Tess
January
By mid-January, Iris was physically well enough to be discharged and Tess couldn’t procrastinate any longer about deciding where she should go. There was a space at Clearview. There wasn’t always. Someone had had to die to free up that place. The woman who phoned was gentle but firm. She needed an answer about Iris. Tess said yes, please, she’d take it, pending a visit, which was hastily arranged. She’d burst into tears when she put the phone down. She felt utterly overwhelmed. Nothing in her life was as she thought it would be. She needed to move out of Sean’s flat. He’d left, that night, eventually – that dreadful New Year’s Eve, when it had become clear to him that no amount of tea or apology or explanation was going to lead to resolution. He stayed with friends, she presumed, although she hadn’t asked.
She’d gone to bed, fully clothed, and cried herself through to midnight.
In the days that followed, they’d avoided seeing each other. She knew he’d been to the flat – presumably to pick up clothes and his post – but he’d done it while she was at work, where she’d been going through the motions, preoccupied horribly by what was happening. After a week of this weird, unnatural way of living, he’d come to see her, texting to ask if he could and ringing the doorbell of his own flat.
Sean had looked drained and tired when she’d opened the door: there were dark circles under his eyes that hadn’t been there before. She felt a rush of pity for him. He’d made the storm that had engulfed them, but now he looked so pathetic, shivering in the rain.
‘What’s happening?’ His arms were out, his palms upturned. He looked vulnerable, pleading.
She made her voice sound stronger than she felt.
‘Well, it’s over. I’ll move out. As soon as I can get myself sorted.’
‘I don’t mean … I don’t need … I don’t want you to go.’
‘But I have to. We can’t carry on living together. We’re clearly going in very different directions.’
‘This is madness. How did we get here?’
Tess felt herself harden against him. ‘You know how.’
Sean shook his head in an almost violent gesture, and raised his hand like a stop signal.
‘I want you to forget what I said. I’m sorry. I was wrong. I can’t lose you, Tess.’
As she answered, she knew she meant what she said. ‘You already have.’
‘I don’t believe that.’ Still the head shake. Denial.
Now she resented having to explain it to him.
‘You can’t just put it all away, Sean. It doesn’t work like that. You did say it. I can’t forget it. This has to be it. It has to be over. You’ll end up hating me in the end. Or I’ll hate you.’
‘I couldn’t hate you.’
‘You’d be surprised.’
‘I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.’
She didn’t doubt it. He looked close to tears.
Perhaps he interpreted her silence as weakening. He reached out to touch her hand. ‘I can make you forgive me.’
It was a bad choice of words, although he wasn’t to know it. It was Donna’s phrase. Forgive me. She pulled her hand out of his and folded her arms protectively across herself. It was Tess’s turn to shake her head.
‘Maybe I could. But I couldn’t forget.’ She looked at the floor.
For a moment they both stood in silence. Then Sean sniffed hard, rubbing his hand under his nose. His voice was quieter when he spoke again.
‘They’ve asked me to go to New York, for two or three weeks.’
‘When?’
‘I’m leaving the day after tomorrow.’
She nodded. ‘It’s what you wanted.’
‘I wanted it with you.’
But just with me, she thought.
‘You wanted it for you, Sean.’
‘You make me sound like such a prick.’
She didn’t mean to. She was trying to be honest. But she daren’t back-track on anything now.
‘I’ll be gone by the time you come back.’
‘Where will you go?’
‘I’m going to ask my mother if I can stay at hers for a while.’
‘Christ, Tess. You and your mum?’
‘She’ll probably be away. She most often is.’
‘Still …’ Sean knew what her relationship with Donna was like. But she couldn’t let him in.
She put her hand up to stop him. ‘It’s only temporary. I’ll find something else. Besides, it’s not really your problem. Not any more.’
She knew she sounded brittle, and harsh. It was the only way she could do it. She was holding it all together, hanging on by a thread. If she let him be kind, if she leant on him in any way at all, she might shatter.
‘It’ll be my baby too.’
‘Don’t you dare.’
But she knew he was right. He turned and walked away.
Tess made herself focus on Iris. With Sean in New York for a few weeks, she needn’t ask Donna right away. That would take a bit of working up to. She’d need to tell her about the baby: nothing else but that truth would make sense to Donna. She’d sent her an email asking when she was home, but she hadn’t heard yet. That wasn’t unusual. Donna usually checked emails only when she was near an internet café.
What mattered first was getting Iris settled. Tess, and the baby – they could wait. She booked an appointment with her GP, which was in ten days’ time. She wouldn’t think too much about it until then. She had the appointment at Clearview to get through first. One thing at a time. If she could just take things one thing at a time.
It was a particularly horrid day, grey and cold and drizzly, but that seemed appropriate. If Clearview looked okay on a day like this, it would look more than okay when the sun shone. And the brochure hadn’t lied. The long driveway swept around towards the house, perched high. Tess parked up around the back, and walked to the front entrance. The manager, Claire, gave her the tour. She was a large, smiley woman, with a calm and reassuring way about her. As they walked, she talked enthusiastically about the facilities, and respectfully about the residents. She’d had a grandfather with Alzheimer’s, she told Tess, who’d died long before this kind of place was available. Her voice broke very briefly when she spoke about him, and she took a deep breath before she carried on speaking. That was why she was so evangelical about matching the right care with the person. Tess completely believed her. If it was a sales pitch, she was buying. But it didn’t feel like it was.
Tess knew it was a nice place, as places like this went. As places like this went, it was actually pretty wonderful. It had been described as ‘cutting-edge’ in an article Tess had read when she was trying to decide where Iris should go, designed after the Dutch model. It specialized in Alzheimer’s and dementia patients, so it was custom-built for their needs, rather than adapted to try to meet them. It was avowedly non-medical in feel, the brochure claimed. It was set up more like a village, designed to be familiar and comforting for its residents. As well as en suite rooms for all its residents, set on corridors that had street names like King Street and the Green, rather than numbers and letters, it had a small pub, with a darts board and a wooden bar, a hairdresser’s and even a tiny sweet shop, with old-fashioned sweets in big jars. A vast noticeboard in the entrance lobby advertised a huge array of activities – sing-along sessions, games afternoons, movie nights – Arsenic and Old Lace was on tonight – next week it was The Sound of Music. She wondered if her grandmother would ever be well enough to make the most of any of it.
Iris was ill enough but not too ill to be here. Tess was quickly growing used to the intricate processes and exacting criteria of healthcare for the elderly, the paperwork and the administrative hoops. The bronchitis that had seen her admitted to the geriatric ward of the local hospital had responded well to the antibiotics and that part of Iris was better. Tess had wondered long and hard in the dead of night whether she was glad about this, whether it would’ve been better for Iris to have died. Whether Iris would want to die, if she really knew what was happening to her. Part of her knew Iris would hate this half-life she was living, but not as much as she hated the burden her living it placed on Tess, the fixer. The larger part of her responded like a child to the illness, became tearful and anxious, and wanted to pray she would recover. In recent times, the scales had tipped slightly, but she had still felt more relief than anything else when the young doctor with the shy smile had said Iris was doing well enough to be moved.
She’d seen several places she couldn’t have borne to leave her. But at this place, she thought maybe she could. It was much nearer than the hospital, thank God. She could come and go much more easily, and see more of Iris than she had done when she was in Salisbury. It had a good feel and a warmth – an optimism, almost – that had been missing in other places.
It was terrifyingly expensive, but Tess had been surprised at how much Iris had saved between her husband Wilf’s pension and the money they’d invested when he was alive. They’d lived, she realized, more simply than they had ever needed to. Iris’s house had to be worth somewhere near half a million, she guessed. It seemed like an enormous amount of money. But this place would cost an enormous amount of money too. It was a hateful sum. But it had to be done. She tried not to think about how families of younger sufferers felt. People who couldn’t possibly afford this kind of facility. Imagine having to leave someone you loved somewhere you hated? This was bad enough. They were impossible decisions. At ninety-five, Iris’s life really was finite. Ten years seemed impossible – two or three more likely. Possible that she wouldn’t live the rest of this one. But if Iris lived to be a hundred, it would cost almost half a million pounds for her to spend those years here. It was an astronomical amount. There’d be nothing left to show for her life, or Wilf’s.
Tess knew what Iris would have to say about it. She’d hate it both politically – she was fiercely proud of the NHS and instinctively mistrustful of anything she perceived as threatening it – and she’d hate it personally. ‘Christ, darling. That’s a lot of holidays … Bugger that. I’ll take the long walk. Pass me the paracetamol and the whisky. Ice flow here I come …’
She’d hate it more if she knew about the baby. Iris had that generation’s interest in leaving something behind. She’d worry less about Donna, but she’d want to do something for the baby. Tess could hear her on the subject, almost as if she was actually speaking.
But she didn’t know about the baby. She didn’t know about any of it. She’d forgotten what Tess had told her. She’d probably never really taken it in. And she never would, now. Knowing what Iris would want to happen didn’t help Tess.
This was her decision and hers alone, and she was making it in this place. Whatever it cost, Tess was going to pay it. Even if Iris never went to one damn fitness class or listened to one sing-along. She was coming. It was the best that Tess could give her.
Someone appeared in the corridor and told Claire there was a phone call she needed to take. Claire put her hand on Tess’s arm and asked if she minded.
‘We had to send one of our residents to hospital last night. I’ve been trying to speak to her son – he’s away on holiday.’
‘Of course. Please do.’
‘Please feel free to have a look in here, rather than coming back to sit in the office. By all means chat to some of the carers. Have a cup of tea … I’ll be right back.’
Tess helped herself to a cup of tea from the heated jugs on a table by the door. She was pouring milk and stirring the mug when a woman came and stood beside her. She wasn’t wearing the pink tunic the staff all seemed to be wearing.
‘Hiya.’
‘Hi.’
‘Are you okay?’
‘I’m just … I’m waiting for Claire. I’m on a tour.’
The woman looked at her curiously. But the curiosity felt strangely uninvasive, just kind.
So Tess explained. ‘My grandmother … she might be coming here.’
The stranger nodded understanding, and for a moment busied herself making a coffee.
‘Do you have someone here?’
‘My father-in-law. He’s that one, over there, in the red jumper.’ She gestured towards the fireplace, to an old man in a winged-back armchair.
‘Do you mind if I ask you, if he’s … is he happy here?’
‘Bless you. There’s a question …’ She smiled ruefully. ‘He’d hate knowing that this was how he’d ended up.’
‘He’d be foaming at the mouth at how much it costs, and I’m pretty sure he’d have topped himself if he’d known.’
Tess laughed with relief. ‘I was just thinking the exact same thing about my gran.’
‘But that is the only silver lining in the whole bloody awful cloud, isn’t it? They don’t know …’
This was the first conversation Tess had ever had with someone in the same position, she realized.
The other woman was still watching her face intently. ‘It’s brilliant here, by the way. Do you want to sit down a minute?’
She pointed to a table by the window, and Tess nodded. ‘If you’ve got time.’
The woman looked over at her father-in-law. ‘He’s nodded off. I like to think it’s not my conversation.’ She laughed. ‘I’m Gigi, by the way.’
‘Tess.’
‘Nice to meet you, Tess. Are you here on your own?’
‘Yeah. My mother couldn’t make it today.’ She didn’t know why she felt she needed to add that – convention, she supposed.
Gigi took a sip of her tea, and a bite of the shortbread biscuit she’d put on her saucer. ‘Well … the truth is, Tess, I have no clue whether he’s happy or not.’
‘Is he … does he have Alzheimer’s?’
Gigi shook her head. ‘Dementia. Same difference, really. I’m guessing your grandmother does too?’
‘Yes.’
‘But we’re happy with him here. It’s an excellent place. Truly. The staff are brilliant. His care is exemplary.’
‘How long has he been here?’
Half a million. Tess couldn’t help the thought. It was like Gigi read her mind.
‘Yes. National debt of a small Third World country. I know …’
‘My grandmother’s ninety-five.’
Gigi avoided the obvious response – that she was highly unlikely to stay so long.
‘I know it’s only any good if you have it, I know.’
She doesn’t know if I have it or not, Tess realized.
‘There are other places … are you local?’
It’s okay, Tess wanted to tell her. ‘She has … I mean, we can afford …’
Her eyes were suddenly full of tears, and she bit down hard on her lip to stop them. It was something about the way Gigi was looking at her.
‘Oh, you poor girl.’ Gigi squeezed her arm. Tess had an absurd thought that she wanted Gigi to put her arms around her. That she wanted to tell her about all of it – about her mother, about the baby, about Sean, and his impossible request. This complete stranger who was being kind. But of course she didn’t.
‘Then do it. You won’t have to worry about her. When you can’t get here. I mean, you’ll always worry, you always do. But you’re young. You must have a life … You can’t spend all your time here. It’s worth it to know that when you’re not here, your grandmother is being properly cared for. Treated with kindness and respect. Like a person. With dignity. That’s priceless …’
‘You’re right.’ It was exactly and all she had needed to hear.
‘What’s her name, your grandmother?’
‘Iris. Iris Garroway.’
‘What a lovely name. One of my favourite flowers, the iris. Does she have blue eyes?’
Tess nodded. ‘Very blue. They were.’
‘And where is she now, love?’
‘She’s been in hospital with a chest infection. She was home before that, in Salisbury, with carers.’
‘We tried that. It worked for a while. There just comes a point when it isn’t enough, doesn’t there?’
Tess nodded. ‘And we’re there now, I think …’
‘Then you’re doing the right thing. For both of you.’
And from this woman, this complete stranger, with the kind face, Tess took the permission she needed. There was no one else to give it.
Week 10. You’re the size of a kumquat, if you please. If I can make it all about me for just a moment, I’m supposed to have skin that is suddenly clearer, and more supple. My hair – which has apparently stopped falling out – is meant to be thicker and more lustrous than before … in short, I am meant to be glowing at this point. Perhaps I am a late bloomer, because I don’t think any of this stuff is happening.
You, on the other hand, are busy with much more important things. Your angry little fist stumps have emerging fingers and your feet are getting some toes. Five on each foot, I hope. In the pictures online you look all thoughtful, like someone in prayer, your new digits forming a triangle as you put your hands together. Your head is still weird – the back of it runs into your neck like a seal or how John Irving describes the back of Garp’s head in a book I read once and never forgot.
The GP was amazed it had taken me so long to come and see her. She said first-time mothers were always in a hurry to get confirmation, get their next appointments booked. I think she was a bit suspicious of me, truthfully. She looked at me hard from behind her glasses like a stern headmistress. Not that any headmistress ever really had to look at me sternly. I was a bit of a goody-two-shoes. Is it wrong that I hope you are just a little bit naughty? Just William-type naughtiness – nothing hardcore. I wonder if I will ever be able to tell you off. Whether I am capable of strictness. Anyhow … the doctor certainly was. She had to send off straightaway for the first scan appointment. That’s in a fortnight, baby mine. I will get to see you – real, actual you, instead of the pictures of other people’s babies I pore over on the internet.
She glossed over the subject of your father. (If only it were that easy.) I swear she glanced at my ring hand. It was all very PC. She referred to my taking a partner or companion for the scan. Emphasis on not going alone. I’ve watched enough films and TV shows to know that sometimes there’s no heartbeat. Or something else has gone wrong. Or there are two heartbeats and it’s twins. You need a person. I feel like I know there’s only one of you, and I feel very certain that you’re fine. I feel it. Apparently, though, we’re higher risk, you and me. Good to know. I have leaflets for terrifying risky-sounding tests I have to decide whether I want. Nuchal fold. Amniocentesis. I haven’t read them yet. I may never read them.
I’m an elderly primigravida, by the way. That’s what she called me, and what it said on my notes. It means old for a first-time mother. Nice.
Your great-grandmother is coming out of hospital. And going straight into a care home. I’m making myself say it to prove it’s true. You know how I feel about it, about her. You must do. You’re wrapped close to my heart, so you have to know.
And your grandmother isn’t here.
Sometimes, apart from you, I feel quite alone. You’re not much company, to be brutally honest …
Now, your godmother is back. Holly. She’s the best company in the world. And she’s going to be so bloody excited about you …