The Little Girl in the Radiator: Mum Alzheimer's & Me (11 page)

The whistle blew, and the train lurched
suddenly forward, and then began to pick up speed. The next stop would be Birmingham itself, if I didn’t find her by then I would be in a terrible mess: the train
was heading up to Manchester after that. Frantically, I scanned the people on
the NEC platform as we pulled away from the station.

Then I saw the back of her head.

I recognised her immediately by her clothes.
The weird thing was, she was walking arm-in-arm along the platform with some
bloke in a grey raincoat and black trilby. I couldn’t believe my eyes – they
were chatting as though they had known each other for years. Then they
disappeared together around a corner, and I lost sight of them. It was too
late. I was now on my way to Birmingham.

I stood there gazing out of the window like
a man in a trance. I knew I had seen her, I just couldn’t quite believe it;
just in case I’d been mistaken, I did as quick and thorough a search of the whole
of the train as I could, racing through each of the carriages before we got to
Brum in the next 10 minutes. Some people looked up at me as I passed, others
ignored me. What a variety of people we have in this country! People of all
skin shades and hues, hair types, textures and lengths, cuts and colours; and
what a mixture of body types, from the scarily skinny to the frighteningly fat,
with all degrees of body mass in between. Every single bodily feature of every
single person is slightly different; it’s amazing how nature can manage to
create so many variations on a single theme. As I passed through the carriages,
scanning the river of heads, like a great sheet of bubble-wrap, all I could see
were noses: big noses, small noses, long noses, short noses, fat noses,
squashed noses, upturned noses, broken noses, bent noses, button noses, noses
with warts, noses with freckles, and, in one case, an adolescent nose with an
index finger stuck up it to the second knuckle. I had never really looked at
people like this before.

I covered the whole length of the train,
knocking on all the toilet cubicles on the way, and by the time the voice over
the Tannoy announced ‘Birmingham New Street, next station stop!’ I had assured
myself that mum was nowhere on this train. It had to have been her I’d seen.

As soon as we pulled into the station, I was
first off. I ran to the information desk. ‘When’s the next train back to the
NEC, please?’

The man looked at a screen over his head.
‘Platform two, just leaving.’

I dashed up the stairs and ran along the
corridor that runs over the platforms until I came to the staircase that leads
down to platform two. The train was just pulling out when I managed to open a
door – thank God, this little local train didn’t have automatic locking – jump
in, and crash the door shut behind me.

A quiet day’s shopping, indeed!

* * * * *

As the train rattled back to the NEC all I
could think about was the man in the grey macintosh.

Who the
hell
was he? I had only
caught the briefest glimpse of him, and only from behind, but I was reasonably
sure I’d never laid eyes on him before. He reminded me of a character in an old
black-and-white film from the 1950s; in his long raincoat and black trilby he
was dressed like Hollywood’s idea of what a British spy was supposed to look
like. But he could be anybody. He could be some sick weirdo who goes around the
country kidnapping elderly women, but what for? For money? Most old people
don’t carry that much cash on them, and I made sure mum never did. For
sex
?
Oh my God, the thought of it!

For what, then? Maybe he was just some
perverted psycho who travelled the country, up and down the train network,
collecting old ladies? I suddenly had the most bizarre picture pop into my
head, of a huge barn somewhere in the middle of nowhere full of scores of
elderly women, all wandering around in circles talking to each other whilst
this shadowy figure in a grey mac and black hat watched it all from a high
balcony, rubbing his hands with glee and laughing maniacally.

‘And now, my dears!’ he shouts ominously,
from the high parapet, his arms outstretched to his captives milling below.
‘Now, we are going to play
bingo
!’

I had to snap out of this. Like I’ve now
doubtless said several times before, Alzheimer’s sends the whole family crazy
and it does an especially good job on the main carer.

‘Next station stop, the National Exhibition
Centre,’ came the metallic announcement. ‘National Exhibition Centre, next
station stop. Passengers wishing to depart the train at this station, please
make sure you have all…’

I stopped listening. As the train squealed
and hissed to a stop, almost everyone seemed to stand up. The aisles were
immediately blocked again. I waited as patiently as I could for the queue to
meander towards the doors, and eventually stepped out onto the platform. I went
the way I thought mum and the mysterious man had gone about 25 minutes earlier.
The crowd milled towards the exits, and we began to move like a great herd of
cattle towards the central complex of the NEC itself.

I noticed that most people were making their
way towards the exhibition halls, and we passed a great sign which swung on
wires over our heads:

FRANCHISE AND SMALL BUSINESS EXHIBITION

Everyone seemed to be going there, so it
made sense for me to follow. If mum wasn’t in there, and had left the NEC
complex with that man, I was stuffed; there would be no obvious way of tracing
her.

The crowd began to thin into a long line as
we approached the entrance of the exhibition hall. When I reached the front I
was asked for my ticket.

‘Sorry, I don’t have one, I’m just looking
for my mother, she’s lost.’

‘Eight pounds please.’

The man collecting the tickets didn’t care
about my lost mother, I wasn’t going in without either a valid ticket, or
paying the admission charge. I paid him.

The NEC exhibition halls are massive and
hold thousands of people; it was going to be a nightmare trying to spot mum
amongst them. The one thing I had going for me was the man in the black hat, if
she was still with him. Men rarely wear hats in Britain now, so he should stand
out from the crowd. Over the main arena was a long balcony, and there were a
number of bars and restaurants on the first floor with large windows
overlooking the exhibition floor. I decided to make my way up there – then I
could look down on the crowd for a black trilby hat. This seemed like a good
plan.

I shoved through the crowd going up and down
the staircase, then I shoved through the crowd on the upper landing, then I
shoved through the crowd to the bar area, where people were chucking down
tasteless, overpriced beer in plastic glasses, oblivious to my anguish. No sign
of mum in here. I shoved my way through the crowd again, back out of the bar
and along the main balcony. When I got to the main barrier, I was able to look
down on the crowd milling below.

The Franchise and Small Business Exhibition
was spread across three huge halls, and I was looking down onto a sea of heads
that swirled around the stands in only one hall. I scanned the jostling horde
from one corner of the great complex to the other, wondering if I’d ever pick
out the man in the black trilby hat.

No, was the answer.

The river of heads ebbed and flowed around
the stalls and swirled down the aisles, forming patterns and shapes as the
crowd intermingled, separated, and mingled again. It was fascinating watching
the crowd from above like that; all individuality was disappearing as the herd
instinct took over, and all these people, who couldn’t possibly know each
other, moved like a single organism.
Blood cells moving through an artery
,
I thought.

I went back down the stairs to rejoin the
throng. I felt in my bones that mum wasn’t in that hall, but that didn’t mean
she wasn’t in one of the others. I swirled with the rest of them along the
aisles and through the large portals separating one giant hangar from the next.
I had not realised that so many people might want to start up a small business.
Here there were franchises to be bought for pretty much any type of business
you could imagine. For £20,000, I could become a loss adjuster for the
insurance industry; or an accident specialist, photographing catastrophes at
the roadside; or I could travel the country repairing scratched paintwork on
cars, taking stone chips out of windscreens, or pulling the dents out of car
panels. I could train privately to become an accountant or a vet; or I could
open a shoe shop, a dress shop, a wedding gown hire shop; or I could sell power
tools. I could learn to repair televisions or computers, or I could learn to
steam clean carpets and curtains for anyone who would like to employ me to do
so.

I wondered what mum had already signed up
to; I could imagine her sitting at a desk with a slimy salesman saying, ‘You’re
never going to regret this, Mrs Slevin, your new career as a freelance travelling
tree surgeon will be very rewarding indeed.’

I had better find her quick.

In the second hall the crowd was even bigger
than that in the first. I pushed and dodged through the crowds, looking at the
people sitting at the stands, the people milling about, the people standing
around, the people moving up and down the stairways. I looked at everyone, and
really saw no-one.

Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw
him!

It was the man in the grey coat and the
black trilby hat. He had just exited this hall and was heading into the third
exhibition. I only got a glimpse of his back, but I was
sure
it was him.
I started to shove through the throng, closing on him with every step. I pushed
through the gateway into the third hall, and looked about. He had disappeared.
Where was he? He was here just a second or two ago. I forced my way forwards
frantically, and then I glimpsed him again. He was carrying two cups of tea on
a plastic tray over to one of the stands. I followed him, and he laid the tray
down on a table. He gave a cup to a woman in a red baseball cap, put a cup down
for himself, and sat at the table. When I approached, I recognised the woman in
the red baseball cap as mum.

‘Oh, Richard!’ said mum, as I approached.
‘There you are. I’m going to start a business embroidering baseball caps for
people! Isn’t that great?’

Mum’s bright red baseball cap had the word
‘Rose’ embroidered across the front in fancy gold lettering.

I took a very deep breath.

‘How do you do?’ said the man in the grey
macintosh. ‘You must be Richard.’

I shook his hand. ‘Actually, my name’s
Martin,’ I said. ‘My mum thinks that I’m her brother sometimes, he’s Richard.
She has Alzheimer’s.’

‘Ah,’ he said, ‘I thought it was
Alzheimer’s. My late wife had it, so did both my parents.’

He stirred his tea thoughtfully.

‘It runs in families, you know,’ he said. ‘I
suppose I’ll get it too, one day. I wondered when someone would show up to
claim your mother.’

‘We got separated on the train,’ I
explained.

‘Easily done,’ he remarked. ‘I realised she
was lost, so took her along with me. I realised someone would turn up for her
sooner or later.’

‘Thank you, that was very kind of you.’

‘Not at all,’ he replied, putting his cup
down. ‘And don’t worry about the new business embroidering baseball caps. I made
sure she didn’t sign anything, or give them any money. Even if she did, I don’t
think they’d be able to hold her to it.’

‘No, they wouldn’t,’ I replied. ‘We’ve had
that trouble before with some double-glazing people.’

The man in the grey macintosh nodded. ‘Are
you looking to start up a small business, or secure a franchise, perhaps?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘I was just chasing my mother.
We were supposed to be going to New Street market, but mum got off the train a
stop too early.’

‘Ah,’ he said.

‘What about you?’

‘I retired a while ago from the military. I
served 22 years in the Army. I’ve got a good pension, don’t really need the
work, just thought I might find something interesting to occupy myself with.
Getting bored at home, that’s all.’

I nodded.

There was a silence for a few moments, and
then he smiled at me. ‘Your mother’s been telling me that you’re a bullfighter
for Coventry Council,’ he said. ‘That sounds interesting.’

‘She tells people that,’ I said. ‘I don’t
know where she got that one from.’

Actually, I suspected it was from the
television. The phrase ‘Mad Cow Disease’ had been in the papers a lot lately,
and there were news reports about it on the TV fairly regularly. I guess that
mum had simply taken a few extra mental steps to give me this somewhat exotic
new job.

He nodded. ‘It’s a fascinating disease,
Alzheimer’s,’ he said. ‘My wife thought I was dead. She used to talk to me and
all that, but then she’d tell people that I had been blown up in the war. She
used to cry about it sometimes, even when I was sitting on the sofa next to
her.’

I shook my head. ‘By the way,’ I said, ‘I
don’t think it is hereditary, you know. Just because your parents had it,
doesn’t necessarily mean you will, too.’