A Small Weeping by Alex Gray

Author:Alex Gray [Alex Gray]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780749009137
Publisher: Allison & Busby
Published: 2010-01-28T13:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-Two

It was the tune on the radio that brought everything back. Just a simple thing like that, Tom marvelled, and he was once more sitting by Nan’s bed, her face turned to his, tired as always, slightly puzzled as if she still hadn’t worked out why this disease had chosen her body for its host. Even when its final strains died away and the presenter began announcing something entirely different, the memories lingered like the scent of a woman’s perfume, subtle yet all-pervasive.

Tom had battled with all his psychologist’s expertise against the demons that had threatened to submerge him until he’d finally taken his own advice and sought professional help. But sometimes there would be a trigger, like that song, and he’d be swept into a series of pictures in his mind that refused to be dislodged.

Yet today it was not scenes of utter desolation and sickness that came to mind but the better days when he’d taken Nan for drives down the coast. She’d been light enough to carry out to the car, her wasted limbs slack beneath the rug, her arms not twined about his neck but hanging useless as he placed her gently in the passenger seat. He’d always played the car radio on those journeys rather than trying to make one-sided conversations. Nan’s voice had reached that piping stage when it was impossible to make her out over the car engine.

Once they’d sung along to the radio, he remembered, when they’d been first married. Journeys into work had been happy, he suddenly realised, despite the daily gridlock. Wasn’t it always thus? To find a memory of pleasure that had seemed so mundane at the time? That’s what everyone had told him at the funeral. Hang on to the good memories. And he’d tried. God knows how he’d tried.

Another picture: Nan on her exercise bike, her feet strapped into the pedals in an attempt to strengthen her ankles. She’d not been able to walk but Kirsty had insisted that it was of benefit anyway. The routine had been well established by then. Mornings when he’d washed and dressed his wife, leaving for work only when the Community nurse and her assistant arrived.

The full-time carer came after that and was gone by the time he’d returned, his morning note embellished with words of her own. Often his classes were over in time for Tom to be there when Kirsty arrived for her third visit of the day. He’d watched her tend to his wife, her lilting voice utterly normal, never condescending like some of them. Nan had hated the ones who had treated her like some imbecile child. Thankfully they’d usually had Kirsty up until the end.

‘You’ll be wanting Countdown then?’ she’d ask Nan. ‘I’ll leave you to it. Never could do anagrams myself,’ she’d say with a self-deprecating laugh. She’d known somehow that Nan’s mind was still quick even if her fingers couldn’t hold a pencil any more. That was what he’d admired about the young nurse, her ability to see beneath the illness to the whole person inside.

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