‘Forty Years! Forty years, George. I can’t stand it no more.’
He sneered his superiority at her. ‘No different for me. I’ve done it as well, you know.’
‘Day in, day out. Nursing, caring, taking him for walks in the park, washing him, wiping him. I can’t do it no more.’
‘So, what, then? Going to put him in that home; like I suggested when he was three? Wash your hands of him, at last? Now our lives is over? That it?’
‘I really can’t, George. I’ve had enough.’
‘And what about me? What about the people I work with? They think I’m a bloody hero; doing it all these years. Think you’re bloody marvellous; carrying on without moaning. What we going to tell them? We’ve given up? I have to work there. It’s easy for you. You only see the other fools pushing their lumps around the park, the other fools drudging at that club. It’s me what has to face people who count.’
‘At least you get a break. You don’t have to lump him about all day every day. Don’t clean him up. Feed him. Talk to him with never a single word back. Play games to amuse him. Watch kids’ telly ‘cos he might get something out of it. Which he doesn’t, by the way.’
‘You were the one wanted to keep him. I wanted him putting away from day one. Soon as I saw him I knew we’d got a dud. But, oh no, Saint bloody Hilary has to show the world how much she loves her son. Son! You’ve spent…we’ve spent forty bloody years wheeling a lump of brainless flesh around with us, just so the neighbours wouldn’t say we was cruel and unfeeling. And now; now, after all that wasted time, you want to abandon him and face the stares and talk and looks on their faces. Well, you do it, Hilary. Do it. And see if you can find me afterwards. Cos, I’ll be gone. I’ll be gone out this door as soon as that lump’s shunted off to the home for the useless. I’ll not be staying to have fingers pointed at me.’
The noise of a fall interrupted their third row of the week. Hilary looked at the wall and then at George. He resolutely stayed put.
‘Let him lie there. He knows no different.’
She sighed, heaved herself out of the comfy chair she’d so recently occupied, and left the room.
He was lying face down on the floor. Her nose told her she’d have to change him, again. The old wheelchair had shot across the room, hit by his flailing arm. It rested against the window, empty, looking out on the world. Just like him, she thought.
Hilary washed, cleaned and changed her forty year old baby. Smoothed salve over skin as soft as the day he’d been born. Tears left tracks down her face. And all the time, she spoke to him, made soothing noises, told him everything was all right, said how much she loved him.
‘My little Robert. So cute and cuddly. Ready for bed? Not hurt from the tumble? Come on, Robert, let’s get you sitting up, so I can lift you back into bed, eh?’
The side of the cot was down. She’d neglected to lock it when she’d left him for the night. Her fault he was on the floor. Her fault he’d been born defective. Her fault he’d tumbled. So, her job to get him back in again. George wouldn’t help. Not tonight.
The technique; a mixture of advice from professionals and personal experience, prevented her damaging her back. But left her exhausted. Robert weighed more than she ever would. Dead weight: difficult to handle. No help, of course. They said his brain wasn’t even that of a newborn.
At last, sweating and panting with effort, she had him across the bed. On his face. Not right. But she’d no more strength. Sixty two, with a lifetime’s care behind her, she had no energy.
‘You’ll be fine, Robert.’
She stroked his cropped hair, pulled the cover over him, raised and locked the side of the cot and switched out the light.
George had poured himself a large neat scotch. Her gin and orange was on the coffee table.
She returned to her seat; took up her knitting. The telly flashed pictures with the sound turned off. George was reading the sports pages of The Sun. The detective series she’d been wanting to watch was on but muted so George wouldn’t be interrupted. She glanced at the screen. A man in a wheelchair rolled down a grassy bank, terror on his face as he tried to apply the brakes. Man and chair reached a cliff edge, parted company, and fell to rocks far below. The camera flashed to another man, higher up the slope; the one who’d let the wheelchair go, maybe even pushed it. His face displayed triumph, relief and then, as realisation dawned, anguish.
‘What a bloody stunt!’
She looked at George, whose concentration on print had been disturbed by her entrance, and wondered; had she really heard that tone? Or was she guilty alone?
He took a slurp from his glass, turned his face to her and assumed a soft expression, strode stiffly over the carpet and knelt. Held her hand to stop the clacking needles.
‘Sorry, love. I’m tired as well. Though, God knows how you manage, day after day. He alright?’
She nodded and dried her eyes, blew her nose. ‘Had to leave him face down.’
A test. George responded and filled her with joy again as he went to turn him onto his back; safe from suffocation, comfortable. But the joy was over George, not Robert. Something had altered. She could feel it but wouldn’t name or even admit to it, but there was something no longer whole within her, as if a bag of emotion had burst and, in retrieving the contents, she’d missed some and left them lying, discarded.
Outside the supermarket next day, a young man in a four by four had taken the last disabled spot. She tried the mother and child section and found it full. No point. She couldn’t leave him and she couldn’t manage too far from the entrance. She’d have to come back.
As she was driving out, the four by four, with the young man on his mobile at the wheel, followed her. He accelerated after the junction, overtook her, and raced up the road, slamming on his anchors as the lights turned red.
She pulled up behind him, waited. He raced away and she wondered; what if Robert had been a proper boy, would he…?
The parking spot would be free now but the supermarket could wait. The road ribboned ahead; winding smoothly to the coast. She followed, as if pulled by some exterior force she couldn’t control. What she was doing, where she was bound, she didn’t know.
Their favourite large field on the cliff top was almost deserted. Just that same four by four, parked in the top corner; the lad behind the wheel, still talking on his mobile.
She parked where they always did. That small strip of almost level ground that allowed them to get Robert’s wheelchair out safely, before they moved him in gentle hairpin bends across the gradually steepening face of the field. A mile to cover three hundred yards to the cliff edge. There, they’d find their usual spot, overlooking the sea as it crashed on dark rocks unseen a hundred feet below.
Robert, they told each other, enjoyed the fresh air and the noise of the gulls. For Hilary and George, the sense of freedom was enough to justify the effort they knew the return would cost them.
But today, she was on her own. George was at work. She lowered the ramp and pulled the wheelchair out. Left it pointing toward the cliffs. Slipped a hand over the brake lever and turned to lock the back of the car. God alone knew how she’d manage him over the rough ground on her own. But she didn’t care. She needed this break.
As she bent to check the lock, her rump bumped the back of the wheelchair. She straightened up, annoyed at her carelessness in placing it so close. When she turned round, the carriage was already moving down the slope, gaining speed.
She was sure she’d put the brake on. But then, she recalled, last night she’d been sure she’d fastened the side of the cot. Old age. Tiredness. The general exhaustion of forty years caring for a lump of flesh that gave nothing back.
And then she came to. Saw the chair a dozen paces from her, moving steadily, rocking a little over the rough grass, his weight keeping it upright. She began to move, legs leaden as in a dream, running through treacle.
The chair gained speed. She followed. Her legs were too slow, her breath too short. She was almost on the handles, all her concentration on grasping the rubber grips, when her foot found a tussock and betrayed her. She tumbled, fell headlong. Winded, she tried to get up. But there was no strength in her. She crawled forward, the chair careering madly now toward the cliff edge. Robert’s slack arms flailed with the motion, waving.
And then he was there. The boy in the four by four. Roaring past her down the field at a suicidal pace, after Robert. She knelt, unable to stand. The car gained on Robert. It would turn across his path and stop him. The boy swerved in a swift arc; the car rocking dangerously as it turned on the slope, but staying on all four wheels.
He drove hard and fast, wheels spinning, to move in front of Robert and his chair. For a split second, it seemed he’d misjudged the timing and would hit Robert with the front of the car. But he eased off. The chair sped past.
The boy dived out of the driving seat and ran after the wheelchair as it continued to gather speed, the bulk of the car hiding them both.
She rose at last and moved as quickly as her legs would take her. As she descended, so the scene was revealed to her. Just as she passed the end of the car and gained a clear view, she saw the boy catch the handles of the wheelchair. Her heart almost stopped within her. She had no breath left to shout her warning. And she stood helpless, as the wheelchair, Robert and the boy dropped over the edge of the cliff.
Copyright: Stuart Aken
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