With no kids to take to Morecambe, I took my mother instead, went down to Barrow to see her and take her up. It was only a forty minute trip along the coast, a journey I had taken many times, coming back from University in Leeds and changing at Carnforth, then back from the south and changing at Lancaster. I went down on the Friday and stayed overnight, we were still debating what she should do, sell the place and move down to my sister's, downsize within the town, wait, sell up and go into a care home. She had lived in the town for the best part of eighty years, one of nine kids, many of whom had remained there. Her attachments there were deep.
Looking forward to Morecambe?
Oh yes, she said. Remember when you went up there with Fiona and that lot and you got that hat.
No. Hat?
She was laughing. She had the box of photos on her lap, had been going through them picking out photos of my Dad mostly and reminiscing. It’s here somewhere, she said, found it, A photo of me wearing a bowler hat with the slogan, I get my mucking words fuddled written on it.
Oh yeah, I gazed at my own face, eight or nine, a close up, me pulling a funny, mock serious face, natural light, the window and a blur of greenery, the edge of a seat; on the coach back. We used to find that kind of thing hilarious as kids I said. Spoonerisms.
What? He hand went up to her hearing aid. Spoonerisms I said louder, you know changing the first letters of a word around. Narl Ceville. Better still, I said and pointed at her Netty Beville, that really could be a name. I wonder if kids still find that funny?
Remember when we were in Glasgow looking for somewhere to park and you got exited and shouted Par Cark!
I laughed too and then for some reason I said, I miss him, you know but it could have been worse and in another way. I let the sentence trail off, I was going to say, I’m free of him, and one day I'll be free of you too, and I'll miss you but perhaps then I'll really be able to float away from the world, no ties, no obligation to live.
He didn’t think you should have stayed in England. He thought it was right you went back to Japan, you had your wife.
Well, that hasn’t exactly worked out.
He was always very interested in Japan, your Dad. He was in the far east for his national s service you know.
Well, I said, in fairness he was interested in a lot of things.
Oh, I know, not like a lot of men only interested in the next pint of beer, whatever they read in the Sun or the Mail. One point he was going to go to the, what do you call it in...
I know I said. The Retreat. I knew, had heard certain stories time and time again. I was tired of hearing them, but she wanted to say it. The memory warmed her, enunciating things gave them a life that just reflecting on them could never achieve.
Aye, that’s right The Retreat. Anyway what he always said when he was in his twenties you know, he was going to do all kinds of things, go off and be a beachcomber in Australia, that was his idea at one point and then another one was, you know, this Buddhist monastery place up in Ulverston. What it’s doing there of all places, I don’t know, they did tell me at one point but I can’t remember now. Well, he was going to go there at one point, he said he used to come back from the yard on the bus and see the
I was growing impatient. Old men with their grey faces, I said
That’s right, all looking so worried about the bills and the mortgage he used to think that’ll be me in twenty year’s time and anyway he always said that if I'd died first he was going to go up there, the Buddhist place. What will you do up there? I asked. He said: contemplate. I did laugh. A life of contemplation, he said, you know how he was. I said you do enough contemplating lying on that sofa with the paper all day.
She was looking out beyond the moment into a livelier and brighter world her face lifted and animated almost as though it were suddenly spotlit, and then the light flicked off, the window closed and we were back in the mysteriously advancing here and now, the photos scattered in her lap and the house half empty somehow.
Alright, I said gently. Cup of tea?
Use the decaff, she said, I can hardly sleep these days as it is.
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