school photos 27

I swept down the corridor to meet Mum, my head hunched, not meeting her eyes. She smiled a tight little smile in greeting, to show how unhappy she was. ‘We better go through here.’ I addressed her like a stranger, guiding her along the corridor. We stood awkwardly, for a moment, at  the entrance to the day room.

‘I’ve brought you some stuff.’ She held out the bag she carried as a gift, and that was us back to being normal.

‘Thanks Mum. Ah’ll get you settled and go and stick it in my room.’

A few other residents had visitors seated. I’d been there a few days and I’d noticed it was usually the same residents and usually the same visitors. It was like sitting on a bus. The corner seats away from the telly in the day room always had somebody sitting in them. The seats nearest the door were the last to be filled. Most visitors avoided your eyes, in case you suddenly sat down beside them, or even worse started talking to them. We found a few spare seats beside a bluff old couple, both with cropped white hair, as if they’d attended the same barber. Morag, their daughter, had a tendency to wander away for longer and longer periods of time. I sat across from Mum, the bag placed beneath the chair legs. I imagined myself a prisoner, perhaps Steve McQueen, in one of those prison heists, the table across my chest and the ashtray between us. Mum let the back of her coat drop onto her chair and lit a fag. Her face was composed, but tired looking. She looked over my shoulder before speaking.

‘Your friend joining us?’ The emphasis was on friend.

‘Ah don’t think so.’

‘That’s good,’ she said with finality. She drew my hand across the table and squeezed my knuckles.

Something about the weariness in her voice, the way she slouched in the chair, bothered me. ‘You’re no’ well?’

‘Not the best.’ The palm of her hand masked her nose and mouth. Bent over like a coat-hanger, she began to bark out cough after cough, her chest shuttling up and down and her eyes watering. ‘Ha-ah,’ she sighed and took another drag of her cigarette, before stuffing the lit end into the ashtray. She pulled a white hankie the size of a horse blanket out of her coat pocket behind her and honked in it to clear her tubes. It was swept onto her lap, hidden under the table, but kept stashed in her fist.

‘Whit’s wrang with you?’

‘Nothing much.’ There was a slight tremor in her hand as she picked up the Zippo lighter to light another cigarette. ‘Probably just a bug.’

‘You been to the doctors?’ I’d adopted the same stringent tone as my Da.

She laughed at this through her nose and shook her head, crinkles in her quicksilver eyes lighting up her amusement. Fag smoke temporarily blurred the edges of her and she seemed better. Then the barking started again and the hanky came up.

When she finished I leaned across, swallowing down the lump in my throat. ‘You’ll need to go to the doctors Mum.’  

‘Calling him now would just be a waste of time.’ She met my eyes. ‘If I don’t get better I’ll call him.’ She added, ‘but I will get better’.

‘Mummm!’ Even to own my ear it sounded like a child’s lowing.

‘Promise.’ She squeezed my hand in a mini-handshake to seal the deal.

‘But whit’s the matter with you?’

‘Nothing much. Don’t sleep.’ She eased back into the chair and tapped fag ash into the ashtray. ‘I thought with you in here I wouldn’t need to worry any more about people sleepwalking, but it seems.’ She took a long breath, ‘it’s one hundred times worst’.  

‘Whit?’ My body strained forward, but her mouth stopped framing words, her eyes sliding past me, smoothing out the lap of her dress, as if she’d crumbs in it and taking a long drag on her fag.

The scent of her perfume should have alerted me but in the broth of ward smells and the low buzz of noise it didn’t.  Janine’s arm flung over my shoulder startled me, slapping against my chest and her body hugged into the back of the chair.

‘Nothing.’ Mum worked on a smile.

Janine slid into the slot of the seat next to me, pulling it in closer so our thighs squished together, taking my hand in hers. She beamed a lippy grin across the table at Mum. Then turning to me in a cocky, playful voice, asked, ‘missed anything? Missed me?’

Mum’s feet scraped across the floor as she stood up. ‘I was just goin’. I’ve brought you some fresh pants and socks. That’s the main thing’.

‘Mum,’ I tugged my fingers out of Janine’s hand. ‘You’re just here.’

She covered her mouth to cough again. ‘Ah, well.’ Her eyes watered making her seem feebler and older. She knitted the hanky round her hand and nodded as if that concluded the conversation.   

‘You don’t like me,’ butted in Janine.

Mum gave her a quick look. ‘No I don’t.’

I expected kind words and evasions, some heeing- and-hawing from Mum, not the gunboat diplomacy of Da.  This must have shown in my face.

‘That’s alright,’ said Janine, scooping up my hand into hers. ‘I don’t like me much either.’ She tugged me in close, shoulder to shoulder, her arm rubbing against mine. ‘But your son, well, he likes me well enough for both of us.’

‘Mum’s not been that well.’ My voice had a fluting sound. I felt that I’d offered that information as a peace offering, the equivalent of a missionary directing the natives to the beads and baubles on offer. ‘My little sister’s been doing a power of sleepwalking and she’s not been getting much sleep.’

Mum bent her head in the way I knew so well when she was considering something. ‘How did you know that? How did you know about little Ally?’

‘You told me.’

She shook her head. ‘No I never.’

‘You told me that someone was having sleepwalking problems…and I figured it must have been little Ally cause she’s the most like me.’

Mum flapped her hands in surrender. ‘Never mind.’ She bent across and kissed me on the side of the hair, above my ear.

‘Ah’ll see you out.’ I rose from my chair, Janine’s hand following from mine. ‘And thanks for the clothes, I really needed them,’ I said in a gushing tone.

‘My mum sleepwalked regularly,’ piped up Janine, stopping us both, standing beside the table and staring down at her. She waited until she had our undivided attention before continuing. ‘Dad soon cured her of that.’

‘Oh yes?’ Mum couldn’t help been sucked into asking. ‘How did he do that?’

Janine clapped her hands together with a loud gunshot noise. Mum and me flinched. Morag had briefly settled at the table next to us. Her head shot sideways and she banged her legs against the chair legs in her haste to get up and escape. ‘A good clean shock. Never fails.’ Janine laughed, but it sounded like a sneer.

‘I feel sorry for you.’ Mum’s voice was low and sounded clear of malice, as if she really did mean it.

‘Ditto.’ Janine made that stupid showy-off sign with two fingers bent like antennae in the air that was meant to mean the same thing and be cool.