And then, somewhere on the way to Edinburgh, I fell asleep, for the first time in years.
Lenni and Margot Get Happy
MY FIRST DAY as an octogenarian was surprising. My legs didn’t feel any more tired and my hair wasn’t grey. I had yet to develop a passion for the smell of lavender and my sleeves didn’t contain any tissues. I had never had lunch in a Marks & Spencer café or shown pictures of my grandchildren to strangers on the bus. But there I was, among my octogenarian peers in the Rose Room, ready to do some painting.
Pippa had rearranged the tables again, this time into clusters of four. I sat beside Margot, and opposite us sat Walter, a retired gardener whose grey hair and rosy red cheeks made him resemble a garden gnome, and Else, who with her black pashmina draped over her shoulders and her short silver bob looked like she could be the editor of a French fashion magazine.
The table beside us was in my mind our competition, as it was made up of four real octogenarians in various shades of sensible pastel pyjamas, whereas on our table sat a gnome, a magazine editor, a fake octogenarian and a Margot. If there was a competition, which I hoped there would be, I was sure we’d win.
Outside the window, the hospital car park was drenched in grey, with half-hearted rain misting down on people as they ran to the payment machines, bowing their heads and opening umbrellas against the subtle deluge. I tried to remember the last time I’d felt the rain. And I wondered, briefly, if I could convince New Nurse to take me out into the car park next time it rained, or better yet, if I could stand in one of the shower rooms fully dressed and have her simulate the rain with one or two of the showerheads on their softest setting.
‘I’d like it,’ Pippa said, rolling up the sleeves of her floral top, ‘if we could spend today thinking about happiness, and painting or drawing moments from our happy memories. I’ll share mine first.’ She tried to perch on the edge of her desk, but stood up fairly quickly because it was ever so slightly too high. ‘One of my happiest memories is a walk my family took with our old dog. It was sometime around Easter but it was a surprisingly hot day. My grandfather was there too, and we just walked along a country road in the sunshine.’
‘I knew you were a dog person!’ I said before I really intended to.
She grinned and clicked off the lid of her board pen. ‘So,’ she continued, ‘what I might draw for that memory could be the line of trees on the country road. People are hard, so if you’re looking to finish the painting today, I’d steer clear of people, but then I might have the sunlight come through the leaves of the trees.’ She sketched all of this out on the board as she talked, and even though it was just a whiteboard drawing, it still looked good.
‘Or,’ Pippa said, ‘if you’re more interested in object studies, the handle of our old dog’s lead, perhaps with the back of his head, might be good.’ She did another sketch beside the first, with a hand holding a handle and the back of a dog’s head with fluffy ears. I felt cheated. Her sketches were so good that mine would never even come close.
‘I’ve made us a CD for this week’s theme,’ she said, as she pressed play on her CD player. Judy Garland singing ‘C’mon get happy’ crossed the boundaries of space and time to enter our ears.
I felt a heat rise in my chest as everyone around me began drawing.
Walter had picked up one of the pencils and started sketching. He definitely has gardener’s hands. There was a flap of skin coming loose on the knuckle of his first finger. And green stains under his nails. His brow was wrinkled as he pressed hard with his pencil onto the canvas. I wondered what he was drawing for his happiest memory. Perhaps it was the day that he made a wish and turned from a garden gnome into a human. Else was painting long strips of black paint onto her canvas. And Margot was holding her pencil and pulling it across the canvas so lightly that the marks it left behind were like the ghost of a drawing.
My canvas stayed white. I didn’t know what to draw. Being aware of everyone around you successfully getting on with the task at hand is the worst feeling. It’s just like school and it’s itchy.
The first eye was impossibly real as Margot sketched out her happiest memory. It was clear and yet somehow shining. Instead of feeling angry at her for being so good at drawing, I was fascinated. She was capturing something, someone, who in eighty-three years of living she had been the happiest to see.
The tiny hands came next, one curled into a small fist and the other open and stretching out, reaching for us.
The blanket covered the little tummy and there were wisps of hair that stuck out from underneath a yellow hat. The button nose was so real that I couldn’t quite believe she was drawing this from memory. All the while, Margot’s face was soft, as though the baby she was drawing were lying on the table in front of her and she was watching it gurgle and kick and stare up at her with big, learning eyes.
When she was done, it was perfect. Just coloured pencils on canvas; she’d shaded the warmth in the cheeks and the soft blue blanket.
Then she put down the pencil and I saw her, though I don’t think she knew,
