The Right to Sparkle

 

‘You can’t ask her, there’s no point, she’s gaga!’

 

‘Please don’t say that, Mike, it’s disrespectful and Dr Greaves said, we don’t really know what she can hear or what she can understand.’

 

Mike frowned and shook his head. ‘Look, I’ve really got to go, I’ve already missed two meetings to come all the way here today. I doubt we’ll ever see that trinket you’re so fond of ever again. The fact is, it could be anywhere, she could have given it to the gardener or that cleaning lady that kept coming, charging her twenty quid an hour just to watch telly with her. It could have slipped off her finger somewhere, in the garden, anywhere. She’s lost so much weight in the past few years.’

 

‘That’s true,’ Alison said very quietly while not taking her eyes off her mother’s face.

 

‘Can you even remember the last time you saw it?’

 

‘I remember she wore it to my sixtieth birthday dinner at The Rose and Crown. They had candles on the table and I remember how it sparkled. She’d always promised it to me that’s all.’

 

‘Well that’s not fair either!’ Mike said, spitting. ‘It’s at least two carats, probably worth five grand, maybe six if you find a private buyer for it. Why should you get everything just because you’re the eldest?’

 

Alison reached out and held her mother’s hand. ‘I’m not getting everything, Mike. Dad gave you months and years of his time when you were setting up your business, he was by your side, I think he even lent you money didn’t he. Did you ever pay it back?’

 

Mike shuddered. ’It was pennies, and anyway, he enjoyed helping me, I was doing something with my life. Look I’ve got to go, I’ll see you next week for an hour if I can make it…and for god’s sake, open a window, it stinks in here!’

 

Alison pulled back the curtain to watch her brother pull away in his Porsche Cayenne, she pulled a disgusted face and then sighed. The clock on top of the mahogany chest of drawers ticked, carving the air into thin slices of time. It was both reassuring and alarming, the endless tick tock which had punctuated her childhood and now the final few weeks of life with her mother who lay with her mouth slightly open, her chest rising and falling gently under a purple dressing gown.

 

‘Where is your diamond, mother?’ Alison whispered, ‘Where is that beautiful ring of yours?’

 

The old lady didn’t respond, she was locked away in another dimension, walking in a rich forest of memories where age was immaterial and material objects had no value. 

 

Alison pulled the blanket up over her mother’s chest and left the room. She went into her old bedroom, the air was freezing cold, the space felt lifeless. There was nothing from her childhood, except for the large dent in the wall where she had slammed open her door in a rage, gouging out an inch of plaster which was later painted over. She pulled her mobile phone out of her pocket and rang her daughter’s number.

 

‘Gail, it’s mum. I just thought I’d ring you before the carers get here.’

 

‘How’s gran?’

 

‘No change, she seems peaceful though, she’s just sleeping, the painkillers make her so drowsy, they make me drowsy just watching her!’

 

‘I wish I could come over, maybe at Easter I could come and stay for a few days. Is Uncle Mike doing his bit now?’

 

‘No, he came over this morning. We were talking about the search for her engagement ring, still no sign of it.’

 

‘Mmmm. I know it sounds a bit….but do you think he’s taken it, Mum?’

 

Alison paused for a few seconds. ‘Honestly,’ she sighed, ‘I don’t know. I feel too emotionally exhausted to think clearly about anything. Mike seems the opposite, he doesn’t seem affected by any of it. That new wife of his, she is a bit grabby. I wouldn’t put it past them. I don’t want to think that of them but I can imagine them doing that, yes, worrying easily.’

 

‘Bastards, greedy bastards. That was destined to go to me wasn’t it, Mum?’

 

‘Yes, yes eventually I think. I was hoping it would go on my finger for a few years at least or perhaps we could sell it to pay off some of your loan.’

 

‘We’re not selling it!’

 

‘Well it doesn’t matter Gail, it’s gone.’

 

‘Uncle Mike and Aunty Sue, I’ve never liked them. They don’t even lend us their holiday home anymore.’

 

‘Sometimes things change in a family. Look, I’ve got to go, the carers will be here in a minute.’

 

‘Okay, love you.’

 

Alison went back to her mother’s bedroom and stood at the window as the carers pulled up outside. She opened the top drawer of her mother’s mahogany chest and pulled out her pills and a packet of baby wipes, then closed it again, jiggling it slightly since it tended to stick. 

 

Right at the back of that very drawer, in the space underneath the ticking clock was an old tin, a Dunlop bicycle repair tin, rusted up in places, especially around the rim of the hinged lid where it closed. Inside the tin were some little spanners, spoke hooks, rubber solution and patches but there was also an energy source. A large diamond ring lay among the tools, incongruous. It didn’t sparkle, in the absence of light it couldn’t but it had a silent energy stored within it which it had carried from its very inception, deep inside the earth. And it had built on that energy with family relationships, events, births and deaths and holidays, for years clinging to a finger with blood pumping through it.

 

The ring had been put away, hidden by its guardian from an increasing number of strangers who came to the house. The old lady had become suspicious of people coming and going and with an awareness of her fading faculties had taken the precaution of hiding her precious gem in  a place where treasure hunters were very unlikely to locate it.

 

Now its destiny was unknown. There was a possibility that Alison would carefully go through every item of her mother’s things after her death, checking every pocket, every vessel but this would be very exhausting and time consuming. The bicycle repair kit could end up in a box with other house clearance objects, perhaps a charity shop worker would open the tin and find the ring or perhaps the tin would end up in a council dump and then in landfill. 

 

All that beautiful, precious diamond could do was emit its energy in the hope that it would attract attention from somebody with a clear head, someone open to such an energy but for now it languished in a rusted tin, inside a mahogany chest of drawers, it’s right to sparkle taken away.