Mira in the Present Tense (14 page)

There's a lady wearing a flowery headscarf at the reception desk, which looks a bit like the foyer of a hotel. Headscarf Lady asks our names and Dad introduces us.

“We are Josie, Sam, Uma, Mira, Krish, and Laila Levenson.”

“Lovely names,” she says, ticking us off in her book and calling up to the ward on her intercom. “The Levenson family have arrived,” she announces as if we're all moving in. Headscarf Lady has long dangly earrings, the kind Nana wears, and bits of straggly orange hennaed hair escaping from her scarf. She has gray eyes that smile at Nana, but her mouth doesn't move when she smiles.

“Would you like a daffodil badge?” she asks me.

“Thank you.”

She offers one to Krish, but he turns his nose up, so she hands him a chocolate football instead. She smiles when she notices his filthy hands. My brother's still covered in sand and mud from the beach.

“And what can I get for you, cutie?” she asks Laila, stroking her plum cheeks.

She rummages underneath her desk and brings out a tiny teddy bear wearing a red knitted sweater with “London Hospice” embroidered on its tummy. Laila grabs hold of it, gurgles, and graces Headscarf Lady with her widest grin. My baby sister has actually got an enormous mouth. When she cries, her jaw drops and her mouth opens out into this massive gaping tunnel in the middle of her face, but when she smiles, it stretches across her face the other way, from one ear to the other, lighting up her whole face. Nana says it's a bit of a comedy mouth. It makes Headscarf Lady laugh anyway.

We pass through some security doors into a hallway. At the end, there is a cafe and to the right of the cafe a sign says
chapel of rest
. In the hall there is a nurse in a white uniform waiting for the lift. The nurse waves at Laila and plays peek-a-boo behind her hand. She has lovely soft hands with strong, creamy varnished fingernails, smoothed with a nail file, not too long and not too short. Laila grabs at the nurse's hands to pull her fingers away from her eyes. She's giggling her head off and making the nurse giggle too. Now Laila's fidgeting to get off Mum's hip and closer to the nurse.

“Come on then, little darlin'. You want to come up and play with Doris?”

Doris opens her arms and Laila literally jumps on top of her.

“It don't take
you
too long to make a friend,” laughs Doris. “What's your name?”

“La La,” answers Laila.

Krish bursts out laughing. “She
is
La La,” he says, putting a finger to his head and tapping his brain, as if to say, “She's nuts.”

“Her name's Laila, and she usually has to be prized away from me,” Mum tells Doris.

“Babies love Doris. It's my round, smiley face—they think I'm one of them.”

Looking at Doris's face, I can see what she means. She's got this soft dark brown skin that looks as if it's covered in a layer of baby cream, big brown eyes, and no wrinkles. None. It's a baby face, but she must be about the same age as my mum.

A woman walks slowly toward us from the direction of the cafe. She has patchy, thin, dyed blond hair, pink powder blush cheeks, and bright blue shimmer smeared all over her bulging eyes. She's a bit like an ancient china doll…and she's thin, like Nana. She's walking a dog on a leash, something like a police dog.

“Are dogs allowed in here then?” asks Nana, stroking its head.

“Why not?” shrugs Eyeshadow Lady. “Thank God for small mercies,” she laughs. “Have you got a dog?”

“Piper,” nods Nana, suddenly looking more relaxed.

“Oh! Goodie, a friend for Lad!” exclaims Eyeshadow Lady. “Crystal,” she says, shaking Nana's hand.

“Josie.”

“Which ward are you on?” asks Crystal.

“Heath Ward.”

“Me and Lad too. We'll be dorm mates then!” Crystal smiles at Nana and squeezes her hand.

The lift arrives. There's not enough room for all of us.

“Race you upstairs,” shouts Krish. I think that's probably two things you should
not
do in a hospice, shout and run, but Doris doesn't seem to mind.

“Go on then, get after him,” encourages Nana. Krish gets there first, of course. Then we wait outside the lift.

The door opens. Somewhere between the first and third floor of the hospice Nana and Crystal seem to have become great friends. I don't know what the joke is, but Crystal and Nana are doubled over laughing and Laila is gurgling and pulling at Doris's tiny braids.

“I can see I'm going to have fun with you two!” giggles Doris in her warm velvety voice.

Crystal and Doris show Nana into the Women's Room. There are four beds on the ward. Doris steers Nana to her bed by the window, which looks out onto the gardens. A great oak reaches its branches toward us.

“Best view in the house! Aren't you the lucky one!” jokes Crystal. She's working hard to make Nana feel at home, maybe a bit too hard because now Crystal suddenly slumps down on her bed, her body collapsing like the stem of a droopy tulip.

“Come now, Crystal, get some rest.” Doris gently eases her into bed. “You'll need all your energy for walking Lad later.”

Within a few minutes Crystal is asleep. Her makeup looks even worse now, like an ancient mask.

In the bed opposite Nana, there's an old lady with a pale, veiny face. Her head's propped up on her pillow and she's pretending to read the
Sun
newspaper, but I keep seeing her peering around it to get a closer look at us.

When Doris has settled Crystal into bed, she goes over and sits next to Sun Lady.

“Clara, can I introduce you to Josie and her family?” asks Doris.

Clara pretends that she's only just noticed us. She folds her paper carefully in two, as if it's something precious. Nana walks across to Clara, holding out her hand, but instead of shaking it Clara enfolds Nana's hands in hers, turning them over and inspecting them.

“Let me guess…soft and smooth, well looked after…nothing manual.” Clara touches the sleeve of Nana's purple cotton Indian shirt and studies her white trousers and tiny beads—Nana calls them “love beads.”

“Fashion designer?” guesses Clara.

Nana smiles and shakes her head.

“Writer then, or artist?”

“You got it!” smiles Nana.

“Your turn.” Clara offers Nana her hand. Clara's hands are rough and sore and swollen, like they've had a lifetime of work.

“I wouldn't like to say,” smiles Nana.

Then she does something very strange. She walks over to her bed and opens her toiletry bag. She sits back down next to Clara, opens her tube of lavender hand cream and smoothes it over Clara's skin.

“Well?” asks Clara. “What's the story of these hands?”

“Cleaning, scrubbing, washing…am I right?”

“Hole in one! In service to the great and the good and the not so good since I was fourteen years old.” Then she holds her hands up to her face and smells them. “Fancy someone like you, rubbing cream into my rough old hands.”

“Someone like me?” Nana laughs and scowls at the same time.

“You know,” Clara says in her sharp little voice. “Like one of them I clean for, like Madam over there.” She nods over to Crystal, who is gently snoring in the bed opposite.

“I've never in my life had a cleaner. I make it my business to clean up my own mess or live in it,” says Nana, slightly offended.

“I expect you do, though it's people like you that put me out of work. I wouldn't have minded cleaning for you.” Clara smiles.

I can't believe we've just arrived and Nana's getting to know people already. I wish I could make friends as easily as Nana. Until now, I've only had Millie, and Millie's got her orchestra friends, but me…I really just have Millie and…maybe Jidé Jackson.

Nana suddenly looks more tired than I have ever seen her before.

“Enough socializing now,” Doris says.

Doris seems to have a tiredness radar. She sees it too, that all Nana's energy has drained away. So we help her into bed; Nana takes a deep breath and her little body disappears under the bright white sheets. I wish I could go back to Suffolk and wrap her in her own purple shawl.

Now I feel like the man in Suffolk who couldn't say good-bye. Somehow it doesn't feel right to leave Nana here. I can't stand the thought of her dying in this place without any of us with her. I know she's putting on a brave face as she waves us good-bye. Trying to make us feel better for leaving her here among strangers. As I look back at her from the door of the ward, she turns away from us toward the outstretched arms of the great oak outside her window.

By the time we get to the bottom floor, we are all blubbing. There is a tall man waiting to get into the lift who has sorry brown eyes that droop like one of those St. Bernard dogs. The man has messy dark brown hair flopping over his face. We are all a bit embarrassed because we are crying so much, that kind of messy crying where your nose streams with snot, and we haven't even got a tissue among us, so we try to hurry away but, just as we are about to leave, Headscarf Lady stops us.

“Ah! Clem, this is the Levenson family I was telling you about.”

My dad can't look up, but the man rests his hand on his arm and I see Dad's back heave. Then the man touches my brother's head, smiles at Mum, Laila, and me, and steps into the lift.

“We'll talk tomorrow. My name's Clem,” he says, spreading his gentle smile over us like a warm breeze. I notice that his teeth are a bit crooked. Dad will like that. Clem bows his head toward the floor while he waits for the lift to close. Headscarf Lady offers us some tissues, which we take. She tells us that the man we have just met is Nana's consultant and that he's “the most wonderful person.”

“In fact, I have to admit to being completely in love with him. If it wasn't for the small matter of him being married with four children and thirty years younger than me, I might be in with a chance. What do you think?”

Headscarf Lady has made us smile. A few minutes ago I thought that would never happen again.

“Have you got cancer?” Krish asks her.

Mum shoots him one of those “How
could
you?” stares, but Headscarf Lady just nods.

“Where was your cancer?” asks Krish.

“In my breast,” she answers calmly.

“My nana's started there.”

Because she doesn't know what else to say, Headscarf Lady rummages under her desk and finds us all another chocolate.

The first thing I do when I wake up is check my mobile again for messages. Still nothing, so before breakfast I make my deal with Notsurewho Notsurewhat. If the smoke alarm doesn't go off this morning, which would be a minor miracle, Jidé Jackson won't be in school today. It doesn't go off, and now I'm sorry I even had that stupid idea. What is the matter with me? I don't know why I make these ridiculous deals, because actually I would really like to see him, no matter how embarrassing it is, him asking for my number and then not calling.

When I get into school the first thing I find out is that Jidé and Ben are out playing in the second round of a football tournament. I suppose I asked for that.