Twenty-Six

Four years ago, Lin and Kieran had arrived at the hospital in Liverpool at seven in the evening.

Lin’s mother had been put into a geriatric ward. It was a grim place, sectioned off from a corridor, where there was no natural light. As soon as they came out of the lift, they saw the eldest of Lin’s brothers, standing at the top of the stairs. He was smoking a cigarette. To Kieran’s surprise, he was a broad, fair-haired man: in build, colouring and features somewhat unlike Lin. It was only by her reaction that he knew who it must be. She took a sudden breath and stopped moving. The man turned.

Kieran walked forward with his hand extended. ‘Kieran Gallagher,’ he said.

The man glanced from Lin to Kieran, then shook his hand. ‘Robert Harris. It was you who rang up?’

‘Yes. We’d have been here earlier but there was a delay on the motorway. How is your mother?’

Robert Harris was now looking over Kieran’s shoulder at Lin. ‘She’s down there,’ he said. ‘Second on the right.’

Lin looked away from him. She walked to the door of the ward and peered in. There must have been twenty beds in there, but the nearest was curtained off on two sides, a third side being the back wall, the fourth side adjoining the sister’s office. Through the glass wall of this office, four people could be seen around the bed.

Robert had walked in behind Lin and Kieran. ‘Only four at a time,’ he warned. Kieran looked at the visitors and then back at Robert. ‘My wife, and my brother and his wife, and their Mandy,’ Robert explained.

At that moment, the curtain parted. A woman looked out, saw Lin, and turned to say something to those behind her. There was a pause, then the curtain was pulled closed. They saw all four people turn and look at them through the sister’s office.

Then the woman came out again. She walked up to Lin and looked her over thoroughly from head to foot. ‘You remember me, I suppose?’ she asked.

‘Yes, Sandra,’ Lin said.

‘I should think you do.’ She looked pointedly at Lin’s stomach. ‘She’s got eight nephews and nieces,’ she said to Kieran. ‘Did she tell you that?’

‘Now, Sandra,’ Robert said.

‘One got married last year. Did she tell you that?’

‘No,’ Kieran told her.

‘No, she wouldn’t. Too busy at her college.’

Robert, her husband, took Sandra’s arm, and tugged her gently to one side. ‘Now she’s come, let her go in,’ he said. He dropped her arm, walked over to the curtains, and went inside. After a moment, the remaining three came out of the cubicle one by one, in a self-conscious line. The other man had a little more of Lin’s colouring. His look was far more aggressive. At once Kieran saw the youngest son in him: the petulant little boy, aggrieved and spoiled. He was probably thirty but his expression was that of a child of eight, highly coloured and wide-eyed. Within a foot or so, Kieran could smell alcohol on him. His wife, small and blonde, gripped his arm like a vice. Behind them came a fair-haired girl of about thirteen, who smiled at Lin for a moment, then dropped her eyes.

‘This one’s pregnant,’ Sandra said to them, pointing at Lin.

‘For Jesus’s sake,’ Robert muttered. He gave Lin a push. ‘Go on in.’

‘Never come to see her mother in five years,’ the younger brother hissed at Kieran, as they passed. ‘And broke her heart before that.’

Kieran allowed Lin to go in first. After a moment he followed her. She was standing at her mother’s bedside, her face utterly white. Then, in the next second, she pressed her hands to her eyes, and slumped down on the bedside chair. He stood at the foot of the bed, staring at her uncomprehendingly. Lin put both arms around her mother’s neck.

Kieran stepped forward. He had been about to say it wouldn’t be wise to disturb her mother by touching her. Then he realized that there were no machines, no supportive paraphernalia of care, around the bed. In fact, the locker and the walls were bare. The oxygen supply was strapped back to the wall. There were no flowers or cards on show. Lin’s mother’s hands lay crossed on the neatly stretched sheet, her head in the dead centre of the pillow. Kieran glimpsed a red-haired woman, a florid face with livid, circular patches on the jawline and around the nose and ears. The eyes were closed. A small gold crucifix hung on the neck, just above where Lin had laid her head.

At once, Kieran turned on his heel. Throwing aside the curtain, he looked out into the ward: two lines of bleak-looking beds, some of the occupants asleep, others mumbling to themselves. At the far end, three or four sat in chairs, staring down the ward towards him, their faces blank or preoccupied.

He strode over to the door. The family was standing in the corridor.

‘Why didn’t you say that she’d died?’ he demanded.

Robert shrugged marginally.

‘She could have come a week ago,’ the younger brother retorted.

‘We didn’t know a week ago,’ Kieran said. ‘We only got the letter today. Lin’s moved house.’ Frustrated anger surged through him. ‘We got married just today.’

Sandra gave a grim smile. ‘Bit late, aren’t you?’ she said, her voice flattening out any possible inflection. ‘Locking the stable door?’

‘We didn’t get married just for that reason,’ Kieran replied. He looked away from her, back to the two brothers. ‘You could have warned her before she went in there.’

‘She died only half an hour ago,’ Sandra said. She crossed her arms, vengeful fury written in every ounce of her. ‘A miss is as good as a mile.’

The younger brother took a step towards him. ‘D’you know how many times Mam asked for her?’ he said, spittle fringing his thin lips. ‘On and on, like a bloody record. She’s maybe said three or four words all week. Lindsay, Lindsay—on and bloody on.’

‘How could we have known?’

‘She would, if she’d bothered to phone her ever. Or write to her.’

Kieran looked back to the curtained cubicle. He could hear Lin’s muffled voice.

He went back inside to the bedside, and saw her sitting upright, holding her mother’s hand to her face. Lin was sobbing softly and regularly, with a small, hitched, repetitive groan, pressing the cold hand to her face.

Kieran ran fingers through his hair, powerless.

Outside, in the ward, a querulous voice of old age called, high-pitched and plaintive, for the nurse.