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Nick Glendinning sat in the sitting room at St John’s Wood twirling a piece of paper between his fingers. Written on it was the telephone number of the woman who’d asked about ‘her lad’, the woman who’d probably received his mother’s last words. She hadn’t rung Charles, or the police or the medical services. She’d rung this stranger. What had she said, before dying?
At first, Nick told himself that Father Anselm was handling Elizabeth’s final dispensations – she’d planned it that way – so he tried to forget the question: he signed up as a locum, and he tried to assume a normal life – until it dawned on him that he’d stumbled on another secret, his mother’s last; and that whatever she’d said was more important than the key or anything retained in its box. This realisation haunted him. It made him pick up the telephone.
‘My name is Nicholas Glendinning,’ he said. ‘I understand you know my mother.’
He pressed the receiver against his ear, to stop his hand from shaking. All he could make out was laboured breathing.
‘Can I meet you?’ said Nick, pressing harder.
The air whistled in his ear. ‘Did she tell you about me?’
‘No.’
‘What do you want?’
‘To talk about my mother.’
The breathing grew calm. ‘I’d like that very much.’
Having noted the address, Nick rose and swivelled on his heels. Framed by the doorway was his father. His arms were almost raised. He looked like one of those entertainers in Covent Garden who don’t move until you give them some money.
They looked at each other, both utterly still. Abruptly Charles grimaced and flicked a finger in the air, as if he’d remembered what he was looking for. Then he quickly shuffled upstairs.
Nick sat on the sofa adjacent to a low table in the Shoreditch flat. The old woman was dressed in a yellow floral dress as if she were off to church or a summer garden party She wore earrings, a necklace and creaking leather shoes. The room was conspicuously tidy but very cold, even though a radiator clicked with activity. She’d had the windows open, and an air freshener had been used. Nick found the assembly of images and sensations unequivocally surreal. He could not imagine his mother traipsing up that filthy stairwell, or sitting here, before this apparition with silver hair and tragic eyes.
‘I don’t even know your name,’ he said awkwardly.
‘Mrs Dixon,’ she said, clearing her throat at the same time. ‘Refreshment?’
‘Yes, please.’
The low table was covered with a white cloth. It had been laid for a small reception. Mrs Dixon poured tea into ancient china cups. ‘Milk or lemon?’
‘Milk, thank you.
A whole ritual unfolded, as if he were a vicar, or the squire. She offered Nick sugar, a teaspoon from the Isle of Man and a jammy dodger from a cake stand.
‘Your mother was my friend,’ she said proudly ‘The Council sent her along when I got lonely’
‘The Council’ had evidently explained that she was dead. The flat vowel in ‘lonely’ disclosed that Mrs Dixon was not a Londoner. Her accent had been softened, but the northern intonation in that one word was unmistakable. Before Nick could think of what to say Mrs Dixon spoke again.
‘She came here every week, on a Friday and we talked… mainly about me, and my family’ Delicately Mrs Dixon raised her cup. ‘She was full of questions, but it did me good to get things off my chest. It’s not good to keep things in, that’s what I say.
‘Absolutely.’
‘You’re a doctor, aren’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well done,’ she exclaimed.
Nick sipped his tea, wondering how soon he might reasonably make his exit. But Mrs Dixon’s confidence had grown. There was something predatory about her delight. A biscuit?’ she said, pointing at the stand.
‘Thank you.’
Mrs Dixon settled back in her chair, her teacup and saucer resting in the middle of her chest. Looking over the top, she said, ‘I told her so much about myself, but I never asked about her… Do you mind telling me a little?’
‘What would you like to hear?’ asked Nick.
‘Well… anything really. Something that explains where she came from… Like I did, with her.’
Nick surrendered to the circumstances, as his mother must have done, when she’d first realised what she’d let herself in for. Mrs Dixon’s question, however, was so broad that he didn’t know where to begin. And then he thought of the photograph.
‘We have this family portrait at home,’ he said thoughtfully ‘It shows my mother as a child with her parents.’
The picture was in the sitting room at St John’s Wood. As a boy Nick used to study the sepia faces of the solemn man and his proud, buxom wife. They were stiff and unsmiling, in a happy sort of way obedient to the formality of their time. His neck was bound in a wing collar, and she was packed into a polka dot dress. Elizabeth was in the middle, her long hair scraped back and held by ribbons. An affectionate hand from her father had strayed onto her knee, unnoticed by the cameraman. There was a clock in the background and a tall dresser. Elizabeth used to say that her self-understanding – where she’d come from, who she’d become, her dispositions and their provenance – had been captured in that one photograph, with one explosion from the flash. It was her way of explaining to Nick why as he’d grown older, she’d become more reserved; and why there was a melancholy even in her smile. As a teenager, her quietness, her lack of bounce, had sometimes irritated him and, being a teenager, he’d told her. It made him sad, now, to think he could ever have held her to account, given the tragedy that overran that prim family in the photograph.
Nick found himself explaining to Mrs Dixon how events had wiped clean his mother’s expectations before she was fifteen. That her father had died suddenly before her eyes.
‘What happened?’ asked Mrs Dixon, blinking over her teacup.
‘He just passed away like a light going out.’
‘But how?’
A weak heart.’ Nick understood now, because Doctor Okoye had made the diagnosis.
‘What was her father like?’ asked Mrs Dixon after a moment.
‘My mother rarely spoke of him,’ replied Nick. ‘She once told me that not a day passed without her calling him to mind.’ Nick sipped his tea – it had gone cold with his talking – and then he said, strangely moved, ‘She said I was just like him…’ In saying that sentence to this dolled-up stranger, Nick, for the first time, understood his own adolescence, and his mother’s anguish as a parent. She’d tried to tell him why they’d fallen out of kilter, but he hadn’t understood.
‘And what of Elizabeth’s mother?’ said Mrs Dixon. ‘How did she fare?’
‘Not very well.’
‘I’m not surprised.’
‘That’s not what I meant.’ He paused, not wanting to divulge much more. ‘She died too – shortly afterwards, from septicaemia.’
Mrs Dixon seemed visibly shocked, and Nick felt a stab of irritation, fearing that his mother’s life had become an episode in a kind of soap opera.
‘Thank you for telling me what happened to Elizabeth,’ said Mrs Dixon, placing her cup on the table. ‘I now understand why she came to look after me.
‘Really?’ asked Nick, curious now.
‘Yes… You see… I, too, have had my mishaps.’ She picked up a paper napkin. And I know what it’s like to lose someone and want them back. Of course, the Council had all this information in their files, and they’ll have told your mother. So when she knocked on my door, thank God, she didn’t bring just pity, she brought… herself.’ The napkin tore in her hands.
Nick was ashamed of his earlier irritation with this poor woman who was genuinely distressed. He would have liked to leave, but now was the obvious time to put the one question that had brought him here. He said, ‘Before my mother died, she made a telephone call… to you.’
Mrs Dixon nodded. Her mouth was set, and her eyes were suddenly vacant.
‘Do you mind telling me what she said?’
‘Not at all.’ Mrs Dixon appeared tragically isolated in her chair, the only one left at the garden party. ‘Elizabeth said… “I’m very sorry, but I won’t be coming any more.”’
Nick was dumbfounded. The latter part of his mother’s life had been devoted to a scheme wholly personal in its objectives and significance. But her last words had been said to a forgotten woman halfway up a tower block who dressed up for a cup of tea; to the person who probably needed her most.