Hello, My Name is May. Rosalind Stopps
I’ll tell them, Jenny says, I’ll tell them you don’t like it, don’t worry, it’s OK.
She looks worried but I can’t stop crying.
I don’t like it here, it’s all wrong. No one can understand me and I can feel the prickly feeling again, that tingle as though I’m being watched. I think it’s the man in the room across the corridor, I’m sure it is. I can’t tell Jenny, it would upset her but I’m sure I can see him out of the corner of my eye. He probably just sits there, watching, I wouldn’t be surprised.
Can I come home with you, I want to say to Jenny, I don’t like it here.
I can’t get anything out now except stupid crying, but I’m sure she understands me. She looks away.
Please, I try to say, and I hate myself for doing it. I know she can’t look after me, not with the toilet in her house being upstairs and anyway there’s her ex-husband, she shares the house with him, I can’t go there. I know all of that but I don’t seem to be able to stop myself.
Let’s go for a little walk, she says, let’s get out of this room and take in the sights. I’m on the back foot, pardon the pun, I can’t really say no. I’m sitting in my special chair that pushes me up and out at the flick of a control button, then it’s touch and go getting to the wheelchair. She’s a strong one though, my Jenny, and I make the transfer without too much folderol.
Round the Cape of Good Hope? she says and it makes me laugh a little, out of politeness.
She’s right, it is good to get out of the room. It crowds in on me, that place, squashes me down until I can’t get my breath. I used to feel like that in the little flat in Pimlico when Jenny was a baby, but I’d forgotten it until recently. He’s got his door shut, the man across the way, maybe he shut it when he saw me coming. She pushes me down the corridors past closed doors or worse, open doors with glimpses of old people’s lives in them. Televisions blaring, little stick legs on beds or dangling from chairs.
They’re not like people, I try to say, they’re an alien race of stick people. Sick sticks.
Ssh Mum, she says. I know she’d find it funny if I could just explain it to her, I’d love to see a twinkle in her eye.
Come to the dining room, she says, just take a look, it’s really pretty with flowers and fairy lights and everything. There will be a tree at Christmas, I bet it’s a big one, she says as if the sole aim of my life so far was to get to a dining room with a big Christmas tree. I don’t bother to answer. To be honest, the struggle isn’t worth it, even for Jenny. My words are on the ration, that’s the thing, and to be used sparingly like eye drops.
Come on, she says, cheer up, I hate to see you like this, you’re usually such a happy person.
I am? I think, really? I try to show her what I’m thinking by raising my eyebrows. I think it works on one side of my face. Jenny bursts out laughing.
Oh Mum, she says and she bends down to hug me in my chair. It doesn’t feel right. I’m supposed to be bigger than her, that’s how it goes with kids. Anything else is like dogs walking on their hind legs, or elephants playing cards. I try to tell her that but I think the only word she catches is elephant. She looks worried.
We sit there for a while, at one of the round tables in the dining room. Neither of us knows what to say to the other. She’s right, they have made an effort to make it look pretty. Soft lighting, big windows looking out on to the grass, more like an upmarket old-fashioned hotel than a nursing home.
Who’s paying for this? I want to say. Jenny has no idea what I’m talking about, so I make the sign for cash, rubbing my thumb against my fingers on my good hand. I don’t want it to come out of her inheritance, that’s what I want to tell her so I make a gesture to take in all the fancy lighting and the soft carpet that most of the residents can’t walk on anyway.
Pish, she says, don’t think about it, everything is fine.
How are you going to get away from that stupid oik of an ex-husband if I don’t help you? I want to say. I make the gesture of a walking stick, and a little wobble. I put my finger over my lip and under my nose like a moustache.
Ah, Jenny says, you’re talking about the walking stick again.
Yes I am I try to say, my movements getting a tad frantic. It’s a walking stick I own, you see, it’s in my wardrobe, it was definitely used by Charlie Chaplin and it should be worth something. I got it at an auction.
Hush now, she says, don’t worry, I know where it is, the stick. Let’s do a jigsaw.
I can tell that she’s a really good teacher. The kind of teacher who is loved by the children, but never promoted. Different from me, softer and kinder. I hate jigsaws, always have, but for once I think I ought to do something to please her rather than myself. And it’s calming, it really is. Looking at pieces, seeing whether they fit in, for a moment there’s no room for any of the ghosts who usually patrol my head. The jigsaw picture is of sweets and chocolates from the sixties and seventies, and my mouth is watering like a burst pipe in seconds. Opal Fruits and Bar Noir, KitKats with the real silver paper, Butter Snap and Aztec. All jostling for position on the table in front of us. It’s like it used to be, just the two of us only this time I’m the infant and Jenny gets to be the adult.
I’ve made a will, I try to say. I thinks she gets the word, will. I lodged it with Cate who lives next door but one, I want to say, you know, the woman with the black car and the brown dog. I notice that even in the words I don’t say I’ve been reduced to describing things by their colours. Cate, I could have tried, the woman whose husband died of oesophageal cancer two years ago last summer. As if I will ever attempt the word oesophageal again.
Don’t talk about wills, Mum, Jenny says, talk about Crunchies instead and she holds up the missing piece of Crunchie wrapper like a trophy. We both laugh and she reminds me that on a Friday we always used to have a Crunchie bar to celebrate the weekend. I’m struck by remorse and I can’t explain why. Was that enough, I want to ask, is that a happy enough memory to keep you going?
The fun goes out of the jigsaw for a moment and I try to sulk quietly. I have surrounded myself with the mundane, I think, and you are the unfortunate byproduct. I refuse to comment on the piece of Cadbury’s fudge she holds up. She’s hurt, I can tell she’s hurt, and I didn’t mean to upset her.
Only joking, I try to say.
I attempt to fit a piece of Galaxy bar into the jigsaw but my arm does that trick again of being out of control and swinging and the whole thing tumbles to the floor. All the pieces, upside down, all the progress we’d made, gone.
Sorry, I say, arm. I can’t see how anyone could understand, it’s just a shout.
That’s OK, she says, you couldn’t help it, it’s only a jigsaw, don’t worry.
But I liked it I think, I liked it and before I know where I am I’m sobbing like a baby again, crying as if my last hope had just died.
It’s OK, it’s OK, Jenny says, we can do it again, and she hugs me and I don’t like it but I’ve made so much fuss now that even I can see I will just have to bloody well put up with it. Just a jigsaw, just a jigsaw, she says in my ear, and I remember a time when I said similar things to her, it’s just a woolly rabbit, it’ll be OK, never mind.
I push her away. No point making a drama out of a crisis, that’s what I’d say if I could. I’ve always had a thing about clichés, tried not to use them too much but these days they speak for me. Least said soonest mended, that one works, too.
I try to rub my eye with my good hand and it’s then that I see him. Like rubbing a lamp to make a genie appear, my eye rub has produced a man over in a shadowy corner that I hadn’t noticed before. I think he’s the man who has been watching me, I’m not sure. From the room across the corridor. There’s something familiar about the tilt of his head.
Is everything OK? he asks, anything I can do?
Jenny