos instead. She could still feel where he had been, remember what a tease he had been, kissing her dizzy, till she was begging him to do more, to touch her.
Her mobile trilled. It was handy in her bag.
‘Hello?’ She shook her hair clear of the set to hear better.
‘Is that Miss Gough? Pamela Gough?’
‘Yes.’ Her first thought was that someone from the office had got her days mixed up, ringing to fix an appointment for her boss. She’d switch off after this.
‘You’re related to Mrs Lilian Gough?’
Panic dried her mouth. ‘I’m her daughter.’ She felt the train sashay to the side, stared at the wooden window frame where someone had scratched T-e-r. She stared at the meaningless letters. Her heart went cold.
‘This is Manchester Royal Infirmary. I’m ringing about your mother. She was admitted here a short while ago. She wasn’t conscious. I’m very sorry to give you such bad news but your mother passed away a few minutes after she was admitted. I’m sorry.’
Pamela watched the letters spin and stretch and pool. She watched her own foot jerking with a will of its own. She felt a pull, increasing pressure as though she was being sucked underwater.
‘Will you be coming to the hospital?’
‘Yes.’
‘Ask for Main Reception, they’ll page me, June Kennedy.’
Pamela replied, the words saying themselves, as though there were two of her in the carriage. ‘I’ll be there as soon as I can. I’m on the train from London, the Chester train. It might take me a while.’
‘No problem.’
‘What was it?’
‘Most likely a heart attack. It’s still to be confirmed.’
‘Thank you.’
‘I’ll see you later, and please accept my condolences. It must be a terrible shock.’
‘Yes.’
She felt blank then, as though someone had slapped all feeling from her. T-e-r. Terrible. Terrified. Terminal. Mum’s dead, my mother’s dead. If she could only pull the communication cord. Stop the train, stop time. Back up a bit. To before she knew. Turn off her mobile and go home to her cottage and have that bath and a gourmet frozen dinner and then ring Mum. ‘I’m back. It was wonderful.’
Whenever she had imagined this it had been so different. A long, slow decline, an illness, sitting at her bedside. The dilemma of care homes and sheltered housing. Visiting, nursing. In all her fantasies there had always been time to say goodbye.
It was horrible seeing her but she had to do it. She had never seen Peter and what he might have looked like had haunted her as a child. She had imagined his skeleton showing through or a scary look on his face. She had to view Lilian now to make it real and so she’d not plague herself with fancy notions of how she looked. They went into the room. Lilian was laid out on a trolley, a sheet up to her shoulders. She looked false. As though someone had made a poor copy of her. Her face was slumped, her mouth pulled down, she looked sulky or grumpy. Nothing like her usual expression. Her eyes were closed, no hint remained of their cat-like quality, the beautiful green colour. No glasses on now. Her hands looked more real – the familiar way her nails were bitten down. The wedding ring and engagement ring still there. Grief broke over her and with it came a whirl of bitterness, a flood of rage and fear.
How dare you, she thought, how dare you leave me. She wanted to shake her, wake her up, force her to put those arms about her, give her solace. Come back. A sequence of nevers flowed through her, surging like waves against the shore: never smile at me, never ring me up, never say my name, never share a menu, never.
How dare you go and die. She put her hand over the cold one and let tears burn and drip down her face. When she got tired she pulled the chair up and sat right next to the bed, lay her head against her mother’s shoulder.
They had shared a bed after Dad had died. For months she had the comfort of her mother’s soft warm body to save her from loneliness and fears. When had Lilian cried? Not in front of Pamela.
She could smell her mother’s hairspray mixed in with the hospital smells and a trace of the floral perfume she liked, Lily of the Valley. Time passed. She let her mind float, bobbing from one memory to another. Time passed. She grew cold and nauseous. She felt filthy from the journey. There were things to do, an avalanche of things, but she didn’t know how to leave.
It was dark outside when there was a knock on the door. Her aunt and uncle. The spell was broken. When it came to it, it was easier to walk out with them, off to be consumed by the practicalities of death. Leaving her mother lying there alone.
Megan Marjorie
Nina
Megan
He roared his head off when Father baptised him. Megan grinned. ‘Sign of good luck,’ she whispered to Brendan. Francine, in Brendan’s arms, looked solemnly on, an anxious eighteen-month-old. He gave her a little tickle in the ribs and she wriggled and smiled.
‘Aidan Stephen Conroy,’ the priest said. They’d argued for hours over the middle name though they both liked Aidan. They’d had it in mind for Francine but then she turned out to be a girl. Brendan quite liked the idea of calling him Aidan Brendan but Megan pointed out that would be ABC in initials. Well, Brendan had retorted, it’ll be ASC if you call him Stephen. That’s OK, she’d replied with a logic that escaped him.