By Tuesday, Mum has to be admitted to the Ysbyty Cwm Mawr’s specialist cancer ward. It’s not good. There’s a horrible resignation to it, like we’re taking a patchy cat to the vet for a final visit.
We’re told, by kind, sombre doctors that THIS IS NOT THE END, they simply need to stabilise the calcium levels in her blood. Hospitals, I learned ages ago, are all pretty much the same, only this one has bilingual signposts. Otherwise, it has the same endless linoleum corridors, stark blueish lighting and sad brown visitor armchairs. Even when I’m seventy, I’ll never forget my thighs sticking to the vinyl on hot July days.
The worst thing about hospitals is the wailing. At any given time, it seems someone is wailing: either calling for a nurse, crying in pain or just moaning. It’s ghostly, like the Disneyland haunted mansion or something. I hate it.
Visiting hours are four till seven. Margot collects me from school and we drive over. I take her books to read and also smuggle in Chat and Bella, because her guilty pleasure is ‘real-life stories’ about women who accidentally married serial killers or think they’re the reincarnation of Marilyn Monroe. We go every night.
By the fourth night, even Margot is looking exhausted. The new routine is to drive back to the farm, have a late supper and slope off to bed ready to do it all again the next day.
I plonk myself in the Land Rover. Margot climbs into the driver’s seat and puts the key in the ignition. She pauses. ‘Regular way home,’ she asks, ‘or shall we go on an adventure?’
‘An adventure?’
‘Let’s turn left and see where we end up.’ She turns to me and gives me an uncharacteristic wink.
Uncharacteristic it may be, but I like it. I have to smile. I can’t help it. Although I’m aching for bed, I say, ‘Adventure it is.’
Margot pulls out of the car park, and, instead of turning right towards the farm, she swings us left into the night.
We drive and drive. With lights on full beam, we snake along winding country lanes, thickly black with no street lights. We pass a disused mine, the skeleton of the lift shaft silhouetted against the pale moon. It’s way pretty. We are dwarfed by snow-capped mountains and I’m almost breathless with how beautiful they are and how tiny I feel. How nothingy I am in the bigger picture.
We drive on. I see the city in the distance, a blob of glitter on a black map, busy roads feeding into it like veins, lit with headlights. Planes pass overhead, landing lights flashing. Margot and I don’t really talk much, but it’s not a scary silence, it’s a relaxed one.
We keep going until we run out of Wales. We arrive at a point at the top of a rocky cliff overlooking a curving beach. The sea is gentle, rippling like navy-blue silk. Staying in the car because it’s so cold, I stare into it, letting it hypnotise me. I have no idea what time it is. I stopping checking hours ago.
‘Where are we?’ I say finally.
‘Gower Peninsula. South of Swansea.’
‘It’s beautiful.’ At night, the sand looks silver. It’s all a bit science fiction, like we’re on an alien planet with purple oceans and diamond beaches.
‘I didn’t know this was where we were going until we got here,’ Margot sighs.
We both seem to relax, sinking further into our seats. For a few minutes it feels a bit like we’ve escaped. I don’t want to escape Mum, obviously, but the walls of Llanmarion are shrinking in on me. Farm, school, hospital, farm, school, hospital on repeat are making me crazy. Seeing the beach, seeing out to the horizon, reminds me I’m not in a bubble. There’s room to breathe at last.
We sit in quiet for a while, listening to the tide yawn in and out.
‘To answer your last question,’ Margot says, turning the heaters down, ‘I didn’t go back to the farm until the late fifties.’
I had completely forgotten there was anything left to know.
‘I brought your mother when she was a baby. By then Peter and Jane were long gone, obviously, and it was just Glynis and Ivor and the animals. They doted on Julia. Ivor in particular was so wonderful with her. Between you and me, I rather think Ivor would have taken to fatherhood splendidly.’
‘What? You think it was Glynis that didn’t want kids?’
‘I suspect so, although they were happy enough.’ Margot smiles, obviously enjoying rolling back through the years. ‘We went back a couple of times, but I stopped when Glynis became ill. She had cancer too. She died in the spring of ’66, if I remember rightly.’
‘Oh no! What did Ivor do?’
‘He ran the farm until the day he died. Which was three and a half years ago.’
I do the sums very quickly. ‘That was when you moved here.’
Margot smiles. ‘I last saw him about five years ago. I received a letter from him, unusual in itself, asking if I’d pay him a visit. I went at once, abandoning my poor deputy editor. Ivor never changed, the same giant, same giant heart. I arrived at the farm and found it the same as ever. He was very old. He walked with a stick and relied on some farmhands to keep it all in order. By then he wasn’t really producing much – about the same as I’m managing.
‘I made us a pot of tea and we drank it in the rose garden. He rested his stick against that little bench and sighed this world-weary sigh. “Margot,” he said, “I’m too old for all this, like. I’m ready to throw in the towel and go meet my Glynis.” I told him he was being a silly old man. “Ah, Margot, I’m tired. I’ve had enough. I’m off to put my feet up. Now listen,” he said, “you’re the closest thing to a daughter we ever had, like, and I’m leaving the farm to you.”
‘Well, how I laughed. The very idea of me having a farm was ridiculous. I’d hardly set foot out of north London in the last thirty years except for holidays. I didn’t even go south of the river if I could at all avoid it. He wouldn’t hear otherwise. “The farm is yours to do with as you will. Look after it, won’t you.”
Sure enough, he died about six months later. Just went to sleep one night and never woke up. At first I thought I’d sell the place, to be honest, but I came to have a clear-up after his funeral. Everything was so familiar, so warm, so … like home. I knew at once I could never sell it. I hadn’t planned to leave London, especially when your mother was in remission, but, and I know this sounds peculiar, I swear I heard a little voice telling me I was home … reassuring me. And it felt right. It felt like the right thing to do. And I think it was. When I left London, I trusted your mother would get better, but even now, with everything that’s happening, I still think here is the right place to be … for both you and me.’
Voices? Like the voices in the woods? Surely not … I almost say something, but hold my tongue. ‘Was it you who changed the name of the farm?’
She smiles a very slight smile. ‘Yes. Keeps the kids away,’ she says with a wink. ‘Come on. I suppose we should think about driving back, even if tomorrow is Saturday.’
‘Just give me a minute.’
She nods and I step out of the car. Despite the calm waters a stiff wind slices across the clifftop and the long, silver grasses seem to bow down. I wrap my arms around me and let the breeze slap me full in the face. I feel it tug and whip at my hair. The air smells super-beachy – salty and briny and piratey. I close my eyes and see candyfloss on Brighton pier, Blackpool Tower, sailors at Portsmouth, Dracula in Whitby and donkey rides on Scarborough beach.
All days with Mum. It’s always been just her and me. I feel hot tears blow back to my ears. I just let them roll. I am not ready to lose her. Not even close.
Margot waits in the car until I’m calm enough to get back in.