The Carer Read online

  There was no sign of him, however, and Phoebe realised that an hour had passed. It was getting late and the crowd was thinning. People were starting to pack up their stalls and behind her the café shutter came down with a clatter.

  She got up and went outside. The rain was heavy now and most people had gone. A few remaining bikes were being wheeled away and in the next field the car park was emptying.

  She went indoors and searched the hangar. She waited beside the gents, in case Torren was in there. She tried his phone but of course there was no signal.

  After a while she realised he had gone.

  ‘You forgot all about me?’

  ‘I’m sorry, doll.’

  ‘You forgot all about me and just went home ?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  It was the next morning and Torren had arrived at her house to apologise. Apparently he’d seen a mate of his who used to run the Wall of Death. It was raining so hard that they’d retreated to his van where they’d smoked some weed. Torren had lost all track of time – and, apparently, any memory of herself. The guy had offered him a lift home and he’d taken it.

  ‘I can’t believe it,’ Phoebe said.

  ‘I realised halfway back and I tried to phone you but I couldn’t get a signal.’

  ‘Do I really mean so little to you?’

  ‘That’s so not true, sweetheart.’ He rummaged in a plastic bag and gave her a bunch of daffodils. He’d probably picked them on the bypass.

  ‘It does make me feel just a tiny bit used.’

  Torren sat down at the kitchen table. It was odd seeing him in her house, the church bells ringing the faithful to prayer and him slumped there scratching his wiry grey rats’-tails.

  ‘You mean a hell of a lot to me,’ he said.

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘You do. Straight up.’

  ‘Oh, yes?’ She shoved the daffodils into a jug. ‘Me, and how many others?’

  Phoebe regretted this the moment she said it. He gazed at her, his eyes periwinkle-blue in that narrow, weathered face. ‘Shall I tell you a secret? My heart goes pitter-patter when I see your little yellow car come down the lane. I feel like I’m young again. I know that’s stupid, but it’s true. There’s nobody else does that to me. So put that in your pipe and smoke it, Miss Wentworth.’

  There was a silence. The bells had stopped and all she could hear was her beating heart. Torren had never spoken like this before. Their little fracas had shunted them into an unexpected intimacy and for this she was grateful.

  The atmosphere relaxed. Phoebe made some coffee. Torren wandered around the kitchen picking up things and putting them down again. She felt absurdly touched by his bashful demeanour and battered daffodils. He’d never given her a gift before, though sometimes his dog dropped dead animals at her feet. They had a proper conversation about the proposed supermarket and what it might do to the town, which he seemed as fond of as she was.

  ‘When I was a boy,’ he said, ‘my dad used to drive his sheep to market here every week. He sat in his tractor herding them down the hills and into the High Street. It was fucking slow – should’ve seen the traffic jam. Then, when he’d sold ’em, we’d stock up on supplies and drive back to the farm.’

  When he’d finished his coffee he kissed Phoebe on the cheek and left. This chaste goodbye, for some reason, moved her more than anything. In fact, on that Sunday morning she felt herself becoming close, very close, to falling in love with him.

  Robert

  Robert woke up feeling weightless – a floating nonentity, filled with dread. The taste of abandonment soured his mouth. In his dream he’d been a baby again, alone in his pram, in some vast supermarket whose aisles stretched into infinity. His mother was nowhere to be seen, and he knew he had lost her for good.

  He kicked aside the duvet and lay there, drenched in sweat. The house felt echoing, with his last child gone. It had been three years since Alice had moved out but he could still feel her absence dizzyingly, like vertigo.

  Farida lay on the far side of the bed; it was her day off. She was curled up, the duvet heaped on top of her. Was she asleep or was she faking it? She looked as artfully arranged as an actress in a movie – the tousled hair, the glimpse of silk strap against the burnished mahogany of her shoulder. Just for a moment he couldn’t quite believe in her, that she belonged to him or truly lived in this house. This large, immaculate house that had so briefly held his children before they disappeared. He felt a throb of homesickness for the terrace down the road where they had been as snug as puppies. The marks on the walls to celebrate their children growing. The scuffs and scars of family life.

  The sun glowed through the blinds. It was late, nearly nine o’clock, but Robert couldn’t move. He had a powerful feeling that he was alone, inching towards death, each passing hour a chirrup of birdsong from his father’s mad clock a hundred miles away. Actually, come to think of it, no madder than anything else.

  His dream had been triggered by something Phoebe told him. Apparently Torren had abandoned her at a motorbike show in Staffordshire. ‘As if I didn’t exist,’ she said.

  She’d made it into a joke but his heart had ached for her. Why did she always choose such hopeless men? Was her self-esteem so low that chaps like Torren were all that she deserved?

  Robert knew the answer, of course. Since their mother died they’d been talking a lot about their childhood. Her death had peeled open the lid of the past, raw and exposed. So had their dad’s transformation into a doddery old man, alone and therefore vulnerable to their examination of his fatherly shortcomings. Their conversations about this, during the past four years, had eased the old rivalry between them.

  Dear Phoebe. Only his darling, neurotic sister truly understood him. Free-floating anxiety, existential angst, bottomless sense of failure – this was meat and drink to her. Farida had no patience with this sort of talk and somehow transformed it into an attack on him. You would say that. Huh, typical! Why do you always go on about how YOU feel? Anything could be used as an excuse to get at him. Take his dad. Huh. Catch us farming our father out. You English are very odd.

  Robert was feeling odd – weird and untethered, like a helium balloon slipping from his own fingers and floating helplessly away. This was partly to do with his novel. It had now been sent to a publisher and his sense of loss was as profound as when his children left home. Not just loss – anxiety, panic, heart-hammering fear. What was happening to it, at this moment? Was somebody thumbing through its pages and sneering at his bumbling attempt at a story? Did they believe in any of it? He missed its company, and his treks during the winter to his shed. He even missed the wicker chair that gave him backache, and its reeking, mildewed cushion.

  Barnaby, his agent, had liked it but then he was easy to please. ‘Splendid, dear boy!’ he’d said on the phone. ‘I’ll whack it off to Ellie Hill at Aintree Books, it’s right up her Strasse.’ A glass clinked.

  Now this Ellie Hill held his life in her hands and he hadn’t heard anything for two weeks. What was she doing now? Reading his book or carousing with her friends in some artisanal alehouse? Washing her tights, his manuscript languishing under a pile of its rivals? Robert examined her photo on the Aintree Books website. Young, of course; they were all pre-schoolers. She looked unnervingly glossy and metropolitan. Would she understand the travails of a Radnorshire farming community a hundred years ago? Did he understand it? Had he truly got to grips with it at all? Would Aled and Cadog and that poor, abused Llinos – names he’d found on Google – come alive for young Ellie Hill from Bounds Green or Lewisham or wherever ambitious young editors could afford to live in London nowadays? He was already resenting her for taking so long, yet mentally smarming up to her in case she was reading it at this moment. It was agony.

  He left Farida to her lie-in and went downstairs to make breakfast. As he ground the coffee beans his mobile rang.

  It was Mandy.

  ‘Everything’s hunky-dory,’ she said. ‘But you
r dad’s wondering if you’re coming today. He has it in his diary but, well, you know what he’s like.’

  Christ, he’d forgotten all about it.

  It was the most beautiful day – sun shining, blue sky. If April is the cruellest month, May is the peacemaker. Wisteria smothered the porches of the embalmed cottages. A huddle of tourists stood outside the shop, shaking out a map. Somewhere a dog barked – wearily, repetitively, as if a log was being sawed. It was a Tuesday and nothing much was happening, but then nothing ever did. For eight years his parents had lived in Chipping Norbury and Robert had no idea how they passed the time until his mother’s death had swooped Dad’s life into close-up. He was still feeling weightless, and this bland picture-postcard beauty felt as unreal as Farida posing in bed a few hours earlier, pretending to be asleep, pretending to be his wife.

  He seemed no longer to be able to make connections. Long ago Chipping Norbury had been knee-deep in blood and guts. People had struggled for existence, scraping a living in howling gales; farmers like Llinos, Aled and Cadog, who had seemed so real in his shed. Now, in this village of manicured lawns, he simply couldn’t believe in them at all. Had people like that really lived here? Lived anywhere? His characters seemed costumed mannequins, wound up like clockwork. He had a horrible feeling that Ellie Hill, whoever she was, had sussed him out. That accounted for her silence.

  As he parked the car Robert remembered something Phoebe had told him. They were talking more nowadays; Phoebe’s life, like their father’s, was coming into sharper focus. Apparently she sang in some sort of choir. It consisted of people like her – ageing hippies with impeccable Guardian credentials, mostly women, of course. Every Wednesday they performed for the old people in the East Radnorshire Day Centre.

  ‘We’ve been trying to open their minds to other cultures,’ Phoebe said. ‘Some of them, would you believe, have never even gone to London. Certainly never seen a black face.’

  So the choir had learned the words of a Tutsi creation anthem. A lot of warbling and clicking, apparently, it had taken them weeks to master it. The old dears, most of whom suffered from dementia, had gamely sung along.

  ‘It was only afterwards,’ said Phoebe, ‘that we discovered it was a lament for a stillborn son.’

  Robert had laughed at the time, but now he thought that nothing is quite as it seems. We think we know the words, but reality can be brutally different.

  Something he was going to find out, in the weeks ahead.

  ‘He hasn’t been too well,’ said Mandy. ‘He’s had a urinary infection.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘That’s why he might seem a little confused. The kidneys can have that effect with older patients. I’ve seen it before. But it’s fine. We went to the doctor and he’s been prescribed ciprofloxacin. He’s much better today, aren’t we, Jimmy?’

  His father did look disorientated, his white hair as fluffy as a baby bird’s. His puzzle book lay open on his knee. ‘When are we going to the donkeys?’ he asked.

  ‘Later,’ she said. ‘Your son’s here now.’

  ‘I know he’s here! He’s standing in front of me, I’m not completely ga-ga. I just thought it’s a nice little walk and the hawthorn blossom’s lovely. One of England’s unsung glories, and it might be the last year I’ll see it.’

  ‘Dad!’

  ‘I’m a scientist, my boy. I’ve spent my life facing the facts.’ With his finger, he traced the scalloped lace of the antimacassar. ‘Dispassion can be a comfort, you know. As Daniel Dennett, the great American rationalist, said, “Not a single one of the cells that compose your body knows who you are or cares.” ’

  ‘Stop it!’ Mandy shivered. ‘You’re giving me goose bumps.’

  ‘I find it strangely invigorating,’ he said.

  Mandy took off her specs and polished them on her cardigan. ‘What those cells need is a nice cup of tea. And if we’re very good, we can have a caramel custard.’

  She gave Robert a wink and put on her specs. Stop infantilising him! he wanted to shout, as she heaved herself to her feet.

  He thought: old age is the loneliest place on earth. Not only do you lose your dearly beloved. You lose, one by one, the people whose shared memories fill your head. Stealthily, as they fade to black, their voices are silenced; nothing and nobody can fill that gap. Nobody else will get it like that person did. Nobody is left who knew you when you were young.

  He listened to Mandy clattering about in the kitchen. And then you end up living with somebody who doesn’t get the joke, who’s not your type. Who you have nothing in common with apart from your survival. Stuck with each other day and night like a terrible arranged marriage. Surely this is the loneliest thing of all.

  His father had sunk into himself that day, and who could blame him? Robert gazed at a list his dad had written, pinned to the wall: ‘NEBULOUS. HOSIERY. LUXEMBOURG.’ Words peripheral to his life that he nevertheless didn’t want to lose.

  Robert needed to talk but Dad seemed querulous and detached. ‘Any news about your book?’ he asked, but when Robert told him about the editor, Ellie Hill, his gaze wandered around the room, as if these surroundings were new to him and vaguely surprising. How have I fetched up here? Where’s my Anna?

  Robert shouldn’t have felt deflated. One has to make allowances, with the elderly. But he didn’t want to. He wanted his old father back, bristling with questions. He didn’t want to treat his dad like an invalid.

  Ah, but had he ever been that interested? Really interested? He was a scientist, through and through. When Robert brought him a toad his dad told him about its life cycle but he’d never asked him how he felt when his first girlfriend, Alison Sykes, dumped him. It was his mother who had laid her hand on his shoulder and said, ‘You poor boy, this is just the beginning.’ Though how she knew about it, with her happy marriage, God knew.

  Robert and his father relapsed into silence. It was almost a relief when Mandy came in with the tea tray. As she passed around the biscuits she talked about her new best friend, Bianka, from Hungary, who worked at the pub.

  ‘She’s not a scrounger, not like those others. Before she came here she worked at Spearmint Rhinos, sitting on men’s knees. She didn’t like that so then she worked cleaning toilets.’

  ‘She’s got a BA in Oceanography,’ said his dad. ‘A surprising choice for a lass from a landlocked country.’

  As the two of them discussed Bianka, his father perked up. The conversation moved on to Bianka’s ne’er-do-well boyfriend, who worked in the carwash at the Banbury Sainsbury’s.

  ‘Bianka’s found out he’s having an affair with one of the mums who shops there,’ said James eagerly. ‘But she’s too weak to leave him. She says that when he’s with her, she’s putty in his hands. She says he gets her, if you know what I mean, and there’s simply no arguing with that, though we’ve tried our best, haven’t we, Mandy?’

  To be frank, this exchange irritated Robert. Here he was, his father, talking about feelings all of a sudden – not something that had engaged him much in the past. And he seemed far more interested in what Mandy was telling him than anything Robert said.

  Robert knew this was petty. This was his dad’s universe now: his carer, the small goings-on in his small village. But still it rankled. Once or twice, during tea, Robert caught Mandy giving him a speculating look. Did she guess what was going on in his head?

  He still hadn’t quite worked her out – whether she considered herself an employee or whether they were the ones who were beholden to her. He and his sister. Whether she respected them for what they were doing, or whether she despised them for not having proper jobs.

  Huh! Robert thought. Just wait till my novel’s published. See your face then!

  ‘What’s the joke?’ Mandy was looking at him.

  ‘Nothing.’

  They were interrupted by a chirrup from the kitchen.

  ‘Aha, the chiff-chaff!’ said his dad.

  ‘No, love, the warbler. Four o
’clock.’

  ‘Silly me.’ His dad dunked his biscuit in his tea. ‘We’re going on a jaunt tomorrow.’

  ‘Only if your temperature’s back to normal,’ said Mandy.

  ‘We’re going to visit her flat in Droitwich.’

  ‘What flat in Droitwich?’ Robert asked.

  ‘Her flat.’ He pointed to Mandy. ‘One of her old boys left it to her.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘In his will.’

  Robert turned to Mandy. ‘Wow. That was generous.’

  She shrugged. ‘The tenants are leaving and I want to check it over.’

  Robert sat there, astonished. Dad and Mandy drank their tea.

  ‘We’re looking forward to it, aren’t we, dear?’ said Mandy. ‘We’re going to have lunch at Pizza Express.’

  He felt a sinking sensation in his bowels. A flat? She’d been left a flat ?

  He phoned his sister the next morning.

  ‘That’s what she was doing that day,’ he said. ‘She was looking at his will.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘To see if he’d changed it in her favour. Maybe to change it in her favour. Fake his signature, something like that. Maybe she did that with the old man who left her the flat.’

  ‘Don’t come all novelistic with me,’ said Phoebe. ‘Save it for your work.’

  Robert was walking on Wimbledon Common. The sun shone, birds were singing their little hearts out. Pedigree dogs crashed through the undergrowth, followed by trophy wives who, like him, were shouting into their mobiles. Happiness swept through him – a gust of it, like a freak wind. He was in this lovely wood on a Wednesday morning, as free as the invisible birds in the bushes, and would soon return to his beautiful Victorian house with its gleaming steel kitchen and four bathrooms.

  Robert’s unease was swept away. He would buy another dog. His novel would be published. His father was being cared for, and only a diseased mind could harbour suspicions about a woman who devoted herself to his wellbeing.