Heart and Soul (12 page)

Hilary Hickey caught sight of herself reflected in a shopwindow and paused in shock. Not only was she very old-looking, but she also looked quite eccentric. Her hair stood up in spikes and her clothes seemed to have been thrown on at random. Was this the way people saw her? Hilary was surprised. She had thought she looked quite different. If she had been asked to describe herself she might have said small, neat, trim, fit, with a nice broad smile, the smile that so many years ago had made Dan Hickey leave his wealthy fiancée at an art gallery opening and come to her side.

No one would leave anyone to come to her side nowadays, Hilary thought ruefully. They might cross the street to avoid her. She looked into the shop further and realized it was a hairdressing salon. Perhaps this was a sign, a message saying that it was time she did something about her unkempt head. She would go inside and see if they had anyone free to do her hair now. If they had, then it was definitely a sign. The young girl at the desk was called Kiki.

“Sure,” she said, “I can do you now.” She looked dangerously young and rather overly made-up for Hilary's conservative thinking.

“But what about the …um …reception desk?” Hilary asked nervously.

“Oh, that looks after itself,” Kiki said, getting towels and directing Hilary toward a basin.

Kiki talked incessantly about a new club that was opening next week.

“My son may well be going to that,” Hilary said cheerfully. It sounded the kind of thing that Nick would like, noisy and colorful and opening its doors at midnight. She often met him returning home when she was heading off to the clinic. But she had learned not to comment.

In many ways Nick was a perfect son. He was a talented musician who gave music lessons in the afternoon when he taught the clarinet and kept an eye on his grandmother. Inasmuch as he could. But of course, if he had to go out to a school or to visit a pupil at home, then there was no cover, no one to look after Hilary's mother.

Hilary bit her lip and thought about it over and over again as Kiki gave her a strenuous shampoo. She didn't care
what
the so-called experts said. Her mother, Jessica, was not going to go into a home for the bewildered. She would
not put
her mother away.

Hilary was an only child, with parents who had been absolutely devoted to her. Her father was a very handsome man who sold cars in a showroom. He loved cars. Hilary remembered how he had stroked them and almost purred at them. He would promise that one day he would save enough to buy them a beautiful car and all three of them would go driving in the countryside on a Sunday.

But before that could happen Hilary's father met a lady with very blond hair and a black leather coat. The lady was buying a car and needed a lot of test drives. During one of the test drives it turned out that Hilary's father and the lady in the black leather coat were meant for each other and would go and live in the south of England, and have their own family.

Hilary had been eleven at the time.

“Will I be going to the south of England to see them and to spend holidays?” she had asked. Her mother thought not. Better not to build up any hopes. Better to work hard and get a good job. That's what Daddy would have liked to see.

So why didn't he stay to see it? Hilary wondered. Her mother never answered this, and so her life was never quite the same afterward. She saw her father only once a year and her mother went out every day. She helped people in their gardens and she made cakes for her friends. She always encouraged Hilary to invite friends home on a Friday evening, and they now had so much room in the house without Father that they let two rooms to paying guests. These were two mousy women called Violet and Noreen who worked in a bank and lived very quietly. Hilary's life fell into a routine: home from school, glass of milk and a homemade biscuit, then homework.

Then Violet taught her bookkeeping, and Noreen taught her to type on an old machine where the letters had been covered with sticking plaster. By the time she left school, Hilary had achieved what they apparently wanted for her: a good education and some steps down the road toward being a secretary. She would have loved to have gone to university like some of her school friends, but by the time she was eighteen she realized that the money just wasn't there. Her mother wasn't doing gardens and making cakes out of friendship for people. She was doing it to earn a living for them both.

Hilary went to a secretarial college, and because the two paying guests had helped her so much, she learned everything she could in a very short time. She got the Certificate of Merit from the college and was ready to earn her own living in a few short months. She started in hospital administration and that was where she stayed. She had concentrated too much on her work to consider men and marriage. Until she met Dan Hickey

All her friends warned her against him. He was too good-looking, they said. He was unreliable. If he left his fiancée for her, he could do the same thing again. He didn't have a real career. He was a gentleman. He needed a rich woman to support him. Only her mother agreed that Dan was wonderful. Anxiously, Hilary ran her friends’ concerns past Jessica.

“Suppose that he
is
too good-looking for me, Mother?” she worried.

“Nonsense, Hilary. You are a fine-looking young woman,
and
you have a good career,
and you
have a house to offer him.”

“He can't come to live here.” Hilary was aghast.

“Where else would he live? I worked long and hard to keep this house for you. We have no paying guests now. Make me a small flat beyond the kitchen and we are right as rain.”

“But it's putting you out of your own house—” Hilary began.

“No, it's not. I'm not really able to climb those stairs anyway. This way I have company
and
independence. What could be better?”

“But will we be able to afford to build an extension?”

“Certainly we will. I have been saving like a squirrel. I've been waiting for this day.”

“It hasn't come yet. He hasn't asked me.”

“He will. Just have an open mind,” Jessica advised.

Dan asked her to marry him the next week.

“I'm not much of a catch,” he apologized.

“You're the only catch I wanted,” Hilary said and he seemed delighted. He was also delighted that he didn't have to think of finding a family home, and after their quiet wedding he moved in seamlessly.

Dan was always seeing someone about an opening or talking to someone about a possibility. But in the twelve years of their married life he never earned one single penny. Instead, Jessica returned to her garden pruning and cake making, and added dog walking as well. Hilary took on private bookkeeping jobs for clients, small companies or wealthy individuals, which paid well.

When Nick was eleven, exactly the same age as Hilary had been when she lost her father, Dan went out of their lives. But he did not disappear to the south of England with a woman in a black leather coat. He was drowned in a deep, dark lake when he had gone to the Irish midlands to meet a chap who might be able to give him a job. The Guards came to the door to tell Hilary and her mother and her son. They were very kind. They came in and made tea for the
stricken family and left knowing as little about the man who had drowned as they had before, except that he had left three broken people behind.

There had been a small insurance policy. Jessica insisted that they have an elegant funeral for Dan Hickey He would have wanted it that way. Hilary was too shocked and angry to care.
Why
had he gone swimming in an unfamiliar lake?
Why
had he gone before his son grew up to know him properly?

Looking back on it all afterward, she was deeply touched at and grateful for her mother's insistence that the funeral be done right. The delicate sandwiches in the posh hotel, his many friends and acquaintances, none of whom had delivered a job, a contract or an introduction but who were all happy to turn up for the reception. It had indeed been exactly what he would have wanted. She had not one moment of regret.

And after that Hilary had set about making Nicks childhood as good and happy as Jessica had made hers. When he showed an interest in music, she paid for private lessons. She never fussed. She knew that his friends teased him about his crazy house with two old women in it. To boys of that age, Hilary knew that she must seem the same generation as her mother. And the years went by. Hilary never found anyone else remotely attractive enough even to consider an involvement. She wasn't short of offers of company, a hardworking young widow with her own home, a good income, an easygoing, grown-up son who composed and taught music and a cheerful mother tidied away downstairs in a granny flat. She had a lot going for her. Or had, at one time.

But her mother had become more frail, more forgetful and less able to cope on her own, Hilary was sure it was simply her mother just getting older—it was beyond belief that Jessica would lose her fine mind, her generous nature, her grasp on everything.

But in her own way, Jessica guessed what was happening. Realizing what the future might hold, she wrote a letter. It was a short typed note:

Then she wrote a few words to each person. To Hilary she wrote:

Her mother was giving her permission to put her away. That was so generous but was it sane? There was no way Hilary could do it.

She looked at her reflection in the mirror without much pleasure. “What are you going to do with it?” she asked Kiki.

“I'm going to give it some shape. You want it shorter and glossy yeah?”

Short and glossy was what Hilary had thought it was until she had seen herself in the window.

“Yes, not too short.”

“Trust me,” Kiki said and huge showers of Hilary's hair seemed to cascade onto the floor.

Hilary wondered why she had trusted this girl with huge, dark-rimmed eyes and green nail polish. There must have been a reason.

Clara gasped with admiration when Hilary came back to the clinic.
“Where
did you get your hair done, Hilary? You look ten years younger. I'm going there at once.”

Hilary showed her the card. “Ask for Kiki. She's got green nails.”

“Well, there's nothing wrong with the way she cuts hair. You look terrific. I think you and I should go out on the pull one night.”

“I'd hate to think what we might reel in.” Hilary laughed, but there was a strain around her eyes.

“No use asking how things are at home. It's more of the same, isn't it?” Clara was sympathetic.

“No, it's slightly worse. She was out in the street last night asking anyone who passed by what time it was.”

“And what time
was
it?” Clara asked.

“It was four a.m., but she thought it was four p.m. and said I would be home for my tea soon.”

Clara was silent.

“Go on, Clara, say it.”

“No,
you
say it, Hilary. You know what has to be said as much as I do.”

“You think she should be put in care,” Hilary said.

“It's not what I think that matters.”

“I'm sure you know the perfect place for her. If I were to ask you, you'd have the name and phone number …” Hilary bit her lip.

“It's your decision, but if you
were
actually asking about somewhere, there's a very good place called Lilac Court. The woman who runs it is a sort of friend of mine, Claire Cotter. I've known her for years. She makes a very pleasant life for the people there.”

“Can't
do
it. Not yet.”

“Sure, sure.”

“Don't put me down, Clara. You don't know what that woman did for me. I can't tidy her away.”

“It might be kinder.”

“It might be easier, but it would never be kinder. Even if I have to give up working here and stay at home.”

“You do, more and more.”

“I know. You probably think that I take too much time off—” Hilary began.

“No, it's not that at all. You make up for every hour you take. Don't I see you working through your lunchtime or staying on after work if Nick is around? You do your full job here, believe me.”

“If it were
your
mother, Clara?”

“I'd have her into the first place that would take her and walk away.”

“You say that.”

“I mean that. My mother was and is a discontented, trouble-making woman who sees the worst in everyone and every situation. Your misfortune is that yours has been decent and kind-hearted throughout, and it's blinding you about doing what's best for her.”