No! I Don’t Need Reading Glasses! (13 page)

Thank heavens Sylvie caught on to what was happening and she was down with her husband, Harry, in a flash, and Harry managed to persuade Archie the elephant had gone back to the zoo where it had escaped from – and I was nearly in tears of relief. Gene still had no idea what had happened and thought it was one of the best elephant games we'd ever had together. But I was really shocked, particularly by the way that Archie had been about to attack Gene.

We all had lunch at Sylvie's, which was a relief, and Archie calmed down considerably, but then Harry asked if I'd seen
Bitter Quinces, Poisoned Souls
, and I said I'd left after the first half hour and he and Sylvie had pounced on this and said I should have stayed to the end because then ‘when the person whose fingers have been cut off learns to play the piano, it's so moving, and there's a shot of a torture cell in a Bulgarian prison which goes on for ten minutes and you're just, well, you're transported, really. You
have
to see it, it's as if you're really
there
.'

‘And the camerawork,' added Sylvie. ‘It was worth seeing for the camerawork alone …'

‘And the little
boy
!' added Harry.

‘The little
boy
!' echoed Sylvie, holding up her hands, and then hiding her face in compassion and misery. But they refused to tell me the end however much I begged them, because they said that I
must
go and see it again all the way through because it was
marvellous
.

Apart from that we all got on like a house on fire.

Harry accompanied Archie back to his house, with the intention of staying the night there, and, after dropping Gene back home, I drove back to Shepherds Bush.

When I arrived, I finally remembered to pop into the corner shop and give back the Debt of Honour I owed them. The Indian man behind the counter had no memory of it, refused at first to take it and when I insisted, looked at me as if I were completely mad.

Got a very apologetic email from Sylvie. Apparently the next day, she'd gone to have a cup of tea with her dad, and when she'd arrived he'd asked her who the hell she thought she was, a complete stranger, barging into his house. He was going to call the police and would she get out, the bitch.
Totally
uncharacteristic phrase for Archie. So she's finally made an urgent doctor's appointment. Thanks heavens! At last! I'm so relieved.

The postman left a parcel today and I opened it eagerly. It was from the plant nursery. Golly, what a disappointment! Thirty-six plants were all crammed into a tiny plastic box, and when I took them out, they were each about the size of my little finger. They were called ‘plugs'. They didn't look
anything like Calibans or whatever they were called, I can never remember these Latin names, nor did they look as if they would ever develop into banks of foaming colour, at least not for another five years. I spent a couple of hours bunging dozens of these things into the ground feeling most pessimistic. All I could see were specks of green.

Later Penny popped round to show me a letter she'd drafted for the planning people. But before she'd even taken her coat off, she said she'd got bad news.

‘What?' I asked, rather nervously.

‘James is in love!'

‘What do you mean, “James is in love”?' I said, in a rather peeved way. I thought I was James's special friend and he would have told me first had he been in love. ‘Who is it …?' Then it dawned. ‘It's not the Silver Birch, is it?'

‘'Fraid so. He went to the pub and they hit it off at once, and now he's in love.'

‘But he said he'd never have another relationship after Hughie!' I said, crossly. Realising that was uncharitable, I added, ‘Oh, well, I'm very happy for him.'

‘Oh, yes, so am I,' said Penny, as she hung her coat up. ‘It's wonderful that he's met someone.'

And then, in the kitchen over the slowly boiling kettle, we looked at each other more knowingly. ‘Bloody maddening as well, if you ask me,' I said.

‘Absolutely,' said Penny. ‘How dare he? He's got us, hasn't he? What's he doing falling in love. It's ridiculous.'

‘Won't last,' I said.

‘Hope not,' said Penny, darkly.

To cheer ourselves up, we each had two chocolate digestives with our coffee.

At first I thought the headline read: ‘IT DOESN'T ADD UP!
21 in every 10 children leaves school innumerate!
' but then I realised that even the
Rant
couldn't go that far. Adjusting my glasses I saw it said that
one
child in every 10 was clueless about arithmetic. However, my blood pressure had already shot up, just as it was supposed to, which gave me the energy to ring Sylvie to find out how the doctor's appointment with Archie had gone.

‘Oh, Marie,' she said, sounding much more affectionate than when I last spoke to her. ‘I was just about to ring you. We went to the doctor's yesterday, and I feel awful about this, but you were quite right of course. I'm afraid he's got some kind of dementia, and the doctor's sending him to have an assessment at the clinic, but it's all changed suddenly very rapidly. It's so awful because he sort of understands what's going on and sort of doesn't. I'm trying to spend as
much time there as possible and Mrs Evans says she'll stay over on the nights I can't be there, but it's all horrible. The thing is that sometimes he's just like his old self and then suddenly he seems completely different.'

‘Oh Sylvie,' I said, almost crying with relief. ‘I'm so glad you went. And I'm so, so sorry. It must be dreadful for you.'

‘I just feel so bad I didn't notice it sooner,' she said. ‘I think I did actually, but I was just trying to pretend to myself that it was just ordinary old age, losing his memory and so on, but after that terrible afternoon the other day with the elephants … I'm so sorry, I wasn't very sympathetic and you were doing your best …'

‘What are you going to do? Can I help you with anything?' I asked. ‘Does he need a carer? Or are you looking for somewhere for him to stay? Is there anything that can be done?'

‘No, there's nothing, unfortunately. If I'd listened to you earlier we might have been able to have made it a bit better for a few months or so, but it's too late now. I'm going to start looking for nursing homes. The awful thing is that he's in perfect health, strong as a horse. It's just his brain that's going.'

‘Well, if there's anything I can do, let me know,' I said. ‘I can go down at the drop of a hat, so if you want some time off, it's fine.'

‘Oh that would be brilliant,' said Sylvie. ‘Thank you.'

The news made me feel curiously light-headed, as if someone had died. This really is the end. I suppose that,
like Sylvie, although I've thought I've faced up to what's going on, I still felt that a trip to the doctor would mean his being given some magic pills that would make him better, at least temporarily. But no. It's just downhill. Poor, poor Archie. I don't think I can quite believe what's happening.

James rang today. He told me he wasn't feeling very well because he'd been buying something at the corner shop and some wretched girl with a huge rucksack had turned round and literally knocked him to the ground. He was only just recovering.

I was very sympathetic and then I said, rather accusingly I'm afraid, ‘What's all this about your falling in love with the tree man?'

There was a silence at the other end of the phone. Then, ‘I don't know about in
love
, Marie,' said James, ‘But he's really nice. He does part-time work for the Organic Soil and Hedges Society, and he knows all about plants, and I've been out with him twice, but honestly, the amazing thing is …' There was a long pause. ‘He does seem to be interested in me, too.'

‘How lovely,' I said, hoping I sounded more genuine than I felt. ‘I'm so glad for you.' I injected such a great dollop of warmth that I almost found myself believing it. ‘When can we welcome him into the family?'

‘Oh, I'm very frightened of your meeting him – well,
meeting him more than you have, Marie,' said James. ‘I know how critical you can be.'

‘Me? Critical? Never! Well, not with you. Anyway, even if I think he stinks, I shall absolutely force myself to like him because I love you.' That at least was true. ‘Come to supper soon. Come on. I'll ask Penny, so it won't just be me staring at him through an enormous microscope and making notes.'

‘No,' said James, darkly. ‘It'll be the two of you. I promise you, he hasn't got leaf mould or root rot.'

‘It's gone that far, has it?' I said, laughing.

Went out into the garden to see if my plants had turned into banks of foaming colour, but no. Believe it or not, I couldn't see any trace of them at all, not even the tiny green shoots there were last week when I planted them.

Cockroaches. Bet it's cockroaches.

Tonight I had an early supper with the family – a kind of last supper – and declined their invitation to come to the airport to say goodbye to them the following day. Gene said he wanted to wave to me from the plane. Sweet. But I just couldn't face it. I knew I'd crack up.

I just said goodbye early, assuring them I'd be over, they'd be over, we'd all be over, I was frightfully busy, it was quite
a relief they were going so I could catch up on
all
the things I had to do. I tiptoed upstairs to give Gene one last kiss (he was asleep) and looked around his room, so tragic with all the suitcases packed and his little satchel filled with pencils and things to do on the aeroplane and his favourite cuddly peeping out of the top, and Jack gave me a special hug and said, ‘Love you, Mum. Take care of yourself' – my least favourite expression because I always think people are muttering under their breath, ‘Because no one else will, that's for sure' – and I just had to rush home before I disgraced myself by falling down on the floor and tugging everyone's clothes and hugging their knees and begging,
begging
them not to go.

Just taken two temazepam and would be very happy never to wake up again. Not really, but you know what I mean.

Well, I
did
wake up. By now they'll be in the air. I thought of getting up properly, but it transpires I've only got enough energy to write my diary and now I'm going back to bed. Going to bed isn't a bad activity, actually, when you're feeling low. It's true you don't often feel a lot better when you wake up, but you usually feel a
tiny
bit better, and anyway it passes the time. Penny believes in running round the block when she feels gloomy, but the thought of pounding the streets with tears pouring down my cheeks is quite beyond me and I'm going to draw the curtains back again and go straight
back to bed. Seems like a very sensible idea. Tomorrow I will start getting my life together.

Just as I was trying to drag myself up at 3 p.m. the phone rang and it was Marion.

‘I'm told this is a horrible day for you,' she said, very sympathetically. ‘So I wondered if you'd like to come and have supper with us? So you know that even if some of your family have gone away, you've got a family of friends still here – us! I know it's not the same, but it's better than nothing.'

I accepted like a shot, and immediately felt hugely cheered up. I'm so mean about Marion, what with her being part of a kind of seventies rock pool, but she's the kindest and sweetest person in the world. I know. There's always the totally unforgivable goat. But her heart's in exactly the right place, and she's a darling.

She'd cooked an enormous bean stew, the type of thing no one else has eaten since 1969, and she even supplied the sort of acid wine we used to take to parties when we were young. But it didn't matter at all. It was just so nice to be there, with old friends, that everything tasted totally delicious. The conversation turned to the subject of getting old, with everyone complaining about it.

‘I was at a party the other day,' said Marion, ‘and I met this charming young thing who was all of eighteen years
old, and do you know she asked me if I'd ever met Oscar Wilde! Aren't young people extraordinary? No idea of history!'

‘Extraordinary,' I said. ‘But very nice.' We all agreed we adored them. Marion says she likes them so much that she's been known, after giving a stray young person supper, to write a letter and thank them for coming over to see them, rather than the other way round.

‘Well,
someone
's got to write a thank-you letter,' I said, rather tartly. ‘And you know it's not going to be them.'

Tim was particularly affectionate, giving me a friendly wink now and again, and the odd pat – not creepily, but as if to say, ‘We know what you're going through and we're here for you.'

Marion's organising a school reunion, and has asked if I'll go. How can I refuse?

A very jolly evening, and I came back feeling completely different. The love of friends isn't the same as the love of family, but it's pretty damn near, and Marion is a total brick.

‘Any time you feel low,' she said, ‘just give us a ring. We're always here. And we always love seeing you.'

Lucky old me, really. Not much to complain about. Though as I carefully lifted Pouncer off the centre of my bed in order to make room for myself, I couldn't help wondering what Gene was doing at this precise moment. Possibly sampling his first real American hamburger? And his first ‘fries'? My mind is completely conflicted between hoping they all loathe
every minute of being in that beastly city and at the same time hoping so much that they're terribly happy there.