‘Speak of the devil,’ Julie said, striding across the room to pick up the phone. ‘Julie Albury…’ She raised her eyebrows meaningfully at Adam. ‘Patricia,’ she said warmly, ‘I thought it might be you… I SAID, I THOUGHT… IT MIGHT… BE… YOU. Deaf as a post,’ she muttered. ‘DON’T BE SILLY,’ she went on. ‘YOU TOLD ME THAT YESTERDAY…YES…’
Adam could hear his mother’s clear, old-fashioned tones ringing out from the receiver between Julie’s loud replies, though he couldn’t quite make out her words. He decided he would see if he could transport himself to her side. He pressed his hands together, as before, in the prayer-namaste gesture and concentrated hard; and before he knew it, Julie’s voice was fading out and the sunny bedroom at Fallowfields was replaced by his mother’s conservatory, that lovely, glass-walled, plant-filled space he had known since childhood. A huge, thick-stemmed plumbago grew up the orange brick back wall, its pale blue flowers spreading prettily across the roof panes in summer, strewing the tiled floor with blossom in early autumn.
What would his mother say when she saw him? Her beloved only son, reconstituted? Would she freak out like Julie? But as he hovered round the conservatory he realised he had become invisible again, even to himself. No hands, no arms, no legs, no belly, nothing. He floated in front of the tarnished old mirror that stood at the far end. But no, he didn’t even have a reflection. His mother chatted on, unaware.
Her hair was still coiffed from the funeral, not the bedraggled mop it could become after a week or so without a visit to ‘lovely Keith’ in Tempelsham. Her chestnut brown eyes, set in that criss-cross palimpsest of wrinkles, were bright and expressive as ever, her thin-rimmed gold specs haphazardly perched on that familiar arched nose. She was chez elle, alone with her carer, but she still had pale pink lipstick shining on her thin lips. There was nothing much she could do to improve those jagged yellow-brown teeth, but at least they were her own. A trio of white hairs curled from her chin, but they would be whipped off before she had a visitor. As a young woman she had been something of a beauty, and taking care of herself was still important to her. Her mind was intact and she wasn’t going to let her body go either; though her now substantial girth revealed her weakness for cream cakes and cheese straws, not to mention the nightly glass or two of Fino sherry and the Sunday lunchtime gin and tonic, a habit and a treat she would never let go, whatever the instructions said about ‘no alcohol’ on her pack of daily tranquillisers.
She was sitting up, a little hunched, in the big, cream, frankly hideous leatherette recliner that Philip had, bizarrely for a man of his good taste, grown so fond of in his final years. It had several levers which meant you could adjust it in interesting ways, not that Patricia ever used them. The Times was open on her lap, her coffee cup on the wobbly cast-iron white table beside her. From here she had a clear view down over the terrace to the sloping garden. Even when Philip had barely been able to walk out onto the lawn, let alone down to the woodland, he had never wanted to downsize or move out of the house that Patricia had inherited and he had taken on to share when he’d married her. Nor was she going to leave Larks Hill either. It was the house she had been born in; and she was going to die there too.
‘I expect you will feel like that, Julie,’ she was saying. ‘I hate to go on about Philip,’ (not true) ‘but you’ll find that it’ll all take much, much longer than you think, just let the emotions come, anger is a perfectly acceptable, no, more than acceptable, necessity… You know the five stages of grief, don’t you…?’
Of course Julie knew the five stages of freaking grief, albeit they had probably been updated since Kübler-Ross. Adam had a feeling that ‘mindfulness’ might be in there these days, perhaps just after the final ‘acceptance’ stage.
It was funny, Adam thought, watching his mother chat away with Julie, just how quickly Patricia had switched allegiance from his first wife to his second. One of his big worries, fifteen years ago, before he’d finally actioned the awful upheaval of leaving Serena, was that his mother would remain loyal to his first wife and never accept flashy young Julie. Far from it. Julie, it soon transpired, was ‘making Adam happy’, in a way that Serena had somehow failed to do. Perhaps it had something to do with the ironing, which Julie enjoyed doing, or at least said she did, while for Serena, ironing, at least for her husband, had always been a step too far. For Patricia, who had never quite bought into feminism, in any of its waves, and still, years later, would articulate the tired old mantra that ‘behind every successful man stands – or was it lies? – a strong woman’, ironing was something a woman did for her man, alongside other necessary domestic services. If you didn’t do it, you were somehow failing, in your loyalty, perhaps even your love.
Now Julie was in the widows’ club, which made her even more popular. Her bereavement gave Patricia the right, if not the duty, to phone her up whenever she wanted. Would his mother have minded if she knew Julie had murdered him? Probably not. ‘Well, it’s understandable, Julie. Even though he was my son I know he could be difficult. The main thing now is that you learn how to deal with your grief…’
Eventually, Patricia rang off and addressed the first of her two helpers, Alexa. Once there had been nothing but a cracked old Bakelite bell, which had run on a greasy twisted white wire cord up from the conservatory into the main part of the house to summon whoever might be there: cleaner, cook, carer. Now, by the wonders of modern technology, she had a series of Alexa Echo 3rd generation speakers, ordered for her and installed by her kind, hands-on, techie grandson Leo.
‘Alexa!’ Patricia commanded. ‘Could you ask Jadwiga to come here, please.’
It always amused Adam that his mother treated Alexa as she would any other helper or servant; with the studied if superior tact of one who had grown up with such people around her.
After a minute the carer appeared on the concrete step that led up into the house. This latest one was in her forties, dark-haired, pink-cheeked, Polish, and quite the success, in that she’d been there, as part of Patricia’s month-on, month-off system of rotation, for almost a year. Patricia’s normal carer sequence usually began with guarded enthusiasm on day one but rapidly soured into a list of ‘issues’ as the days went by: the carer didn’t ‘lift a finger’; was always on her mobile; sat watching TV on her laptop upstairs; cooked the wrong things or ‘couldn’t cook’. Alternatively, she did too much; wouldn’t leave Patricia alone; insisted on watching TV with her; wanted to read to her to improve her English (the carer’s, not Patricia’s); in one case, ‘prayed all over’ her. The best ones were the Eastern Europeans, who seemed inured to boredom and servility; the worst, the South Africans, who often had ‘problems of their own’. One was ‘rather an unhappy woman’, another was ‘with a man who, well, I’m not sure it’s for me to judge, but he doesn’t seem to treat her at all well’. With one exception, who hadn’t worked out, and not because he was gay, which was perfectly all right (‘I’m more than comfortable with that, as long as he doesn’t bring anyone back’), they had all been women.
‘So sorry, Jadwiga,’ his mother asked. ‘Would you mind terribly if I had another pot of coffee?’
‘That’ll be your second and last for the day,’ the carer replied.
Patricia grunted and Jadwiga hurried off, to return five minutes later with the favourite oval tray. Coffee in the silver pot, one of the old blue and white willow pattern Wedgwood cups, and a plate of garibaldi biscuits too, even though it was barely half nine. Jadwiga could be tough, but she knew what his mother liked all right.
‘You okay in here?’ she asked. ‘Warm enough? You don’t need that little heater?’
‘Ryvita?’ Patricia glared at the garibaldi in a puzzled fashion. ‘Not at the moment, thank you, Jadwiga. Maybe later.’
‘I said, Do… you… NEED… that LITTLE HEATER, madam?’
‘Oh yes, I think I will have the little heater, thank you. It is a bit chilly.’
Julie was right. His mother was getting deafer by the day, though she refused to consider a hearing aid, regarding such a device as a ‘horrid old people’s thing’. No one apart from Adam thought she needed one, she had repeatedly told him, though of course they all did.
Adam watched as the carer returned and set Patricia up. She didn’t really need the heater, but what she did need was someone to boss around. Jadwiga had not only worked that out, but, amazingly, seemed happy with it. Perhaps she was just very professional, and this is what the best carers did.
‘Are you okay, Jadwiga?’ his mother asked. ‘Got enough to be getting on with?’
‘I’m just tidying up those files for you. In the little study.’
Patricia stared at her blankly.
‘FILES,’ Jadwiga repeated. ‘In your STUDY.’
‘Oh yes, good. We might look over those later.’ Patricia returned to her Times. ‘Just going to see what this useless government’s been playing at now.’
‘Whenever you’re ready, madam.’
She was the only carer who called his mother ‘madam’. Patricia seemed to like it, even though there had been the usual kerfuffle when Jadwiga had first arrived and insisted on this old-fashioned deference. ‘I just don’t know whether I should let her,’ she had said. ‘All the others call me Patricia. But she insists. Says it helps her with her boundaries.’
‘If she’s happier calling you madam,’ Adam had advised, ‘I don’t see it as a huge problem. Unless you really don’t like it.’
‘I don’t dislike it.’
‘Well then.’
So after further consultation with his sister Claire, and the usual phone posse of other friends and confidantes (those that weren’t already dead) it had been settled. To Jadwiga, she was ‘madam’.
As Adam watched the carer retreat, and his mother return to the important business of news, he wondered what Jadwiga was up to. What files was Patricia letting her tidy up? It was odd, because Patricia was normally very protective of her private material.
After a bit Adam realised that his mother’s urgent interest in current affairs had abated. She had asked Alexa to switch to Essential Classics on Radio Three, a favourite of both hers and Philip’s, loyally stuck to, of course, after his death. But even as the lovely Georgia Mann was outlining today’s ‘playlister challenge’, Patricia’s head was nodding forward, and then, as Renaud and Gautier Capuçon and the Radio France Philharmonic took it away with Camille Saint-Saëns’s Op 132, ‘La Muse et le Poète’, The Times slid out from under her bony fingers and tumbled to the floor.
Patricia slept on, her chin sinking down lower with each rasping snore.
Adam watched her with alarm, even as the violin and cello raced to a fiery climax. He might very well not have been here, but now that he was, he didn’t want his mother falling off her chair. Shouldn’t Jadwiga be keeping an eye on her, rather than ‘tidying files’? A crash down onto these hard tiles might hurt her, even, at her age, kill her. Carer indeed!
‘Mother!’ he shouted. ‘Mother, wake up!’
Nada. Whatever luck he’d had with Julie wasn’t being repeated here. Not that he minded, at one level. Did he want his mother knowing he was still around? No. The news that he had appeared to her in ghostly form would get out on the family and friends phone network sooner than you could say ‘spook’. Maybe they would all just assume she had gone mad with grief. Then again, Patricia was persistent and convincing. He didn’t want to jeopardise his chances of learning anything significant about his death.
She was leaning right over, on the point of toppling off. He had to do something – and fast.
‘Alexa!’ he shouted. ‘Play Queen’s “Another One Bites the Dust”.’ That should wake her up all right. But the virtual assistant didn’t respond. Either she was programmed only for command by Patricia or Adam’s ghost voice was not getting through. As his mother’s chin juddered dangerously downwards again, he reached out to an empty flowerpot that was resting near the edge of the long, wide, gravel-covered shelf that ran down the garden side of the glasshouse. With his imagined hand he gave it a hefty push.
It fell to the floor and smashed noisily. Adam jumped back. How on earth had he managed that? Patricia jerked awake. She stared around her, blank-eyed for a moment, fearful.
Then: ‘Adam,’ she muttered.
Help! Was he visible? Had he, by using his ‘hand’ like that, somehow materialised and blown his chances of listening in?
But she wasn’t looking at him. She was looking slowly around. Albeit in the wrong direction.
‘Adam, is that you?’
He sat tight, like a small boy playing hide and seek; the small boy he’d once, long ago, been with her. The only sound was Georgia’s next tune, the soupy slow movement of Mozart’s 23rd piano concerto.
‘Very strange,’ Patricia went on. ‘I could almost imagine you were in the room with me, you naughty boy. Alexa,’ she went on, ‘stop playing that music. And get Jadwiga for me, please, could you.’
Adam watched his mother as she waited in the sudden silence. She scanned the room, eyes bright, head up, senses tuned. For some people, old age meant degeneration, a slow slide into fading faculties, dementia. Not for Patricia. If anything, she had become beadier in her dotage.
‘Yes, madam?’
‘Ah, Jadwiga, there you are. A flowerpot just came crashing down. I have no idea how.’
‘Don’t worry, I can sweep it up. Did you knock it over by accident perhaps?’
‘No, Jadwiga, I didn’t touch it.’ Patricia was cross now. ‘I was nowhere near it. I was having a little nap.’
‘Of course you were. Now are you okay staying here or do you want to move? Up to bed? Or we could have a little game of Piquet if you like?’
Another thing the saintly Jadwiga was happy to do; play this boring card game that Patricia liked to inflict on her carers.
‘Actually, it was the oddest thing, Jadwiga. I thought Adam was here for a moment. My son.’
‘Ah, that’s nice.’
‘It wasn’t nice, it was alarming. I felt his presence quite strongly.’
Jadwiga nodded. ‘Yes, madam.’
‘You don’t believe me, do you?’
‘If you felt that he was here, I do believe you. Now shall we move you through into the sitting room for a bit?’
‘I’m fine here, with Georgia. Alexa, play Essential Classics, please.’
Even as the music started up again, Patricia’s phone was ringing. She flashed a brisk smile at her carer as she looked down at the screen. ‘My daughter, Claire,’ she said, although Jadwiga hardly needed to be informed that Patricia’s daughter was called Claire. Jadwiga and Claire spoke most days, between themselves, though not always within Patricia’s earshot.
‘Hello, Claire, my darling, how are you?… Hang on a moment, I just need to mute Georgia. Alexa, mute Essential Classics, please, thank you. That’s better. Sorry, darling, I was just listening to Essential Classics… Yes, Jadwiga and I are doing a little tidying up… Although a strange thing happened just now, a flowerpot flew off the side and smashed onto the floor… In the conservatory, yes… No, it wasn’t on the table… How many times do I have to tell you, that table isn’t wobbly, your father had his coffee on it for years… It absolutely wasn’t near the edge… Jadwiga and I are always very careful about that… No, Claire, I didn’t knock it over… If you’d like to come round and have a look for yourself you’d be more than welcome… It would actually be quite nice to see you in the flesh for a change…’
This was often the way with those two. A phone call started equably, enthusiastically even, but within a couple of minutes they would be trading passive-aggressive barbs. It was a mother–daughter thing, Adam told himself, because even though he could and did find Patricia infuriating, he generally managed not to rile her in quite the expert way that Claire did.
Adam had seen enough of his mother for the time being. He decided he would try and take advantage of this call to see if he couldn’t transport himself to his sister. Might he even be able to appear to her too? Find out what her take was on his ‘suicide’, over and above what she had expressed, publicly, at his funeral.
He put his hands together and focused in on Claire’s voice on the other end of the phone. And yes, wonderfully, it grew louder, his mother’s grew fainter, and the sedate, tatty surroundings of the old conservatory were replaced by Claire’s state-of-the-art kitchen with its real granite worktops, maple cupboards and limestone floor tiles. Claire was standing by her picture window, looking down over her short, paved drive at a rather smart car that was speeding in through her neat stone gates.
It was his car. The crimson Alfa Romeo Giulia. He was shocked to see his widow at the wheel. Julie didn’t drive the Alfa; she drove the Disco. What on earth was she thinking? Then it hit him again. He was dead. Dead, dead, dead. He would never feel the beautiful thrust of that vehicle under his right foot ever again.
‘Sorry, Mum,’ Claire was saying, ‘I’ve got to go, Julie’s just showed up.’
Even from where he was, across the room, Adam could hear Patricia’s loud squawk. ‘Julie? I was just talking to her, darling–’
But Claire wasn’t going to let her mother join in with this encounter, was she?