The light’s on in the sitting-room. There’s a half-full wine glass on the table beside Mama’s laptop. Displayed on the screen is a download of a tariff page. It’s for a care home. Rates start from £750 a week.
The peacocks are crying in the garden down the road: I can hear them through the open front door. Outside, the gate is open too. Mama didn’t close it when she came back from her walkabout because the primer was still tacky.
There’s a full moon. The blossom on the cherry tree is silver. A light wind soughs through its branches; blossom falls, drifting onto the grass like gleaming confetti.
I go back into the house, into Granny’s room, and sit down on the chair by her bed. I can tell by the rapid eye movement under her lids that she’s deep in Dream Time.
‘Hello,’ I say.
‘Who is it?’ Her voice comes in the lisp that means that she doesn’t have her teeth in.
‘It’s Katia, Granny.’
‘Oh! Katia! How lovely! What are you doing here?’
‘I’m watching over you, Granny.’
‘Oh. Do I need watching over?’
‘Oh, yes, indeed you do.’
‘Why do I need watching over?’
‘Because you’re nearly ninety, and can’t look after yourself.’
‘I see. Someone wrote a song about that once, you know,’ she says, conversationally. ‘“Someone to Watch Over Me”. Shall I sing it for you?’
‘Yes, do.’
‘You might want to put your fingers in your ears. I was never much of a one for holding a tune.’
I laugh. ‘Give it a go.’
‘I’m shy, now.’
‘Do the first verse.’
‘You’re sweet. You always were my favourite grandchild.’ I don’t bother to remind her that I’m her only grandchild. She smiles and shuts her eyes, and then, in a faltering voice, she starts singing, slowly and rather sweetly.
But I’m feeling antsy now. Like Charlotte said, Dream Time is precious, and I can’t faff about.
I let her finish the first verse, and then she launches into the refrain.
‘Someone . . . to watch over me,’ she warbles ‘That’s you, Katia, I’m singing about. Isn’t it? You’re the someone who’s watching over me.’
‘Yes, Granny. I am indeed. Now. Follow my lead, like it says in the song.’ I’m all businesslike, like Mama when she’s in carer mode.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Come with me.’
‘You want me to get out of bed?’
‘Yes.’
‘But it’s the middle of the night.’
‘It’s three o’clock in the morning. That’s always the best time.’
‘The best time for what?’
‘For what we’re going to do. Come on.’
‘I haven’t got my teeth in.’
‘You won’t need them where we’re going.’
‘Where are we going?’
‘You’ll find out when you get there. Just follow me.’
‘I need help to get out of bed. Give me your hands.’
‘No. You won’t need help. You can do this by yourself. But don’t worry. Because you know that I am here.’
Granny pulls back the covers and slides her stick legs out over the edge of the bed.
‘Good Granny!’ I tell her. ‘Come on. I’ll show you the way.’
‘What about my cardigan? My slippers?’
‘You won’t need those either.’
‘But you say I’m going out somewhere?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then let me at least put some lipstick on. I never go out anywhere without my lipstick, you know.’ She pauses by the chest-of-drawers, reaches for her lipstick, applies it in a couple of strokes, then rubs her lips together. ‘How’s that?’
‘Perfect, Granny. You look lovely.’
I lead the way, down the L-shaped corridor, through the front door, out into the sun porch. I look over my shoulder. She’s walking doggedly, but this time there’s no stump stump stump. ‘You’re doing great,’ I tell her. ‘See, I knew you could do it by yourself.’
Into the garden now, across the carpet of silvery blossom. I wait for Granny by the open gate. There are petals falling on her head; I think of the Selfish Giant lying in his garden, his dead body covered in blossom, his spirit alive and kicking in Paradise. It’s not Paradise where Granny’s going, but it sure as hell beats being possessed by a witch. She draws abreast of me and pauses. ‘Where now?’ she asks.
‘Along there.’ I point to the tunnel of trees that, in the daytime, casts such long shadows over the Gingerbread House.
‘I suppose I’ll have to do whatever you tell me to. Bossy boots.’ She starts to move off along the road, then stops and looks back. ‘Are you not coming?’ she says.
‘No, Granny. You have to do this bit on your own.’
‘Why can’t you come?’
‘Because I’ve a job to do.’
‘And what might that be?’
‘I’ve to watch over Mama.’
‘Oh, yes.’ There’s a pause. ‘Katia?’ she says.
‘Yes?’
‘You died, didn’t you?’
‘Yes, Granny. In a scuba-diving accident.’
‘Oh, yes. I remember now. Was it in Jamaica?’
‘No, it was off the Scottish Coast.’
‘I’m sorry to hear about that.’
‘No worries, Granny.’
‘Shall I go now?’
‘Yes.’ I feel I ought to add something like ‘your time has come’, but it seems too melodramatic, somehow.
‘Well. See you later, alligator.’
‘In a while, crocodile. God speed.’
God speed. It’s a comforting thing to say, isn’t it, to someone who’s setting off on a journey, whether or not you believe in a god? I watch Granny’s retreating figure as she trudges off up the road, her mad, blossom-covered hair lambent in the moonlight. Lambent. That’s another word Mama taught me. It means radiant. I’d better get back to Mama, but I’ll wait until Granny’s well and truly gone.
I wonder how the David Attenborough commentary would go, if this were one of his documentaries. ‘Under the shadow of the trees she passes, singing one of her little ditties. As must happen to all our species, she’s shuffling off her mortal coil at last, heading unerringly for the light at the end of the tunnel.’
I wonder what’s going through Granny’s head as she plods along the road. Maybe the light pollution from the city far on the horizon reminds her of the footlights in the theatres of her youth. Maybe she thinks she’s taking a curtain call. I wish I could tell you that her demeanour changes, that her gait becomes more erect, that she glides gracefully away from life, but it doesn’t happen like that. Her silhouette in her white flannelette nightdress just diminishes, gets smaller and smaller the further away she goes, and more and more shimmery, until I can’t see her any more.
And now I know what Alice never did. I know what the flame of a candle looks like after the candle is blown out.
I turn back through the gate and move across the garden to the porch. I’ll have to stand guard until the sun rises: I don’t want to run the risk of any night-time passers-by investigating the Gingerbread House with its front door ajar, all lit up like an invitation to a burglar.
I sit down on the step and allow my mind to go back to my fourteenth birthday. A dive site on the west coast of Scotland.
*
Of course I’m not expecting the dive to be as special as the reefs in Jamaica, but as soon as I perform that backward roll and feel the sea churn around me in an explosion of bubbles and refracted silvery light, I feel more alive than I’ve ever been. I make the ‘OK’ signal to Mama and Dad, then draw a big smile across my face with my index finger. Mama and Dad smile back.
As we descend, bubbles fizzing from our regulators, I look around in a kind of trance. I know now how an addict might feel who had been denied a drug – I’m Pisces, back in my element!
Below us, the terrain looks as if it’s been scattered with gold dust. Crabs covered in tattoos go about their business, scuttling across the sandy bottom, and starfish – ranging from the size of a dinner plate to the size of the nail on my pinkie finger – have bedecked themselves in pretty silken fronds. All around me are delicate, translucent jellyfish, and algae like giant pink powder puffs, and tubeworms glistening like jewels.
Tubeworms! They sound disgusting, don’t they? But they’re not. They’re really, really pretty. Their homes are shaped like miniature angels’ trumpets, and when they’re all gathered together, they look like an arrangement in a posh florist’s window. Every time you flick your fingers at them, they dive back into their little trumpet homes, and it’s just like seeing the lights on a Christmas tree going on and off. And – oh! – you haven’t lived until you’ve laughed at scallops in motion! They rise from the seabed when you prod them, and soar up through the water looking like Granny’s false teeth chomping away randomly.
Mama and Dad and I frolic – it’s the only word for it. Venting air, we descend further into a valley carpeted by brittlefish – tiny starfish whose filmy limbs float around them like feathery ribbons – and then Dad touches me lightly on the arm. I turn, and he points to the other side of the valley. About ten metres away I can just make out a dozen or so great streamlined shapes. Yikes! I turn to Dad and make the shark fin sign, hand rigid on my forehead, but he shakes his head, and I can see that his eyes are laughing behind his mask. He draws a smile across his face, then moves his right hand in a wavy, rhythmic way, mimicking the way dolphins move through the water. Dolphins! Oh, bliss! Dolphins! I’m nearly crying with happiness. I have never before been so brimful of feel-good endorphins as I watch the pod’s graceful progress into the blue beyond. To judge by their comparative sizes there are about eight adults and three calves. Come back! Come back! I plead with my eyes. But their shapes slowly recede, disappearing like a vision in a dream.
I see Mama shrug – a gesture of regret – and then she taps on her gauge, reminding me to check my air. All that frolicking and laughing and oohing and aahing means that I’ve used up a fair bit, but I don’t want to ascend – not just yet – so I make the OK sign, and we three frolic some more, until . . .
‘It’s definitely time to go up now,’ Mama tells me, with a firm upwards jab of her thumb.
But ‘hang on a minute’, I tell her with my right hand. The legs of my dry suit are filling with excess air, and I need to perform the trick that vents it, otherwise I run the risk of making a feet-first ascent – not just terminally uncool, but dangerous, too. I tuck myself into a ball and quickly roll over on to my back, feeling the air rush to the exhaust valve on my arm. Yay! Chuffed I am, at my own niftiness.
‘OK’, I signal to Mama, and ‘OK’ I signal to Dad, preparing myself to fin upward. But nothing happens. I breathe in deeply, hoping a good lungful of air will do the trick and help me ascend. Nope. I press the inflator valve to give my buoyancy a bit of a boost. Nul points, as Granny might say. I work my thigh muscles hard. Nothing. Then I decide to descend a little, so I can push myself off the bottom. Still nothing. Nada. Zilch.
I look at Mama, and wish I hadn’t. Her eyes behind her mask are wide with concern, and her concern makes me fearful. ‘Are you OK?’ she signals, and I make the ‘dodgy’ sign back at her. Take it easy, Dad motions with his hand. Stay calm. Everything’s cool. I try to breathe easy, but the breath I hear inside my head is ragged, coming and going in a rush as I snatch again and again at precious air. Dad reaches for my gauge to check the level, and I see his brow furrow. When he next looks at me, however, his eyes are all reassurance. He’s putting on an act for my benefit, I know. He’s trying to make sure I stay calm.
Dad moves around behind me, and in my peripheral vision I see him take his dive knife from the scabbard on his thigh. Looking up, I see fine lines of nylon waving to and fro in the current. My gear’s entangled in fishing line. It must have happened when I did my backward roll. Don’t panic, Katia, I tell myself. Stay calm. Stay calm. That’s the rule that is reiterated on every single page of the chapter in the dive manual that deals with emergencies.
Dad’s cutting through the tangled nylon, but it’s taking too long. My gauge is dangerously low now. I know that the best way to help would be to allow myself to go limp, but panic is rising as fast as my air supply’s being depleted, and I start to struggle, and pull at the nylon, entangling myself further.
Help! Help!
I’m wriggling; Dad’s working away with his knife, and out of the corner of my eye I see that Mama’s desperately signalling to me to share her air. No! I’m scared, too scared; my jaws tighten on the rubber between my teeth. I can’t – won’t – relinquish it. There’s only one thing for it at this stage. Once free, I will have to make a runaway emergency ascent. I reach for the clasp on my weight belt. I wait. I wait. And I wait . . .
The last length of fishing line is slashed. Pulling at the release, I let the lead weights fall to the seabed, and then I’m freefalling in reverse, soaring to the surface, breathing out all the way because the first rule of scuba diving is never hold your breath. Above me the sun is dancing on the water, below me I see my parents’ upturned white faces as they, too, ditch their belts and come hurtling up behind me. Never hold your breath. But I have none to hold. I’m clean out of air now, diving on empty.
I’m scuba girl Katia, beloved only child of Donn and Tess, saved from death by a neat Heimlich manoeuvre – and oh, how the sharp metal of that stupid Claddagh ring seared my windpipe! But this time the pain is much worse.
I’m Alice, falling down to Wonderland, chasing the White Rabbit, swimming in the pool of tears.
I’m the little mermaid off on her first adventure to the world above the waves, the world where the sun is a great ball of fiery light in the sky, and fish swim around the soughing branches of trees and sing to each other, and where a handsome prince with wavy brown hair and laughing green eyes is waiting for me. From far below, I hear my mer-family call ‘god speed!’ The sun is coming closer now, and any second I will pass through the glittering surface and pull sweet salt air into my lungs.
But . . .I . . .Don’t . . .Make it.
*
It’s dawn. The peacocks are clamouring in the garden down the road from the Gingerbread House. My fledgling blue tits will be chirping in their nest, poised to take flight and go frolic on their baby wings. And there’s a song playing in my head.
It’s the song a sentimental Mama used to play over the headphones when I was just a tiny baby floating inside her, the one the little mermaid sings about the world above the waves where the sun shines.
I can tell that Mama is dreaming when I get into bed beside her, so I slide into the dream and croon to her. I want to make her smile in her sleep.
Mama opens her eyes, but she’s sleeping still. ‘Katia?’ she says.
‘Yes, Mama?’
‘Are you there?’
‘Of course I’m here, Mama. I promised you I’d watch over you, didn’t I? That’s why I came with you, to the Gingerbread House. Katia keeps her promises.’
‘You were – you are such a good girl. Oh, sweetheart, sweetheart – sometimes I don’t know if you’re here or if you’re there, somewhere beyond in blue. You’re such a good, good, beautiful girl.’ She shuts her eyes again, and I see tears glistening on her lashes. ‘Shall I tell you a story, my darling girl?’
‘I’d love that.’
‘Which one?’
‘Which one do you think?’
‘Your favourite?’
‘My favourite.’
‘Far out in the wide sea,’ begins Mama, settling Teddy into the nook between her chin and collarbone, ‘where the water is as blue as the loveliest cornflower, and where it is very, very deep, live the mer-people . . .’