I know, she thinks with a cheeky smile, I’m going to have a head start on him and start picking the berries!
So Pansy, believing that she’s in the lush countryside of England goes walking round the Flower Dome looking for blackberries. The cool air of the Dome and the extensive field of flowers and plants collaborated in her delusion. Her heart is bursting with happiness in anticipation of seeing George. She bends and stoops to reach for the blackberries and she picks them wherever she can find them and stuffs them into her handbag which she thinks is her basket.
The Flower Dome’s young manager, who is instructing his helpers on deadheading the wilted flowers and leaves, does a double take when he sees the old lady suddenly walking round the Flower Field, nonchalantly picking the blackberries he had painstakingly nurtured to grow in the tropics! The woman examines each berry as if to see if it’s wormed or wholesome, and if it looks bad, she proceeds to chuck it back into the flower bed, presumably keeping only the good ones, storing them in her handbag. His jaw drops. He can’t believe his eyes.
Chapter 12
By the time Anthony arrives at the Gardens by the Bay security office, Pansy has forgotten the whole episode and her momentary lapse from reality. Fortunately, because of her diagnosis, he had placed family contact details in her handbag. He had expected to see her in an emotional state but instead she is sitting quite relaxed and nonchalantly drinking the tea that someone had kindly made for her. They have even provided her with some biscuits, which she is happily dunking into the tea, the way some English like to do, calling it Builder’s tea as most construction workers liked to drink tea in this manner, from a mug rather than a cup. She has calmed down considerably after security had first accosted her. She had created a scene, refusing to let the two burly security officers, one a Malay, the other, a Bengali, take away her handbag. She struggled and vented expletives which shocked the two men, incongruous from the lips of such a fine lady. She had struggled between them as they led her away. To the amazement of the security officers, by the time they had reached the office, she had suddenly returned to being a docile old lady, not realising what had taken place just moments ago. She spoke to them in kindly tones, asking about their jobs and families as if they were her kampong neighbours.
“Hi, Anthony,” she says, not in the least perturbed. “What are you doing here? I didn’t think you were interested in flowers.”
Anthony rolls his eyes upwards. He is furious, but is trying to calm himself. As soon as the security officer had called him, he had rung Dr Kwa and asked her for advice. She had told him not to upset Pansy by overreacting.
“It will happen more and more,” she said over the telephone. “No one can predict how Alzheimer’s affects each patient. It depends on which part of the patient’s brain it affects. Some patients lose their capacity for speech, others lose muscular control. We can only try to manage the condition through medication and drugs. But they are not a cure. One moment your mother can be lucid, in the next she won’t be. The disease changes the personality of the patient as well. Some of them can turn really vulgar and bad- tempered. But you must always remember that it is not your mother in action, it’s the disease talking. Sadly, it sounds as if your mother’s condition has deteriorated rapidly and she needs full-time care now. She won’t be safe on her own. I would suggest you start looking for a full-time caregiver, or put her in a nursing home.”
Anthony looks into his mother’s handbag that security had confiscated as evidence. He sees its contents—address book, cosmetics and apartment keys drenched with purplish blackberry juice and fruits. She had talked so much about how his father had liked blackberry pie, so he can guess why she did what she did. The sight produced an ache in him. Anthony sighs.
Goldie is upset to hear about her grandmother’s furore at Gardens by the Bay. Her father had told her about it. Alzheimer’s sounds like a life sentence. But she won’t be able to get back to Singapore till Chinese New Year the following year. She hopes that Pansy will still recognise her. She has tried talking to her grandmother on the telephone but it’s getting more and more difficult to carry on a conversation with her. Her grandmother gets disoriented listening to a disembodied voice.
Pansy cannot understand why she’s not in her own home, and why she is in this place with many other old people who seem to be in varying states of mobility and comprehension. Depending on her vacillating mind states, sometimes home to her is Bracklesham Bay, but sometimes it is Kampong Tepi Laut, never at her small apartment in Aljunied. Her short stay in the place had not reinforced any memories. She tells herself she must be in hospital or somewhere like that. Fortunately she has her own suite, a room with a bathroom attached, so that she doesn’t have to share a bathroom with the others. But the nursing aide regularly takes her out to the living room so that she can socialise with the others. When she remembers George and realises he’s not there with her, Pansy kicks up a fuss, screams and shouts, “I want George! I want to go home!” On other occasions, she weeps inconsolably when she asks for George and he doesn’t come.
“You said you’ll always be there for me,” she shouts accusations at him when she’s in her anger mode. “You promised!”
In February, Goldie finally makes it back to Singapore in good time for the reunion dinner for the Year
