They say you don’t notice when you first begin to slow down. They say it starts early – at about fifty – a gradual slowing where you have to be careful on the stairs and getting in and out of the bath, where you don’t run but jog, don’t jog but walk. But I can forever know that isn’t true. I moved faster than I have in months – years, even. I ran. It must have been something to behold, but the halls were quiet. It was barely morning.
Arthur already had her hand in his as he sat beside her. Lenni’s nurse, who had run with me, explained in words I heard but didn’t hear.
Lenni’s face was covered with a mask, and there was a rattle when she breathed. It was jagged. I sat on her other side and took her hand. It was cold and heavy. I didn’t let go anyway.
‘It might be time to say goodbye,’ the nurse said, unable to stop the many tears that were running down her face. She tucked her cherry hair behind her ear and wiped her hand under her eyes. Then she walked over to Lenni and gave her a kiss on the forehead.
‘Lenni?’ the nurse said. ‘Margot’s here.’
Lenni’s eyes flickered, half opening. She saw me.
‘Hello, pet. I’m here,’ I said, forcing a smile. She moved her head in an almost nod. I had to blink to clear my vision.
‘I love you, Lenni. I always will,’ I told her. She squeezed my hand and from behind the mask, she mouthed her reply.
‘You’re going to be so happy,’ I told her. ‘You’re going to marry a tall man, and he’ll have dark hair but light eyes, and he’ll sing. He’ll sing to you all the time. And you’ll get a little flat together and then a house, and you’ll send me postcards, and then you’ll have a baby or maybe two, and one of them you’ll call Arthur and the other you’ll call Star, and you’ll have a garden with snails but you won’t mind them. And you’ll be so happy, and you’ll remember us all here and think how funny it all seems now. I’ll come to visit, and you’ll make up the bed with a floral bedspread.’ I couldn’t stop talking, but she didn’t seem to mind.
Then she turned to Father Arthur, pulled at her oxygen mask until it came off, and in a small voice she asked, ‘Do you think I’ll get into heaven?’
Arthur closed his eyes at the pain of it but then fixed her with a look of complete conviction. ‘Of course, Lenni,’ he said, ‘of course.’ He stroked her hand and she closed her eyes.
‘And Lenni, when you get to heaven,’ he said.
Her eyes opened.
‘Give ’em hell.’
It was the first time she had smiled all day.
Margot Again
I THOUGHT I would go first.
How could she slip so gently away? I thought she would go like a firework, with bright lights flashing and alarms ringing and defibrillators being raced around corners. The kind of thing she would have loved. Chaos and commotion, her two closest companions in life, deserted her in her final hours. Her death was hallowed and quiet, and we stayed by her side for as long as they would let us.
And then they took her away. She could have been sleeping, but for the fact that they had unplugged the tubes and wires that had been keeping her alive and coiled them neatly by her hand. No longer needed.
And then there was just a ward. And a place where a bed and a girl used to be. And we were no longer Father Arthur and Margot, we were just a priest and an old woman. Surrogate parents robbed of a real daughter.
I started to panic and Arthur, bless him, held me tight as I wept.
When I was ready, he walked me back to my ward, and we sat on my bed and we cried together.
Precious Little
MY MOTHER HAD two words she always used when she was running out of patience, or when she was tired, or when she was scared. She would turn to me and say something like, ‘I don’t know, Margot, but there’s precious little time left in the day,’ or ‘There’s precious little we can do,’ or ‘There’s precious little left in the cupboard.’
I used to imagine what a Precious Little might look like. A glass trinket perhaps, blue and shining in the light. Something you had to be careful with when you held it in the palm of your hand. It would need wrapping in tissue if you wanted to take it somewhere, but I always wanted to slip it into my pocket. I imagined my mother and my six-year-old self, sitting either side of the kitchen table with the Precious Little between us, deliberating how we ought to split it between us to make a meal.
It feels like there’s precious little now. I don’t know what to do with myself. All I can think to do is finish my story.
Ho Chi Minh City, January 2000
Margot Macrae is Sixty-Nine Years Old
At the airport, Meena and I clung to each other and I felt tiny – like we were two particles that had accidentally collided in a dust cloud. And I thanked the various gods for letting us collide. We made no promises or vows to see each other again. One year from seventy, I knew better than to make promises about returning to that humid, intense, faraway place. The city had been ours, even if only for a few months. We had entered a new millennium together and that felt like a lot.
‘Goodbye, my love,’ she said into my hair as she held on tight.
And I felt peace.
Because we had finally answered the question of the gap between our beds.
