A PERFECT WAY

BY

CHRISTOPHER BRADBURY

chrisbradburywriter@hotmail.com

www.chrisbradburycreative.com

 

 

 

FADE IN:

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INT. A LOUNGE/DINER - DAY

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TAMARIND sits at a dining table. She has a newspaper open in front of her and a mug of coffee on the go. She is middle- aged and clearly 'middle-class comfortable.'

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TAMARIND

A couple of weeks ago we had a day out, in York. I thought it would do her good and she did get quite giddy at the idea. I drove. She hasn't driven since 1982, when a tractor pushed her onto the verge in a narrow lane out Denby way. It quite shook her up. I doubt, between you and I, that the tractor really had much to do with it. She would have seen it coming from half a mile away and started to panic straight away. I'll bet she didn't keep a straight line from the second she saw that tractor crest the hill; she will have been all over the road, white lines or no white lines. You could've lined the road with newborn babies and she'd have ploughed over every one of them to avoid that tractor. She anticipates, you see. I say to her,

'Mother, stop looking for problems.

They'll be along of their own free will. They don't need your help.'

It makes no difference though.

She's always been neurotic. Nothing ever went smoothly. Holidays were a disaster waiting to happen. She would pack everything she could to prevent the inevitable; bandages, mosquito repellent, antihistamines, half a dozen bags of O negative blood and a hundredweight of plaster of Paris.

One year, she stubbed her toe against the wheel of a parked car - the driver had left it with the wheel sticking out a bit, trying to get into the space - it happens - well, she kicked at it like Bobby Charlton and she was left with a little toe that sat out at right angles to the rest of her foot. I was sick when I saw it, right there on the pavement. Ice-cream. It was still a bit cold when it came back up. 'I knew that would happen,' she said. 'I knew it.' Well, father, who was used to her dramatics, said, quick as you like, 'I hope you brought the hammer, love. That'll take a bit of bashing back in. '

(beat)

He paid for that remark. He usually did. That was on the Isle of Wight. I remember because we stayed on a caravan site, near Bembridge. The doctor, bless him, didn't speak a word of English, said the toe was dislocated and pushed it back in.

It hurt her. I could tell, because she kicked him in the chin. He went flying, I can tell you; there was stainless steel all over the cubicle. The security guard, a midget of a man with one hand smaller than the other, like that Beadle, came rushing in, saw my mother with her strapped-up toes and eyes full of tears and venom and my father leaning over the poor doctor trying to help him up, and assumed that he was on the attack. Well, he leapt on my father's back like he was a beach-donkey. 'I'm just trying to help,' yelled my father, while my mother yowled like a cat over it all. Anyway, Dad threw the security man, he can't have weighed much more than a bag of pennies, and helped the doctor up and then the little security man. He had to apologise to everyone for my mother. He was used to that. When we got back to the caravan, she made him wait on her hand and foot. He didn't mind. He was used to it. She wasn't much different when her foot wasn't broken.

(beat)

I loved it at that park. We had a caravan at the top of the hill, away from the cliff edge, which I was glad of because even then I was wary of heights. Looking back, it was all very primitive, with shared lavs and showers, five pence for a few minutes hot water, but it was an adventure for me and my sister. My Dad wasn't overfond, I don't think; too close to the neighbours for his liking, but he liked to see us all happy and would forego his own pleasures for ours.

(beat)

The best time was in the mornings. Me and Bet, my sister, would go off to carry out our ablutions, as Dad called them. I didn't know what that meant. For years I thought it was something holy, then one day I realised I'd been confusing it with absolution. Still, one cleansing is as good as another, I suppose. As you walked through the camp, you could smell nothing but bacon cooking. It was a glorious smell, wafted by the sea breeze that crept up over the cliffs, and even now I can't catch a whiff of bacon without being taken back to that campsite. Twice we went there. They were the best summers of my life. It wasn't long after that that we lost Bet.

(she loses herself in the memory for a second)

Mother played on the toe thing all holiday, until the second we got off the ferry in Portsmouth. One minute she was limping like Douglas Bader, the next she was off like a whippet. It was her way. Dad said it was her way. She was always a drama queen. If she sees a fruit fly it becomes a great hairy wasp and every puppy's a potential killer. She's a bit OCD, you know; obsessive.

Not so as she has to carry that alcohol hand cleaner around or straighten up all the knives and forks in a restaurant, I couldn't put up with that, but everything has to be just so. If we do go to a restaurant, she will examine minutely any cutlery in front of her. She doesn't try to hide it either. There's nothing surreptitious about Mother. Then she'll check the napkin, to see if it's clean. If it meets her standards, she'll use it to give the knives and forks a polish. There's no need, they've already passed her scrutiny. I think she's got one of those bionic eyes, the way she can spot a blemish. She has found stains on her cutlery on several occasions and hasn't hesitated to create a scene. She once demanded to see the washing-up boy and accused him of trying to kill her. He cried. Poor lad. I think he was only doing the job for a bit of pocket money. He can't have been more than fourteen. He still had acne, greasy hair and that boy smell, a cross between Brut 33 and road kill. Anyway, you'd have thought that once he'd started crying, she'd have sensed victory and laid off him. Not a bit of it. She went for the kill. It was like watching a startled rabbit in headlights, just waiting for the bumper to connect. Well, she ran the poor little sod down, no mercy. Then reversed back over him. She got what she wanted. Dinner was on the house. We had to pay for drinks, so she had tap water and forbade father to drink anything more than Coca-Cola. Talk about cutting your nose off. Father went back in after, saying he ought to pop to the loo before going home.

He gave mother the car keys and told her to get comfortable. She trotted off and he bolted to the kitchen like a freed seal and gave the lad a fiver for his troubles.

He was good like that, my Dad. He didn't like to see people hurt. He especially didn't like to be involved in the hurting. It was difficult to avoid with mother attached to him. It must have been like trying to carry a live cattle prod through Tesco on a Saturday.

He must have given out more fivers to keep the piece than Hitler dropped on London. She is a creature of habit, which is why I was so surprised that she agreed to come to York in the first place.

She has to bathe at the same time each day, have coffee at the same time each day, eat her meals at the same time each day and God help all of us if her slippers aren't where they're supposed to be. 'A place for everything and everything in its place,' she says. It makes sense, I suppose, but there's being prepared and then there's turning the baked beans around in the cupboard so that she can see the words, 'Baked Beans,' on the label. I mean, if it's not obvious from the picture of baked beans on the label, then I don't know what is, but every tin has to face outwards, so that it was plain for all to see what the contents were. I used to turn them around, before I left home, just out of mischief, and listen to her huff and puff and curse my father thinking he was the one who'd done it as he'd gone on a search for a tin of Cross and Blackwell. He knew I'd done it, but he let her rant on and wink at me.

I suppose it was our rebellion. Not quite Spartacus, I know, but no one wants to be crucified at the side of the road over a tin of beans, do they. I suppose she finds security in habits. Especially since Dad died. He died, ironically, in his soup. One day, they were having tomato soup for lunch. All was well until he just fell face first into his bowl. 'I thought he was joking,' she said. 'What's funny about smashing your face into a bowl of tomato soup?,' I said. 'He had a strange sense of humour,' she said. I'd never known him to flop into his soup just for a laugh, I have to be honest. It wasn't until he'd been there for thirty seconds and she couldn't see any bubbles rising up through the soup that she realised something was wrong. She phoned the ambulance, but he was declared dead at the scene, covered in tomato soup, like he'd got sunburn. Apparently, he had just had a massive heart attack. The ambulance man said that he wouldn't have known a thing about it. Just as well. There's not much dignity in dying in a bowl of soup. It's as good a way as any to go, I suppose. It's better than lingering in some hospital bed with cancer. He wouldn't have wanted that. I think, when I go, I'd want to go in my sleep. I'd go to bed as usual and just not wake up. I don't suppose Brian would enjoy waking up next to my lifeless corpse, but there is a flaw to every plan and you just have to make the best of a situation. He'd be fine once he'd changed the sheets. Before we were married, we used to say to each other, 'Oh, I hope I go first. I couldn't stand the idea of being alone.' I don't know so much any more. I mean, there's something to be said for the single life. There are places I would like to go that he has just never fancied. Egypt, for example. 'I'm not going there!,' he'd mumble.

(mocking Brian's voice)

'Too hot and too many urchins.' 'Urchins?,' I said. 'Just use the pool and stay out of the sea.' He looked at me gone out and rolled his eyes.

(mocking Brian's voice again)

'Street urchins, Tamarind! Street urchins. Them thieving little buggers that constantly tug on your sleeve with one hand and steal your bumbag with the other.' 'They're not all like that,' I'd say. 'Every country has its bad element,' I'd reason. 'You've got those squeegee merchants in London that soap your windscreen willy-nilly and beggars in Calcutta or whatever it's called now, who tap at your window like angry sparrows. It wouldn't surprise me if there were gangs of rogue penguins on the South Pole out to steal your tins of tuna.'

You can't judge a country by a random few. Except maybe Australia. I've always found Australians to be consistently loud and very opinionated, but I suppose that comes as a consequence of their isolation. It can't be easy living that far away from the rest of the world. I mean, they have television and radio and probably the interweb, but it's not like they can just hop on a plane and jet off to Egypt is it. They're not as lucky as us. Plus, they've got all that wildlife to put up with; spiders that hide under toilet seats and bite your bum when you go for a tiddle and snakes that can swallow a whole person in one go. I like koala bears, but apparently they're infested by fleas and are prone to rabies. You can't win if you're Australian, can you. So you can't blame them for being like they are. Life's just one judo lesson for them. All the same, I'd like to travel. I once asked an old lady if she'd ever been abroad. She said, 'I've been to Birmingham.'

She was about as close to death as you could get without an absence of pulse and she'd never been further than Birmingham. What a waste, I thought. What's the point, if you've never been further than Birmingham. I mean, they probably wouldn't even have had the Bullring back then.

I was only a lass but, even then, I wondered, what have you done? If Birmingham pre-Bullring was the height of your ambition, what was the point? I couldn't go to Spain,

I don't think, because of the bullrings. I couldn't go to a country that thrived on animal cruelty. 'You do,' says Brian. 'There's a difference between cruelty and discipline,' I say. (beat)

No. I don't think an economy that has thrived on the gratuitous slaughter of innocent animals is for me. I mean, I like my black pudding as much as anyone, but that's survival. It's not like I run the pig around the ring and stab at it with prettily adorned swords, is it. No, of course not.

I'm not so sure about any Latin country to be honest. If it's not animal cruelty, it's cocaine. No, I'd much prefer to visit an economy based on sound moral values. And warmth. I wouldn't want to go anywhere cold either. Corruption and cold are my Achille's heel.

That rules out Russia and most of the satellite states and as for the African continent...It's got the heat, but there's not a politician I'd trust out there. Not like here. I'd go to Austria. We've forgiven them Hitler by now, I think. I don't think I'd mention him, just in case. You wouldn't want to upset your hosts. And Iceland. I'd go there. That's where that pixie lady's from, the one with the turned-up nose. The one that sings those odd songs that sound like pain. Bjork. Odd little thing. She once got into a fight with a photographer at the airport. Good for her, I say. Nosey buggers! My Dad did service in the war. He was very young, but he was all over the Middle East - Egypt, Syria, North Africa. After that, he joined the secret service. That's what I told the other girls at school.

It was actually the civil service, but I would get the two confused. I suppose it's easily done in the mind of a child. Mother always wanted to be an actress. That'll surprise you. She went to RADA, she claims. The Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. Richard Attenborough went there. And Anthony Hopkins.

She didn't. The Royal Academy of Drama Queens perhaps. She did am dram. She wasn't bad. She did a fair Lady Bracknell and I was almost convinced by her Desdemona. She was too prone to flinging her arms about though. You'd never catch Judy Dench flinging her arms about. The sign of a good actress is not flinging your arms about.

She liked the stage though. I think it helped her escape. She was always a bit restless. She was sort of trapped between the rigidity of OCD and the need to break out of her shell. Hence the flinging of the arms, I suppose. I would say to her, 'Stop flinging your arms, Mother. You'll knock someone out one day.' 'Rubbish,' she would say. 'I don't fling. I emphasise with dramatic flair.' Dramatic danger more like. I remember when she was doing An Inspector Calls. She played Mrs Birling to Gordon Tway's Inspector Goole. She flung her arms about so wildly she fetched him one in the groin. He went down like a sack of coal. They had to bring the curtain down. I've never heard such a silence in a theatre. Mr Tway was such a nice man. He ran the local hardware store. It never occurred me that he even had a groin until that moment. I never saw him in the same light again. If his name ever comes up in reminiscences, I just get an image of him doubled up on stage on the razor's edge of nausea.

(beat)

I think that's why she gave me such an exotic name; the actress in her. She couldn't have called me Julie or Sarah or something straightforward. No, it had to be different. It didn't go down too well at school, I can tell you. She might as well have called me Banana or Dragon Fruit. Dragon Fruit Jackson. I suppose it has a ring to it, although I don't suppose anybody had even heard of a Dragon Fruit back then. I'm not even sure that there was a familiarity with the tamarind. Back then you went wild if you caught sight of a grape. If you went to a Berni Inn and had a prawn cocktail, which we did, you'd come out thinking you'd just been abroad. It's amazing what you can do with a few prawns, some soggy lettuce and bit of salad cream. I remember when those Vesta meals came into fashion; you weren't sure if you needed a knife and fork or a passport. I liked the Chinese one with the crispy noodles. I think it was Chow Mein. My mother, in one of her arm- flinging spasms - all actress, no cook - would drop the noodles into the pan and they would puff themselves up into these curly fingernails of deliciousness. There were always a couple that got burned and I loved those. They were better than Blackjacks and Fruit Salads. I suppose that's why I like burned bits now. Looking back, I think there was probably very little Chow and barely any Mein came out of that box, but those crispy noodles were akin to the invention of the smallpox vaccine to me.

(beat)

Losing Bet took a bit out of her - and my Dad, of course, but mostly her. Bet, you see, was very vivacious. She was a bit like my mother, but without the flinging. She was always in the school plays and guaranteed to be the centre of attention at any gathering.

I remember when the school drama club put on Romeo and Juliet, she made me cry. Mother was crying before the curtain was even up, of course, but I was spellbound. It was as if she became someone different, possessed almost and, much like with the prawn cocktails and the Vesta Chow Mein, it all seemed so other-worldly, so unattainable, to someone like me.

My mother lived through her. As far as she was concerned, Bet was little more than her premature reincarnation. She could sing too and dance. Sometimes, when we were together, on a rainy afternoon in the summer school holidays, when it was still warm enough to need the windows open and you smell the rain on the parched concrete and hear it clapping at the leaves on that big oak in the garden, she would spend hours reciting for me. She'd dress up too. She once threaded some leaves together until they made a sort of crown, wrapped a sheet around herself and did all the major speeches from Julius Caesar. It didn't matter that she was only a girl, because she could make you believe anything that came from her mouth. Anything.

(beat, thoughtful, melancholy)

It was meningitis that took her; like a bolt of lightning from a blue summer sky. One minute she was there and the next...There was not a lot to be done back then. Antibiotics and hope. That was about it really. I can remember sitting in the hospital corridor with all those strange smells and all I could hear was her screams.

It was as if some invisible monster had wrapped a vice around her head and was slowly squeezing the life from her. If you've heard a fox scream, it was a bit like that, only more...haunted. It echoed down those bare, tiled corridors. I glimpsed through the door because I wasn't allowed in the room and I saw her, all scrunched up into this ball in the middle of the bed, her knees up to her chin, with this banshee wail coming from her tiny body. Quite why I wasn't allowed in, I don't know. I was just left to sit on my own in this...cathedral of dread, with only the noise and nothing to see. (beat)

I can understand people dying young; it is sometimes the way of this world, but to torture someone as sweet and talented as Bet in the way that that illness did...it was so unnecessary. Cruel, I would say. Cruel and unnecessary.

(beat)

It took her just over twelve hours to die. My parents never left her side and I never left that corridor. The nurses brought me snacks and some pop, but I wasn't very hungry and I didn't drink much because I thought it would make me go to the loo and if I went to the loo, I might miss...something. It's bit of a stain, that scream. It's the first thing that comes to mind when I think of her and I have to batter it away and try to think of something else. It's usually those rainy afternoons. They are pleasant thoughts.

(beat)

Mother gave up the am dram for a while after that. I think when Bet died, a bit of her did too. It didn't stop her flinging her arms about, but even the drama was toned down, a bit half-hearted. I suppose it all reminded her too much of Bet. She always knew that Bet was better than her and that perhaps one day she would achieve what Mother never had. It was vicarious living on Mother's part. When that gets taken away, well, there's just nothing, is there. Nothing at all.

Eventually, Dad took her aside and gave her a copy of Blithe Spirit that the society were preparing to put on. He said that she was to play Madame Arcati and that there would be no argument against it. It was time to move on. Mother screamed at him. How dare he? Did he not see her pain? I bet she nearly flung the walls down with her arms, but he'd had time to predict her reaction and harden himself to her hysterics. He let her off the leash for a good half hour and then quietly and calmly told her to learn her lines and present herself at the village hall that evening for rehearsals. She did. I found my Dad sitting on the stairs afterwards. His eyes were red raw. He hadn't allowed himself a second of emotion in that room and I suppose the stairs was the only place, between Mother upstairs and me in the living room, where he could release all that balled up tension he had inside him. 'Do you miss her?' he asked as I sat on the stairs next to him. 'Aye,' I said. 'All the time.' 'Me too,' he said. He'd stopped crying by then, but every now and then he'd choke, as if he was holding it back again, for my sake. It was the only time we talked about Bet, but it sort of opened up a door. It gave us something in common, to know that we were both in the same boat as far as Bet was concerned. Of course, we all knew how Mother felt. It was like having a weeping ghost in the house. Every time you turned a corner there'd be the sound of crying and sniffling. Don't think me harsh but, to be honest, she got on my nerves a bit. It was like there was no room left for me and my Dad to mourn, 'cause she had taken up all the mourn there was. Still, those few minutes on the stairs made all the difference. It's funny how things are. My mother needed a museum in which to display her emptions, so that the world could pass by and view.

Me and Dad just needed a quiet few moments together on the stairs, a few words, and that was it. We carried on. We just carried on. As it turns out, Mother did a very good Madame Arcati, probably the best thing she'd ever done. That summer, Dad and I cleared out Bet's room. We didn't plan it, we just seemed to meet on the landing one day and realise that we'd both had the same thought. I don't hold with keeping shrines. That's not good for the soul, for the living or the dead. How's a soul meant to move on when there's a shrine dedicated to them? So we spent a week of the summer holidays cleaning that room out and redecorating it. We turned it into a little reading room cum library. Dad found a couple of very comfortable chairs the size of boats and a small music centre, so you could have a bit of music in the background when you read. The first book we put in there was the works of Shakespeare. I read every one of those plays and I could hearh er voice as I read so, in that sense, she lived on a bit. It's not ideal, but you take what you're given in this life. That's what Brian says, usually looking at me through narrowed eyes and clenched teeth. It was his idea to take Mother out for the day. He must have seen the look on my face 'cause he apologised for the suggestion straightaway. 'Sorry, love. I don't know what I was thinking,' he said. Still, he'd planted the seed, as he fully intended no doubt and I thought, well, why not. She likes York and she hasn't been there since before Dad died. It was just the idea of it, you know, a whole day with a potentially hysterical woman just waiting for her to go off on one. I know how those unexploded bomb experts feel now.

Once the ticking stops...It thought it over anyway and asked what she thought of the idea. 'That,' she said, 'would be lovely. We could go to the Jorvik Centre.' 'The Jorvik Centre?,' I said. 'Mother, you've never shown the slightest interest in the Vikings, why the sudden urge to go to the Jorvik Centre?' 'I've always liked the Vikings,' she protested, a little too much if you ask me. 'But it smells,' I said.

'It smells of Lapsang Souchong and, to put it bluntly, faeces. I'm not sure I want to spend an hour being wheeled around a museum that smells of smoky tea and human waste.'

There was no putting her off though. She also wanted to go to the York Dungeons. 'Why on earth would you want to go to the York Dungeons?,' I asked. 'It's gruesome. It's all about death and the like.' 'I just want to,' she said. 'Fine,' I said, 'but don't blame me if your pacemaker stops.'

I thought perhaps a bit of a gentle wander down the Shambles and then a quiet half hour in the Minster would suffice, maybe even a walk along the river, but no, she wanted Vikings and wax figures, so there you go. A couple of days before we went, she rang me. 'Take me to Marks and Spencer' she demanded. 'What? In York?' I asked. No gave one of her dramatic tut-sighs. She was good at tut-sighs. In fact, I don't think I've ever known anybodye lse even do a tut-sigh. I might copyright it. She's the only person I know who can express the disappointment to be found at the well of her soul with a tut-sigh. It's difficult to describe, but it's a tut and a drawn-out exhalation at the same time. The tut lingers, as if it's held in the jet-stream of the sigh, and then dissipates very slowly, as if the sigh is a bubble that has just burst and released the tut to thrive momentarily alone. It's an art, I think.

TAMARIND (CONT'D)

God knows what she was like as a teenager, what with all the arm- flinging and tut-sighing. It must have been like living with a failing helicopter. Anyway, she demanded there and then that I take her to Marks and Spencer. 'Why?,' I asked, regretting it as soon as saying it. 'I need some clothes for York,' she said. 'We're going to the Jorvik centre,' I said. 'Not to the races.' 'I'm not going to York shabbily dressed,' she said. 'I've nothing to wear.' 'You've plenty to wear, Mother,' I said. 'You have unopened boxes of shoes in your wardrobe and pristine dresses and skirts still on the hangers they came with. You could clothe most of the third world with the contents of your wardrobe. Why do you need new clothes to go and sit among the smells of Jorvik?.' And then I got it. The TV was going to be there.

It was only Look North, but they were doing an article on tourism in the place and Mother, quite naturally, assumed that once she hit the ancient walls that they'd make a beeline for her with cameras and microphones at the ready. So, off we went to Marks and Spencer. I swear to you, by the time she'd finished I was ready to slash my wrists and submit myself to God. I have never known any woman, particularly one of nearly eight hundred years old, try on so many different outfits. I was exhausted. I don't know where she found the stamina. 'Mother,' I reasoned. 'At best, it'll be that Harry Gration. You could put on a sticky vest and tracky bottoms and he'd still interview you.' I might as well have not bothered. Harry Gration's like a god to her generation. If he wrote another ten commandments, she'd have them written in stone and standing at the top of Scafell Pike for all to see and fall before within a week. She got, wait for it, three skirts, five blouses, two dresses and five pairs of slacks. 'Why do you need so many?,' I asked. 'I have to take into account weather and mood,' she said. 'Who knows how the day will start? First appearances matter.' 'They've already found Scarlett O'Hara, Mother,' I said. 'It's not an audition, it's just a day out.' The silence that descended after that was thicker than porridge. 'It's not just a day out,' she said.

'Your father and I went there only a week before he died. It was out last day out together. I don't care about Harry Gration...' she said, which I didn't believe for a second, '...but I want to look nice, for your Dad.' Well, that got me, didn't it. 'I'm sorry, Mum,' I said. 'I didn't realise.' 'Well, just think on before you go all judgmental in future,' she said, sticking the knife in with the practiced finesse of a 1950s Frenchman. It wasn't until I got in the bath that night that I realised that their last day out together had been at Scarborough the day before he stuck his head into a bowl of tomato soup. The crafty cow! She could outmanipulate Rasputin that one. All the same, I said nothing. I wasn't going to ruin our day out because she was a silly bugger.

(beat)

I picked her up at nine-thirty on the Thursday morning. There was no point going before that - the motorway's just chockablock before then. In the end she wore a pair of cream slacks and a very nice plain purple blouse. She looked lovely. She still had a face like a bulldog chewing a wasp but, below the neck at least, she looked quite bright. It was a hot day too. The weatherman had said it would be twenty-three degrees. That wouldn't help that smell in the Jorvik Centre; it would be like sitting in a pot of stewing tea, but at least we could walk around without worrying about getting rained on.

We went to the Jorvik first. It was her choice and I didn't object. It got it out the way. It still didn't do much for me. Twelve-pounds fifty for a sleigh ride around a few waxworks with the bitter aftertaste of burnt tea sticking in your throat is not an incentive. I came out smelling like I'd been in a bonfire. Mother liked it. She must have looked at every artefact twice over and asked a dozen questions about each. I never realised she had such a fascination for the subject. We moved on to the Minster after that; that was another twenty- two pounds. We sat on those wooden chairs they've got lined up. You'd think they could afford some decent pews at those prices. 'I think I'll buy one of those mine detectors,' said Mother quite suddenly, with glued to the Great East Window.

'Mine detectors?' I asked. 'Mmm,' she said thoughtfully. 'For looking for gold and stuff in fields. I fancy trying that.' 'Has someone abducted my mother and replaced her with a looky-likey?' I asked, a bit flippantly, I admit. 'No,' she said. 'I just want a hobby. I want to get out an about.' 'I'll take you out and about,' I said. 'I don't want to go out and about with you,' she said. 'I want to just wander the fields, looking for treasure, with one of those mine detectors.' 'You'll tread in a furrow and break your hip,' I said. 'They're not very even, these fields. Remember Mrs Armstrong? She tripped over a flag and was never seen again. Broken hip, broken mind, so they say. She went from keeping up a large bungalow to senile dementia in the twist of an ankle. Imagine what a field could do. You could be out there for days with no more than a bunch of curious cows and a fractured neck of femur. It's not worth the risk.' 'I suppose not,' she said. 'But then, what is? Marriage? Kids? Amateur dramatics? All those lines learned and then discarded.' 'I think you're missing the point, Mother,' I said. 'No, Tamarind, dear,' she said. 'I think you are. I'm wondering, what was the point? Bet, you, your father, me? I sit under this roof and wonder at the people that have trod upon this ground and are now gone forever. I miss Bet every day. I miss your father. Thank God I won't be alive to miss myself; that would be a step too far.' She didn't say anything else about it. After that, we went shopping in the Brambles and had a late lunch in a cafe. It was a nice day. Overdue, I'd say. That was our moment on the stairs. (beat)

I'd better get ready. It's the funeral in a couple of hours.

(beat)

She died the night we came back from York. I got worried when she didn't answer her phone the next day and went over to her house. She'd just gone to bed and not bothered waking up. A perfect way to go, I'd say.

(beat)

 

o, all that came before me is now gone and all that's left is what comes after. That's the way of things, I suppose.

​

FADE TO BLACK.