It was obvious she knew why I was there and was both disappointed and intrigued to see me, Whatever her feelings she made me feel welcome.
“Your old room is still there, just as you left it, make yourself at home Annie.” I loved being called Annie again, it was so much nicer than either Susie or Susannah. “I’ve missed you dear. You must tell me what you’ve been up to. You never said anything really in any of your letters and ‘love Annie, Carl and the kids’ on a Christmas card says nothing at all!”
“It didn’t work out.”
“Obviously not.”
“We didn’t really know each other.”
“Obviously.”
“Not well enough. We didn’t really think it through, what we were doing to the kids, why we were moving in together.”
“It’s always a good idea to make sure your mistakes hurt as few people as possible.”
“We did try. We kept going far longer than we might have done. Honestly Maureen, we did try.”
“But you didn’t succeed and you have run way from your children. Again.”
I had left my children the first time as soon as I possibly could have done, the day Joe died. I had run away then, leaving them in the care of Max and Monika and Charles. Just as I had now.
“Well they’re back where they want to be.” Maureen changed her tone and spoke firmly “Charles and Holly will love having a family.”
I didn’t want to talk about Holly.
“It’s highly likely they won’t ever be able to have their own children.” Maureen continued. “So sad, she would make a lovely mother.”
I could only take it as direct criticism that I hadn’t.
“So now she’ll have mine she’ll be happy?”
“That’s very cruel Annie. You can’t imagine what it must be like for someone who wants children with the man she loves and can’t have them.”
There was something in her voice that made me ask “You…?”
“Another time. Not now.” I had obviously hit a nerve, Maureen was jumpy and quickly changed the subject. “Anyway, the children will be fine, your conscience can be clear.”
I wasn’t even going to try to make her understand.
“Carl called a few hours ago. Don’t you want to know about Bill?”
“Not particularly. I can’t do anything about it can I?”
“I’m going to tell you anyway. He’s broken both his legs very badly, apparently the car ran over them. And he’s got some very nasty internal injuries.”
“But he’ll survive and he’ll be fine.”
“He’ll survive but he’ll probably…”
“Oh don’t say ‘he’ll probably never walk again’ that’s so melodramatic.”
“But, Annie dear, I’m afraid in this instance true. Carl says they think they won’t have to amputate his legs, but it’s unlikely he’ll ever have any strength in them.”
“Surely it’s far too soon to know.” Perhaps there was the smallest feeling of sorrow for Bill but I quickly remembered to feel nothing.
“There may be a chance, a slim one but a chance, that he may walk with crutches. Whatever happens he’ll be spending a long time in hospital. He’s is facing a very bleak future.”
“He’ll be someone else’s problem, someone who cares more than I do, who is able to care more than I do.”
Maureen had tried her best to get me interested in the fate of my youngest child but she failed. To give her her due she accepted her failure with equanimity.
“You should keep in contact with people better. David has made excuses for you and your uninformative letters. He said you get so involved in your own life you forget there are other people who might be interested in what you’re doing and who are doing things you might be interested in. He said it was something you had probably inherited from your grandfather. You will go to see him tomorrow, Annie. I will not allow any excuses.”
David had been moved from the hospital to a hospice. He wanted nothing more than to go to sleep and no longer feel the pain, but every time he began to lose consciousness his head jerked back bringing him back to the reality of his agony. I watched this lovely man deteriorate day by day.
Sometimes he seemed quite lucid and reminded me he had kept his promise, he hadn’t died before I had come to visit him again. I felt so guilty that I had done nothing in those six years to keep mine.
At times his mind would be wandering and he would ask why there was a cauliflower at the bottom of his bed and whether Edie had taken the eggs out of the airing cupboard. Whenever he spoke he would stare at his hands, trying to flex his fingers, but the misshapen joints barely moved. When he did doze his breathing was shallow, punctuated by involuntary shudders as he experienced a wave of greater pain.
“I’m so sorry. Water…”
I stood up quickly and crossed to the trolley by his chair, angling the straw into his mouth so he could suck up the water. It was not dignified for such a man to have to ask for water like this, sipping through a straw held in place by his grand-daughter because he simply was not able to pick up a glass and do it for himself.
He lifted up his elbow, the most movement he could manage, to indicate that he had had enough.
“I can’t talk. Tomorrow, I’ll tell you tomorrow. I want you to know. I did try… Wasted…
He gestured for me to put the straw between his lips again and drank until he was sucking up air.
“I was always told off when I did that.” I tried to joke but it was all too sad that this wonderful man had come to this.
I was rewarded with an attempt at a smile. As I stood away he tried to move his hand towards mine, he couldn’t grasp it but could only brush across my arm. I took his hand carefully in mine, any touch seemed to give him pain.
“I should have made you … realise how … important… he will…”
“What?”
His blue eyes focussed on my face and he spoke with surprising anger. “We tried to … get you to care… Ted … your friends … to get you to care …”
The effort tired him and he sank back against the pillows and seemed to be going to sleep.
“I do care.”
“Not enough.” He whispered with difficulty as he let go of my hand. His fingers, for all the pain of his arthritis, had been gripping mine hard.
“I’ll see you tomorrow.” I bent to kiss him on the cheek. It felt like kissing paper.
The next morning, before I could leave for the hospice, there was a phone call. I was drinking a mug of coffee, leaning against the Aga when Maureen came in and put her arms around me.
“I am so sorry my dear, David has passed on.”
I had always wondered why it seemed so difficult for people to say ‘he’s dead’. There were so many euphemisms that people seem to prefer. I stood awkwardly encompassed by Maureen’s arms with the Monty Python sketch revolving in my mind. ‘He is a late David, this David is no more, his metabolic processes are history, he’s shuffled off this mortal coil, he is an ex-David.’
“He can’t have.” I said stupidly.
“I’m so sorry.” Maureen repeated knowing there was nothing she could say that would help.
I sat down thinking of all the things David had told me, about his childhood, his work, his fears for his family, trying not to think that he was dead. How can so much experience, love, feeling, intelligence, disappear as if it had never existed?
“He was a lovely man, Annie, he had a long and interesting life and I know he was happy those years he had with your grandmother.”
“I know. I was just remembering things about him, things he had told me about himself and thinking how sad so much is lost when someone dies without telling their family about themselves.”
“As long as he is remembered he is alive. My God that sounds so clichéd!” Maureen put her mug down on the table slowly and deliberately, as if not knowing what to say next but knowing she had to say something. Or perhaps she knew what she had to say but just didn’t know how to frame the words.
“He had wanted me to do so much and I had failed him.” I was speaking to myself, not really expecting an answer. “He wanted me to find someone he thought would harm us, his family, and I have done nothing.”
“What did he ask you to do?” Maureen asked sympathetically.
“He wanted me to find the ‘loose cannon’.”
“Loose cannon?”
“Years ago, when he was first ill, he told me about some man he thought might harm us.”
“What did he say about him?”
There was something about Maureen’s question that didn’t ring true. She was too interested, it seemed too important for her to know what I knew. ‘Not much really’ seemed the safest answer and, as she pressed me for more information, I knew I was right to be suspicious.
“Did he say anything about the man?”
It was a long time since I had spent most of my time wondering about Max and David, and his words warning me about the Indian. During those years Maureen had often asked, in a friendly, almost detached, fashion, how I was progressing.
Perhaps she was more involved than I had known.
I wanted to ask her why she was so interested but the phone rang.
After she had put the phone down she looked at me and said, coldly, “That was Charles. Holly has left him. I hope you’re proud of yourself.”
“Why is that anything to do with me?”
She didn’t answer, simply fixing me with a look that showed no friendship, only contempt.