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Sleepy. Warm and calm and slow are the words for this.
Wrap them around me. Then, a thread of sound, winding itself in through my ears.
Noise. Noise I know.
Aeroplane, humming silver in the clouds…
Long blue whales…moaning underwater…
Bees…fat summer bees lifting slowly into the air from a hive. Paint flaking. Apples gleaming
green in shadow. Where?
It won’t come.
The word ‘summer’ still hovers, sounds sweet inside my head. Lifting young legs through long
grass. Flat blades tickle my shins. Ankle socks and sandals suck up the wetness of the stems.
School. Playtime in the overgrown field behind a red brick house. Inside, there are lessons,
sharp pencils. A teacher with big bosoms, long blue skirt, buttons at the side. Outside it’s
playtime. Whoops and voices, children bouncing like puppies through the grass. A boy
standing in front of me, breathing fast, asking me to be his horse. We use the cotton belt of
my dress for reigns and off we go, galloping with the others through the field. They’re horses
too.
That noise. Still there. I can’t find it, the word I want. Just out of reach.
I’m early today. Couldn’t sleep once it got light so I made myself some toast and set off. The
cleaners are working their way in the corridor from either end, dipping in and out of rooms,
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floating their hoover-partners back and forth in a slow motion jive. I acknowledge them with
a little nod and a wave. Rude not to. They keep this place immaculate.
Now I’m here I suddenly feel so tired.
In the day room the TV isn’t on yet but the inhabitants have been set up for the day; lumpen,
muted children in washed out cabbage colours, dotted around in arm chairs. Dorothy who
loves dolls. Ann who shouts ‘Careful!’ all the time. Helen who is always busy with her Life
Book, trying to remember who she was. And Barry who arrived last week. He shuffles
towards a chair on his frame, navy towelling slippers sucking at the carpet. I smile at him but
he looks only at the chair.
Kathleen’s in her usual place by the window. Head back, eyes closed, wearing a pink flowered
blouse I don’t recognise. She hates pink. The sister comes over to me. “Morning Mr Trotter.”
She gives me a brief, efficient smile. “Kathleen’s had another restless night, I’m afraid.” She
gives my forearm a little squeeze. “Pop in and see me before you go, would you? There’s
something I’d like to discuss.” Kathleen is special, apparently, in that she has an unusual kind
of bastard dementia: Frontotemporal. She started young at 62. “What is knife?” she’d ask.
This woman who used to cook up Robert Carrier feasts for twelve, was asking me what a
knife was. That was three years ago.
I sit down quietly next to her and look at what’s left. Her hair needs a wash. I want to tidy
that lank strand away, neaten her up a bit, but I’m wary of sudden physical contact. It’s one
of the first things you learn. She always took such care with her appearance, had her hair
done once a week, loved new clothes. The pink blouse makes me want to weep and crush
things. Who put her in that? Her eyes are watering under their papery lids, leaving a shining
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wet line on each cheek. Is she crying in there? My eyes want to copy hers and I feel the
judder in my throat. Gently, I scoop up her hand, cup it between my palms. She opens her
eyes and the faded, far away irises find mine.
He’s here again, the doctor. Kind eyes. Squeezing my hand now. Am I ill? Or is it the baby.
Maybe it’s the baby. I want to see him, hold him. Feel him suckle. Smell his newness and his
milky head. I want to take my baby home. This doctor is kind. He might say it’s alright.
She begins, with a coy smile. “I’m ready to go home now, doctor. Me and my baby. Can we?”
Her words are coaxing, soft. Like the old Kathleen, out looking for our cat in the garden. I
smile at her, the wife I have teased and held and fought with, trying to make her see me, to
call a little of her back. “It’s me, Ronnie. Your Ronnie. There’s no baby, love. He’s all grown
up. Doing well! I give her hand a little shake and another smile.
She turns her head and starts to wail.
I want to go home now. Don’t they know? I’ve been here all day and I want to go home. Lots
to do. Where’s my baby? What have they done with him? Bitch nurses don’t tell you anything.
He needs feeding, my baby needs feeding. I want to go home.
Her voice is alternately loud and soft as she looks at nothing. It’s demonic, awful. And now
I’m shouting, shouting for someone to come, to help, because I can’t stop her and I can’t
listen any more. Lips still working, she plucks at the blanket covering her and tries to stand,
levering herself up on the chair’s varnished toffee apple arms. I move forward to catch her
but she flings out one arm to push me away. The bone of her wrist catches my chin and I
gasp, just as her stick legs collapse. She falls back in the chair, whimpering. One of the nurses
dodges between us with a silver dish, syringe rattling as she moves. The needle goes in and
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out before Kathleen can knock it away. Around the room old eyes stare, called back from
their own addled worlds, bearing witness as we watch and wait for Kathleen’s sluggish blood
to pump the drug around her body.
Nurse talking in my ear. Don’t listen don’t listen don’t listen. Shut my eyes. I want my baby I
want to go home and I want my baby oh please tell me where my baby is.
Someone brings me a cup of tea. Then another. Then I’m allowed to see her. She’s been put
to bed. Still asleep, her face turned away. I can see the silhouette of her puffed sleeve rising
and falling in time with her breaths. So I’ll wait.
Her room looks over the car park. Some might say it’s not much of a view but I’ve always
liked watching the colours of cars, people drive in and out, slowing, reversing, indicating,
squeezing in where they might not fit. If I open the window I can hear the whisper of rubber
on tarmac, the click of a lock. Soothing. Exact.