A Short Story

Awakening

   Papaya-pink seagulls scraped across the sunset as they flew to roost on bleak cliffs. Above my head, a dead branch, as stark as forked lightening against the darkening sky, mewed like a Siamese cat in the evening breeze. I imagined that the house put its arms around my shoulders as I sat there on the veranda, resting my aching limbs, watching the silver birch tree flowing, tousled as a mermaid’s hair.

   “Nina!” stabbed my mother’s voice, filling my head, tugging my attention to its feet. “Neena! Neena!” chanted like a police car siren.

   “I hate my nickname,” I thought through clenched teeth as I leapt up and hurried indoors.

   I was inside before I remembered that my mother was dead.

***

   My father, protector, confidant, best friend, had died six months before from a heart attack while I was in bed with ‘flu, leaving me to face the awful truth that my mother was, and had been for most of my life, an alcoholic. You imagine you’d notice, wouldn’t you, something like that? You’re thinking, ‘That’s silly! I’d know if my mother drank.’

   I did know, deep down. Everyone likes a drink, I told myself, a little glass of wine while they’re preparing lunch, a small tot of whisky to relax with in the evenings. I sympathised by telephone with her poor health, her insomnia, how some mornings she was so weak she had to lie down with a hot water bottle while my father took the dog out alone. I understood when visits were cancelled: ‘Your poor Mummy, she’s a bit poorly at the moment. Maybe in a month or two…..’

   It was only after my father’s death, when I was faced with a furious, bitter, cruel old woman, who never shed a tear for her husband of sixty years, who fell down the stairs every night, refused to eat, and heaped hatred upon anyone who tried to help her, that I realised that she was a drunk!

***

I got up early, as birds shook themselves and chirped their first morning note, as foxes slunk back through dew-covered grasses to their lairs. I had a lot to do. I worked automaton-like as I completed my mental list. At last I had finished. I filled the kettle and stood looking around the kitchen: sandwiches piled on plates under tight shiny cling film, bright salads gleaming in glass bowls, purposeful cakes made by neighbours anxious to offer support, unsure how best to do it. I checked the trays, the array of unmatched cups and saucers hastily borrowed from friends, the higgledy-piggledy assortment of glasses lined up like Dad’s Army on parade. I looked in the mirror, checked my hair, saw the lines of pain etched into my face, wondered fleetingly if they would ever go.

   “Ready, Mum?” said my son, smartly suited and serious.

   “I’m ready,” I said.

   We walked out of the house and down the path to the line of waiting cars. Heading the procession in a black limousine, my mother was waiting, tucked snugly in a white satin bed under her duvet of yellow roses. I had dressed her in clothes she hadn’t worn for years, a dress I’d found at the back of her wardrobe, fresh white cotton sprinkled with blue cornflowers, blue crystal ear-rings and necklace to match, a white cardigan, all dressed up for a summer’s day in the garden, a day watching Wimbledon, a day from the childhood I would have liked, a half-memory that wasn’t there, a wish, a might-have-been.

***

   I felt my father’s hand upon my shoulder.

   “Thank you all for coming,” I began, looking down at the very few exhausted, loyal faces staring back at me from the pews. “It is difficult for me to describe the way I feel today, as we gather here to say 'Goodbye' to my mother.”

The End