Carry You. Beth Thomas
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Mum was in what turned out to be her final month of life, she started to obsess about trivia. I don’t mean she was desperate to spend the last of her precious time on this earth swotting up on which country has the largest temperature range in the world, or how many drops make a dash. As if she was expecting to have to pass some kind of general knowledge quiz to get … where she was going. What I mean is she was intensely and constantly worried about what was going to happen to us all, and all her things, after she died. Which may not seem trivial, but compared to dying in a hospice it seemed pretty irrelevant to me. She talked endlessly about the things in the house that she wanted us to have: a glass punch bowl; a china set; some silk scarves.
‘Daisy, I want you to have the scarves,’ she said, trying to squeeze my hand. Her hand in mine didn’t feel real. It felt more like a collection of twigs than anything else, but I held it anyway. I held it for as long as I could stand it.
‘Mum, it’s fine,’ I said, smiling very widely. ‘Please don’t worry about it. We’ll sort it all out.’
‘No, no, you’ve got to listen. I want you to have the scarves because Naomi doesn’t suit a scarf. She’s too serious. But you mustn’t be upset if I give her the Wedgwood set. I just think it will be better for her because she’s got Russell and the house and everything.’
‘Mum …’
‘And then if she’s having that, you must have the jewellery box. It needs looking after, though, Daisy Duck. It’s over sixty years old so you’ve got to take care of it. My dad gave it to my mum on their wedding day, you know.’
‘Really?’ I did know. She’d told me months earlier. But she was on morphine by then and wasn’t always clear about what she’d already said.
‘And I need to sort out my jewellery. I need you to help me, sweetheart. I can’t ask Graham because he gave me most of it and it will only upset him to know I’m giving it away.’ She smiled sadly. ‘I don’t think he wants to face what’s happening here until he absolutely has to. Do you understand?’
I nodded. Of course I understood. He didn’t want to be reminded of the fact that she was dying. I totally got that. ‘Yes, I understand.’
‘So … will you do it for me?’
‘Of course I will, Mum. Anything. Just tell me what you want me to do.’
It turned out she had a folder in the house with photographs and a description of every item of jewellery she owned, for the insurance, and she asked me to bring it into the hospice, with Naomi, so we could leaf through it and choose what we wanted. I used my door key to visit the house when Graham wasn’t there, sneaking in and opening Mum’s bedroom cabinet. I felt like I was violating her. She lost her dignity in so many ways.
Naomi went first, while I sat on the bed with an aching throat.
‘I love this ring,’ Naomi said excitedly, pointing to a page in the folder. ‘Can I have it?’ She looked at me. ‘Daze? You don’t want it, do you?’
I shook my head. I didn’t want it. I didn’t want any of it. I just wanted Mum to keep on wearing it for the next forty years.
‘Excellent.’ Naomi pulled the sheet of paper out of its plastic sleeve and wrote a large black ‘N’ on the page next to the photograph. ‘Lovely.’ She slid it back in and continued turning the pages until eventually she had labelled about ten things. ‘Here you go, Daze,’ she said, handing the folder to me. ‘You choose ten, and then we’ll fight over the rest.’
I took the folder but didn’t open it. Mum had gone to sleep and I stared at her for a few moments, watching her chest rising and falling, willing it to keep going. I started counting the seconds that elapsed between the end of an exhale and the start of the next inhale, and as it grew from three seconds to four, then five, I began wondering if today was going to be the day.
‘Wakey wakey,’ Naomi said suddenly, and I jumped a bit and turned to look at her. She wasn’t talking to Mum, though; she was talking to me. ‘Get a move on, Dozy, I’ve got to get going in a minute. We’re going to Ikea.’
So I picked my ten, and then Naomi divided the rest out between us. By the time Mum woke up again twenty minutes later, Naomi had gone and each item had either an ‘N’ or a ‘D’ next to it.
‘Oh, hi, Daisy Duck,’ Mum said, smiling at me. ‘When did you get here?’
I’m glad she did it now. It gave me a chance to wear some of it when I went to visit her, which she loved. She was so thin by this time that she hadn’t been able to wear any of it for ages, so she was happy to see it again.
‘Just don’t let Graham see you wearing it,’ she said, fingering a gorgeous aquamarine and diamond ring I had just taken off. She slid it onto her own pathetically thin finger and it dangled there loosely like a curtain ring, the heavy gem immediately sliding round to the underside. She laughed and slid it off again. ‘Here you go, it looks a lot better on you. But don’t forget, poor Graham would be devastated if he knew you had it already, before … anything has happened. Don’t let him see, sweetheart. Promise me.’
‘I promise, Mum.’ I slid the ring back on my finger, not realising how devastating that promise would turn out to be.
Of course, because she was so organised about all that, it meant she didn’t have to put any of those things in her will. Which meant the letter from Owen and Lake was about the house and whatever liquid assets Graham left. I knew that as I took it from Abby last Sunday.
‘Aren’t you going to open it?’ Abby asked me, while I ran my fingers over the heavy paper.
‘Yeah, course I am.’ I folded the envelope in half and tucked it in my own jeans pocket. ‘Just not right now.’
‘Might be important.’
I shrugged. It would wait. Nothing was all that important any more.
This route that Abby and Tom have worked out for me isn’t too bad actually. It’s a circuit, which means I just have to keep walking until I get back again, minimal orienteering required. I start off along the road and go down to the park – one and a half miles. I skirt around the edge of the park and go through a little gap in the fence at the top end, which leads to a footpath – half a mile. I follow the footpath alongside the canal, then cross over the dual carriageway and keep on the same path all the way to the next town – four miles. Then I come back along the road for a bit, use the underpass to get back to the other side of the bypass and cut through a housing estate back to Abby’s – three miles. In total, it’s about nine miles. I know this because I have a brand new pedometer in my pocket, which counts my steps, multiplies that number by the length of my average pace, which I had to input in advance, and converts that figure to a measurement of how far I’ve walked. Also because Abby told me.
Daisy Mack
Clothed in cobwebs; feasting on flies.
Suzanne Allen Jesus, Daisy, do some shopping for the love of Gucci.
Georgia Ling LMAO! xxx
Nat ‘Wiggy’ Nicholson You sound like you need a makeover, hunni.x
I’m on the approach to the footbridge over the motorway now. I’m not happy about this part of the walk, for two principal reasons. Firstly, the path is a bit overgrown and I keep swallowing insects. They stay in your throat for ages and I never know whether to swallow them to get rid of them, or try to spit them out. I’m also finding this part of the canal path is permanently festooned with cobwebs, which of course are completely invisible to the naked eye. It’s not until you walk through one and find yourself trying to pull swathes of sticky strands off your face that you even know they’re there. And of course, as you’re trying to free yourself from their deadly little silken traps, you know that the eight-legged architect is no doubt now somewhere about your person.
Not that I’m scared of spiders. I’m not. Why would I be? They’re wonderful because they don’t live on leftovers, like some insects