No! I Don’t Need Reading Glasses! (28 page)

As we started to tuck in, Penny cocked her head, listening. ‘Remarkably silent,' she said. ‘What happened to the …'

‘
Sshhh!
' I hissed, hoping Sharmie wasn't eavesdropping in her garden.

It was quite a relief to get the whole miserable story off my chest, and Penny shook her head, rocking with silent laughter. ‘The granny chimes! My God! You must have felt awful!'

‘Imagine if some dreadful neighbour had destroyed something in New York I'd given Gene to remind him of me and …'

‘Don't even think about it,' said Penny. ‘Much better in her bedroom, anyway. Now, what are you going to about the installation?'

‘Do you think I could suggest keeping it in the garden?'
I said. ‘Well out of sight? I was thinking I could put it round the side here – you could only see it if you were at the end of the garden looking back.'

‘But would it be able to cope with the rain and wind?' said Penny.

‘Hopefully not,' I said. ‘But heaven knows what Sharmie will think when she looks out of her kitchen window and sees this ghastly thing from a Stephen King novel peering in at her.'

‘Serves her right for putting up the—,' here Penny held up some imaginary chimes and flicked her finger against them and said, ‘Ting!'

‘If only Gene were around I could say I'd moved it because of health and safety and the risk he'd put his eye out on the barbed wire.'

‘Bung it in the garden,' said Penny. ‘James can't expect you to have it in the living room. Now,' she said, as I brought out the coffee. ‘The Residents Association … and the plans …'

We decided to have a meeting next week and get the councillors and the local MP along too. We're going to ask Father Emmanuel whether we can hold the meeting in his church, and leaflet the entire area so that we get masses of people along. I said I'd chair it, and we'd get various people to speak for three minutes each. Like Ned, who'd say how important the tree was, and maybe one of the more respectable drug dealers to say how crucial it was to have somewhere to exercise their slavering dogs (we definitely want to make use of
the drug dealers as they add diversity and authenticity). Then Brad from next door can talk about other legal aspects, and apparently Tim knows something about Open Spaces … then I'll do a kind of round-up of the whole thing, and there'll be questions and it'll all last about an hour. I'm sure there's a good enough story for the local paper.

‘I'm absolutely shattered,' I said, as we wound the whole thing up, and Penny got up to go.

‘Well, I'm not surprised!' said Penny. ‘You've only just got back from New York, where you've had an exhausting time, you're knocked for six by the news about Archie, even though it turns out he's now okay, and you've had a long flight and jetlag and you've had a fall – what do you expect?'

The awful truth is that I expect to sail through things like this. I always used to sail through them. I was renowned for always coping and soldiering on, whatever happened to me. But sometimes now I actually feel my age … isn't it dreadful? Indeed, this morning when I walked into the kitchen in my slippers I was aware of a funny rustling noise. Then I worked out that it was me – shuffling!
Shuffling!
Shuffler Sharp! I never thought I'd shuffle. Made a resolution in future to Lift My Feet.

Just had a text from Louis, asking for my email address. Very flattering! Might wait a couple of days before I reply, just to pretend I'm not as desperate as I am. Next, a Skype from
Jack, wanting to know if I got back safely. He sounded just as shattered as me. They'd been relying on me to look after Gene and had got an enormous amount of work organised to do while I was there, and now they're having to get temporary childcare and they've got some Dutch girl, recommended by a friend, who's over there doing a PhD and needs extra money. She'll only be there for a couple of weeks, but obviously my leaving has put them in a bit of a difficult situation.

How easy it would be if only they were here! I could just pop over and we'd all be happy as bees.

Michelle came back from Poland in a furious mood. Apparently Maciej has broken off their engagement and she found out that he
does
have a new girlfriend and she went round to her house and threw water all over her. Doesn't sound very edifying, but it obviously made her feel better. She didn't have a good word to say about him.

‘'E ees just seely leetle boy. I am better wizout 'eem. I 'av 'ad lucky escape. And 'e snore,' she added. ‘And ees feet, zey are not good.'

‘Perhaps you need to look for an older man,' I said. ‘More mature.'

She rummaged in the fridge for a Yakult, took one out, and stomped upstairs.

No word from Louis despite my having sent my email address about three hours ago. Oh dear, I'm starting to feel like Michelle. I thought I'd never have to suffer all that ‘Will he write? Won't he write?' ever again. And now look at me!

Sylvie rang to say that Archie is still out of bounds, but they're hoping he'll be up for visitors in a week or so. In the meantime, I've forgotten to mention James and his horrible installation.

‘I love it!' I lied when I rang him. ‘I just wish I could have it in the middle of the living room, but …'

‘Oh, no, you can't do that,' said James. ‘I thought it would be good just outside the French windows so everyone can see it.'

‘That's a thought,' I said, non-commitally. ‘Let's talk about it. You see, I was thinking, there's that kind of dead area in the passage alongside the house and I thought if I painted that bit of back wall white, it would really show up from the end of the garden. It would look as if it was in its
own private exhibition space …'

I congratulated myself on this phrase. And I could see that the idea had made James think.

‘But no one would see it,' he said, dubiously.

‘Oh yes they would, because whenever anyone went into the garden, I'd show them,' I said firmly. ‘It really deserves its own setting.'

I could hardly believe my ears.
Its own setting!
Sometimes I think I should have been a used-car salesman. By this time, I was starting to believe my own patter.

Sharmie rang this morning saying that there's been a muddle with childcare this afternoon, and she's got an urgent appointment, and if she were to drop Alice over, could I possibly look after her just for an hour or so?

Felt extremely touched and flattered by this request. And delighted of course, to have Alice over. No substitute for Gene, of course – little girls are so different from little boys – but any tiny person in a storm.

And today was made even more wonderful by the arrival, finally, of an email from Louis. He told me all what he'd been up to – investigating some Mafia story in the IT industry – and some party he'd been to – ‘but none of the women were up to your standard' – and ended with the news that next month he's got to come over to see his mother again in Oxford, because she has some grim hospital appointment, and he says he can't wait to meet up again. He ended, simply, ‘xL', but that was good enough for me. I spent the rest of the day dancing on air.

Alice arrived on my doorstep with a rather white face, long fair hair held in place with a diamanté hairband, clutching not only an enormous stuffed rabbit but also a very pretty sparkly bag in which ‘I keep my jewels,' she
explained as she came in. She was wearing white tights, a very pretty green-and-yellow dress and pink ballet shoes, which she immediately took off in the hall. Naturally I said nothing about it being a shoes-on house. I'm not a monster.

She clung to her mother and didn't want her to leave, but I knelt down to her level, feeling the scabs on my knees cracking as I did so, and said, ‘Now, you and I are going to do something very special for Mummy when she's gone … it'll be a surprise for her when she gets back … it's our little secret,' and then I whispered in her ear that we were going to dress her up as a princess and she started to smile.

Sharmie played along. ‘What are you two plotting?' she said, pretending to try to overhear our conversation. Alice smiled and said, ‘Go away, Mommy, it's a special secret!'

I hadn't prepared for this but soon we were up in my bedroom, going through the drawers, and finding an Indian shawl which turned into a long skirt, a sequined scarf that we tied into a top, another bright red stole to tie into a belt, and, having laden her with every brooch, bangle, bracelet, necklace, and earring we could scrape up from my jewellery box, and put her hair up with pins, we managed to transform her into the prettiest little princess I'd ever seen. Something I could never do with Gene.

Alice looked in the mirror, completely delighted by what she saw. Then she took my hand and said in a very serious voice. ‘You have any make-up?'

‘Of course!' I said, and let her loose on lipstick, blusher, eyeliner, and we even managed to pull off a winning stroke,
a special Indian red dot between her eyebrows. With a spray of extremely expensive scent, she was finished.

After ten, when the bell rang, I'd just taken a couple of photographs of her (at her insistence) while she was admiring herself in my bedroom mirror upstairs, so I went down and let Sharmie in.

‘Pretend not to recognise her,' I whispered. Then ‘Alice!' I called. ‘It's your mum!'

Alice came downstairs very slowly, and Sharmie played along.

‘My, oh, my!' she said, putting her hands into the air. ‘What a beautiful little princess! But where,' she said, turning to me, with a worried expression, ‘is my Alice? You haven't lost her have you? I did tell you to be very careful of her.'

‘It's
me
, Mom,' shouted the Alice Princess, shrieking with laughter and running down the stairs towards her. ‘It's
me
!'

‘No!' said Sharmie. ‘It can't be!
You're
the little princess?'

‘Can I show Daddy?' pleaded Alice. ‘Can I show Dad? Huh? Huh?'

They all went off with promises to return everything once Daddy had seen the vision of loveliness and I was left with that wondrous, wonderful feeling that I remember so well with Gene … the feeling of fulfilment. Sometimes I think that being a granny allows you to be a child yourself, but without any of the unpleasant feelings of powerlessness. Creating something with a child, letting your imagination roam, whether making a prison with a six-year-old boy, or
turning a little girl into a princess – it's the most glorious, inventive and stimulating feeling in the world.

Well, I think so, anyway.

Finally got the all-clear to visit Archie and was, curiously, rather dreading seeing him again. It's odd, but I'd been so keyed up to expect his death that in a funny way – and I wouldn't admit this to anyone except my diary, not even to Penny – I rather resented the fact that he was still alive. I wonder if anyone else ever has that feeling? I mean I'd prepared myself for the grief, the funeral, the memories, and now here we were stuck in the same old pattern. I also felt, like Sylvie, very sad that he'd been so much forced to survive. I think it was that, selfishly, I was longing to grieve for what I'd lost. But, in the circumstances, I couldn't.

When I arrived at Eventide at lunchtime, I was told to sit in the corridor because the nurse was fussing about him in his room – taking his pulse, checking his blood pressure, draining away what little hope of a peaceful death was left inside him, leaving a hollow shell. I stared bleakly ahead of me. On Archie's door there was a small window set in, presumably so people can spy on him during the night to see he isn't doing anything naughty like dying peacefully on their watch. On the wall opposite me, there was a reproduction of Monet's Water Lilies, which I was trying to look at properly despite being constantly interrupted by the
passage of old ducks in wheelchairs being steered along the corridor, no doubt on their way to a collage class or some other distraction from the business of dying.

‘Coming with us, dear?' said one nurse to me, as she sailed by. ‘You'll have some fun. Armchair Aerobics. Everyone's welcome.'

The look of horror that crossed my face as I realised she'd mistaken me for a resident – or ‘guest' as she was probably trained to call me – must have struck her because she immediately corrected herself. ‘Oh, sorry, love,' she said. ‘But do come, anyway, if you'd like.'

Armchair Aerobics? She must be joking. Did I really look like an Eventide resident? I got up to look at myself in a mirror, but couldn't find one. No doubt they keep mirrors away from the oldies in case they all drop dead the moment they see the ghastly shrivelled sights that stare back at them from the glass. However, as I got up, I did notice something odd. The hem of the skirt of my dress. I frowned. Surely it didn't have a border, this dress? I looked again. And then, to my horror and mortification, I realised I'd put the dress on inside-out. No wonder the nurse thought I lived there! Fumbling at the back of my neck, I could feel the label on the outside. Rushing into the nearest loo, I finally found a mirror. Briefly, I panicked that the facelift might suddenly have dropped and a kind of plastic surgeon's midnight bell might have been struck, like in
Cinderella
, and all my features had suddenly slumped back to how they used to be. But no. My new face was still intact. Applying a great deal more
make-up and giving my hair a good comb, I made sure I looked emphatically like a visitor before I emerged into the corridor again. Whew! One moment later and they might have injected me with some kind of sedative and before I knew it I'd be slumped on a commode in a Sunset room, gawping at daytime television.