Authors: Rowan Coleman
Caitlin walked me down the aisle, which meant a lot to me because even on our wedding day she still couldn’t quite believe that Greg genuinely did love me. When I first told her I was seeing our sexy young builder, she was appalled. She said, ‘It’s some kind of scam, Mum. He’s probably trying to rip you off for money. He’s using you for sex, Mum, because he knows you are desperate.’ And when, after only a few months of being with Greg, I told her I was pregnant: ‘He’ll leave you in the lurch, Mum.’ That’s my girl, always says it how it is, never pretends for the sake of it.
As we walked down the aisle, Caitlin and I held hands like a couple of little girls. She looked stunning, of course, although she was still sulking over the fact that I hadn’t let her wear the little black cocktail dress she’d had her eye on. She was dressed in ivory organza – it floated around her ankles as she walked – and her hair, the dark tumultuous curls she got from her father, fell in soft tresses around her heart-shaped face.
The ceremony took place in a room with a full-length window of diamond-paned glass that looked out across the ocean, which was just as blue and as sparkly as I wanted it to be. I could see tiny white sails on the horizon, little boats far out at sea, bobbing
away completely oblivious to this, the happiest moment in my life. But even so, I felt like those tiny boats, miles and miles away, were part of my wedding too. And so was the sun, and the stars beyond it, which sounds a bit over the top and a little crazy. But that was how I felt: like the centre of all existence.
Neither one of us fancied the pressure of writing our own vows, so we stuck to the traditional ceremony. I was just looking at Greg, feeling the love and goodwill of all the people in the room, hearing Esther, who was swathed in organza with orange blossom in her hair, shouting baby babble at the top of her voice, when I caught my friend Julia’s eye and she mouthed ‘You lucky bitch’ at me clearly enough for the registrar to raise an eyebrow. Caitlin read Philip Larkin’s ‘An Arundel Tomb’. I remember those things and for me they were the vows. Those things, and the way Greg looked at me, made me realise I was getting married to the love of my life. I have been happy before, and my girls make me so happy all the time, but that day was the happiest I’ve ever been all in one go.
I got very drunk, of course. I insisted on making a speech after Greg’s, which went on for at least ten more minutes than it should have done, but everybody laughed and cheered and put up with me showing off, as my mum would put it, because everyone there wanted the best for me. Afterwards, during the dancing, Esther spun round and round and round so that her skirt floated upwards like the petals of a flower opening outwards, and then fell asleep on my mum’s chest as she sat in the quiet room next door to the party, pretending she wasn’t actually a little tipsy and hadn’t really flirted with Greg’s Irish uncle, Mort. Julia had taken off her shoes and
was dancing with everybody’s husband, whether they liked it or not, terrifying one of the young waiters into slow dancing with her.
Greg and I danced all night long, spinning and shimmying, doing high kicks and jazz hands. We never stopped dancing. We never stopped laughing, not until he finally picked me up and carried me up the stairs to bed, calling me ‘Ms Armstrong’, teasing me because I’d asked him before the wedding if he’d mind very much if I kept my maiden name. It had been my name for so long, and it was Caitlin’s and Esther’s too, that it just didn’t feel right to change it. Of course, he hadn’t minded – he liked it, he’d told me. He liked being married to a Ms, and as he carried me into the bridal suite he whispered in Ms Armstrong’s ear how much he loved her, whatever she was called. Finally, when I did go to sleep, the last thing I remember thinking was that this was it. This was the time that my life finally began.
I thought about waiting in the car for her, but then I realised it was entirely possible that I would be here all day. Mum doesn’t have much of a sense of time any more: hours seem like seconds to her, and vice versa. I don’t want to get out of the safety of her confiscated cherry-red Fiat Panda and run through the rain, which is weighted like lead pellets, into the school, but I know that I have to. I have to go and collect her from her last ever day as a teacher, a day that I know is breaking her heart. And somehow, on the way home, before we are back in the middle of Gran and Esther, I have to tell her what I have done, because time is running out.
The receptionist, Linda, whom I’ve met a few times but mainly know through Mum’s vivid and comic tales of school life, sits behind bullet-proof glass, making it look like the school is in downtown L.A. rather than Guildford.
‘Hi, Linda!’ I grin fiercely, which I find is the only way
to get through these sorts of conversations – the sympathy conversations that always seem to have this quiet undertone of glee.
‘Oh, hello, love.’ The corners of Linda’s mouth pull down in an automatic, so-sad little pout.
After her diagnosis, Mum hadn’t wanted people to know right away: she had wanted to keep going for as long as possible, and everybody – even Mr Rajapaske, her consultant – thought that was feasible. ‘You’re a bright woman, Ms Armstrong,’ he told her. ‘Studies show that high intelligence often means diagnosis is delayed because clever people find ways to compensate and strategise. You should disclose your condition to your employer, but, on the whole, if the drugs have the desired effect, then there’s no reason your life should have to change drastically any time soon.’
We’d all been so reassured, so grateful, for what felt like a reprieve, giving us time to adjust and get our heads round what was happening; and then Mum drove her lovely little Fiat Panda – the first new car she’d ever owned – into a postbox. And to cap it all, this happened right outside the school gates. If it had been during the school run, the chances are she would almost certainly have run down a child. It wasn’t that Mum had stopped concentrating – it wasn’t that. She was concentrating very hard on remembering what the steering wheel was for when it happened.
‘Hello, darling.’ Linda repeats herself in a sing-song whine. ‘Here to collect your poor mum?’
‘Yes.’ I smile ever so brightly, because I know Linda is being nice, and it’s not her fault that the sound of her voice makes me want to break down the door of her bullet-proof cubicle and pour that cup of cold tea over her head. ‘How did it go, do you know?’
‘It’s been lovely, dear. They did an assembly about Alzheimer’s awareness. All the Year Sevens have made a friend at Hightrees Retirement Home, in mem— in honour of your mum.’
‘That’s nice,’ I say, as she lets herself out of her cubicle with the jangle of an ostentatious bunch of keys, and buzzes us through into the inner sanctum of Albury Comp: Mum’s school, as I and many other people have thought about it for the last few years, especially since she got her promotion to head of English. Mum made this school what it is. ‘And they had special tea and cake – you know how your mum likes cake. And I think she seemed really happy, you know, taking it all in. Smiling.’
I bite my tongue, stopping myself from telling her that she is a silly cow, and that Mum is still Mum and not some brain-dead vegetable, all of a sudden. That the diagnosis doesn’t make her any less human. I want to say this to her, but I don’t, because I don’t think Mum would want me to insult the school secretary on her very last day here. Actually, I take that back: I think Mum would love it. But I hold it in anyway. Mum thinking something is a good idea is sometimes a good reason not to do it.
‘She’s not actually so different from how she was six months ago,’ I say carefully, as I follow her, keys swaying on her hip. ‘A year ago, even. She’s still Mum. She’s still the same person.’ I want to add that she’s still the same woman that told you to get over yourself when you tried to call the police to escort Danny Harvey’s mum out of reception the day she got so sick of the bullying that she came to school to sort out the bullies herself. Mum had been in the staff room when she’d heard the shouting. She’d come out to see Mrs Harvey, and taken her into the staff room, where she tactfully pointed out that the last thing a twelve-year-old-boy needed was for his mum to pile in and beat up the bullies. Mum had got involved then, even though she hadn’t even taught Danny at all. Mum had it sorted within a week. Mrs Harvey nominated her for the South Surrey Teacher of the Year award. Mum won it. She isn’t some empty shell of a woman yet. Mum is still fighting, and this is her last stand.
Linda opens the door to the staff room, where I find Mum sitting with her best teaching friend, Julia Lewis. Before Mum met Greg, Julia was her pulling buddy – that’s what she used to call her. Most of the time, I tried to pretend that I didn’t know what they got up to, and when Mum got together with Greg, the one thing I was relieved about was that I didn’t have to think about my mother having a mysterious sex life any more. Not that she let me see her getting dressed up to the nines and going out dancing and drinking cocktails, flirting and whatever else I didn’t know about. And Mum
never brought men home when I was there, not once, not until Greg. He was the very first man she had wanted me to meet, and I really hadn’t wanted to meet him. It’s no wonder their romance all came as a bit of a shock to me. But I know there have been men, and I know a few of them must have happened when she and Julia were ‘letting their hair down’ and ‘blowing off steam’. Once, she said to me that we never had to talk about our love lives unless we really wanted to, and we never have. Not even when I met Seb – not even when I fell so much in love with him that it hurt me to breathe whenever I wasn’t with him. I never talked to her about him, or my feelings. Perhaps I should have, because if anyone could have understood, it would have been Mum. If I had, then telling her everything that has happened since Seb, because of Seb, would be so much easier. Now, I’m afraid that the moment when I can confide in her and she can, well, just be my mum, has already passed. I’m afraid that soon when I walk into a room where she is waiting, she won’t recognise me, or she will forget what I’m for, like she did with the steering wheel.
But Mum smiles at me now as I walk into the staff room. She is clutching a large bunch of supermarket flowers. ‘Look!’ She wields them at me, cheerfully. ‘Smell-nice things! Aren’t they pretty?’
I wonder if she’s noticed that she’s lost the word ‘flowers’, but I don’t mention it. Gran always corrects her, and it seems to make Mum cross, so I never do. I do wonder if ‘flowers’ is one of the words that have gone for good, though, or if it will
come back. I’ve observed that sometimes the words come and go, and sometimes they’re gone for good. But Mum doesn’t notice, so I don’t tell her.
‘They are lovely.’ I smile at Julia, who’s grinning broadly, determined to keep things light.
‘It’s been ages since a man sent me flowers,’ Mum says, burying her face in the petals. ‘Julia, we need to go out on the razz again, get some hot man action.’
‘You’ve got the hot man action,’ Julia says, not missing a beat. ‘You’re already married to the fittest man in Surrey, darling!’
‘I know,’ Mum says into the flowers. Although I’m not entirely sure she does – at least for a second or two, anyway. Once, until very recently, Greg made her so happy that he lit her up like one of those Chinese paper lanterns Mum had the guests set free at their wedding. Back then, she would glow from the inside out, floating above the world. And yet now, Greg, their love, their happiness, their marriage, comes and goes in her mind, and one day I suppose it too will be gone for good.
‘Shall we be off, then?’ I say, nodding towards the door. There isn’t really a reason to go right away, except that I can’t bear to prolong this final moment of the job Mum loved so much. When she walks out of here, she’ll be leaving behind something that defined her. And the longer she stays, the harder it will be.
I also know that today, or tomorrow, or the day after,
Greg and Gran, or maybe even Mum, will notice that I still haven’t gone back to uni, and then it will all come out. And everyone will have an opinion and something to say. And I don’t want that. I don’t want all the secrets and mistakes that I have so carefully managed to keep close for so long to suddenly just spill out everywhere, in one big bloody mess, because then it will be real and I am not ready for it to be real. It’s really terrible but the truth is, when Mum got her diagnosis, just as I’d returned for the summer break, I was relieved – relieved to have a reason not to tell. And that’s the thing, that’s the thing that’s doing my head in. I mean, I am almost twenty-one years old, but I am still so stupid, so immature and selfish, that I actually saw a plus side to my mother being told she had early-onset Alzheimer’s. That is the kind of person I am, and I don’t know, I just don’t know how I can be better. Suddenly I’ve got to grow up quick and decide what is to be done, and I don’t want to. I want to dive under the duvet and bury myself in a book just like I used to do not that long ago.
I am not ready for this, not for any of it.
Part of me wants to tell Mum now, about everything that’s going on with me, before everyone else gets to jump in with an opinion. And yet I worry: should I tell her at all? I am not sure whether she will even understand or be able to remember what I say for more than a few hours at most. If I tell her now, does that mean that, in the weeks to come, I will have to tell her again and again and again about how I have
so comprehensively ruined my life, and see the shock and disappointed look on her face again and again?
But she’s my mum, and I need to tell her. Even if it’s just for now.
‘Mum, are you ready?’ I prompt her again.
Mum doesn’t move. She sits on the rough, brown, horrible school chair and suddenly her eyes fill with tears. I feel the strength drain away from my legs, and I sit down next to her, putting my arm around her.
‘I love my job,’ she says. ‘I love teaching, and I’m so good at it. I get the kids really interested, really caring about Shakespeare and Austen and … This is my vocation. I don’t want to go, I don’t want to.’ She turns to Julia. ‘They can’t make me, can they? Isn’t there something we can do? They’re being prejudiced against Alzheimer’s.’ Her voice begins to rise with indignation and something like panic. ‘Isn’t there some sort of court we could go to, and make them see my human rights? Because they can’t make me go, Julia!’