The Silk Factory (3 page)

Tally was still speaking: ‘You know how it is with old people; they hide things in a safe place and forget where they put them …’

Rosie nodded absently, trying to remember whether the back door had been unlocked. Was it possible that the girl had come in – just walked in uninvited? Surely a child of that age would know not to do that, would understand about privacy. Perhaps she wasn’t quite ‘all there’, as her mother would have put it. How weird! It made her feel uncomfortable, as though the peace of the house had been broken, her territory violated.

‘Once she had a roll of money propping up the cooker,’ Tally said. ‘Tucked under one foot to keep it level – more than two hundred pounds!’

Rosie brought herself back to respond to her guest. ‘Poor May,’ she said, pouring coffee and then passing a mug to Tally. ‘Mum told me you rang her when May couldn’t cope any more but I never knew what actually happened.’

‘She got very confused: getting up in the middle of the night and doing her hoovering, setting off for town and then forgetting how to get home again, that sort of thing. We used to take her round a dinner but she wouldn’t eat it, said she could only manage tiny bits of soup. Then one day she turned the gas on and forgot to light it – bless her. Rob had to have the back door down to get in.’

Rosie was shocked. ‘How awful! Mum never said!’

‘Once she was in hospital they did an assessment and sent her into care. I reckoned that if I went through May’s address book and rang everyone who was mentioned only by their Christian name I’d eventually hit a relative, and that’s how I found your mum. Rob was well impressed with my detective work.’ She grinned, that wide smile again. ‘He’s in the Force – Plod not CID but he’s working on it.’

‘I must visit her,’ Rosie said. ‘See how she is. That’s another thing I really must …’ She tailed off.

Tally saw how her face clouded at the prospect, as if she felt so battered by events that it was hard to summon the strength to meet one more challenge. She’d noticed the nervous habit that Rosie had of undoing the hairclip that held her long hair in a twist at the back of her head, coiling it around her hand and then clipping and reclipping it back in place – an obsessive movement, patting and tidying an imagined disarray, restoring order. Her heart went out to her. On an impulse she said, ‘Look, why don’t you go and see her this afternoon and bring the kids round to me? It’d be easier on your own. You might find the visit quite difficult; she might not even recognise you, you know. She didn’t know me from Adam when I went.’

Rosie assumed that the offer was made through politeness and thought that she shouldn’t impose. ‘Thank you, that’s really kind of you but …’

Tally leant forward. ‘No, really, it’d be no trouble. Mine’ll be back at three. They’re on a summer play scheme doing football or rounders or somesuch, down at the Jubilee Fields. They’d love someone new to play with when they get back.’

‘Are you sure? Cara’s only a toddler; she might spoil their games.’

‘We’ll do play-dough.’ Tally smiled. ‘No problem.’ She finished her coffee. ‘That’s settled then. I’ll see you at three.’

Rosie saw her to the door, Tally waving away her thanks. She felt her spirits lifting as she thought that Tally was someone that she might be able to confide in, someone who just might become a friend.

In the town, Rosie was ushered into Holly Court by a woman in a blue nurse’s uniform who introduced herself as the senior carer, Julie Todd. As she led her through the sitting room where two elderly men were playing whist, she told her how May was doing. ‘She has good days and bad days, mind. Sometimes she’ll be quite chatty; others you can’t get a peep out of her. We keep trying though; it’s really important to get the patients to interact. Do visit whenever you can.’

At the door of the sunroom, she gestured to Rosie to wait. ‘About your mum … May won’t have any recollection that she’s passed on. We find it best not to mention it; it’s too upsetting for her – as if she’s newly bereaved each time. I’m sorry to have to bring it up but I felt I should let you know.’

Rosie nodded. ‘Doesn’t she wonder where Mum is? Mum said she was visiting every day when she wasn’t staying with me.’

‘She asks sometimes. We just say she’ll be along tomorrow and five minutes later she’s forgotten all about it. I know it seems awful but it’s a kindness really.’ She peeped round the corner of the door. ‘I’ll just go and tell her she’s got a visitor. We find it helps to give a little warning; it lets them orientate themselves.’

Nurse Todd went over to a group of chairs at the end of the room and Rosie held back in the doorway. The long, bright room had windows all along its length and French doors opening out on to the garden, which reminded Rosie of a park, with its neat edged lawns, formal beds and summerhouse. The back wall was lined with groups of empty ‘easy-rise’ chairs interspersed with coffee tables and jardinières filled with spider plants or mother-in-law’s tongue. Nearby, a lady with a paper on her knee, left open at a crossword puzzle, was dozing, her head bent down on to her chest.

Nurse Todd beckoned Rosie over and she approached her aunt with some trepidation, anxious not to say the wrong thing.

Nurse Todd said, in a loud, clear voice. ‘Here she is, May, this is your niece, Rosie, come to see you.’

‘Yes, yes, I know. You just told me!’ May said peremptorily.

Rosie sat down nervously on the high seat opposite her without proffering the kiss she’d intended. May looked so changed! Her hair, which was once coloured a silver ash and softly waved, was now a steely grey and cut in a straight bob, parted severely on the side with a plain metal hair slide girlishly pinning it back out of her eyes. The coarse hair of her eyebrows had grown thick, giving her a fierce look. And where were the slacks and smart fitted jackets that Rosie remembered? Instead May wore a long droopy skirt and blouse and a chunky cardi that was miles too big across the shoulders. Her body seemed to sit inside her clothes, strangely separate from them, as if a creature had set up home in an abandoned shell. ‘Hello, Aunty May,’ she said. ‘How are you?’

‘Have you brought biscuits?’ May leant forward and stared, her small, intent face and curled hands giving her a simian look. ‘You usually bring biscuits,’ she said accusingly.

‘I haven’t been to visit you here before, May. You haven’t seen me for a long time; do you remember me? It’s Rosie, your niece, Rosie.’

‘So you say,’ she said, looking her over. Then, as if she had found some familiarity in her face, she asked uncertainly, ‘Not Helena?’

Rosie felt a lump in her throat at the mention of her mother’s name and at her aunt’s expectation of seeing her. She did as the nurse had told her. ‘She couldn’t come today,’ she said gently, ‘so I’ve come to visit you instead.’

May turned her face away and stared out of the window. Rosie followed her gaze. A middle-aged man wearing a lanyard with an identity tag was setting up a game of hoopla. Rosie wondered if he was some kind of therapist or maybe a volunteer. The residents who had been sitting on the veranda of the summerhouse roused themselves and an old lady in a floppy sunhat shuffled forward to make the first throw, her shoulders hunched with arthritis, her head pushed forward like a turtle. She threw awkwardly and stood looking after the hoop as it rolled past the post. May’s eyes didn’t follow its motion; she stared as if looking straight through the scene as the hoop wobbled and settled flat on the grass.

Rosie tried again. ‘Do you remember coming to stay with me in London? I only had Sam then, he was just a toddler – your great-nephew? Well, I have a little girl too now, called Cara. I’ll bring them to see you next time.’

May looked back at her and seemed to be listening so Rosie ploughed on. ‘Do you remember when we went over to Kew Gardens and had a picnic? Helena and you, and Sam and Josh and I?’

May nodded, at first tentatively and then more vigorously. ‘Hothouses,’ she said. ‘Flowering cacti. Pelargoniums. The child was cutting a tooth.’

Rosie was surprised; she had forgotten that herself. What she remembered was how distracted Josh had been, how he kept getting up from the picnic rug and striding away every time he got a call. She had been annoyed because he was supposed to be taking time off so that they could have a family day, and instead of helping her entertain their guests he was dealing with work queries every five minutes and champing at the bit to go home – to get back to his computer, Rosie had imagined. Now she wondered if he hadn’t even then been keen to take the messages because they were from Tania; maybe they had even been seeing each other, arranging to meet, Josh estimating when he could get away … Was it possible? Tears came into her eyes. ‘That’s right,’ she said weakly, ‘Josh took us in the car.’

As though May read her mind, at the mention of Josh she leant forward and said, as if confiding a secret, ‘Why you ever married him I don’t know.’ Then, looking around the room as if seeking an audience, she announced loudly, ‘The man’s an absolute arse!’

Rosie, tickled by May’s colourful language, began to laugh.

‘Arse! Arse! Arse!’ May chanted. Rosie could do nothing to quieten her and laughed uncontrollably, finding a release. The lady dozing at the other end of the room stirred and blinked at them like a waking owl and then subsided back into sleep.

‘Pain in the arse!’ May ended triumphantly, slapping her knee. ‘And that is my considered opinion. Where is my bag?’ She cast about her and found it under her seat. ‘Do you like Maltesers?’ she asked, calm again.

Rosie, dabbing her eyes, said that she did.

May pulled a black leather handbag the size of a shopping bag out from under the chair and up on to her knee. She rummaged inside and then lost patience and began to unpack its contents on to the coffee table beside her.

‘What on earth have you got in there, May?’ Rosie said as the clutter of objects grew: a seed catalogue, several framed photographs, a
Radio Times
, a thriller with a bookmark in the first page, a crude piece of sewing in colourful felts with a needle dangling from it, a tube of indigestion pills … Rosie picked up a toothbrush, covered in fluff. ‘Why have you got your toothbrush in your bag?’

‘I’m not staying,’ May said. ‘I’m going home soon.’ She pulled out a box of Maltesers and offered it to her.

Rosie took one and then, seeing that May was struggling to pick one up, trying to capture it between her fingers and the base of her stiff thumb, picked out another and popped it into May’s mouth. ‘Isn’t it heavy to carry around with you – your bag?’

May shook her head. ‘There are thieves,’ she said in a matter-of-fact tone. ‘They come in your house. They send her to unlock the door and let them in. They hide behind doors and round the bend in the stairs.’ She grew more agitated and began pulling things from her bag as if searching for something else.

‘Who do they send?’ Rosie said.

‘The child. The bad child.’

‘What child?’ Rosie said uneasily, feeling a prickle at the back of her neck.

Suddenly May upended the bag, tipping the remainder of its contents out on to the table: a battered purse, half a packet of Jaffa Cakes and a TV remote control. She began sorting through them, her hands jerking as she searched. Alarmed by her growing agitation, Rosie said, ‘What are you looking for, May? Can I help you find it?’

‘Keys, keys! Got to find my keys. Must be here somewhere. I have to get back or she’ll be getting in again, taking all my precious things. I have to hide them, lock them up!’

‘No one can get in, May, I promise you,’ Rosie said, thinking uncomfortably of the footsteps on the stairs. ‘All of your things are safe; I’ll take care of them.’

May looked at her disbelievingly. ‘You can’t watch them all the time … She comes in and out, just as she chooses …’ She cast about for her keys amongst the objects on the table, knocking things to the floor.

Rosie laid her hand on her arm and quickly picked up one of the silver-framed photos to try to distract her. ‘Where was this taken, May?’ In front of a caravan with an old-fashioned, round-cornered shape, a family group sat at a camping table spread with the remains of a meal. Rosie’s grandparents looked so young she almost didn’t recognise them: her grandfather in an open-necked shirt and with a glass of beer in front of him, and her grandmother holding a cigarette. May and Helena sat either side of them, both blonde and clearly sisters; May about eighteen, in a flowered sundress, a spotted hairband holding back her thick, back-combed hair and Helena, ten years younger, still a child in shorts with a pudding-basin haircut and a big smile for the camera.

May stopped sifting through her belongings and took the picture from her. ‘Let me see; let me see.’ She passed her index finger over the glass as if the past was touchable. ‘Durdle Door, 1958, Clifftops Holiday Park,’ she rapped out. ‘You could walk down to the beach from the cliff path. It was beautiful, clean fine sand and the most amazing rocks standing out in the sea. I can see it in front of me, a huge …’ She moved her hands as if to describe a shape for which she’d lost the words. ‘Bent … a hole …’

‘An arch?’

‘Yes, that’s it. Not smooth, rough-cut, you know – by the waves. Helena and I went swimming every day, further along. We took a picnic. Helena got stung by a wasp by the bins and I put an ice cube on it to stop her crying …’ She tailed off.

Rosie, amazed by this sudden flood of memory, tried to encourage her to say more. She had heard that dementia patients could often summon up detailed memories of the distant past even though they couldn’t remember what they’d had for breakfast that very morning. ‘Who took the photo?’

May’s face softened. ‘He was the campsite owner’s son. He was called Stephen. We wrote for a while … then the next year Mum and Dad wanted a change and we went to Filey, then Scarborough the year after that.’ She put the photograph back on to the heap face down and turned to gaze out into the garden, her eyes sad, thoughts far away.

Rosie took it and wrapped it in the piece of sewing saying, ‘It’ll save it from scratches.’ She imagined the holiday romance, walks along windy cliffs, stolen kisses at the door of the little caravan. How sad that they hadn’t gone back. She wondered how many other loves May had had and still regretted losing. She had thrown herself into her civil service career working in the Highways Department. Articulate and practical, she had risen in a man’s world. She had never married. Rosie carefully pinned the needle and thread into the fabric so that it wouldn’t get loose in the bag and prick May’s finger in her rummaging through her belongings. Like Sleeping Beauty, she thought, her brain making a strange connection to thorny thickets of briar enveloping a pinnacled castle where a girl lay dreaming of love; time stopped for her at sweet sixteen. She reached across and took her aunt’s hand.