It was a sensible arrangement. At the back of the flat were two bedrooms, side by side, one of which had French windows opening out on to the garden. That was where Agnes slept. The other was for Wilma. They left their doors ajar at night.
Lucy was staggered at Wilma’s cleanliness. For fifteen years she’d bustled from Hammersmith to Shepherd’s Bush, to a drop-in centre by a church. There she showered, took her breakfast and then came back to feed the birds in Ravenscourt Park. She’d met Agnes while tailing a pigeon. A friendship had grown, unknown to anyone in the family including Lucy. It was always that way with Agnes. She had small, secret spaces in her life which were only discovered by accident. Surprise questions were an act of trespass, so the family got used to stumbling upon things and pretending nothing had been uncovered. And so it was here. Wilma’s intimacy with Agnes passed without comment, even though a first, brief association was sufficient to confirm that Wilma was pleasantly and ever so slightly mad.
Agnes now had a wheelchair but she would not sit mm it. She pushed it round the flat, moving slowly and with relaxed deliberation as if negotiating an obstacle course, smiling at little victories and wincing at scuffs upon the furniture. The frontiers of her world were contracting and she rubbed against them. She no longer went to the park, or along the river to watch the boats, but moved from room to room, from chair to bed, and, whenever possible, out to the garden among fresh green things.
Wilma was tidying her room again when Lucy decided to mention the gun. She had been foraging in a cupboard for something Wilma had put away when she’d touched the barrel. She’d left it there, wrapped in a duster, with four corroded rounds of ammunition. The incongruity of Agnes with a revolver could not pass without comment. This was a secret space that had to be invaded, tactfully, as they sat in the back garden.
‘A French officer gave that to Arthur,’ explained Agnes. ‘He brought it back, along with his clock. They were his only souvenirs. I’d forgotten all about it.
‘But it’s illegal. It should have been handed in.’
‘Take it to the police after I’m dead,’ said Agnes.
The word struck Lucy like a back-handed slap. But to Agnes it was just another sound. She said, ‘I’d like to go inside now’
They returned slowly to the flat. For a long while Agnes jiggled her wheelchair at the French windows, trying to get it over a ridge. Lucy watched from behind, detesting her impulse to push past and move things along, to get away from this constant, slow pageant of illness.
‘I expect you see rather a lot of young Fougeres,’ said Agnes, leaning forward to push.
‘Not really’
‘I suspect he rather likes you.’
‘Stop it, Gran.’
As they passed Agnes’ bureau by the door Lucy saw a sheet of cardboard. ‘What’s that?’
‘An alphabet card:
The letters were written very neatly in lines of four, forming six columns.
Agnes stopped and turned, her blue eyes alarmed as by the heavy approach of a new and threatening machine. ‘When I can’t talk any more, I’ll point.’
They looked at each other, helpless.
Every time Lucy saw Agnes something happened to wound her memory. A gallery of imprints hung in perpetuity. That evening joined the rest. She would for ever be able to see her grandmother standing by a door, thin arms on a wheelchair, her eyes resting on the alphabet.