My Real Children (32 page)

Rhodri showed her how to use it. All she had used her old computer for was making notes for her classes, like a glorified typewriter. This one was different. It could go online, and once it did it had Google. Google was what Trish had wanted for years, the ability to search for something she had forgotten. “If only Google would tell me where I’d left my glasses!” she said. But it told her the lost word “samurai” when she searched for “Japanese warrior” and the author of
Sonnets from the Portuguese.
It helped her fill in the blanks. The Mac also let the children email to and fro with their parents on the moon and their cousins and friends across town. “What a wonderful machine.”

The twins noticed that she was forgetful. “I told you that already, Gran!” Bronwen said when Trish forgot something.

Rhodri was good at thinking of ways to help. The computer had a “to do” function that reminded her to take her pills and collect the children from school and teach her classes. It beeped in a friendly way to remind her when she had to do something, and when she checked it told her what. She used it for her lists and notes. She wrote them down on a notepad that she carried with her and then transferred them into the computer at night. Doing that she was sometimes distressed at how many times she had written down the same thing.

Cathy, coming up for a weekend with fifteen-year-old Jamie, was skeptical of the computer, and of the twins when she caught Bronwen reminding Trish to take her pills. “Are you looking after those children or are they looking after you?”

“A bit of both,” Trish said, honestly.

Cathy’s son Jamie was sullen and spoilt in Trish’s estimation. He attended an exclusive private school where he seemed to learn less than Trish’s other grandchildren did in the state system. They went on a picnic to Windermere and Jamie found fault with everything from the food to the lake. What worried Trish was the way Cathy agreed with him and appeased him, as if she were afraid of upsetting him. Jamie reminded Trish of Mark, and of Doug as a child, enjoying bullying. She didn’t understand how he could be like Mark. He had only been a year old when Mark died. Surely a tendency to like bullying couldn’t be genetic?

The next year, when he was sixteen, Helen told Trish that Cathy was going to buy Jamie a moped. “A moped, in London! I’d never let Donna or Tony,” Helen said. “And they’re going to be on at me again now that Jamie has one. Cathy has no sense with that boy.”

“No, she doesn’t,” Trish said. “And it’s not being a single mother, because look at you with Tamsin, or Bethany with Alestra for that matter.”

“I was never on my own with Tamsin the way Cathy has been with Jamie. You were there, and Gran, and then Bethany too. Cathy had nannies and au pairs, but they were employees. She’s got too much money, that’s what it is. Did you know she boasts about being in the sixty percent tax band?”

Trish couldn’t remember. “Are you short of money?”

“We’re doing fine. Computers are the big thing. I’d rather do more programming and less selling, but that’s not the way things are these days. My only problem is that I’m bored with Don. He doesn’t want to do anything different, ever. I suggested we have a holiday in Greece or Italy, but he only wants to go to Spain like always.”

About a month later, in early December, Trish got an anguished call from Cathy very early one morning. “Mum!”

“What’s wrong?”

“He hasn’t come home!”

“Jamie?” Trish rubbed her eyes and looked at the clock: 06.17.

“He wasn’t home and I went to bed, and he still isn’t home.” Cathy was screeching into the phone.

“Call the police,” Trish said. “He’s only sixteen. They’ll have to do something.”

She made a note to herself “Jamie missing.” She didn’t think she’d forget, but these days she never knew what might go out of her head.

“Wouldn’t they have called me if they knew something?” Cathy asked, sounding a little more collected.

“If they knew something, probably, which means he probably isn’t in a hospital or anything like that. But if he’s gone off somewhere they can try to find him.” Trish calmed Cathy down and got her to agree to call the police.

She got up and had a hot bath and a cup of tea to get her mind working. Then she got the twins up for school. They were old enough to go by themselves now, but she made Rhodri porridge and Bronwen toasted cheese. “The strongest correlation to doing well in school—” she began when Rhodri protested.

“—is eating protein in the morning, yes, I know,” Rhodri said.

“And your father always ate breakfast and none of my other children did, and look at him now.”

“I can’t, the moon has set,” Rhodri said.

“Smartass,” Bronwen said.

They went to school and Trish called Cathy back. “Any news?”

“Nothing,” Cathy said.

That afternoon the telephone shrilled, but it was Helen, calling to tell Trish that Donna had won a County Art Prize. Trish wrote it down before she forgot. “Did you speak to Cathy?” she asked.

“No?”

“Jamie didn’t come home last night.”

“That doesn’t sound good,” Helen said. “Oh no. I hope it’s not something terrible.”

“Coming off the road on that machine would be terrible enough. There was ice last night.” Trish shuddered.

She called Cathy again and had no answer. She left a message. The twins came home from school, and Bethany came home from the food co-op and made dinner. She had a council meeting that night and was in a rush so Trish didn’t take her aside to tell her about Jamie.

Cathy called just after ten. She was hysterical. Trish caught “pond” and “dead” and “body.”

“What has happened?” she asked. “Shall I come? Where are you, Cathy?”

Cathy was at the police station in Twickenham. “Twickenham! That’s where Gran lived and I grew up.”

As it turned out, it was also where Jamie had died, skidding on an icy road and coming off his moped and going into a pond, where he had drowned. Trish went cold hearing about it.

“Shall I come?” she asked again, calculating how she would ask Helen and Bethany to cover for her with the twins.

“What good would it do, Mum?” Cathy asked.

After that she went to bed. She had thought it bad to outlive a son; now she had outlived a grandson.

She remembered it in the morning. She knew she had, because she had told Helen when she called in to the shop and spoke to her. Helen had been shocked that Cathy hadn’t called her, and that Cathy hadn’t wanted Trish to go. “Does she want me?” Helen asked. “Should I call and ask? She shouldn’t be on her own.”

“You can try,” Trish said.

But by the weekend when Cathy called again she had forgotten. It had all drained out of her mind as if it had never happened. She heard Cathy’s voice and answered “How are you, darling? How’s Jamie?” She remembered almost at once, as soon as she heard the tone of Cathy’s voice change, but by then it was too late. She deserved everything Cathy called her, unkind as it was. She should never have forgotten. She wouldn’t have believed it was possible that she could, except that somehow she had.

She went downstairs to Bethany. “I’m going senile. I’m going like my mother was.”

“What have you done now?” Bethany asked.

“Have I said that before?” Trish asked, appalled.

“Only hundreds of times,” Bethany said. “What is it?

Trish told her about Jamie, and about forgetting. “I didn’t say anything at home because of the twins. They’ll have to know, but I didn’t know how to tell them, and then I just—it went out of my mind.”

“Cathy will never forgive that,” Bethany said. “But it’s not your fault, Trish, you know it isn’t. It’s no more your fault than if you had Parkinson’s and you dropped a cup and it broke. It’s a medical symptom.”

“I do blame myself. And you’re right that she’ll never forgive me. She’s always been the most difficult of them, and now she’ll be sure I’m a senile old fool and not fit to have charge of myself never mind the twins.”

“I’m here for the twins if it comes to that,” Bethany said. “And Helen and Don. You’re not in sole charge. And you’re not dangerously forgetful anyway. You do forget things, but you’re all right.”

“The Mac helps a lot,” Trish said. “It’s a godsend. And so are you, Bethany. I don’t know how I’d manage without you.”

“Well, I’m here,” Bethany said.

31

I Hope I Forget: Pat 1992–1999

Philip took a course and trained as a carer for disabled people. “There were very few places, and I’m sure I got into it entirely by explaining that my mother was a double amputee who had been in a wheelchair since I was four years old,” he said.

Bee laughed. “Why do you want to do it?” she asked. “Couldn’t you teach, like Sanchia, or do casual work like Ragnar?”

“I could, but I’d rather help people,” Philip said. “I need something to bring in money, and this is good money and odd hours, just what I want. Casual work is boring and pointless, and teaching is soul-destroying. And once I have the qualification I can do this anywhere in Europe. If I happen to have three days free in Heidelberg or Venice I can pick up some caring work there.”

“Teaching can actually be rewarding,” Bee pointed out.

Philip blushed. “Your kind of teaching, of course, or even Mum’s, but teaching music to beginners is what I meant. I’ve seen it grinding Sanchia down.”

Things went on as they were. Pat grew more forgetful and started relying on lists again as she had when the children were young. She stopped driving because she felt she wasn’t safe, and she stopped writing and updating her guidebooks after the final update of the Rome books in 1994. She handed on all her materials to a young writer Constable recommended who would keep them going. “They’re an institution,” her editor said. The new girl seemed impossibly young, but she was older than Pat had been when she had written the first Florence book. “And she loves Italy. That’s her real qualification,” Pat told Bee.

In 1998 Jinny announced that she was getting married to a contractor called Francesco. Pat and Bee rushed off to Florence at Easter to meet him and his family. He was younger than Jinny and had typical Italian good looks. “I’d like to sculpt him,” she confided. “If I did, would you mind if I put it in the courtyard?”

“Better ask him. It’s your house now,” Pat said.

“A contractor, eh?” Bee said. “Maybe we can finally get a stairlift put in. And a recharger so I could bring the electric wheelchair to Italy, maybe?”

The wedding was arranged for July, when they would be in Florence as usual.

Pat was reading the new Margaret Drabble when Philip called with news of his own. “Sanchia’s pregnant,” he said.

“Whose is it?” she asked.

“We don’t know and we don’t care,” Philip said.

“Of course. Well, congratulations.”

“I’m a little overwhelmed. Remember how surprised I was to find I was an uncle? Finding I’m going to be a father is even more overwhelming. Oh, and write this down right now, Mum! I don’t want you forgetting to tell Mamma! Where is she anyway?”

“She went somewhere, I forget,” Pat said. “Maybe physio? Is it Wednesday?”

“It’s Thursday,” Philip said. “Have you written it down?”

“Yes,” Pat said, writing it down carefully. “I’ll tell her the second she comes in. Will you all come to Italy for Jinny’s wedding?”

“I will absolutely come, and I think I can speak for the other two in saying they will want to be there and will come unless there’s something that absolutely prevents them—I know Ragnar has a performance in Helsinki sometime this summer but I can’t remember when.”

Pat sat and waited for Bee to come home, her notebook on her lap. As soon as she heard the car she got up and went out. “Sanchia’s pregnant!” she called, as soon as Bee was out of the car. The new car allowed Bee to drive it in her chair.

“Who’s the father, or don’t they care?” Bee asked.

“I think they said they don’t care. And Philip said he’d come to Jinny’s wedding,” Pat said.

Then as she came close enough, Pat saw Bee’s face. “What’s wrong?”

“I did think about not telling you, because this isn’t something I want to tell you over and over, love. But it’s fucking anaplastic thyroid cancer, the same as Michael had, and Lorna.”

“Oh Bee, no.” Pat found she was sitting on the ground on the drive with no idea how she had got there. “How are we going to manage?”

“You forgot where I was going, didn’t you?”

“I did.” Pat looked up at Bee. “Have they developed any better treatment?”

“Nope. Six to nine months if we do nothing, six to nine months if we mess about with surgeries and chemo.”

“It’s March…”

“It’s April,” Bee said. “Get up from there and make me some dinner. I’ll make Jinny’s wedding, that’s one thing. I’ll be glad to see her settled. I thought she never would be, over thirty and nobody serious.”

“Bee, you’re talking as if—”

“Well, how do you want me to talk? Like a tragedy? There’s nothing I can do about it. If you like I’ll say we’re totally doomed—I’m dying and you’re going senile, and I think I have the best of it. But what good does that do? Might as well live while we can. Dinner while I can still eat. Sex while we can still enjoy it. Music. Let’s sing together after supper. Graft a few plants and see if I can make some new ones that produce more oxygen for the Mars mission. See Jinny married, maybe see Sanchia’s baby if I’m very lucky.”

“Oh Bee,” Pat said, getting up carefully. “What am I going to do without you?”

“I have no idea. So let’s enjoy the time we have left.”

“Do you want to go to Florence?”

“I want to go in the summer when we always go. For Jinny’s wedding, for the summer. Then I want to come home when we always do, and be here where I have the conservatory all set up to work in. I want to go on as normal as best we can—but Pat? Please try to remember this, because if you forget and I have to tell you again and again it’s going to drive me mad.” Bee’s chair hummed off indoors and Pat followed.

“I’ll try to remember,” Pat said. “I don’t see how I could forget, as it’s the worst news I’ve ever had, but there seems to be no control over what I forget and what I remember.”

“I do know you can’t help it,” Bee said. “I’m not angry with you. I’m angry with the cancer, with the stupid Americans who just had to retaliate with an H-bomb and no thought about the winds and who they were hurting, with the equally stupid Russians who thought they could get respect by taking out Miami, and with the Indians and the Chinese. This could be from that just as easily. We’ve only got one habitable planet and it’s so fragile, and we keep on screwing it up. Dropping nukes and burning oil. That’s what makes me angry, not your infirmity.”