‘Pass it to me! C’mon, kick it over here!’ shouted Marcus as Troy was showing off his football skills, dribbling the ball around any obstacles he could find: park benches, dogs, a woman wheeling a pram. When he did finally kick it, it went slightly off course due to the erratic breeze.
‘Oh, watch out for that old man. Look out, mister – oh no!’ Marcus cried, as the ball hit an elderly man on his shin.
‘Are you okay, old fella?’ called Troy, scratching his head.
‘Yah, I’m okay. Haven’t played footie in a while though!’
‘Well, come on then. Join in!’
The old man chuckled, placed his walking stick on the ground and then made a tremendous effort to position his right leg to kick the ball back and Troy was hooked. He and the old man had a gentle little game between them until the old man put his arm up to signal that he’d had enough.
Despite the fact it was rather chilly and neither of them wore jackets, Eileen was sitting on a bench next to her mother in her wheelchair, watching her sons’ antics.
‘Look at them, Mum. Oh, what a brilliant day! Thank you so much,’ she gushed throwing her arms around her mother’s neck and kissing her.
‘You’re completely welcome.’
It had started off brilliantly too. She’d awoken groggily in bed that morning, on hearing unfamiliar noises downstairs. She’d blinked and looked at the alarm clock, 7.45 a.m. Strange. There weren’t usually any noises at this time in the morning, until she got her boys up. She could hear metallic scraping, raised voices and her mother’s occasional lilt as though she was having a conversation with someone. Those were not the normal sounds Eileen expected to hear any time, least of all today.
She’d been having a much-needed lie-in and taken the day off because today was her birthday. Her boss always gave his staff the option to do that if they wanted to. So she’d told her boys she’d be having a lie-in that morning. Her usual working day started with her wakening at 6.30 a.m. and getting the boys lunches sorted out, having her shower, helping her mother out of bed and getting her into the shower and then into the wheelchair, followed by making everybody breakfast, while either putting a wash-load on or doing some cleaning, so she didn’t have to do it later when she came back from work. Eileen was an organised routine type of person and her morning routine was always the same. So usually she never had a lie-in, but her added workload of getting the Afternoon Tea Club off the ground had caused extra administration and meant overtime, even though she had Taynor’s help. It made her colleagues laugh that Eileen always maintained the same routine, each day, whether it was her birthday or not. Even on her birthday she’d do all her chores in the morning and then she took her mum for a drive somewhere in the afternoon. When her sons came back from work the four of them would go to her favourite restaurant in the evening.
Some might call that boring but Eileen knew it would always be lovely. She didn’t like to risk doing something new on special days – any other time of the year, yes. But not on birthdays and Christmases. She also always liked to have Christmas at home. And it was the one time of the year she allowed her mother to pitch in and cook their turkey dinner, quite simply because her mother did it best.
So that morning at 7.46 a.m. Eileen was utterly astonished when, just as she was thinking about going downstairs to find out what on earth was going on, her bedroom door opened and Troy came in with – goodness – breakfast on a tray with a single red rose in a rosebud vase she didn’t even know she had!
Her mother would clearly be downstairs somewhere as her boys weren’t allowed in the kitchen to make anything by themselves. She’d witnessed their efforts once before. Spilt flour on the counter tops and floor as well as sticky pools where an upturned honeypot had dribbled down the units because Troy had flicked water at Marcus and then a fight had ensued, resulting in her putting her foot down about any further attempts to do anything in the kitchen apart from tipping cereal into a bowl, adding milk and letting them eat it. But how had her mother got out of bed and got into the wheelchair by herself? The whole thing was most odd.
She started to ask that very question of Troy but was met with, ‘Come on, Marcus. Hurry up!’
And then behind Troy came Marcus with a lovely bunch of flowers that had a label on them saying, ‘Happiest Birthday, my darling daughter xx’. He also held a huge parcel under his arm, which he then placed by the side of her on the bed. The label on that read, ‘Best wishes Mum, from Marcus and Troy xx’.
‘Eat your breakfast first, Mum, and tell us how much you like it because we cooked it specially for you!’
Eileen started laughing. ‘I wish— God, you two are so funny!’
‘Okay, we thought you’d say that; iPad, Marcus!’
Marcus’s iPad sprung to life and showed the two of them in the kitchen under her mother’s direction, making the gorgeous scrambled egg and smoked salmon on toast she saw before her, without everything landing all over the place or on the floor. A cafètiere she’d also never seen before, with steaming coffee, sat on a napkin on the tray.
‘Where’d you find these things, boys?’
‘We bought the cafètiere and the tray and the bud vase. The tray is spongy underneath so it can sit on your knees or whatever. We will admit that Gran pointed us in the right direction with all that lot. We’ve been having lessons with Gran, you see, while you’ve been working overtime. Especially for your birthday. C’mon, Mum, eat your breakfast or it’ll get cold. Isn’t that what you’re always telling us?’
Eileen tasted the scrambled eggs half expecting them to taste too salty or to be thin and watery. But they were perfect and so were the salmon and the coffee. Her boys sat on her bed and watched her delighted features getting brighter and brighter.
‘We’ve also done all the cleaning and put a wash-load on, too.’
‘You’ve done what?’ Eileen cried spluttering her food out again, envisaging all the colours bleeding into each other. That was a thought too far.
Troy almost laughed his head off. ‘We’re not entirely hopeless now. Gran taught us loads. She said it was time. Keep watching the iPad. It’s all on there!’
‘Mother, please eat your breakfast,’ Marcus demanded. ‘And then you can open your presents!’
The large parcel on the bed contained all of Eileen’s favourite toiletries and a box of chocolates. Maybe the chocolates mightn’t have smelled of perfume if the boys had wrapped their gifts separately but Eileen wasn’t going to say anything about that.
Then they gave her an envelope.
It was for a weekend stay for the four of them on the Isle of Wight. None of them had holidayed anywhere since their father’s disappearance over three years ago. Time off from work had always been used up lazing around the house or going out for nice meals. Not jetting off anywhere, although they wouldn’t need a jet to go to the Isle of Wight.
‘Well, we’re earners now so we decided to do this for us all. We deserve it, don’t we. And they’ll even take Gran with the wheelchair and there’s an island trip on one of the days. Good huh?’
‘Come here, my darling boys,’ Eileen said, with tears in her eyes. ‘Have I told you how much I love you both, recently?’
‘Aw, Mum!’
So that afternoon they’d driven to one of the parks, taken their father’s old football he used to kick around with them when they were all little and had an impromptu game of footie. Eileen’s mother threw the ball for them, pretending to be the goalie and they laughed and hollered and screamed with excitement.
‘You paid them, too, didn’t you?’ Eileen whispered to her mother on the way home.
‘How did you guess, love?’ her mother smirked.
***
Classroom 4A had not been easy to find.
The directions the receptionist had given them, downstairs, were not accurate. Some of the elderly Afternoon Tea Club members had gone up in the lift but, unfortunately, had gone up one floor too high and were wandering around, beginning to panic, until Stacy found them. Then Stacy asked directions from a chap who looked like a caretaker and he showed them where to go. He unlocked their classroom and eleven hopeful students piled in and looked around, in awe of the computers and notices pinned to the walls. The classroom was on the first floor and had great views of the college’s landscaped grounds.
‘This is nothing like I remember being at school. Didn’t even have calculators. Had to do adding up in our heads dint we, Hilary?’ said one elderly lady.
‘Oh yes,’ said Hilary. ‘And we had to write our times tables out by hand. Do you remember all that? This is amazing in here, though, isn’t it?’
‘Oh yes. Even my grandson says he’s impressed that a sixty-eight-year-old man gets to come to college to do computer studies!’
‘They look complicated things to master, though, don’t they with those buttons there?’ said one lady, tentatively brushing her fingers over the keyboard. ‘And nothing’s happening.’
‘Well, the computers haven’t been switched on yet,’ Stacy explained, noting the wide-eyed worry etched on some of the elderly students’ faces. ‘The tutor will explain everything to you. Everything’s easy when you know how to do something.’
‘Welcome, everybody!’ cried the tutor, as she breezed in behind them. ‘I’m Miss Broughton and I’m so pleased you could all make it here today. Did you find us okay?’
Nine women and one gent exchanged doubtful glances but didn’t say anything. Stacy sat down in front of one of the computers.
‘Right, so I’ll just tick off your names – roll call, if you like – and then we’ll need to do the fire drill and I’ll show you where we’ll be going for refreshments later. Okay. Let me just switch your computers on first. I thought the caretaker was going to do that for me but I have a sneaky feeling he might have gone for a quick ciggie instead!’
Stacy smiled at that.
When they ambled back into the classroom, after the fire drill, and sat in front of the computers, Miss Broughton then went round setting notepads and pens out in front of everyone. The LCD computer screens had already blinked into life.
‘Well that has eaten into some of our allotted time for this class, so let’s get started, post haste. First of all, let’s see what you all need help with today. How many of you have used computers before but just want a little clarity? Perhaps I can go around the class and ask you each in turn what skills you hope to acquire in these lessons?’
One elderly lady put her hand up. ‘I’ve never used one, love. Fancied it, so I could prove to my grandkids that I’m not completely from the Dark Ages.’
‘I’m a carer and have no use for computers. But as it was being offered I thought I’d come along and have a go at it,’ said the lady who always wore a pale grey trouser suit to the Afternoon Tea Club meetings.
‘So is that about the same for all of you?’ asked Miss Broughton.
‘Well, I switched one on once but I wouldn’t know how to do it again!’ said someone.
‘Ah, well,’ Stacy began. ‘All I really need is some help with this new mobile I’ve just bought. I’m having some problems with it but I don’t have time to take it back to where I bought it and sort things out. Plus I’d also like to learn about macros.’
‘Macaroni did she say? Well, my old dad was Italian. He could’ve shown her how to make that, easy enough!’ said the old gent and the class fell about laughing.
‘No, she didn’t say that,’ said another lady. ‘She said nachos. My grandsons, Neil and Brent, they like nachos—’
Mrs Broughton tried to bring the class to order by coughing loudly.
‘Oh, you need a butter ball for that cough, love,’ said one of the ladies. ‘My mother was good at making those. You scoop out a bit of butter on a spoon and roll it into sugar and then dip it into vinegar. Greases up the throat a real treat it does!’
‘Well,’ said the lady, tapping the buttons on the keyboard to try and make it work. ‘I must say I’m really going to enjoy learning about these new-fangled computers, once we can get them started!’