Читать книгу Has Anyone Here Seen Larry? - Deirdre Purcell - Страница 6

Here is an example of what goes on in this house. Here is my day-to-day life. I get up at ten minutes past six. Before I bring Mammy her cup of tea – her first cup of tea, I might add – I have the washing in the machine and last night’s load out on the line, rain or shine. (I have a special raincoat for going out to the line.) ‘Good morning, Mammy,’ I say as cheerfully as I can when I push open her door. I put the tea on her little table. Of course all I get in return is a grunt.

I try to ignore this and go back downstairs where I put on the porridge for the three of us. I slice up the bread for toast and lay the table. It is a quarter to seven by this time. When the porridge starts to simmer, I tramp back up the fifteen steps with Mary’s cup of tea. I don’t bother to bid her good morning. There is no point. She is in cloud cuckoo land, that one. All the time. I could be Godzilla coming in with a hatchet for all she knows or cares.

I go back into Mammy’s room and find she hasn’t even touched the tea. So I have to make her sit up. ‘Drink that now, Mammy,’ I say each day, as though for the first time. ‘It will wake you up. And I’ll be back in a minute or two to help you into your dressing-gown. The porridge is on.’ She’ll squeak something about it being too cold to drink. But I tell her it’s her own fault. I try to be gentle about it – and of course I take it back down the stairs to put a hot drop into it.

When I have her sitting up and drinking, it’s downstairs again. Then upstairs to check on the two of them. Then downstairs. I’m like a yo-yo. Same thing every day. Sometimes I think I should just record everything on a tape recorder. Then all I would have to do is to switch it on every morning.

It is a quarter past seven before we are all sitting at the table. I am already wrecked.

The whole day is still ahead of me, of course. Dishes, shopping, cleaning, laundry, cooking. Driving Mammy to get her pension or to have her hair done – the bit of hair she has left. All right, it is her car and I have the use of it. But she can’t drive it any more, can she?

She has the travel pass, of course, but would you let an 87-year-old out on her own to cross the city on a bus? So once a week I have to drive her to visit her pal who is so out of it she can’t talk any more. All she can do now is to smile.

The visits to that nursing home are torture to me. I know I should have more patience with her, with the two of them indeed. After all, it is not poor old Marian’s fault that she’s as feeble as she is, but I can’t help it. It is torture for me sitting there, watching Mammy whispering into her ear as if we have all the time in the world. All I can think about is that back home the washing is getting rained on.

Daddy slaved all his life and paid his insurance stamps, and for what? Because Mammy is not living alone, she is not entitled to any home help. So I’m not only her body slave, I’m a body slave to the State.

I asked Mary once if she could do something about getting Mammy some rights. After all, what is the use of being in the civil service if you don’t have even a little bit of pull. But it was no use. She said it was a different department – well I knew that much – and she had no contacts at all.

My bet is she didn’t even try.

So the result of it is that all day long, every day, I have to put up with Mammy’s long face and her constant sighing. Her telling me that I’m putting the groceries on the wrong shelf in the fridge. Her asking me over and over again what time it is. She can’t read the dial of her watch any more.

That’s the worst part. Because I know why she keeps wanting to know about the time. She wants to know when her precious Mary will be home.