Hard Word (7 page)

Laura

There's difficult and difficult, I understand that. Now.

At first I thought Mum's memory must be going the same way as Grandma Vera's. Only earlier.

‘If you think I'm going to pack your grandmother up in her present state, and cart her all round the country. Like some blessed King Lear …'

We were arguing again about my birthday party. About whether Mum and Philip couldn't go away for the night. And take Katie and Grandma Vera with them. To the coast. To Uncle Brian's. Or somewhere.

‘Just,' she was still going on, ‘so that you and Toni and your friends can have the house to yourselves …'

‘To play up in
,' I said. And I saw from the way her head snapped back and her eyes narrowed that I'd got the voice just right. Grandma Vera's voice.
‘Misbehave in
–'

And that was when she came out with it.

‘Laura Vassilopoulos,' she said. ‘You can be a very difficult young woman.'

And it was my turn to go
Huh?
then, because that's exactly what she's always said she wanted me to be when I grew up. A difficult young woman. And I understood at that moment there's difficult and difficult.

Grandma Vera would never go to the doctor, but I always liked it – at least I used to, back then, when I was smaller – because there were lots of things you could play with. Besides, I liked looking round the waiting room and trying to guess what everybody had, if they had cancer or their guts were falling out or their womb or something and wondering if it would happen there in the waiting room before they even got in to see the doctor. Once, I remember, there was a man who didn't have any nose or only a very small one like a monkey's, and Mum said later he had skin cancer and lots of surgery but I shouldn't ask out loud like that because it embarrassed other people and only made them cough. The nurse always gave peppermint sweets to the children but not to the adults. But that wasn't the reason Grandma Vera wouldn't go to the doctor. Mum said she was frightened.

‘Of what?' I said.

‘Of what's in her mind,' Mum said. ‘Of what she knows.'

Just for one second I thought she must be talking about the man without any nose, but then I thought, That's stupid, your nose isn't in your mind, and I worked it out.
Knows
and
nose,
I mean.

So the only way Mum could get Grandma Vera to go to the doctor was to take me along and pretend it was me who was sick and my development or something wasn't good and I'd be starting high school in a year and needed testing. And Grandma Vera could come along too and help so I wouldn't be frightened. I was only eleven then, or maybe I was only ten because I was just going into the last year of primary school, and school had just started and it must have been summer, like now.

‘The doctor will just ask you some questions,' Mum said before we went.

‘What sort of questions?'

‘Easy questions,' she said. ‘You're not to worry. It's only a game.'

‘If it's only a game, why are we doing it?'

‘After you've answered the first two or three, I want you to pretend you don't know the answers to any of the others, and let Grandma Vera answer them.'

‘Why?'

‘Will you do that, darling? Just for me?'

It wasn't our normal doctor at all, who's Dr Lazenby, but a special one, and they didn't have sweets for children or anything, and there was no one else in the waiting room to look at or games to play, just magazines like
New Idea
or
Women's Weekly
that were about a hundred and fifty years old, and I remember thinking what if you were a man and wanted to read about cars or football or something. And it was so quiet, there was only one lady behind the desk and she was like Sybil from ‘Fawlty Towers' and kept fiddling with her hair and looking down behind the counter so you couldn't see what she was doing, but I think she was reading and it was probably the
Women's Weekly
but I bet
her
copy wasn't a hundred and fifty years old. It was probably last week's or this week's even.

And just then Grandma Vera leaves her seat and starts looking around, and the lady behind the counter looks up and says, ‘Is something wrong, dear?' –
Dear,
she says, and she's just met her, she doesn't know her at all, people are such fakes, but Grandma Vera, instead of going
No
or
Mind your own business,
says, ‘There aren't any trolleys,' and she must have thought she was at the supermarket or somewhere, and the woman goes, ‘Doctor won't be long now' – not
the
doctor or his name, Doctor Gerontics or someone, his name was on the front door when we came in – just
Doctor,
like
Gorilla
or
Ape
or something, and I laugh then, not because of Grandma, but I'm just thinking
Gorilla won't be long now
or
Ape will see you soon,
but Mum looks at me because she thinks I'm laughing at Grandma Vera, which I'd never do, and she says:

‘Don't be difficult, please, Laura. Things are hard enough as it is.'

When we do go in the doctor's room, I don't like him very much. There's nothing in the room to look at, no cabinets or jars with dead babies or even eye charts on the wall you can test yourself on while the adults are blabbing on and shut one eye and pretend you can't read half the letters and wonder what it'd be like to have a Labrador and be blind.

‘Well …' the doctor was saying, and he was looking at me and not Mum or Grandma Vera. ‘Isn't this one a real beauty? Isn't she gorgeous?'

But I didn't trust him as soon as he said this because I didn't think he was talking about me at all, and his shirt was all white and shiny and pressed and he had this red bow tie and he started fiddling with it as soon as Mum came in the room, and he was about forty or fifty or twice her age and had glasses and everything, but I knew he was talking about her not me, which was strange because he hardly looked at her at all.

But after a while he did start talking to her, even though he kept fiddling with his tie – it must have been loose or choking him or something and sometimes he fiddled with it so much I thought he was going to pull one end of it out completely, but he never did all the time we were in there with him, so I figured he must have practised tie-pulling a lot. He had a clipboard and some paper on it, and he came out from behind his desk and sat in an armchair near us and took out his pen and said to Mum they'd just do some simple clinical stuff first – but it looked to me like
he
was going to do it with his pen ready and everything, and not Mum at all. The place wasn't like a doctor's either. It was like a lounge room or a family room with armchairs and rugs and things, but no TV or CD player anywhere.

‘Now, Laura,' he said. ‘I'm going to ask you some simple questions. And I want you to take your time. And I don't want you to worry –'

And this is where Grandma Vera leaned over and grabbed my hand, and she nearly broke it off she was holding it so tight.

‘If you don't know the answer to the question,' the doctor said, ‘just try and guess. Give me your best guess. Okay? If they're too hard, maybe your mother or even Mrs Harcourt –?' And this was the first time he really looked at Grandma Vera, and he had this weird grin on his face that you could tell straightaway was false, and he was like a shark or something who was going to eat her. ‘Maybe,' he said, ‘Mum or Grandma could help you.'

‘Right, then,' he said. ‘Let's start. Well the first one's easy. We know your name, don't we?'

‘Laura,' I said.

‘Laura Trent-Harcourt,' he said, writing it down, and I could have said, ‘No, Vassilopoulos actually,' and I was going to because he was so smart and had that false smile and thought he knew everything before you even told him. But he was already on to the next question.

‘How old are you, Laura?'

And it
must
have been summer and this time of year because I remember saying I was ten but I was going to be eleven in a few months.

‘Eleven,' he said, and made a click with his tongue. ‘You'll be a young woman before you know it.' And I saw Mum frown at that and Grandma Vera nearly broke my little finger off she was hanging on so hard, and I wondered if it was because she would have got that question wrong on account of she'd sent me a birthday card at Xmas instead of a Xmas card – and Philip had laughed and said, A birthday card at Xmas? She must think you're Jesus,' but Mum said she didn't think that was funny – and anyway the card was for a ten-year-old. It had this stupid dog on the front and said,
For a big girl who's about to reach double figures.
When I'd been in double figures for nearly a whole year already.

‘And do you know what time it is, Laura?' the doctor said.

‘Time?' I said.

‘Yes. Do you know the time?'

‘Do you mean, can I tell the time?' I said. And the questions were stupid because I'd been telling the time since I was five. When I was five I could even tell the time in Greek, though I couldn't now.

‘No,' he said. ‘I mean what's the time now. But I see you haven't got a watch. Perhaps your Grandma can help you. Mrs Harcourt,' he said, ‘what's the time?'

And that's when my little finger nearly got screwed off completely.

‘Time –?' Grandma Vera says, and she's looking round like a murderer's come into the room or a serial killer or something instead of just looking at her watch. And I lean across her to grab her other wrist and turn it over so she can see her watch, but Mum signals
no
, and Grandma Vera's lips are trembling and she's still going: ‘Time?'

‘Oh, not the exact time,' the doctor says in this real oily voice like he's the son of a man who's dying and he's trying to get his father to change his will at the last minute. ‘The time of day will do,' he says. ‘Is it morning, Mrs Harcourt, or evening? Or afternoon perhaps?' Which is all stupid because you only had to look out his window to see it was about ten o'clock because the sun hadn't even got into his yard properly yet but was just in the top of the bushes and trees.

‘Afternoon,' Grandma Vera says, and I don't know whether she's just joking because the question's so stupid or if she just repeats the last thing she hears in his question. All I know is, I'll never be able to play the piano again.

‘And what day of the week is it?' he goes. And what date, and what month, and he's writing the answers each time on his clipboard and he's going ‘Good, good' all the time, which is how I know he's a fake because the answers Grandma Vera's giving are all completely wrong and Mum's looking at me and her face is saying
Don't-move. Just–sit–absolutely–still–where–you–are.
And poor Grandma Vera, and this is where I begin to get really sorry for her, because I can feel how frightened she is – the fear's running right through her body and down her arms and into mine, and I wouldn't move now even if I could. And she's looking at Doctor Gerontics or whatever he's called and she can't take her eyes off his face and she's like a rabbit I saw once on TV and it was in its cage and there was this weasel that had got into the cage and was just sitting there and looking at the rabbit like it was asking it questions, and the rabbit had made itself into the tiniest ball it could and scrunched itself down in one corner of the cage, like it was pretending it wasn't there at all, and the weasel was just looking at the rabbit while the rabbit shivered and only looked sideways with one eye and sometimes looked away altogether, like it was thinking if I don't see it, it's not there, and that's when I started hating some of those animal shows on TV because if they were filming the weasel, they could have stopped it and switched the cameras off and saved the rabbit, but they didn't; it just went on and on, until the weasel got bored, and it pounced and tore the rabbit's throat out.

‘Tell me,' the doctor said, ‘can you identify the three persons in this room?'

And Grandma Vera went:
‘Miriam
–' And it wasn't just Mum's name she was saying, but it came out like a squeal. And she looked at the doctor again, and he said:

‘And me. Who am I, Mrs Harcourt?'

And Grandma Vera just shook her head and started to cry, but he didn't stop then. He just kept looking at her and saying in that smarmy voice, ‘Just a few more, and we're finished.' And he asked her her age and she said ‘Forty-seven,' and ‘My' was all he said, but he didn't know Grandma was almost right because she's seventy-four. And all these things from ancient history he wanted to know as well, like the school she went to and her date of birth and the name of Grandpa Bill and it took her ages to remember even that – when they'd been married for centuries – plus the date of the War, and the name of the present Prime Minister and that was funny because she said ‘Bob Mendes' or Menges or someone who nobody had ever heard of, and then when he got to the last question, he said:

‘Can you tell me the months of the year? Not in their usual order, mind,' he says, ‘but backwards?' And Grandma Vera only got September and June and she was starting to cry again, and I hated him, and I didn't care
what
Mum said, and I started shouting:

‘December, November, October …'

And by the time I got to January, I was still shouting and nearly crying myself, and the doctor was looking at me like I was mad, and Grandma Vera had stopped crying and she was patting my hand and going
TT-tt
with her tongue, and saying, ‘Don't, don't.' And I wouldn't look at Mum. In the end the doctor said: