Last Train from Liguria (2010) (28 page)

‘I’ve been away, working in the States, I just forgot all about it.’

‘Yes, I understand. However—’

‘However, matron?’

‘Yes, there was a box of papers and a few other things - I’m just looking at a note of it here in the book we keep for unclaimed items - now, that would be up in the attic. If you could give me a few hours or better even a few days?’

‘I’ll be there this afternoon,’ I say.

*

By the time I reach St Ita’s the hospital day is all but over. ‘Oh God. You’re
really
late today,’ Thelma squeals as she opens the door to the ward.

‘I know. Had a few things to do first. No change I suppose?’

‘Never is. I’m off for a smoke - comin’?’

‘I’ll follow you, Thelma,’ I say, ‘just want to say hello to herself.’

‘S.B. - wha’?’ Thelma laughs softly as she always does since she first heard me call Nonna this name.

‘That’s right, Sleeping Beauty.’

It’s not yet seven o’clock but the blinds are drawn in the ward, and the night light is on and someone down the far end of the room is quietly wailing for God.

I take my seat. There’s a new arrival in the next bed where Mrs Clarke used to be. I don’t look at the face, but can tell it belongs to another mover and shaker; constant fingers plucking on the downturn of the sheet and feet hard at it under the bedspread.

And there’s Nonna, statue-still, out for the count, and not coming back to me anytime soon. I decide to go for it.

‘I’m not going to read to you today, Nonna, because I want to talk to you instead. I mean properly talk.’

I take off my coat, fold it behind my chair and lean in: ‘Listen, I’ve been thinking a lot about Pembroke Road lately. Actually, I’ve been over to see it, last week, and again today. And I noticed that you haven’t rented out our old flat or done it up either. It hasn’t been touched since you left it. Then it dawned on me, Nonna, that maybe you kept it like that, well - for me. In case I needed it or that. And I hope I’m right, Nonna, because I do. Need it, I mean. So.’

I wait a moment or two, get up and rearrange the top of her locker, pour myself a glass of water and sit back down again.

‘You see the problem is, Nonna, because none of us know - not me, the doctors, God, probably not even yourself - how long you’re going to stay in there, wherever you are, well, I’ve got to make the decision. And I’ve decided. Yes. I’ve definitely decided. That I’m going to sublet my place on North Great George’s, maybe even sell it after a while, and move back into Pembroke Road. Until I can decide what to do with my life. I hope that’s OK now with you. I don’t want to be presumptuous and I’ll have to take it that you don’t mind. But. Well, I just need to do
something
. Put one leg over the fence, as you used to say. Hope the rest of me follows, eh?’ I feel my throat tighten and so I drink more water and then slowly continue.

‘I think. I think it will make me better, if I live someplace else. I’m not sick or anything, not in the usual sense. But - I still need to get better. If I go home, Nonna - you know?’ I’m crying a little now, and I can see the flinty glint of eyeball from the patient in the bed next door, watching me. I wipe my eyes with my hand and stand up.

‘By the way, Nonna, I collected a few things belonging to you today from that nursing home, remember that place? Now, I don’t want you worrying. What I find, I find. I won’t care or fuss about it. I promise. I won’t think any less of you or anyone else. I’ll let you know how I get on, eh, Nonna? I’ll let you know that.’

I put the glass back, take a baby brush out of the mouth of the locker, and fix Nonna’s hair, which though thinning is still thick enough. In this light its colour is shocking white.

God, that bloody smoking room. It’s empty when I go in and gratefully I sit down. I choose a wooden stool, rather than one of those armchairs that start me scratching the minute I look at them. There’s a coffee table with a selection of old Sunday supplements or out-of-date housewifey magazines, which used to amuse me, but which I no longer read since opening a page and finding a big lump of phlegm embedded into a knitting pattern. The cushions on the armchairs show bulges of orange foam through the flowery stretch-nylon covers. They have curved wooden arms with most of the varnish scraped off by names that have come and gone over the years: Pete. Jeannie. Mairead. Turlough. Milly. Aine. Jonathan. There is a heart carved into one, with ‘
I luv ?
‘ written in it. A child of Prague with his young head on old shoulders stands on the window ledge. And there’s a J.F. Kennedy plate on the wall that makes him look as if he has Down’s Syndrome. The ashtray is stuffed with cigarette ends; more are spread over the upside-down lid of an old biscuit tin on the floor. It stinks in here; you could scrape the nicotine off the walls.

I’m halfway through my cigarette and thinking about getting up to go when Thelma comes in carrying one of those lopsided trays made in the arts and craft class, with three mugs of tea on it, and one bun on a plate. The bun is for me. Thelma insists. She’s already had four. But the staff nurse said it was all right. Mr Carroll will never eat them anyway and she doesn’t want them left hanging around in case they bring in more mice.

The owner of the third mug then struggles in behind Thelma. And I see it’s Mona, the aptly named tea lady. Mona’s son is collecting her after work and it’s getting dark and looking like rain, so I take her offer of a lift as far as the bus stop in Portrane. Even the way she makes this offer sounds like a lament. Then she pulls a single cigarette out of her overall pocket, plumps it into shape and lights it up. And she’s off: her feet are bleedin’ killin’ her, the neck as stiff as a board. Her next-door neighbour has cancer. ‘Doesn’t even smoke, I wouldn’t mind.’ Mona says this as if it’s an unfair world that the neighbour has cancer and she hasn’t - after all the trouble she’s gone to puffing on her forty a day.

Thelma tuts with sympathy and makes little heartfelt suggestions to ease Mona’s hardships:

‘A hot-water bottle! I hear that’s great for a sore neck.’

‘A basin of salty water - that’s the man for the feet.’

‘Do you know now what you should do - put honey in your tea! You’ll never feel tired again.’

But Mona is not interested in Thelma or her prescriptions. ‘Do you know what it is?’ Mona says to me. ‘There’s days I do be that knackered I swear I could climb into bed with one of them loonies out there, and not care if I never get up out of it again.’ She takes a pull of smoke, then darts a look at me. ‘Oh God, sorry, love, I’m sorry. No offence.’

‘You’re grand,’ I say.

‘No change with your poor granny?’ she asks me then, putting one cigarette out while accepting a fresh one from me.

I shake my head.

‘God love her all the same. Doesn’t be a peep out of her these days.’

‘Not a dickie bird!’ Thelma confirms.

‘And she was a great one there for a while, yapping on like I don’t know what - wasn’t she, Thel?’

‘Oh yea.’

‘She’d be going goodo there before she’d the stroke.’ She leans over, tips me on the arm, casting a vague wink and a twitch of her lips towards Thelma as if warning me to say nothing right now. ‘That other business. I have to tell you, I thought that was a bloody disgrace. I mean how that happened, it’s beyond the beyond. Do you know what I mean?’

‘Rabbitin’ on,’ Thelma says. ‘So she was, S.B. Rabbitin.’

‘Ah no,’ Mona says. ‘Not always. Be fair now. You could have the odd conversation with her like. Sometimes she used to even speak Eyetalian.’

‘Yea?’ I say.

‘Ask me how I know that, go on, ask me.’

‘How do you know that, Mona?’

‘Didn’t I used to work in Macari’s. The chipper on the Malahide Road?’

‘Right.’

‘She’s not Eyetalian but - is she?’

‘No. She lived there for a while, when she was younger.’

‘Ahhhh, that explains it. Handy little number it was, working in the chipper. But me ankles like, with all that standing. And I usedn’t be able to breathe, the steam and that you know, brings on me asthma.’

‘I can imagine.’

Thelma touches the tray. ‘You never ate your bun,’ she says to me.

‘You know, I’m not really hungry, Thelma - would you like it?’

‘All right.’

‘Ah, ah, fatso,’ Mona says. ‘I thought you were cutting down? Ten Ton Tessie, if you don’t start watching it, you. Do you hear me now?’ Then she looks over at me again. ‘Do you know what I often meant to ask you?’

‘What?’

‘Who’s Alec?’

‘Alec?’

‘Is he your little brother?’

‘No. Why?’

‘Well, I reckoned he’s a kid anyhow. She used to be on about him sometimes. You know the way they do. Askin’ after people you wouldn’t know. But you don’t like to be ignoring them either and so you humour them along a bit.’

‘What sort of things would she say?’

‘Ah you know - just little bits of things while I’d be cleaning around the bed and that. Where’s Alec? she might go. And then I might say, Ah, he’ll be back now shortly in a minute. And then she’d say, Is he with Edward? And then I’d say, Do you know what? I think he is. Havin’ a lesson? And then I’d say, Oh, he is. Piano or tennis? would be the next thing she’d want to know. And I’d say, God, I couldn’t tell you that now but it’ll be over soon enough anyhow. And she’d say, He won’t do his algebra, do you know that? And I’d go, Isn’t he the little divil not doin’ his algebra? Wait’n I get him, I’ll give him a good smack for himself I will. And she’d go, Ah no, you’re not to smack him, you’ll only hurt him. And I’d say, Ah of course I wouldn’t smack him, I’m only jokin’ you. He’s too good to smack. And she’d say, He’s a good boy. Then I’d say, Ah God he is, sure everyone knows that he’s the best boy. And she be delighted with herself then and off she’d go back to sleep.’

We say nothing then, waiting on Mona’s son to arrive. Thelma spluttering away on her bun. Mona lighting another cigarette and smoking it as if it were her last.