The Face That Must Die (3 page)

Even I couldn’t pretend nothing was wrong now, but more than thirty years of not discussing her at her insistence made me incapable of seeking medical advice on her behalf. I felt helpless and increasingly desperate whenever I thought of her. Usually on my visits I had to try and disentangle the truth from her account of something that had happened, or that she claimed had happened, since my last visit; often we had violent arguments over nothing at all — sometimes we came to blows. More than once I grew so frustrated that I ran at a wall of the room head first. I wasn’t always sane myself. Eventually, on the theory that living near me in a house she knew I owned would make her feel more secure, I managed to obtain a mortgage for one from the bank.

Perhaps this seemed the perfect solution because I was at my wits’ end, or because it was so close to the ambition she’d nursed throughout my childhood of owning her own home. I couldn’t see (though my wife tried to make me see) that it was too late and might very well make the situation worse. It wasn’t long before we found a house my mother was delighted with, a few minutes’ walk away from me.

The negotiations for buying it took months, as they will. Meanwhile my son was born and my mother kept calling to say that heads were looking at her out of vases or to plead with me to take her home from the house someone had left her in. She slept downstairs on the couch, because people came into her bedroom and pushed her out of bed. By now I left the phone off the hook when I went to bed, but more than once I woke in the dead of night convinced I’d heard its ringing.

Shortly after the contracts of sale had been signed, my mother decided she didn’t want to move house after all: she felt at home where she was, she had friends among the neighbours. I managed intermittently to persuade her, sometimes by making wild promises, and spent the week before the move in packing her belongings, since she was either incapable or unwilling. Spending so much time in that house reminded me of my childhood. Remembering how she’d looked after me made me realise how unrecognisable she was now, and how little was left of our relationship. In the garden I burst into tears.

At first she seemed happy in her new house and finding out where the shops were, two minutes’ walk away. She bought a television, which she’d wanted for many years. I imagined her settling in, making friends, taking strolls along the promenade to which steps led at the bottom of her street. I was as trapped in a fantasy as she was.

It took me a while to notice she was no longer changing her clothes. People had stolen all the rest and replaced it with inferior stuff which she refused to wear, instead tying it in bundles which she hid around the house. I was visiting her every day, and now that I’d learned to drive I took her touring the nearby countryside. None of this helped: it simply let me believe intermittently that it was a partial solution. Of course I knew it was nothing of the kind.

By now she often called me several times a day to go round and tell the people to leave her alone — the children, my sister, the man who looked like the devil. Often she told me I was there with her, or someone who was pretending to be me, who looked extremely ill and who had her worried sick. Occasionally I persuaded her that she’d just woken from dreaming. Sometimes I rushed to her house to prove her wrong, but either she denied having called me or the people had just gone: this lady in the corner and the people in the curtains would confirm she was telling the truth, or were they afraid to speak? She knew they weren’t really people in the curtains but photographs of people that someone kept putting in the room — hadn’t I heard of talking pictures? That was as far as I could argue her back towards reality. What was I trying to do, drive her mad so I and that woman could have her house? Oh no, of course, it wasn’t her house, though I’d said it would be. I’d shown her three houses and this was her least favourite, she hadn’t really wanted it at all. . . She refused absolutely to believe that anything was wrong with her or that she needed help.

I did. For the first time in my life I considered seeking help on her behalf, considered it and was too desperate to behave as she had programmed me to. Even so, I spent months trying to persuade her to enrol with our family doctor until one day I drove her there and dumped her in the waiting-room. She told the doctor I was her husband who had left her for another woman. The doctor agreed with me that something had to be done.

Nothing could be, since my mother refused help. The doctor referred me to the social services, who ran luncheon clubs and day care centres for the elderly. The case worker made two visits to my mother, at the second of which I was present and saw her fail to explain what services she was offering (presumably assuming, quite unjustifiably, that my mother was capable of remembering what she had been told the first time). She left after five minutes and put the case away among the dormant files. The few times I went to the social services after that she was usually on holiday, or not back from holiday when she was expected, or off sick. Once she told me that perhaps my mother’s hallucinations were company for her. Her colleagues praised her professional competence.

So began the worst year of my life. I realised that my mother never went out of the house by herself, though she was convinced she did. Her calls became more frequent and more terrified, and all I could do was grow used to them, respond indifferently, tell her I’d be round later. I still visited her every day, though by now we loathed each other: either we had violent arguments in which she clung to the idea that nothing was wrong with her, or hardly spoke. I was becoming everything she feared and hated. Sometimes when I took her for a drive I was tempted to leave her miles from anywhere; sometimes I thought of killing her, reaching across her on a deserted stretch of motorway and opening the passenger door. Perhaps she would leave the gas fire on unlit or finally wander down into the river.

The doctor could see how I was, and called in the community health officer to visit my mother. He was sympathetic, and more skilful than the social worker at the job she ought to have been doing, but all he could do was visit my mother regularly in the hope of establishing a rapport. Meanwhile my behaviour towards my wife and children grew steadily worse. When we took a fortnight’s holiday in the summer of 1982 I made sure the social services knew I was away, but I was hoping that my mother would either have to go out shopping by herself or starve to death.

When I came back her house smelled worse and was swarming with flies, but otherwise nothing had changed: the same arguments, the same helpless mutual loathing. She had clearly not been out of the house. She accused me of having stolen her key, and when I showed her she had several copies in her purse, insisted that they didn’t fit the lock. She went to the front door to demonstrate, and I watched her trying to turn the lock with a box of matches.

Either I was able to see clearly at last that she needed constant supervision, or two weeks’ respite had made me even less able to cope. I called the community health officer, who had concluded independently that part of his problem in establishing a rapport was that my mother felt (however bitterly) she could always rely on me. I told her that I wouldn’t be visiting her for three weeks; if she needed anything she would have to call on the services available, whose phone numbers I had posted on the wall above the phone. Surely this would break down her obduracy.

She called me a couple of days later to ask if we were still friends. Those were just about her last words to me. Nearly two weeks later I heard from the community health officer. He’d visited my mother’s house two days running but had received no answer. I hurried round and let myself in.

The kitchen and most of the hall were flooded by a tap that had been left full on. My mother lay on the sofa, breathing but past waking. She looked twenty years older. The kitchen drawers were full of liquescent sliced bread, months old. The television was turned over on its screen; a mirror lay smashed in the hall. From the cuts on her hand it seemed she must have punched her reflection in the face.

I called the community health officer and drove to the social services. The case worker was off sick, and the officer I spoke to complained that it was nearly her lunch hour. She tried to make me feel guilty enough about my mother to go away, until I began to scream at her. I should not like to have to rely on most of the Wallasey social workers I met, and perhaps after all it was to the good that my mother never had.

Our doctor and the community health officer had her admitted to hospital that afternoon. She’d regained consciousness, and was pitifully grateful both to see me and to go into hospital. I hoped this would be the first step towards her going into care, but every time I visited the hospital she seemed worse. Soon she didn’t recognise me. Sometimes she lay with her eyes moving back and forth very fast, like a metronome. I fed her water from a toddler’s lidded cup, managing a cupful an hour if she didn’t spit it out. Less than two weeks after she had been admitted, the ward sister called to say she had died during the night. I feel she died of my neglect and of my having destroyed her memories.

You may feel that all this has strayed rather far from the source of
The Face That Must Die
and of my fiction generally, but I wouldn’t have known where to stop. I think it reads coldly, but I can’t justify rewriting to protect my own image, though perhaps that is just my trying to display how honest I think I am.

My mother was cremated, and I took the ashes to the family grave in Huddersfield one weekend, only to find that there was nobody to tell me where the grave (which I’d seen once, twenty years before) was. I set out to look for it, but found after an hour that I’d examined perhaps a tenth of the headstones. I gave up then, planning to come back on a weekday when someone would be in attendance, and wandered aimlessly through the graveyard until suddenly I halted, turned, and found myself looking straight at the family headstone. I had walked to it by the shortest possible route. I should like to think that my mother had managed at last to take me where she wanted to be.

Ramsey Campbell

Merseyside, England

(1982)

* * *

I Am It And It Is I

There can’t have been much stuff in that cake. Or else it must have been all seeds. I must have had the best of it last night.

I don’t want to think about last night. Maybe I should listen to some sounds.

So why shouldn’t I think about last night? I’m not going to be stoned on this stuff. There were some nice sounds going, and I was listening to them, and that must have been when everyone went out for a walk. Sylvia went to crash with Den and Heather. She’ll be back. It was just a temporary thing. I wish I could remember exactly what happened. She wanted to turn the sounds down, that’s right, because the gays upstairs were banging on the floor, and we had an argument. I forget what I said. I know I told her to fuck off, and she went out crying with Den and Heather. They’re not on the phone, or I could tell her I’m sorry. I mean, I am, but it was weird because at the time I felt bad about it yet something told me I had to be on my own for a while. Weird.

I can’t suss why I’m not stoned now. It’s nearly two hours since I ate that cake. It was the last piece, right enough, and I know it was full of seeds because we didn’t spread them out properly. But last night, I mean, wow, that was cake. Den had brought along some Debussy. I said shit when I saw it, but they were really some sounds when he put it on. That’s right, I had my eyes shut, and I was sailing down out of space through the clouds into this ruined temple, and just as the sounds were really freaking out there was light, brighter and brighter. Had Sylvia gone by then? No, she couldn’t have, because Den didn’t leave the sounds. I can’t remember.

But that was good dope. A friend of Den’s was growing it in Sefton Park, right in the middle of all those streets. I mean, all those straights in the streets never knew, that was the incredible part. Just beautiful. And he was making it to Amsterdam, so he sold his plot. Plot of pot. Wow, must remember that. He sold it, half to Den and half to me. Last night was the first crop. Said he scored the seeds in some little village with a ruined temple in the background. It sounds like William Burroughs, I know, he said.

It sounds like William Burroughs, I know he said.

My God, I’m slowing down. It’s coming on.

Right. I’m going to listen to some sounds. See if it’s as fantastic as last night.

This room’s too purple. Look at those velvet curtains. It’s like your spit thickens when you’re sick, they’re thickening the sunlight. So are those cars in Lodge Lane. Grinding away and throbbing and rattling — they’re interfering with the sunlight. No, they can’t be. Who said that? Come on, come out wherever you are.

I’m going to hear some sounds.

Look where the records are. I’ll never get over there. It’ll be a miracle if I can stand up. Jesus, look at that! My purple shadow! It’s turning to look at me! You’re turning to look at yourself, you mean. Who’s saying these things?

Oh Christ, there’s Sylvia. I just flashed her. In the doorway with tears running down her face. Trembling like she wants to shake herself to pieces and never be put together again. Oh I’m sorry, love. I didn’t want you to go. It was the shit talking. I never wanted you to go.

- Why do they call it shit?

- Who’s there? Oh Jesus, it’s not Sylvia who came apart, it’s me. My mind’s splitting down the middle like a cleaver’s gone through it.

- Of course. There’s a calm side and a paranoid side. You’re on the paranoid side now, man.