Bia's War (35 page)

Nana remained asleep for the
rest of the day, causing Victoria’s blood pressure to rise as she
worried over the reason for it. Eventually, her mother came to find
her to inform her that her tea was ready, even though she hadn’t
been down to collect either of their meals.

“Why has she slept for so long?”
Victoria demanded to know. “She’s never done this before so why is
she doing it today? Do you think that she’s ill? Should I go and
get the doctor so that he can come and have a look at her?” Panic
was making her voice rise.

“Don’t speak to me in that tone
of voice!” Bia was back to her old self and took these comments as
criticism of her care of her mother. She was not in the mood to let
such insolence go unpunished. “She’s just tired, everybody needs
more sleep the older they get. It’s just caught up with her today,
that’s all. You come and get your tea and we’ll see how she is
after that. If she has problems breathing or talking to us, then
we’ll call the doctor.”

Bia ushered Victoria out of
Nana’s bedroom, but turned and went back in when she saw Victoria
making for the stairs.

“Is this it then, Mam? Are you
finally going to give in to the inevitable or will you rise,
phoenix-like, from the ashes and start again?”

There was no reply from the bed
so Bia turned and followed her daughter down the stairs, her mind
racing with all the possibilities for change which would come if
her mother gave up her battle for life. She smiled to herself as
she pictured herself turning up at the Middlesbrough and District
Grocers’ Federation Annual Dinner wearing a fur coat, with matching
shoes and handbag. Those thoughts made her spirits rise and she
served their evening meal without any of her usual sniping at
Victoria or acerbic comments on the activities of any of their
customers. Victoria and her father were both grateful for the
peaceful atmosphere so neither of them spoke during the meal, not
wanting to remind Bia of her mother or the imagined laziness of
their neighbours.

It was a long evening, given
that Bia refused to let Victoria sit in Nana Lymer’s bedroom
watching her grandmother sleep. She knew that Victoria would get
more and more agitated the longer that Nana remained sleeping
during a part of the day when she normally didn’t and Bia didn’t
want her daughter all worked up before the inevitable happened. Bia
was convinced that her mother was entering the last phase of her
life and doing it in a very peaceful way, with as little fuss as
possible. Even though she rarely thought well of her daughter, she
knew that Victoria had a very close relationship with her
grandmother and she didn’t want her seeing anything distressing for
her, beyond the actual death of Nana Lymer.

With tacit agreement, the whole
family decided to retire to bed at eleven o’clock, earlier than
usual for them, although Victoria did go downstairs before bedtime
to sit with her father in the kitchen, watching him boning a side
of bacon ready for selling the next day in the shop. He glanced at
her solemn face and gently tried to lift her spirits.

“If Nana Lymer is getting ready
to move on, there’s nothing that you can do about it, Victoria,” he
said. “It’s very unkind to try and delay a death when the person is
ready for it. She’s very tired now, because she’s had a long and
busy life and trying to impose your personality on her to make her
cling on to life is a selfish thing to do. You don’t want to lose
her because you love her, but it looks as though her time has come
and she’s not fighting against it. You’ve got to love her enough to
give her the space to do what she’s ready to do without making her
feel guilty at your loss. That is too unfair for her.”

Victoria could understand what
her father was trying to say, although she didn’t really want to
hear it and she managed a faint smile.

“I know, Dad,” she murmured,
“But I don’t want to lose her yet. If she could only last a few
more years, so that we can spend some more time together, then I
would feel all right about it. But I don’t want her to die now.”
The last was almost a wail.

“It would never be the right
time, pet, believe me. There would always be a reason for wanting
to keep her close to you and it doesn’t get any easier to cope
with. In fact, I would think that if you could delay it, you would
feel even worse when she did die. Go to bed and let’s see what the
morning brings. Things always look better when they’re seen in
daylight.”

Victoria climbed the stairs
slowly and couldn’t resist popping her head round Nana’s door on
the way to her bedroom. Nana was still breathing deeply and hadn’t
moved since before tea. As she closed the door quietly behind her,
Bia emerged from her bedroom further along the landing.

“I’ll wake you if anything
happens during the night.” Bia said, in a very gruff voice. “Go and
get yourself to bed. You look shattered.”

It was the nicest that her
mother had been to her for a long time and it nearly knocked
Victoria’s fragile equanimity for six, although she did manage to
clutch it to herself for the few seconds it took her to pass into
her bedroom and close the door behind her. Then she leant backwards
against the door and sobbed as silently as she could so that no-one
would hear her and come and investigate.

Despite her belief that she
wouldn’t even be able to close her eyes, Victoria did fall asleep.
She hadn’t got undressed in case she was needed during the night
and she was incredibly dishevelled when her father put his head
round her bedroom door. She had no idea whether it was still
night-time, but it was dark outside.

“Can you come, chick?” He asked
very gently. “Nana’s taken a turn for the worse.”

Victoria was out of bed and
across the room in a split second.

“Do you want me to go for the
doctor? Or have you rung him? Do you think an ambulance might be a
better idea?”

Her father didn’t answer her
questions, but steered her across the landing and through Nana’s
bedroom door. Her mother was standing next to the bed, looking down
at her parent. Victoria could see that Nana was still in exactly
the same position as she had been since she had fallen asleep the
previous afternoon. The only difference was that the heavy
breathing and the slow rise and fall of her grandmother’s chest had
ceased. Tears came to her eyes and dripped, unheeded, down her
cheeks as she took her place on the other side of the bed to her
mother. She made no sound but her mother answered her unspoken
question.

“She never woke again,
Victoria,” she said quietly. “She’s slipped away in her sleep, with
no pain and no fuss, just as she would have wanted. She was alive
the last time I checked on her at about half four this morning, but
she was dead when I came back five minutes ago and it’s quarter
past six now.”

“Do you mean she was alone when
she died?” Victoria was appalled at that and her tone betrayed her.
Her mother immediately dropped the façade of grieving daughter and
compassionate mother.

“She died while she was asleep.”
Bia snapped out. “She had no idea whether she was alone or in the
middle of Paddington Station, so don’t be so high and mighty with
me, lady. The next few days are going to be difficult enough
without you having temper tantrums, criticising your own mother’s
actions. I didn’t know she was going to die during the night. She
could have lasted for weeks yet and if I spent every hour of every
night watching her, I’d have been in no fit state to care for a
doll, never mind a human being. Keep those remarks to yourself,
particularly when the doctor comes.”

Victoria could see the sense in
her mother’s words and was actually slightly ashamed that she’d
spoken as she had. If she’d been so determined that Nana didn’t die
alone, she, Victoria, could have sat with her all night. The point
her mother made about not knowing when she would die was perfectly
valid and Victoria could see the logic in not spending all night
with her grandmother. She modified her tone and then asked a
question that was bothering her.

“Why is the doctor coming now?
It seems a bit of a waste of time now that she’s dead!”

This time it was her father who
answered her. He had followed Victoria into Nana’s bedroom, but had
been keeping out of the way until now.

“The doctor has to come to sign
the death certificate, because without that we can’t organise a
funeral or start putting her affairs in order.” Dad answered. “Your
Nana has found the best way to die and I think you should be happy
for her that she’s left this life without being in pain, without
any fear of what faces her and without a room full of grieving
relatives, all weeping and wailing and making her feel worse. She’s
been very lucky compared to some and I think we should all be
grateful for that.”

Victoria thought of the many
ways that people who Nana had known and held dear had died and she
realised that her father was speaking a very profound truth. The
young men who had died on the battlefields of the Front during the
First World War; Simon, having his breath and his life shaken out
of him; William being tortured before he was killed; Peter, dying
in an enemy bombardment trying to save those he loved from
committing unforgiveable sins; they had all died in terrible ways
whereas Nana Lymer had breathed her last without even knowing it in
her own bed in her own bedroom and in her own house, knowing that
she was surrounded by people who cared for her. Dad was right;
there were a lot worse ways to go when your time came.

There was a knock on the side
door downstairs and Victoria heard her mother opening it. She
quickly crossed the room and bent and kissed Nana on her soft sweet
cheek before she went back to her own room. She waited while the
doctor did whatever it was that he had to do. She could hear his
deep voice and the higher voice of her mother as he asked questions
about finding Nana dead, about her health over the last few weeks
and lots of other questions. Her mother answered at the required
times and it was obvious to Victoria that Bia was incredibly calm
and self-possessed at the situation. Perhaps she had practised this
scene in her mind many times over the last few years or perhaps she
genuinely didn’t feel any emotion at her mother’s passing and could
therefore be completely serene and unruffled during a possibly
stressful event. Anything was possible with Bia!

Victoria realised with a
slightly guilty start that she was hungry, so she went downstairs
into the kitchen and began making breakfast for all three of them,
hoping that her parents would be hungry as well as she. Dad came
through from the shop where he had been setting out the cooked
meats and cheeses he had taken out of the shop fridge, ready for a
day’s work. Bia could be heard letting the doctor out of the side
door, then she entered the kitchen and nodded with relief when she
realised that Victoria had breakfast under control.

“What are we going to do about
the shop today?” her Father asked, once they were all seated and
eating. “Should we not open as a mark of respect for your mother or
should we carry on as normal, apart from the day of the funeral? I
don’t want to upset you, Bia, but I also don’t want to lose
customers who would go elsewhere if we aren’t open.”

Victoria surprised both her
parents by butting in with her own thoughts.

“Nana told me about a time when
she had a death in the family, but they opened the shop, not just
for the convenience of the customers but also because being busy
served to take their minds off the person they had lost.”

“I think that’s a very sensible
way of looking at the situation.” Dad said. “I also believe that
Nana Lymer wouldn’t have wanted to waste any time that could be
spent making money, by being sentimental and slushy about
anyone.”

“But what will the neighbours
think?” Bia wanted to know. “They could be appalled at the
hard-nosed disregard of my mother’s death.”

“Well, we tell everyone that she
didn’t want us to close the shop, because she didn’t do it when she
was in the same situation. I’m sure plenty of people remember what
she was like and won’t be surprised at it.”

“I wonder who it was who had
died but Mam opened the shop.” Bia mused. “I can’t remember when it
happened.”

Victoria knew exactly when it
had happened but she chose to keep that little bit of information
to herself. If Nana hadn’t told her daughter about Simon’s death,
then Victoria wasn’t going to enlighten her. That was her and
Nana’s secret. It did cross her mind that her mother didn’t know
that she’d had an older brother, but would the knowing of him make
any difference to her mother now? She knew very little about her
sister Annie who had died when Abia was a baby so it was
understandable that she would know nothing about an older
half-brother. It would seem that Victoria’s mother had never heard
of any of her family’s history from before she was born. Her mother
spoke at this point in Victoria’s musings.

“Very well, we’ll open the shop
today and let everyone know that it was what my mother would have
wanted. We will only close on the day of her funeral. Somebody is
bound to complain that I only care for profit, but you can’t please
everybody all the time. I wonder if Joan would come and do a turn
in the shop today. It would give me chance to go and get Mam’s
death certificate and see the vicar and the undertaker as to when
we can expect to have the funeral.”

“You go and sort out what you
need to do and I’ll ring Joan to come in.” Victoria’s Dad said.
“Word will soon get round as to what’s happened and people will
understand that we may be having difficulties.”

Victoria remained quiet during
this exchange, not wanting to be lumbered with a session working in
the shop, or having to accompany her mother to see the vicar or
undertaker, but, luckily, her mother seemed to have forgotten what
Victoria was capable of doing and left her out of her arrangements.
Victoria knew that she had to fulfil her promise to Nana that she
would contact Mr Vine to let him know that Nana Lymer had died,
before anyone else could tell him. She cleared the kitchen table
and washed the breakfast pots, which earned her a brief ‘good girl’
from her mother as she passed through the kitchen on her way to the
Registrar’s office, then trotted upstairs to change her wrinkled
clothes.