No! I Don’t Need Reading Glasses! (23 page)

Very grim time at the B&B so I'm delighted that next time I shall stay with Sylvie. It was one of those places so filled with knick-knacks you didn't know where to move. Every chair in my room was occupied by a ceramic pierrot doll with painted tears running down its face, and the box of tissues was covered by a quilted chintz case – to match
the cover for the lavatory paper in the bathroom. In a bowl lay some very dingy-looking shavings of wood impregnated with a sickly scent that pervaded the room, and all the drawer handles had plump red tassels hanging from them.

The pillows were those dreadful ones carved out of foam, utterly unyielding, like sponge boulders, and the sheets were made of some synthetic material so that within minutes of lying down one was drenched in sweat. On the bedside table was an electric clock with a blinking red light that I had to cover with a pair of knickers to stop it keeping me awake, and outside, early in the morning, the country road turned into a motorway for farm vehicles, with agricultural machinery grinding up and down.

The owner was, as they always are, an utterly delightful woman with a disabled husband who was proud as punch of her ‘home from home' as she called it. All of which made me feel like an ungrateful old sourpuss when I thought of how much I'd loathed my night there.

To make up for my vicious thoughts I was effusive in my praise of the breakfast, which consisted of tinned mushrooms, bacon swimming in a white watery residue and scrambled eggs which must have been cooked the week before.

Before I left for London, I popped in on Archie again. He was staring at the paper, sightlessly. He suddenly pointed to a picture of a tree. ‘Okay!' he said, excitedly. ‘Okay!' I looked at the picture. It was of an oak tree.

‘I think you mean “oak”,' I said, gently putting my hand on his shoulder.

‘Oak!' he cried. ‘Oak!'

So you see it's pretty painful for all of us. Oh dear, I'm starting to cry as I write. It's difficult not to. Does one just get more emotional as one gets older? Sometimes I think I'm turning into a tough old boot and the next minute I'm bursting into tears at the slightest thing. Pull yourself together, Marie.

Of course it may sound very cold, put like this, but unless you've lived alongside someone who's getting Alzheimer's you can't conceive how gradual it is. For a couple of years you can see the same old person shining through, and the forgetfulness, rambling conversation, muddle and confusion are just rather annoying bits of nonsense that surround them. It's as if you had a really good friend who started to wear odder and odder clothes, until you could hardly recognise them, and yet you could still see little bits of them peeping out between the hats and veils occasionally, and still recognise them by their walk and the way they got up and sat down.

And then one day you realise the person has completely disappeared. Gone. Well, they've never quite gone, but the glimpses you get of them are so rare that they might as well not be there. Indeed, one never has a moment when one can actually mourn the time they disappeared because in a way they're still disappearing. So very sad.

It's a kind of death, but a very slow death. I mean, if Archie had changed from being the old Archie on a Tuesday, to the new Archie on a Wednesday, I think I would probably have had a nervous breakdown. But as it all happened so gradually, over a period of years, I never had a single moment to actually feel the loss of him slowly disappearing. It's hard to grasp.

Finally got my act together and booked tickets to New York.

A bulb went in the hall light. As it's a high ceiling I asked Michelle to hold the ladder while I clambered up.

‘My fazair 'e fall off a larder,' she said.

‘How could your father fall off a larder?' I said.

Eventually we understood each other. If anything, her English seems to get worse the longer she stays here. Perhaps she's not going to English classes at all and instead working as a call girl in the West End to fund her product habit. Last year I would have been worried sick. Now, frankly, I think she's old enough to look after herself.

But thinking about falling off a larder, and also with that ever-present faint but acute fear that the aeroplane might crash on the way over, and with the existence of Chrissie and Gene, I decided that, before I left, I should remake my will.
No good my disapproving of Archie's lawn, it's
my
lawn I ought to be concentrating on. It looks like a forest. Pouncer can hardly be seen above the grass.

Well, I've just got back from the solicitor's. He's going to make a rough draft of the will. I've got a great solicitor – a real old-fashioned one who wears a suit and a tie and sits in a dilapidated office surrounded by papers. He's called Mr Rankle, he's got a white moustache, and all I can hope is that he lasts long enough to do all the paperwork before he croaks. The man doesn't even have a computer on his desk. God knows how he copes in this day and age. He may not actually have a quill pen, but he looks as if he knows how to use one.

We chatted a bit about his family and mine, and then he drew a clean sheet of paper towards him and said: ‘Well … let's get started …' and off we went.

He kept saying things like, ‘But let's say the unthinkable happens and Jack dies before you …' or ‘Let's say the unthinkable happens and Jack has a nervous breakdown and
his character changes completely and he develops a wild gambling habit …' or ‘Let's say the unthinkable happens and Chrissie develops multiple sclerosis and starts having an affair with someone …' He outlined so many unthinkable disastrous scenarios, all of which he assured me had happened to clients of his over the years, that I couldn't help laughing.

‘Can we safeguard perhaps against my having a nervous breakdown, going bonkers and throwing all my money away in the street, or giving it to a young African gigolo I picked up in the Gambia?'

‘Interesting point,' he said. ‘Exactly the same thing happened to a client of mine some years ago. It's always useful, in such an eventuality, to have someone up one's sleeve to whom one is prepared to give power of attorney.'

I was laughing so much at this stage that he started giggling too, and try as he might he couldn't stop. I suppose it's the subject of death that is, at its heart, so frightening that one either blanks it from one's mind or finds it all, as I do, absolutely hilarious.

‘Have you made any plans for your funeral?' he said eventually, after we'd made what's called an Advance Directive which gives Jack the power to tell the doctors to switch me off when I'm ready to go – I do seem to be obsessed by this.

I said I'd had quite enough of all this death, and I'd think about it over the weekend. Funerals. I'm torn between wanting burial in a recycled cardboard box in a quiet glade with no fuss, and a majestic show of pomp, circumstance and plumed
horses at Westminster Abbey. So I'm leaving it all to Jack to do exactly what he wants.

That's probably the best.

After all, one can't control the world from beyond the grave. (And nor should one try to.)

Penny is very worried because we haven't heard anything from the council about the petition, and there's been no more news about the plans. We don't know whether they've been approved or not. They should have looked at them by now. James has asked Ned if he can find out anything, and according to his spies the developer now knows about the signatures and has submitted a slightly different plan. Not so different, however, that it needs further consultation with the residents. We are really worried about this. We feel that the council's in league with the developer and they've got him to make minor changes so our petition will be rendered worthless. I bet someone in the council is in his pay. Or perhaps he's promised to give the new parking spaces to the councillors. I wouldn't put it past him. Slimy old thing.

I've booked to go to New York next week, and today James came over to look at the house because he's going to take care of it and Pouncer while I'm away. Michelle has gone to Poland to see Maciej for a couple of weeks. I suppose partly to see him and partly to try to keep him in line. But I fear the worst.

I am of course terrified that in the three weeks I'm away gangs of drug-dealers will break in and steal my computer, Pouncer will perish after being attacked by a herd of oriental cockroaches, pipes will burst and the few remaining plants in the garden will die from drought. It took ages to explain everything to James, but he took notes and I made him go in and out of the house switching the burglar alarm on and off to make sure he understood it all.

‘I've got a big surprise for you when you get back,' he said, mysteriously.

‘Oh, is it the artwork?' I said, as enthusiastically as I could.

‘I'm not telling,' he said. ‘You'll just have to wait and see.'

‘Are you and Ned getting married?' I suggested.

‘That seems to be less and less likely,' he said, rather sadly. ‘The problem is that the more I wean him off his vegan diet, the more he seems to change. He ate a bit of haddock the other day, and then I caught him eyeing up a woman in the Uxbridge Road.'

‘A woman? I thought he was gay as a Christmas tree,' I said.

‘Hmm … I'm not totally certain. Apparently he was married when he was young … I'm not sure he isn't bisexual, which does make things difficult. Now you're not to go stealing him off me,' he said, half-jokingly. ‘Anyway, he doesn't look like a Christmas tree, does he?'

‘No, he looks like a silver birch,' I said. ‘At least that's what Penny and I think.'

James laughed. ‘What tree would you call Penny?' he asked.

‘She's a cherry tree,' I said. ‘Not a very good shape but liable to burst into surprisingly lovely blossom now and again. You're definitely a pine of some kind.'

‘Tall and boring, darling, don't rub it in,' said James, ruefully.

‘Not at all. Constant, smelling lovely, always green …' Not much else you can say about pines.

‘Well I think you're a plane tree,' he said. ‘You're shady – in a good way – strong, reliable, and a real boon to the urban environment – particularly with all this work you're doing on the hotel.'

‘Oh, thank you!' I said.

And funnily enough I
was
rather pleased. I love plane trees and always have. The other day I was walking down the road with my paints and easel, having just completed the September Season of the Doomed Trees, and there was some mad – and I mean mad – Indian woman in a bright red and yellow sari with very long, curved fingernails, standing by a plane tree systematically picking off its bark.

‘Stop that!' I said. ‘You'll kill it.'

‘No, it is good …' she said, turning her obsessed plane-bark-picking eyes on me. ‘It likes it.'

‘It doesn't like it!' I said tersely. ‘If you go on like that I'll report you to environmental health!'

She slunk away.

Most odd.

Spent the entire day packing. I know – it's ridiculous because I'm not going for a couple of weeks. But the older I get the earlier and earlier I start packing. I used to throw something into a suitcase the night before and that was that, but now I get my bag out from the elephant cupboard ages before I'm due to go. I've been to a toy shop and bought Gene the most enormous selection of dinosaur-making kits, books of origami, metal puzzles … all things we can do in the flat, or apartment as they call it. I also bought a kite, in the vain hope that it might be a windy day in Central Park. Then there's the virtual chemist's shop I have to take with me every time I leave home these days. There's practically no room for my clothes.

Looked at my passport photograph and I have to say I do look different after the facelift. I suppose I should have got a new one taken. Hope they don't refuse me entry because I look too young. Wouldn't that be awful? Awful and immensely satisfying at the same time.

David rang and asked if he could drop off some remotecontrol helicopter he's bought for Gene for me to take over. When I opened the door to him, he did a double-take as he entered, staring at me.

‘Golly, you're looking well!' he said. ‘What's happened? You look absolutely marvellous!'

I told him about the facelift and he kept sneaking little looks at me. ‘You look just like you did when we first met!' he said, sentimentally. ‘Takes me right back … we did have some fun, didn't we? Sometimes?'

‘We certainly did!' I said. But then I asked him how he thought they were getting on in New York, and he said, ‘Hmm. I thought they'd be back before now, I must say. But there's still time. Though I'm afraid to say whenever I've spoken to Jack he seems to be having a great time, and he's working really hard and Gene's loving his school now.'

It was the last thing I wanted to hear.

Feel really bad that I haven't been down to see Archie recently. Sylvie says I mustn't worry at all, and as he hardly knows who anyone is it won't make a lot of difference. I know it won't, but I still feel I ought to go and see him, for my own sake, really. Anyway, I'll go the minute I get back.

Been so busy packing and changing my mind about what to take, I haven't had a moment to write my diary. Off tomorrow. I've had to pay a fortune for my travel insurance. After a certain age no insurer wants to touch you with a barge pole. They imagine that the moment you're sixty-five you start getting ill and falling off ladders and costing them a fortune, and of course they're absolutely right.

On my way to the hairdresser to get a good cut for the trip, I went to the newsagent to tell them when I wanted the papers cancelled while I'm away. Afterwards, blow me, I couldn't find where I'd parked the car. I walked down the street I thought I'd parked it in, and then back down the other side, and it was getting later and later and I was sure the hairdresser would have given up on me, and I kept pressing the button on my keys hoping that one of the cars would start blinking encouragingly at me, as if it were saying hi to a friend, but
nothing
. All the cars turned their backs on me. It was like being sent to Coventry. I tried my mobile to let the hairdresser know I'd be late, but the battery had run out, and I was forced to walk home so I could ring her from there. As I got to my front gate I spotted my car on the other side of the road. I'd completely forgotten that I'd walked to the newsagent. Honestly! What's so weird about getting older is that you can remember the tiniest detail about the party dress you wore when you were three – or I can anyway – but can't remember where you parked your own car a quarter of an hour ago.