‘Exactly, see, there you go Frank,’ she said. ‘Helen remembers it. My parents wouldn’t let me go, would they Frank?’
She giggled like a naughty schoolgirl and I wanted to pick her up and pop her in my pocket. Get her away from this sterile environment, where no matter how hard they tried to make it look any different, it still resembled God’s waiting room.
‘So, he’d come over and skulk about in the back lane, waiting for me to get changed out of my nightie and into my itsy bitsy miniskirt.’ She laughed to herself. ‘My father was incensed when he saw me in it the first time: “You’re not going out dressed like that.” So, I’d storm off upstairs and come back down in something that covered me from my neck to my ankles. “That’s more like it,” he’d say. He never found out that I’d just shove my teenie weenie skirt into a carrier bag, along with a bottle of wine that I stole from their drinks cabinet.’
She laughed again, and I couldn’t help but join in her merriment. I could happily listen to her all day and was already working out a way to come and see her more often.
‘Your Aunty Sheila came to see me,’ she said, looking at Thomas. He threw me a sideways glance, careful to keep his smile painted on. ‘She’s very unhappy at that place she’s staying,’ she went on. ‘Says that they’d treat a dog better than they treat her.’
Thomas sat there, sadly nodding his head.
‘I didn’t like to boast and tell her how wonderful my son is,’ she went on, giving me a nudge with her elbow. ‘I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for him. Anyone else wouldn’t bother; they’d just put me in one of those terrible places that she’s in and leave me to rot. But not my boy; he looks after his mum.’
I felt my heart lift as I looked at him. ‘He’s a good man,’ I said.
She patted my hand.
‘Now, you see next to the purple rhododendron bush, there’s a delphinium, well that was one I planted in the springtime and look at it now. The gardener said to me, “Joyce, you shouldn’t put that there, it’ll get overshadowed by the hornbeam.”’
‘Mum loves her plants,’ Thomas said, smiling.
‘But I stood my ground,’ she went on. ‘And look how beautiful it is.’
She certainly seemed to know her stuff, as the window perfectly framed the wild English flowerbed she’d helped create.
‘That’s why I always like to sit here. This is my special place.’ She looked out wistfully, seemingly lost in thought.
‘What did you have for dinner last night, Mum?’ asked Thomas.
She smiled. ‘We had a tea dance yesterday afternoon, so we had sandwiches and scones and a band came in to play. Oh Frank, you would have loved it; they sang all our favourite songs. Do you remember that song we had at our wedding? ‘Raindrops Keep Fallin’ On My Head’. Well, I danced to that with Eileen, because you weren’t here, but I imagined it was you.’
‘I remember,’ said Thomas, throwing me a rueful glance.
I looked at him, suddenly aware of how painfully difficult this must be. Who could possibly imagine that the woman who had rocked you in her arms, snuggled down beside you in bed to read you a story, been the only person who could comfort you when you fell and hurt yourself, would ever mistake you for someone else? Or at times, stare straight through you as if she’s never seen you before. The cruelty of the disease rocked me to the core and I felt a new sense of love and respect for Thomas as he pretended to be the husband his mother had separated from over twenty years ago.
‘And what was that song we used to sing to our boy?’ Joyce went on. ‘You know the one . . . dom, dom, where it began . . .’ Thomas shrugged his shoulders and looked away, embarrassed, as she sung louder. ‘You can’t begin to know it . . .’
‘“Sweet Caroline”,’ called out her nearest neighbour, whose head I couldn’t even see over the top of the chair.
‘That’s it Maude, join in.’
Joyce picked up my hand and we swayed our arms above our heads, as the impromptu singalong gained momentum. Clearly Maude was of the loudest voice, despite her feet not being able to touch the ground.
Even one of the nurses, who was administering tablets in