Mira in the Present Tense (28 page)

Dad opens up the blue box and takes out a navy blue beret covered in medals as Krish fires questions.

“Which war was Granddad Kit in? What did he do in the war? Who's this in the photograph?”

When Krish finds out that Granddad Kit was a gunner in Malta during the Second World War, he is transformed; his arms morph into machine guns shooting planes down from the ceiling of Nana's flat. I don't think that Nana Josie would approve, somehow.

“Can I have that painting of Granddad Kit eating fish and chips?” Krish asks, stopping suddenly with his arm-gun firing in the direction of the painting, which has always been there, but I suppose he's never really noticed it before. Actually, if you look closely, it's the fish eating the chips, not Granddad Kit. This is the painting where Claude the Newfoundland dog has a head bigger than Granddad's. Nana does some very funny paintings where she gets the perspective all wrong on purpose. The style is called “art naive,” but I think Nana really does see things a bit the way children do. I've done a painting of Laila in an art naive style where her head is too big for her shoulders and her arms and hands look really little in comparison to the size of her head. People say it does look a lot like Laila.

“Take the easel, Mira.”

I hear Nana's voice order me, as clearly as if she was standing right next to me in this room. I fold down the legs and drag it toward the car. Dad sees me struggling and takes one end and we carry it to the car together. Nana's easel is surprisingly heavy.

As soon as we arrive at the hospice, Krish runs up to Nana to show her Granddad Kit's things. He's happy again, full of energy, but when he approaches Nana's bed he sees how weak she's become. Dr. Clem keeps trying to get the right combination of drugs for her so she won't feel any pain. He has to keep changing her painkillers because the cancer pain is changing too…getting stronger.

You can tell when Nana has been in pain because her skin goes gray and her eyes sink into her. If she's had a bad night, she can hardly lift herself up off her pillows, but when she sees Krish, so enthusiastic, she tries really hard to look lively. Krish shows her the beret and the photos and the box and Nana puts on her glasses to read some of the letters from Granddad Kit.

“I'd forgotten about these love letters from your dad.” She looks up at my dad and smiles. I think of Jidé's secret note to me. I think it probably is my first-ever love letter.

For a moment Nana is lost in the photographs of her and Granddad Kit, black-and-white photographs taken on the Embankment with Toro, their bulldog.

“Look how young we were,” Nana whispers.

“You look like models out of a retro photo shoot. Errol Flynn and Audrey Hepburn!” Dad says.

Nana sighs as if to say, “Where has the time gone?”

“Can I have Granddad's beret then?” asks Krish.

“Of course you can,” she says, but I can tell she thinks Krish has made a strange choice. I understand him though. It fills a gap in the jigsaw and there's nothing Krish hates more than losing a piece of a jigsaw. He inspects the beret with all the medals on it and touches the textures on each one, as if trying to take hold of Granddad Kit.

“It's because I know you, Nana. I don't really need anything of yours, unless you want to give me something…but I never knew Granddad Kit or anything about you two together, when you were young.”

I think of Jidé…all he has of his sister and his mum and dad is a bit of cloth.

Nana holds Krish's hand for a minute and he looks at her with his bright blue eyes.

“Oh, and I forgot.” Krish lifts up Nana's painting for her to see. “I found something that both of you are in. You painted it and Granddad Kit's in it. Can I have it, Nana?”

“Yes, that one worked out well.” Her laugh trails away into a distant memory that belongs only to her. “It made Kit laugh too.”

For a while Nana seems to be lost in the past, until her eyes come to focus on Mum feeding Laila, whose little body relaxes as her hand falls, slow motion, through the air. She's still a bit weak after her illness. Nana picks up her thin wrist.

“Shame she's losing her fat bracelets. What did you choose for Laila?” Nana asks us.

Krish shows Nana the silver rattle on a blue ribbon.

“Apparently, that was my first rattle. Good choice, Krish.”

Nana tries to rattle it, but she doesn't even have the energy to make the little bells ring.

Laila has fallen fast asleep. Mum lifts her gently and lays her on the bed next to Nana. Nana's so small now, there is plenty of room. She puts her arm round Laila and sighs as if she's the happiest person in the world. Mum sits close to the bed in case Laila rolls over, because if she needed to, Nana would not be strong enough to pick her up by herself. Somehow Laila looks bigger than Nana; even after her illness she looks plumper…more alive.

My dad's Uncle James and Aunty Ella arrive. Krish and me call her “Aunty Elegant,” because she is. Ella delicately picks up Laila's rattle.

“What an exquisite old rattle,” she says, inspecting it.

“That was mine, Ella,” Uncle James tells her. “Mine had a blue ribbon and Josie's had a pink one, but I won't fight you for it, Josie!”

“I should think not, James,” Aunty Ella laughs.

The phone next to Nana's bed rings. Dad picks it up.

“Dan…?” He doesn't know who it is. “Ah! Yes,
Dan
…from Suffolk…Yes, yes, Dan…of course I do.”

Now he knows who it is.

“Can you talk to him?” whispers Dad to Nana, so as not to offend Dan if she doesn't want to speak. She hardly wants to talk to anyone these days.

Nana nods.

“I'm putting Josie on the phone for you. She might not be able to speak for very long, but she's listening.”

Dad holds the phone up to Nana's ear. I'm sitting right next to her so I can hear exactly what Dan's saying.

“Josie, I'm calling you from your cottage. I've been sitting in your garden all morning watching the flycatchers. You've got three chicks. They've come back to the same old pot, mouths open. Mum and Dad are in and out, feeding them all day long. I wish you could see them.”

Nana's eyes have welled up. She can't speak, but she passes the phone back to Dad and makes the shape of “thank you” with her lips. Aunty Ella and Uncle James look worried, so I tell them the news from Nana's garden.

“The flycatchers have arrived.”

You wouldn't think something like birds nesting could make you feel so happy and heartbroken at the same time, but it does. Dad speaks to Dan for a bit longer, thanks him for calling, and hangs up.

Nana closes her eyes. These days, that's the signal for us to leave. We all file past, kissing her. She doesn't open her eyes. I am the last to say good-bye.

“Did you take the easel?” Nana whispers through her tears.

I nod.

As we walk out into the corridor, we pass Question Mark. I stand in the doorway for a moment, watching him walk across the ward to Nana's bed. He pulls up the comfy chair, sits beside her, and holds her hand.

Question Mark feels me watching him and smiles up at me, a distant smile. Suddenly, I'm the stranger intruding on Nana and Question Mark…the stranger standing on the outside of their dying world.

When I get home, I run up to my room and call Jidé and we talk and talk and talk…

The smoke alarm squealing, Mum wafting her tea towel around like a lunatic, Laila spitting out great gobs of baby porridge, and Krish dribbling his football around the table…Just for a moment it almost feels like everything is back to normal, just an ordinary Sunday.

“How's it all going now at school?” Dad asks, trying to sound like it's just an off-the-cuff sort of question.

“Yeah, all right. I like the writing group we're doing.”

“What are you writing about?”

I'm not going to say Nana because somehow I think that would worry him.

“Next week we've got to take in an object or something and we have to write about the object as if it's got a personality.”

“Ah, yes…personification, I remember it well.”

“Pat Print called it something else. I can't remember what…something about fallacy.”

“I know what I'd take in, this
blasted
alarm!” shouts Mum as she stands on a chair and nearly topples off, reaching up for the red button of the smoke alarm and finally silencing it.

“Language, Uma!” grins Dad.

“I thought I'd take in Nana's charm.”

“Good idea. Go and get it then, and I'll fix it on for you,” says Dad cheerily as I collide with Krish and his football in the doorway.

“Do you have to be so annoying?”

“Where else am I supposed to play?” he huffs.

“I'll take you out later for a kick around,” offers Dad.

“Yes!” shouts Krish, punching the air and shooting me that look as if he's got one over on me.

“As if I care,” I mumble.

I run upstairs to my room, and there's the bracelet still sitting in the orange tissue paper on my old-fashioned school desk that Nana gave me…but the charm…I'm sure I put it safely in the ink well. Maybe it's rolled off. So I scramble down underneath, flattening my body against the floor to get a better look, but it's too gloomy to see properly. I feel every inch of the carpet near my desk, but it's not there. I'm starting to get hot and sweaty and I have an empty, sick feeling in my belly. I cast around the room for a glimpse of it, looking in the same places over and over again, but they are always empty.

“Come on, Mira!” shouts Dad from downstairs.

How can I tell Dad that I've lost Nana's charm?

“Let's do it later,” I say, hanging on the banisters.

“Why not now?”

“Because…I can't find it,” I whisper.

We search all day, everywhere. Mum even empties the vacuum cleaner bag in case it's been hoovered up.

“Dad! You
promised
you'd have a kick around with me,” moans Krish.