I am uncomfortable about what it reveals about me but I want one of these. Though I am saving up to get the inestimable Fox in the Snow to make me one of her specials.
What is your favourite T-Shirt?
As I sit typing I am surrounded by men in business suits tutting. There is a problem with our plane and it seems likely we will have to disembark and jump onto another. The BA pilot has informed us, in his reassuring upper middle class tones, that the plane “is deemed not to be quite 100% safe”. For those of you who are not British, that means “likely at any moment to burst into a spectaular ball of flame that will be visible from the Faroe Islands and will rattle the cocktail glasses of revellers in Monaco”.
P and I are flying North for her grandmother’s funeral. P’s family is a close one. They share a sense of familial duty which is alien to me. They programme regular visits, talk often by phone and think of one another frequently. As a result I probably saw more of P’s grandmother than I ever did of either of my own.
The first time I spoke to her was in the foyer of the Grand Hotel Regina in Grindlewald, Switzerland. I was newly engaged to P and was whisked away, at the family’s expense, on a skiing trip. The family had been holidaying in Grindlewald for three generations. P’s great-grandfather had, so far as I can gather, paused from his annual dalliance with the lounge singer to win the world curling championship on an ice rink beside the Hotel some time in the 20s. Ever since, the Regina had been pleased to welcome the family with the slightly disdainful efficiency that passes for a warm welcome in Swiss luxury hotels.
A plan had been made to go out for lunch and I made my way down to the lobby a little ahead of my new fiancee. The family had been nice to me but I could not quite shake the feeling that I was being somehow absorbed or swallowed. I spotted P’s Gran sat bolt upright in a high back chair. Her hair was dyed and, for want of a more vivid word, “coiffed” to perfection. She wore a blue collarless cardigan buttoned to the neck with large gold buttons and had her handbag sat on the lap of her elegant slacks. She turned and saw me and from a facial twitch that fell short of a smile I deduced that I was to join her. Once seated I squeezed at whatever mental gland secretes small talk and got ready to nod at anything she said. I was in the middle of saying how lovely something was when she leaned over towards me and said in a voice that echoed around the mountain slopes “You are only here because of my husband”. I nodded politely before the penny began to drop. At first I was confused. Was she saying her husband and I were related? Sensing that I may not have followed her train of thought she leant forward a second time and said “It’s HIS money that is paying for YOUR holiday”. I bridled and had to fight an urge to write her a cheque there and then and drop it into her lap.
Over the years, I got to know her a little better and came to understand that she was kicking against a fate that will afflict us all in our turn. For a time she and her husband had been the hub of the family. Once her daughter took the (to her inexplicable) decision to go to university, become a teacher and work for a living, the centre of gravity shifted. Then her husband died and she became a problem. At first she was merely a logistical problem. “We have to pick up Gran! Who is going to do it?”. “Where are we going to put Gran when she comes for Christmas?” What must it feel like to go from mother of the family to inconvenience? As deafness took hold she became a social problem too. She drifted to the edge of table conversation and could only force an acknowledgment of her presence through controversy. Her son-in-law might be a Professor of Artificial Intelligence but what was that? Her husband had been an accountant; an entrepreneur and academic achievement did not compare. Two grandchildren became doctors and the third a barrister but if she felt a hint of pride she would not admit to it. Around the cheese course she would make it clear that doctors were parasites on the pain of others and they were saints compared to lawyers. Why couldn’t any of them have become an accountant and entrepreneur?
It was loneliness that turned her into an accomplished provocateuse. It was the feeling that a wheel had turned and left her without her partner and without a purpose.
Around a year ago she succumbed to Alzheimer’s Syndrome. She was moved from her prim Carluke bungalow into a nursing home. The first time I visited her there she was convinced she was in the Grand Hotel and fretted that she could not find her purse to pay the bill. She wanted to leave and could not. She looked frightened.
Last time I saw her she was sat in a highbacked chair with her blue cardigan buttoned to the neck. Her hair, undyed, was roughly combed and her bony hands gripped her knees as, sedated, she tried to the impossible: to stand on her own.
As I searched for my black tie today I prayed a selfish prayer: “take me first”. I know there are readers who within the hour have held their child in their arms and felt the responsibility of being their baby’s whole world. It is fleeting. A friend called me to tell me this morning that his scan has shown he has heart disease. We will lose the ones we love. Yet, even though the backwards step into the shadows awaits us all, I somehow cannot bring myself to mourn. This beautiful, fragile life brings us such astonishments: the moment we first hold our lover’s hand, a baby returning our gaze, kisses, the consolations of friendship, reunions and a thousand other experiences and expressions of love. What does death teach us? Don’t waste a minute – abandon yourself to love.Â
P and I are going to have a 3 – 4 week vacation in the US this August. We are visiting friends in Washington and family in Philly. Otherwise we have, as the song says, no particular place to go. Any suggestions as to where we should visit (or not)?
[EDITED to take account of Peter’s naming and shaming]