Golden Hour (6 page)

Apparently I'm supposed to be grateful, but I don't know for what. All I do is sit in a chair in the kitchen. Then for a change I go and sit in a chair in the garden. Why doesn't anyone understand that it's driving me insane? They think if they put me to bed and get me up and feed me that I'm well looked after. But count the hours in the day. Count the minutes in the hours. All those endless minutes, and I'm living through them, doing nothing.

Don't tell me my brain's not working properly. I know what's going on. I'm not gaga yet. She'd like you to think so, that's her story. “Mrs. D's not all there,” she whispers, but I can hear her. And why can't she call me by my name? I'm not Mrs. D, thank you, I have a name like everyone else. And I'm all there all right, as you'll find out soon enough.

Oh, Perry. Can you hear me, Perry? I think of you all the time. I think of the walks we had together. I hear your bark. I see you curled up on your rug by my chair. You understand, don't you, Perry? You know I'm living in hell.

Bridget comes out with a torch. The beam of light causes the night to fall.

“Time for bed, Mrs. D,” she says. “I have to be off. I'm an hour late already.”

“Then be off,” says Mrs. Dickinson.

“Now don't be silly. You know you can't go on sitting out here.”

“Phone Elizabeth. Tell her to come round. There's something I have to tell her.”

“Now, Mrs. D, you know your daughter can't just come round whenever you want.”

“Do as I tell you!” says Mrs. Dickinson. She hears her own voice rising to a shriek. The effort of it leaves her breathless.

Bridget stands there for a moment, the beam of the torch wobbling about over the grass. Then without another word she goes into the house.

Maybe she's walked out.

Mrs. Dickinson's heart lifts in momentary exultation. Her one desire these days is to force Bridget to quit her job. She's asked Elizabeth to sack her, but Elizabeth says, “Don't be silly, Mummy. She's wonderful.” If she's so wonderful, why do I hate her? Why do I want to kill her? You try living with her. You try being ordered about all the time and talked to as if you're a baby. Just because she gets me meals doesn't mean she keeps me alive, you know. Exactly the opposite. She's slowly killing me. She wants me dead. But she doesn't know me. I'm a survivor. Rex thought I'd just give up and die when he left, but I didn't, did I? I'm still here. So just let her try, that's all.

Bridget comes out again, invisible behind the glare of the torch.

“Your daughter says she can't come round right now and could I get you to bed before I go.”

“Why can't she come round?”

“Don't know. So come on, I'll give you a hand.”

A white hand looms toward her. Mrs. Dickinson twists her body away.

“Now come on, Mrs. D. I haven't got all night.”

“I have.”

“You know you want to go to bed.”

“Just go away. Leave me alone.”

“I can't leave you here. You'll catch your death.”

“Good.”

A silence falls. Mrs. Dickinson waits, hearing Bridget's heavy breathing, wondering what she'll do next. A secret exultation fills her. She's never staged such a show of total defiance before.

“Well,” says Bridget. “I can't force you.”

Mrs. Dickinson says nothing. Victory is in her grasp.

“I should have been home an hour ago. You know my hours. If you won't go to bed, I can't make you.”

“No, you can't.”

“So what are you going to do? Put yourself to bed?”

“Yes.”

“Well, then. You'd better do that.”

Mrs. Dickinson keeps her head down and waits. Then the beam of the torch is swinging away. Bridget's footsteps return to the back door.

The old lady listens, not moving. She hears Bridget pass through the house. She hears the front door open and close. She hears a car engine start up, and drive away. She hears the sound of the car fade into silence.

Bridget has walked off the job! She can't come back after that.

Mrs. Dickinson sits in the dark garden and savors her victory. A flock of rooks passes overhead, squawking, to land in the distant elms. If she stays quiet she can hear the soft scratch of the guinea pigs in their hutch as they make their nest in the straw. She wonders if Bridget filled her hot-water bottle before she left.

Why didn't Elizabeth come? She didn't even give a reason. Because she hasn't got a reason. She just couldn't be bothered. My only child, and she can't be bothered to come when I call. For all she knows I'm dying. Except of course Bridget would have told her it's nothing. The old bat making a nuisance of herself over nothing.

I shall kill that woman. If she comes back.

Now she does feel cold. Suddenly it's more than she can bear. She knows she must get herself into her warm bed.

She grasps the arms of the garden chair, shuffles her bottom to the edge of the seat, and pushes. Up she goes. There. Who says I need help? She turns herself slowly to face the house. The light in the kitchen window throws an illuminated rectangle across the stone-paved path. Moving slowly, probing with her stick, she sets off on the journey to the back door.

Walking is hard work. Not just the effort required to pull one leg ahead of the other: there's the constant worry over maintaining your balance. You take it for granted all your life, but it turns out that staying upright is a feat of skill that requires constant responses from muscles all over your body. This common act of crossing the garden is now fraught with danger. Get the movement of an arm or the lean of the back just a little wrong and you fall. So everything has to happen very, very slowly.

She reaches the back door at last. The door is standing as Bridget left it, half open. She puts out her left hand to support her weary weight on the door handle. The door swings back under the pressure. And down she goes.

Falling has its own familiar pattern. The first terrible moment of helplessness. Then the slithering crumpling descent, in which many parts of your body are bumped, but you feel no pain. Then seeing the floor and the walls at odd angles, and not quite knowing where you are. Then twisting your head about you and seeing an arm, a leg, all in strange places. Then the throbbing sensations in various unidentified regions of your body, and the rush of sudden weakness that makes you lay your head down again. Then the pain.

Maybe you've broken a hip. Maybe you'll have to go to
hospital. Maybe you'll have a general anesthetic and die. Or not die, but lie in bed for weeks and weeks, and die later.

Falling is the prelude to dying.

She lies still for a few minutes longer. Then she starts to wriggle her limbs. They all respond. Bruised but not broken. So she begins the slow arduous process of raising herself up off the ground.

The first stage is to get into a sitting position. This she achieves by pushing against the doorframe. But getting up on her feet is another matter. Not that she's a heavy woman, there's not much of her at all. But try lifting yourself up when there's nothing to pull on and you'd think you were tied to the ground with leather straps.

She heaves and strains, and feels what little strength she has left draining out of her. She could try crawling, but that means turning onto her knees, and one knee hurts. There's a dustbin nearby, she could pull herself up on that, but it's not quite within reach.

So there she sits, in the open back doorway, with the cool night breeze sucking the heat from her body, and the bruises from her fall pulsing in her thigh, her knee, her elbow. Tears form in her eyes, but she's too tired to cry.

It's all Bridget's fault. She left the door half open. She made me fall. She left me to cope on my own. How wonderful is that, Elizabeth?

She knows now what it is she must do. She must press the red panic button that hangs round her neck. She's not injured, it's not an emergency. But if she stays here all night, who knows what state she'll be in by the morning?

Don't fall, Elizabeth says. Whatever you do, don't fall. Well, now I've fallen. You try staying on your feet all day at my age. Try doing anything at my age.

She fumbles for the string round her neck, pulls out the heavy plastic fob. Her stiff fingers feel for the dome of the button. She presses. Then she presses again, and again. Nothing happens, it makes no sound. Now all she can do is wait.

A few minutes go by. Then her phone starts ringing. It rings and rings, then falls silent. Another minute. Then the Lifeline speaker by the phone wakes up with a cackle. A boomy echoey voice says, “Mrs. Dickinson? Are you all right?”

“No,” she says. “Send someone.”

“Mrs. Dickinson?” calls the voice. “Can you hear me?”

I can hear you but you can't hear me. My voice isn't strong enough. I'm by the back door. My knee hurts. I want to be in bed.

The crackling and booming ceases. Silence returns. Nothing to do now but wait.

She feels the need to sleep. It tugs at her like a child. Then she feels another need, to be held, to be cuddled, to be comforted. Take me in your arms. Make me safe, make me warm.

Love me.

She finds she's crying. Angrily she pushes the tears from her face. She doesn't want pity. But just because she's old and her body is failing doesn't mean she has no need of love.

How did this happen? How did I get so there's no one who loves me? It must be my own fault, but I don't know what I did wrong. Rex pretended to love me, then he left. Elizabeth does her duty, but she finds me a burden. The grandchildren never visit. Perry's gone. All I've got is Bridget, and she hates me. Am I such a despicable creature? Am I so worthless that no one in all the world loves me?

Then she sleeps a little, sitting in the doorway. As sleep relaxes her, she tips slowly to one side, and feeling herself falling again, she wakes.

Time passes. Impossible to say how long.

Then the sound of a car, and footsteps, and the front door opening. Someone coming through the hall, into the kitchen.

Elizabeth.

“Oh, my God! Are you all right?”

Elizabeth takes her hand and helps her up. Mrs. Dickinson feels tottery, her legs seem to have forgotten how to support her. But with Elizabeth's help she makes it to her bed in the room that used to be called the study. Elizabeth talks all the way in that tight high voice she uses when she's stressed.

“What happened? Why on earth didn't Bridget get you to bed? How long have you been there? Thank God you pressed your button. What can Bridget have been thinking? It's almost ten o'clock. What on earth happened?”

Mrs. Dickinson is too tired and too cold to speak. She lets her daughter help her get undressed and into her nightie. All she wants is to be in bed.

“Are you sure you haven't broken anything? Does it hurt anywhere? Why wasn't Bridget here?”

“She left.”

“She's supposed to help you go to bed. She knows that.”

Now Mrs. Dickinson is in bed and beginning at last to feel warm again. Funny how cold you can get even in mid-summer. She hears her daughter fussing round her, tugging at her bedclothes, asking her about Bridget, but she no longer has the energy to speak. Elizabeth sounds very angry with Bridget, which soothes the old lady. Yes, she thinks as she lets herself slide into sleep, Bridget abandoned me. She failed in her duty. She wants to tell Elizabeth more, now that at last she's begun to understand. How Bridget hates her and torments her, and wants her to die. How Bridget has been plotting to steal her
house. How unhappy and lonely she is. How long the day lasts. How she wants so much to be cuddled. How easy it is to fall. But she says none of these things, not aloud.

She sleeps.

Dean drives his van up the Offham Road and waits at the junction to pull out onto the main road. A blaze of approaching headlights. Terry's in the seat beside him. A truck rumbles by.

“Done this before, Tel?” says Dean.

“Not as such,” says Terry.

Out on the A275 between night trees, the van's engine struggling, needs retuning. Needs scrapping, more like, but where's the money coming from for new wheels?

Dean has a plan, a dream you could call it. Buy a new van, new tools, set up as a Mr. Fixit, come to your house, fix anything. Fencing, walling, drive maintenance, rubbish clearance, all the little jobs the big boys won't touch. His name and mobile number on the side of the truck:
Dean Keeley, No Job Too Small
. Sheena thinks it's a good plan, she's backing him all the way. Not like there's much work going on the building sites these days.

“You're lucky you got out,” he says to Terry, meaning out of Landport. “Nice place you've got now.”

“It's okay,” says Terry.

“Doing good for yourself.”

“Tell you what, Deanie,” says Terry. “Makes no fucking difference where you live, they still treat you like dirt. They've got the money and you don't, that's what it's all about. You and me, we could work till we drop, we'd never make that kind of
money. And you know how they get it? They're born with it. They're fucking millionaires from when they're babies.”

“But at least you're picking up a few jobs round your way.”

“Oh, right. His lordship tips me a tenner to chase away his rabbits. Her ladyship never says a word to me, not even a fucking nod. I'm telling you, that woman can't even see me. And guess where all her money comes from? From her dad. Like I said, fucking millionaire babies.”

“Just luck in the end,” says Dean.

“We do what we can, don't we, mate? Even up the odds.”

Ahead on the left looms the cut into the hillside that's the old chalk pit. The van's headlights sweep the high grimy white cliffs. The windows of the Chalk Pit Inn glow bright and cheerful. Half a dozen cars parked outside.