No! I Don’t Need Reading Glasses! (6 page)

‘Oh, I'm sure you have them in France,' I said, knowledgeably. ‘Lots of them. But France is much richer in wildlife than England. Here we must preserve them. No, here we are lucky to have black beetles in our kitchens. Particularly endangered species.'

She looked doubtful. ‘Perhaps you're thinking of a cockroach?' I said, the penny dropping. ‘Because it's
not
a cockroach,' I added with certainty. I'd seen plenty of them in every lavatory I entered in Morocco when I went on a wild trip with Marion just after we'd both left school. ‘Cockroaches are
brown
.'

I remember once going to a loo in Tangiers and counting twenty-nine of the beastly things inside, all grinning at me and waving their antennae about.

I might put a saucer of milk out for it if comes back tonight, and perhaps some crisps, but I am not sure what endangered species like to eat so have decided against the crisps.

Shut the kitchen door in case Pouncer takes a fancy to the scuttling beast. Even though he's old in years, he can't resist anything scampering about on the floor.

I know it's only a few weeks since I made the List of Things to Do, but I don't feel I've got to grips with it yet. Time is speeding by. Honestly, within what will seem like only a few weeks, it'll be Christmas yet again. How on earth does one fill one's days? I'm at a loss to know. Before I've blinked, another week has raced by.

I suppose everything takes a bit longer these days, but not
that
long, surely? My days seem to be spent doing maintenance. Maintenance, maintenance, maintenance. Sometimes it's me who needs maintaining – a round of doctors to see about this and that, a strange patch of eczema at the back of my knee, blood tests, visiting the optician for new glasses … then there are the exercises we all have to do these days to stop our limbs seizing up like one of those clockwork drummers. You know the sort. They work perfectly well and then suddenly one day they just stick, frozen, as they beat – or rather don't beat – their drum. And however much you wind them to the ultimate point or tap them firmly on the side of the table, they just refuse to move and sit there, mid-beat. I'm starting to feel like that in the mornings. I wish I could have a change of oil, like a car, to get everything lubricated again.

The other day Gene said to me, ‘Granny, do you go up the stairs slowly because you
like
it?'

Apparently it's all down to the little pads between one's joints wearing out, or shrivelling up – I imagine them like those old India rubbers you find at the back of drawers. All firm and bouncy when you originally put them away, but, when discovered years later, dry and cracked and unmalleable.

Not only that but there's also all the checking up on one's friends. Whenever anyone says they've got to have a scan or an X-ray or an appointment to see an oncologist, I rush to the diary and put in the date, to remind me to ring them up within hours to find out exactly how they got on.

And apart from all
that
there's the maintenance of wherever one lives. In my case, it's a hundred-year-old house. If it's not a slate off the roof, it's a drip on the upstairs tap, or the front door suddenly sticks because it's swollen by the rain. If it's not the draughts, it's the blistering paintwork, and if it's not the little holes in the shower-head getting bunged up with limescale, it's the lino that starts buckling in the kitchen – signifying that there might well be a leak from the dishwasher.

How people with jobs manage to cope I just don't know. Indeed, how I used to cope when I worked full-time as a teacher, I don't know either. Sometimes entire days are simply taken up with fixing, collecting, repairing, buying replacements – well, just
maintaining
. And when you go to bed at night, you feel you've achieved nothing because all you've done is rush around like a mad thing, just to stay in exactly the same place as you were before.

I was over at Jack and Chrissie's yesterday, picking up Gene from school and looking after him until Chrissie got back from some essential shopping before they fly off – and when she got back she made me a cup of tea. She was pink with the cold. Golly February's a cruel month. I took the chance to reapply my make-up – I always like to look my best, but particularly when immaculate old Chrissie's about – and as I was doing so, my lipstick rolled off my lap onto the floor. Chrissie said to Gene, ‘Pick that up for Granny! Don't make her bend down!' and I had a completely different vision of myself as I must appear to Chrissie – rather less agile than I actually feel.

And then Jack came back from work and they started discussing a trip they'd made to the Monument. Jack said, ‘You must go, Mum, it's really interesting! It's where the Great Fire of London started,' and Gene said, ‘Yes and you go up all these steps to the top!' and Chrissie said, ‘You can see all over London!' and then Jack turned to Chrissie and said, ‘Might be a bit much for Mum, don't you think?' and then added, ‘all those steps,' which I thought was pretty odd and then I heard Chrissie saying, ‘Oh no, I'm sure she could manage them!'

Manage
them! I'm sure no one said that about me when I was fifty!

Of course it's these little incidents I'll miss when they're
in New York. Just the small encounters and closeness and estrangements and instincts and understandings that make relationships. How on earth am I going to cope without them?

It's not as if I even have Archie to keep me company, now, really. He's just a little bit too peculiar. Tomorrow Im off to see him, and I have to admit I'm rather dreading it.

Just back from seeing Archie. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. I don't know what to do. I'm so worried about him. The first thing that made me nervous, as I turned the car into the drive, was to find him sitting on one of the stone lions that guards his front door,
in his pyjamas
. He hadn't shaved and his hair was sticking up on end. As it was midday and raining it was particularly odd. And then he greeted me as if I'd been there all the time – there was no surprise or pleasure in his seeing me.

I parked the car, got out quickly and went up to him. ‘Darling,' I said, putting my arms round him and kissing him. ‘How are you?'

‘I've lost my key,' he said. ‘I went out this morning to find Philippa in the garden and now I can't get back inside. I've been looking everywhere.'

‘But Philippa's dead, sweetie!' I said.

‘I know she's dead, Marie,' said Archie, looking at me as if I were mad. ‘For God's sake, what are you talking about?'

‘But you said you'd gone out to look for her.'

‘I didn't. ‘I said I'd come out to look for Hardy, my dog, in case you'd forgotten …'

‘But you said Philippa.'

‘I didn't!' he said. ‘Honestly, Marie, are you going deaf?'

I said nothing. Then, ‘But what about the key?' I asked. ‘Have you lost the key? Have you locked yourself out?'

‘Yes,' he said. ‘And I know there's a place where it's hidden somewhere but I can't remember where it is.'

‘It's under the fourth flower pot outside the back door,' I said, leading him round the house. We found the key, then went back to the front of the house and opened the door. It was still drizzling. ‘Now come on, go and have a hot shower and get yourself dressed. You must be freezing. It's nearly lunchtime.'

I fed Hardy who'd been inside all morning and was so desperate to get out he'd done a poo on the kitchen floor. So I cleared it up. I made lunch and got out the cutlery and plates to lay the table, but when I opened the cupboards, I found that dirty plates had simply been stacked up as if they were clean, and there was congealed food on every one of them. I knew Mrs Evans wouldn't have left things in such a state, but she usually comes on Tuesdays and Saturdays, and today was Friday, so obviously Archie had just piled the plates away without washing them up. There were clean knives and forks in the drawers – but also ones with butter smeared on them, and bits of cabbage attached.

Just as I was staring at these revolting specimens, Archie came into the kitchen, having got dressed and, peculiarly, as we were in the house, wearing his loden coat. ‘You look as if you've seen a ghost,' he said. ‘What's the matter?'

‘These,' I said, pointing to the dirty plates. ‘How did they get put away like this?'

Archie appeared amazed. ‘Well, that's disgusting,' he said. ‘Who can have done that? Mrs Evans … oh, dear. She's not up to her usual standards. I'm thinking of sacking her, you know.'

After lunch, Archie made the coffee – I only just prevented him from putting salt into his – and we decided to go into the library and do
The Times
crossword, which Archie is very good at. We got to the word – ‘amphora', and Archie said he'd look it up in the dictionary. He got up and pulled it down from the bookshelf and sat down.

‘It's a Roman vessel,' he said, as he opened the book.

‘I know it is,' I said. ‘And so do you. It's a well-worn crossword answer, like “retsina”. Why are you looking it up?'

But he'd started poring over words.

‘It's Greek,' he said. ‘A two-handled vessel for holding wine, oil, etc…. amphitheatre … amphibian … yes, amphi means double … can live on sea and land … but ampho … that's different … amphitryon … the host, giver of dinners … that's interesting … you see “amphi” meaning double, where is the meaning in that … “ampho” on the other hand … ah, the two handles …'

‘Yes, but what's 6 across, now beginning with “p”?' I asked,
tetchily. But Archie wasn't to be deflected from his task. It was as if he'd forgotten about the crossword puzzle altogether. He started looking up ‘Double … ah, yes, from the Latin here, Duo meaning “two” …'

I couldn't tear him away, and even though I got up and suggested we went for a walk while it was still light, he seemed transfixed. He pushed me away rather crossly when I tried to take the dictionary from him, and just carried on reading out the words like an automaton.

Eventually I gave up and went out on my own, feeling very lonely. It was nice that Hardy came with me, and licked my hand as if he knew something was wrong. We didn't go far – just to the end of the field outside the house and back, and I felt sad that Gene would miss all the wonderful English countryside when he was in New York, the damp aroma of the fields and leaves, the snowdrops, the faint smell of wood smoke, the sound of pigeons chuckling to themselves as they settled down for the night …

When I got back, half an hour later, Archie was still studying the dictionary, now on to ‘mitriform … shaped like a mitre … from the Greek “
mitra
” a type of headdress worn by a woman …'

Eventually he stopped, but he'd been preoccupied for far longer than usual.

‘Let's go for a walk!' he said, brightly. I didn't think it was worth explaining that I'd just come back from one, so out we went again, even though it was now getting quite dark. ‘Doesn't seem as if Hardy wants to go out,' he said as
he tried to persuade him through the door. ‘That's odd. He usually loves a walk about this time.'

I didn't say I'd just taken him out, but after moving around a bit in the open air, Archie seemed a bit more like his old self. Although we'd been silent as we wandered down an avenue of beeches, he started singing ‘Oh My Darling Clementine'.

‘Our song, Philippa,' he said affectionately squeezing my hand. But of course it wasn't
our
song. I just smiled at him. We walked on, over the stile and into the darkening wood. We sat on a bench.

‘Our tree, darling,' he said.

And there he was right. That old beech was indeed ‘our tree'. It was here, several years ago, that we'd sat one glorious summer's day, and he'd put his arm round me and we'd just sat, staring out, happy to be together, when he'd said, ‘Would you like to get married, Marie? To me, I mean!'

I hadn't known what to say. I was so touched at his suggestion and yet at the same time I felt a wave of anxiety. Marriage hadn't been very happy for me, and I didn't want to do anything that would rock the boat with Archie. I must have blushed and stammered because he looked at me, affectionately and then said, ‘Don't worry. If you wanted to, of course we could. I just wanted you to know that of course it's in my mind. If you want.'

‘Well, it's not that I don't want to be married to you,' I said. ‘But marriage is really for people when they're going to have children, isn't it? And then we'd have to remake all
our wills … making sure that our children would still get what they should get … and to be honest, I don't know how Sylvie or Jack would react …'

‘Sylvie would hate it,' laughed Archie. ‘She's a daddy's girl. And she's never got over her mother's death. So it's probably best not. But I just wanted you to know, darling, that I feel married to you, even if we're not.'

‘And I feel married to you, even though we're not,' I said.

‘At least until one of us goes bonkers,' added Archie realistically. ‘Any moment I start going funny, I do not want you devoting your life to me, and you've got to make me a promise that if it happens, you won't. I don't want any sacrifices, okay?'

‘I'd find it hard not to,' I remembered saying. ‘But I'll promise, if you promise me the same if I start losing my marbles.'

‘Our special marriage tree!' Archie had said, looking up at the branches, pulling me close and turning, reaching down, and pulling a stalk from the ground. ‘With this weed,' he'd said, winding it round the third finger of my left hand, ‘I thee wed.'