A Woman Unknown Page 0,39

die where you lived, not pass your last few days with starched strangers.

The matron came to find her. The doctor must come. They were waiting for the doctor. Deirdre turned back and looked at the window. It felt so cruel to leave her mammy alone at the last.

‘How will you get home?’ the matron asked. ‘I could arrange for you to be taken.’

A pounds, shillings and pence sign flashed in the matron’s eyes. It would be added to the bill.

Deirdre did not know what the word meant. Home. She had said goodbye to home the night she lay on the bed in the old room, on her mother’s bed, a room full of memories, and struggles not spoken of, just faced, just won or lost, all the tiny battles to hold your head high, not be overcome by the inability to make a shilling stretch, to be always surrounded by want and sickness and small defeats and people who put on a brave face. Cut out the cardboard insoles for your shoes and never heed the holes. Go to the market as it closed to see what was to be had. Pick up a cabbage that had fallen from a cart. But everyone was in the same boat. Then along came the big brown bear, Cyril Fitzpatrick, courting her in the boating lake café with fancy cakes.

The matron looked at her, waiting for an answer. ‘I don’t need a ride,’ Deirdre said.

That would be too strange, and not her at all, to ride in a motor car when her mother would never again feel the air on her skin or see her own shadow on the wall by candlelight. ‘I’ll take the tram.’

The matron touched her arm with long thin fingers. ‘I will walk you to the tram stop.’

‘No. Thank you.’ She would walk herself.

The matron kept her fingers so lightly on Deirdre’s arm. Deirdre felt light-headed, and unreal, as if she might float away.

‘Your husband and brother should come tomorrow, to make the arrangements.’

The arrangements.

Deirdre nodded.

Arrangements. Such a strange word and what it meant was, we will begin the long, slow goodbye to your mam.

Who will remember the way you combed your hair?

Deirdre walked.

There was the tram and people getting on, as if nothing had happened.

She turned into the park through the big gates. As others left the park, she went deeper, against the flow, as usual.

At the boating lake, the man in charge called across the water, ‘Come in, your time is up.’

She walked back to the nursing home. She hesitated, seeing a big car by the gates. But there was only the driver, waiting, smoking a cigarette.

She passed the motor on the other side of the street, making herself invisible, then crossed and entered the ginnel that ran alongside the nursing home grounds. Overhanging branches formed a shady tent.

She saw Fitz, the man she called husband, the lumbering stranger she had coaxed to more than kiss her but who did not like to be too close, or to touch her breasts or her thighs or any part of her. When she had enticed him, he had acted as if she burned his fingertips, as if to touch her was to feel the flames of hell.

With the man she had called husband was the one who called himself her brother, who had appeared out of nowhere, demanding to be paid attention, frightened her mother to death by his likeness to their dad, and expected to be praised for it.

The resentment rose. Tiny knots of fury made her skin feel too tight to contain her feelings. All those years when Anthony was an ocean away, Mam carried him in her heart, his name on her lips and in her prayers. And he never bothered, never cared. If he did care now, it was in that showy way, all mouth and trousers, and too late. Well let him get on with it.

When Fitz and Anthony finally left, Deirdre opened the nursing home’s side gate, a creaking gate, and stepped into the grounds, keeping out of sight behind the trees.

She followed a winding path to the rear of the garden, to a greenhouse, and opened its door.

After the evening chill, it was like entering an oven, but this oven smelled of the jungle, of vines and sharp, sweet vegetation. Potted plants stood on shelves. At the back, on sacking, lay uprooted flowers that had come to the end of their days.

Deirdre carefully folded a rough sack, took off her shoes, and