Being Various by Various

Author:Various [Lucy Caldwell]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780571342518
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Published: 2019-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

The Eclipse

Darran Anderson

She lay there, quite serene, and informed us in an offhand way that all the houses in the cul-de-sac were burning to the ground. None of us looked at her, or each other. I noticed her dinner congealing next to her, on the bedside cabinet. Her food always went untouched. She looked forward to it coming, religiously, and when it arrived she began again to look forward to it coming again. The tumour that nestled under her skull was benign, a curious term for something that would, in all likelihood, end her life. It was weighing against her brain, distorting its functions, warping in effect an entire universe, her universe. She could still talk, still see. On a good day, she could still shuffle herself to the bathroom. What it wreaked havoc upon was time itself. I thought of those old phrenologist skulls with different qualities mapped out in rooms: Inhabitiveness, Veneration, Secretiveness.

Her decline was charted on the internet, in comments and timestamps. She began to leave cryptic messages, inappropriate replies. She’d ‘like’ intimate messages between virtual strangers sixty years her junior. Someone in the family noticed and mentioned it in passing and soon everyone began to witness the small personal collapse of a human unfold in her own unassuming words. Having spent a lifetime in the medical profession, she must have suspected something was wrong. They found recently acquired and abandoned books on stress and mindfulness in her house. Perhaps it was easier for everyone, including her, to ignore the issue rather than confront it. It was a routine appointment that finally brought matters to a head. She had awoken one day, dressed in her Sunday best, left her house, careful to double-lock the door behind her, and walked to the tube to catch a train to her doctor’s surgery, one stop along the line, for a check-up. Crossing the road, she was perplexed to find the station gates locked. The streets were deserted except for the occasional drunk staggering home and cars gliding over the rain-slick streets. By chance a transport worker was hanging around after his shift and approached her. She had, it turned out, lost all ability to tell night from day.

My aunt and uncle were dispatched from Ireland, driving over by ferry, to bring her home, even though the capital had been her real home for over fifty years. She had watched over them when her sister, their mother, had died tragically young of cancer and old debts were duly repaid. When they arrived, they found her house in immaculate condition. Pristine beds, plush cushions, polished silverware, and all the food rotting in the fridge.

To pay for her care and to make sure no one broke in, an uncle moved into her house, sending rent back. Adrift after something resembling a breakdown, I joined him. He was a nurse too, a pain specialist. I barely saw him, except on the evenings when we’d go to the local pub, suspended sometime in the 1970s, to watch the football together.

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