Hard Word (29 page)

‘It's about Grandma Vera. Philip thinks …' And Mum's looking at him, and being very careful now. ‘Philip's proposing …'

‘That we put Grandma Vera in a home,' I say. ‘Philip's always thought that, and I now agree with him. And it'd be best for her, so long as it's near here and we can visit her every day.'

And there's silence. And Philip's looking at me as if I've just said we can't bomb Denmark because it's Sunday, but we could do a naval blockade of Vladivostok.

‘But, darling,' Mum says. ‘You've never said anything about this before.'

‘Well, that's because you've been too busy playing Mother Teresa to ask.'

‘But when we discussed bringing Grandma Vera here, you were all for it.'

‘That was then, Mum. That was nearly two years ago. She's much worse now, and we're all running round in circles trying to plug all the holes that appear every time she moves, and it's not just us, she's getting more and more distressed, and inside she knows what's happening to her.'

‘But she hates the idea of a home. She's always hated it.'

‘That's all changed, Mum. You must have felt it. She's with us less and less every day. And she's knows she's fouling … everything up for us, and that's what's upsetting her.'

‘Darling,' Mum says, ‘I don't know how you can say any of that. With any certainty, I mean.'

‘What's she been saying to you recently? What did she say yesterday after –'

‘ ‘‘Bad girl, bad,'' she just kept saying …'

‘What else?'

‘ ‘‘Home, now. Home – now.'' '

I don't say anything to Mum then. I just look at her. Till it hits her.

‘Oh, no, darling, you're wrong,' she says. ‘She doesn't mean that at all. It's what she often says, you know that. When we go out, when we visit the doctor, she wants to leave, to go home. It's just an anxiety phrase – separation anxiety, it's called.'

‘Home, now,' I say. ‘It's different. She's saying it in a different way.'

‘What are you saying?'

‘She's giving you permission.'

‘Darling, that's just wrong.'

‘Well, why are we having this meeting, then?'

‘What?'

‘What's the point of this meeting?' I say again. ‘If nothing's going to change. If you're not
ever
going to put her in a nursing home, what are we discussing?'

Mum looks at Philip then.

‘Well, we
are
actually discussing putting her in a home,' he says. ‘It just takes a while for it to … crystallize, to sink in, I suppose. And don't be so tough on Miriam, Laura,' he says.

And normally, if anyone said this, I'd tell them to mind their own business, but when Philips says this and he puts out a hand to Mum and she takes it for a second, and I see she's upset and grateful he's done this – when he's like this and protective with Mum and touching her like that and not pashing on in the kitchen pretending he's eighteen instead of about a hundred and eight, well, I change my mind about Philip. And right at the moment he does look very young just sitting there and holding hands with Mum, and I find I like him a lot, so much in fact I could kiss him, and he is handsome and that, and I can even see why Mum's keen on him, and I realize this is hard for both of them and everything's upside down at the moment, and it's like
we're
the parents, Katie and me, and Mum and Philip are asking our permission for something, like whether they can get married or something, so I decide to sit up straight and be mature and not such a poop, and help instead of being a difficult young woman – for the moment anyway – though Katie's still breaking bits off the edge of the meringue, and Philip's still talking.

‘Of course,' he says, ‘we'd all rather Grandma Vera stayed here with us, right to … the end. But, as you saw yesterday, we're finding it impossible to cope, both with meeting Mother's needs, Grandma Vera's, I mean, and with our own. Now the idea of the nursing home is mine, and I take full responsibility for it …'

Mum is going to say something, but Katie beats her to it.

‘But she'll be lonely in a home,' Katie says. And she won't have us –'

‘Do you think?' Mum says, and I can see how divided and uncertain she still is about all this. So I say:

‘She doesn't have us now most of the day, Kat, and she hardly notices we're away. You and I are at school all day, and Philip's at work and hardly sees her, and Mum's teaching three days a week, sometimes more, and –'

‘And she can't have Yogi to play with when she wants to,' Katie says.

‘She didn't have her last night,' I say, and Katie pokes her tongue out at me, and picks at the meringue.

‘Anyway,' Philip says, ‘unless anyone's
absolutely
against it …'

And he pauses then and glances at Mum but she's got her head down and her hands are open on the table in front of her like all those Muslims you see on the TV in the mosque whenever there's a riot somewhere, or Salman Rushdie's about to be killed, or something. So when she doesn't look at him, Philip goes on:

‘I think we should at least look around. We'd have to do it anyway soon, in case Grandma Vera got very bad suddenly – and medically we couldn't manage her here.'

‘Anything …' Mum says, and it's like she's strangling herself in getting the words out. Anything we did decide on … it would have to be very close to here.'

‘Of course,' says Philip. ‘Of course, darling, you'd want to be there every day, and Katie and Laura would want to go too.'

‘We could go there on our way to school,' Katie says in her first bright note.

‘And who knows,' Philip says, and he is – I have to admit this – in charge of the meeting now, and I like him for what he says to Katie, ‘We may even find a place that allows pets. We'll look around anyway. Nothing's definite yet.'

And when he says this last bit, he's not announcing it to us or saying we can change our minds if we don't like it, he's not even talking to Katie and me at all, because the decision's really made – and it's the right one and I'm glad he's done it and I think he's really mature and all that – but it's actually Mum he's talking to, and still persuading, and making it easier for her. But I wonder really if he dreamed this up himself because he didn't say anything about it after the barbecue, he was just glad the thing was all over, and it was Mum – in the park and back here at home when we cleaned up – who was doing all the thinking. But this is what it's like with parents, you never know what's going on in their heads from one moment to the next. It's hardest for Mum, though, because I know what it's like myself. You think about something, and you decide the best way to do it is like this or like that, and you think that's over, then when you tell someone else and you hear yourself saying it, you suddenly think, no, that's not right, that's crazy, and what
could
I have been thinking about? And I'm sure Mum's like that now, listening to Philip talk, and even if last night she thought this was the best solution for everyone, now, this morning, listening to it all, she'd be going, What? Put my mother in a home? Over my dead body.

‘Can I have the meringue now?' Katie says.

‘There is one other thing,' Philip says. And he's starting to get bossy and important again, so I say, ‘You're supposed to say, Item on the agenda.'

‘Thank you, Laura,' he says. ‘That's very helpful.'

‘How would you two girls …?' Mum says, and she's still sounding strange, and I can see she's worked herself up to this, and wants to get it out and over as soon as possible. ‘How,' she says, ‘would you feel about having a … ?'

‘A what?' says Katie. And even her hand's frozen beside the meringue.

‘A little brother,' Mum says and goes red and gulps like she's about fourteen, but this time I'm the one who nearly faints.

‘You're not –' I say. And I can see immediately she is. And she will. And I think, Yeeeech. My own mother. How could she do this to me? And oh, yes, I can just see myself saying to the kids at school, My mother's going to have a baby – joke! and
I'm
fifteen – and they'll go, You what? and you're crazy, Lolly, she
couldn't,
it'll be a mongoloid or something, she must be at least sixty – and how am I
ever
going to tell Toni, she'll never let me forget it.
If my mum told me she was going to have a baby,
Toni'll say,
I'd have to go, Oh, yes, and what was it – immaculate conception? Because my Dad wouldn't know how
… And then there's Philip! Imagine if Philip ever found out my own mother was going to have a baby. And he's coming here, to the house! Oh, Christ, I'm going to leave home. I'll phone Philip, and tell him I'm sick, or Mum is. I'm never never never going back to school. Ever.

‘Of course,' Philip's saying, ‘we're not entirely sure yet.'

This is the trouble with Philip. He's so wishy-washy. He never says anything definite. First, Grandma's going into a home, then she's not, or maybe. And next Mum's preg – See, I can't even say the word. It's
so
disgusting. And then she's not, or maybe. He never makes up his mind, Philip.

‘I am,' says Mum.

‘You are what?' says Katie, and I'm glad she says it because I can't speak.

‘Sure,' says Mum. And it's going to be a boy. What do you think, Laura?'

And all I'm thinking is, if she says she's going to call it
Philip,
I'll kill her.

‘I have to make a phone call,' I say. ‘It's urgent.'

And then she looks at me and she sees something in my face, and understands, and she's my mother after all, and she looks suddenly hurt and about four years old, and says:

‘Aren't you pleased for me?'

And what can I say to that? ‘Yes,' I say.

‘I'll be able to play with him, won't I, Mum?' Katie says.

‘Yes,' says Mum, but still looking over Katie's head at me.

‘Sure?' she says to me.

‘Yes,' I say. ‘I'm sure.'

‘And so Grandma Vera can have Yogi after all,' Katie says, ‘cos I'll have –'

‘Well, we don't know for absolute sure yet,' says Philip who's starting to fidget, and look around for his paper because he realizes no one is listening to him any more, if they ever were. ‘We'll have to see what the tests say.'

‘Laura?' Mum says. She's still watching my face, and I can't look away.

‘It's just a bit of a shock,' I say.

And then she says something that shocks me even more:

‘I've thought about it and thought about it, Laura, but these two things – they're not connected, I'm sure of that, if that's what you're thinking. They just happened this way …'

And I don't have a clue for a while what she's talking about. ‘Grandma Vera and the pregnancy,' she says, when I finally ask her. ‘I wondered whether I was just making a convenience of Grandma Vera, getting her out of the way because –'

‘Oh, Mum,' I say then. ‘Don't be crazy. Nobody'd ever think that.'

‘I keep telling you, Miriam,' Philip says, ‘you're too fastidious. In conscience. The thing never even occurred to you till
after
we'd discussed the issue of Mother and a home.'

‘Not consciously,' Mum says. ‘But –'

‘You'll probably believe it anyway,' I say then. ‘Just to punish yourself.'

She looks at me sharply to see how I mean this.

‘Yes,' she smiles back. ‘I probably will.'

‘Well,' says Philip. ‘If there's no other business …'

‘You can make your call now,' Mum says to me. And this tells me, if I didn't already know it, how smart she is, and how much I love her.

‘It's okay,' I say. ‘There's no need now.'

Miriam

Expect the unexpected. Isn't that what all the management gurus say now, the corporate trainers? And it's true enough in a way, I suppose. The things you anticipate with most dread never happen, but the trivial is always there, waiting to rise up from nowhere and bite the backside from under you.

It's Monday, my first class for the new half-term and I'm already dreading it, dreading having to face Ted Coster and Pam Richter and start the struggle all over again to get Sorathy released for classes. At least Mother's recovering, according to Dr Lazenby anyway, though to me she seems even more vacant than ever, and adrift somewhere. She's scarcely left her bed these past two days.

‘Deep shock can do this,' Dr Lazenby says. ‘She'll come out of it when she's ready.'

In my pigeon-hole in the staff room, there's a note which I snatch up and read on my way to class. It's from Pam Richter, asking me to call in at her office in the coffee break. Here we go, I say, and stiffen my back for Officer Coster. I'm glad, I catch myself thinking, that I have my hair up this morning.

But it isn't Ted Coster who's waiting by the door of my classroom.

‘Sorathy!' I say, and look around for a blue uniform, a guard. There is no one, only students chatting happily as they move in and out of the rooms. ‘What are you doing here? Come in, come in,' I say, dragging her by the arm and pulling her into the classroom before anyone can come and snatch her away.

There are cries of welcome from all round the room, but I wave a hand at them and focus on Sorathy.

‘How is it you're here? How did you do it? I thought I'd have to come –'

‘There is no problem,' she says.

‘But you were so late. Mr Coster –'

‘It is the weekend,' she says. ‘It is Saturday. Mr Coster is not on the gate or in the guardhouse when I get back. It is a lady officer.'

‘And she … ?'

‘She is very nice. She pick up My Huoy and talk to her while I sign the book. You have to sign the book when you go out and when you come in. And she sign it after you.'

‘But the time –?'

The whole class, I'm aware, is hanging on every word. They will have heard the story of My Huoy's disappearance by now, I realize, either from Njala or from Sorathy herself.

‘The lady on the gate,' Sorathy says, ‘she has to write down the time, but I tell her about the barbecue and then she say to me: ‘‘What is the time now?'' and I say, ‘‘I do not know.'' And then she say her watch often wrong, what time am I due back? I say three o'clock, and she say that must be the time then, because she know I am always on time. And so she put it down. But when I get to my room and look at my clock, it is already four-thirty.'

There is a roar of approval and delight, and we settle to the shambles of a class. Except, in the event, it's anything but a shambles. This morning, they insist, they want no grammar, no exercises, no drills. Instead they have dozens of questions arising out of the barbecue. Questions of social etiquette, linguistic etiquette. Who greets whom, and how, at an Australian party? How do you address Philip if he is a man you haven't met before but you call his wife
Miriam
even if she is your teacher? When people come to your house, how do you greet them – for dinner? For a barbecue? If you serve people drinks before dinner, how – in Australia – do you get them to the table? We practise the phrases, we role-play, we act out scenarios.

‘Less imperative,' I say to Maria at one point. She is seating guests round her dinner table – Njala, and Shamila (Njala's husband in this exercise), Sorathy and Hué (Sorathy's husband).

‘You,' Maria says to Shamila. ‘Sit here!'

‘Still too imperative, Maria,' I tell her. ‘Not
Sit!
You say
Sit!
to a dog –'

‘What if he look like a dog?' Maria says, and they fall about. Maria still has all the skills of a market woman. And a natural clown.

‘Okay,' I say, when they've quietened again. ‘Now Hué – she's Sorathy's husband, remember. What do you say to him?'

‘You sit here next to me,' Maria says to Hué. And then, turning to the class, she says, ‘He is verrry handsome.'

Again I wait for them to settle.

‘It doesn't matter whether you put
you
in front of it, Maria,' I tell her. ‘You're still using the imperative form of the verb. And it's not appropriate. Try something like this: “Hue,”' I say, acting Maria's part, ‘ “I wonder … would you like to sit over here, next to me?”'

‘It is more subtle?' Maria says.

‘It is more seductive,' I say.

‘Aaaah –'

‘What …' Maria says, ‘if he says no?'

‘Then,' I say, ‘you say
Sit!
'

They laugh. The first hour flies. We are all happy for Sorathy. It is all so carefree, I think, looking at Sorathy's face. She is smiling at some foolery of Maria's, though – as always – with more restraint than any of us. And I am thinking of this with a little sadness, when the second dread of the day hits me, and I curse silently and sneak a look at a roster I have in one of my folders – and there I find my worst fears confirmed. My obsession with Coster, with facing Pam Richter has driven this other horror completely out of my mind. I hadn't even expected Sorathy to be here today. But she is, and I can think of no way of avoiding what must happen next.

I clap my hands and announce it's time for a break. And then I ask:

‘After coffee, whose story do we hear today?'

They look around. Sorathy has her hand up, and there is none of the usual swell of approval and anticipation. Their dread is the same as mine, and they move towards the coffee table barely looking at one another.

‘Pam?' I say, putting my head round the door of her office. I don't go in, expecting her just to hand me a form or class-roll or something.

‘Come in,' she says, and waves me to a chair. When she shuts the door I know something's very wrong. Sorathy's made a mistake, that
must
be it. The woman on the gate has reported her after all. But then why did they let her come to class?

‘I heard about the barbecue,' Pam says. ‘From some of the students – they couldn't stop talking about it this morning.'

‘I can explain,' I start. And know how lame it sounds, and how often recently I've sat in this same room and said the same thing.

‘It seems as though everyone really enjoyed themselves,' she says with a tight smile. ‘I wish I'd been there myself.'

Is that what this is about? I ask myself. That Pam feels piqued at not being invited? Inviting her had simply not occurred to me. After so much contact with students during the week, most staff simply want their weekends to themselves and their families.

‘But it's not the barbecue I need to talk to you about,' Pam says.

I note the
need
rather than
want
, and wait.

‘It's something else more disturbing,' she says.

Jesus, I think, is it about Sorathy, or isn't it?

‘One of the students,' she says, ‘tells me that part of the reason for the barbecue was to meet your mother –'

‘Oh, yes,' I say. ‘They've made a roster, they're sitting with her while I take my other classes – until I make some other arrangements. Aren't they wonderful?'

Pam looks at me.

‘Miriam,' she says, ‘have you lost your head?'

‘What do you mean?'

‘Miriam, these are your
students
.'

‘So … ?' But already I see a pit opening up.

‘Don't you see how this might look?'

‘No,' I say. But in fact I begin to. ‘Tell me,' I say.

‘Are you, for instance, paying these women?'

‘No, I'm not. I tried to, but they wouldn't accept any payment, they said it would be an insult. I'm trying to think of some other way of repaying them.'

‘And you don't see that it's a potential conflict of interest? That it's unprofessional?'

My mouth is drying. Am I perhaps stupid? Just accepting things on the terms, in the spirit in which they were offered?

‘How do you mean, unprofessional?' I say.

‘Well, think for Godsake. You're their
teacher,
they're doing unpaid domestic labour in your house –'

‘It's not labour. They sit, they sit with my mother, they talk to her.'

‘Do they fetch things for her?'

‘Sometimes.'

‘Do they get her lunch?'

‘Sometimes, but –'

‘Miriam, you are their teacher. They are doing unpaid “work”in your home, and at the end of term you must assess them.' ‘But most of it's an external test. It's this multiple-choice rubbish for Christ's sake, it's even machine marked.'

‘But you still have a hand in the assessment. Don't you see the conflict that could be there?'

And I do. But only in the abstract. This is not, I want to say, how it is. It is not like this at all.

‘Regardless of the reality,' she says, reading my thoughts, ‘I'm formally counselling you – I must, if only to cover myself – to break this arrangement with your students as soon as you possibly can, and that means immediately. And I'm going to put it in writing, and I'm going to ask you to sign it, to show that you have been counselled –'

‘Warned,' I say.

‘If you like. I'll have it ready by the end of your class. Miriam, I'm sorry about this, but I have to …'

‘Cover your arse,' I say. ‘I know.'

On the way back to the classroom, I feel not so much angry as just – dejected, I suppose. Disappointed in myself, in Pam, in the way things are, and I find I'm nearly in tears and make for the toilet instead.

It's only when I emerge – face still hot and stinging but washed clean and, in the cracked glass of the washroom mirror, almost presentable if no one looks too hard – that the final blow falls into place, and I remember Sorathy and what we are about to hear, and that's when I say ‘Fuckkk,' imitating Philip, and enter the classroom. Smiling.

‘What is the matter?' they say immediately, and I compound everything I've done wrong to date by drawing them into it, doing the very thing I promised myself I wouldn't do. Acting unprofessionally. But I have to know.

‘Do you think … does anyone here think, that I'm exploiting you? That I'm doing the wrong thing by having you sit with my mother?'

‘No –'

‘Please,' I say. ‘I must know the truth about this.'

‘Who says this?' Maria is on her feet.

‘Maria,' I say, ‘please sit down. I must know if anyone feels … I want to know.'

They deny it, of course. But then – if Pam is right – they would, since their own interests are at stake. In this sense, I begin to realize, I can't win.

They ask for the story, and I sketch it as briefly, as impersonally as I can, and I find that – as I do – I simply cannot believe that the looks of incomprehension and then disgust on their faces are not genuine.

‘We will hold a protest,' Maria says. ‘We will occupy her office.'

‘No, Maria,' I say.

‘We will sit-down,' someone says. ‘We will pocket.'

‘Picket,' I say.

‘Picket?' Njala says. ‘What is
picket
?'

And, hearing that, a way out occurs to me – for at least one of my problems anyhow. I begin to write the word
picket
on the board. This is how my best classes always go – with the enquiries and the energy coming not from me but from the class. The hour before the coffee break – on the etiquette of hosting – was simply brilliant. And now, I think as I write, we shall explore the language of protest. And there'll be no time for Sorathy's story. We can put it off to another day. When we're all feeling stronger. And then I pause and think again, and rub the word out. I'm already unprofessional, according to Pam, and I imagine her walking in the corridor outside my room in a half-hour from now and glancing in at my class to find them all role-playing a strike, seated cross-legged on the floor, and the board covered with
strike
and
picket, sit-in
and
occupation,
and all the inflammatory language of protest.

‘Let's forget all that,' I say then. ‘It's only a small problem, after all.' And it is, I think to myself, compared with what we are about to face. ‘Please,' I say, ‘just leave it to me to sort out. We'll just go on with our present arrangements until …'

And then I experience a crisis of courage, while they wait patiently for me to finish what I'd started to say. And looking at their faces, I find I just cannot bring myself to tell these women that I am thinking of sending my own mother away to a home. They've already, I rationalize to save myself, had enough incomprehension for one morning.

‘Until …' I say finally, ‘I make some other arrangements.' And they nod at this nonsense, and seem satisfied. ‘Now,' I say, ‘it's time to hear someone's story, and today it is … you, Sorathy?' I say. Hoping. But she says, ‘Yes,' and stands and comes towards the front of the room. Normally I swap places with the speaker, sitting in the seat they've just vacated. Today I go to the back and sit behind the other students, where they cannot see my face and I cannot see theirs.

When Philip and I were first married, we spent a week – not in Greece, but in Southern Thailand, around the small hills of Songkhla, its bays and islands. One day, we walked along the wharves down on the harbourside. The fishing fleet was in, and a Thai naval destroyer sat on the horizon, supposedly checking movements in and out of the harbour. The port itself was putrid. It stank after the greenery of the inland, and the clear air and water of the lakes. The water here shone with slick and black oil. Paper and plastics, fish heads and other garbage rotted on the grey swell.