Homemaking for the Down-At-Heart. Finuala Dowling

      Margot said she’d stay. She was expecting the carer to stop by and meet her charge. What a breakthrough that had been: discovering that there was an agency you could phone; that there were trained people you could hire. She was not alone – her problem was in fact so common that it was in the Yellow Pages.

      Margot put the kettle on. For some years her mother had favoured a disgusting brew of black tea with apple-cider vinegar and honey. Margot put this on the tray along with her own cup of strong Ceylon with sugar. Zoe was wandering around the front room, the room that had convinced her to buy this house forty years before, as if she were in a completely strange place.

      “I can’t find the door,” she complained. “You mustn’t leave me alone like that.”

      Margot showed her the tall wooden door with its shiny brass handle.

      “Everything is so fuzzy,” said Zoe. “I want to be tested for madness.” She paused and then repeated, “I want to be tested for madness, but I don’t have the right clothes.”

      “You’ve already passed that test,” muttered Margot.

      She set the tea tray on the table between them. Zoe helped herself to Margot’s steaming orange-brown tea, pronouncing it delicious. Margot contemplated the vinegary elixir that remained on the tray and wondered whether she shouldn’t skip tea altogether and pour herself a stiff brandy.

      After all the years when they’d seemed to do nothing but talk, talk, talk, she couldn’t think of anything to say to her mother. Zoe either stared at her without animation, or blocked her tentative ventures into conversation with a gloomy remark. Sometimes she thought how easy it would be to press a pillow over her mother’s face. How long did a stifled person flail about before asphyxiation was achieved? Then she would go to jail for a long time, longer than however long this was going to take. Why did everyone go on about longevity as if it were dearly to be wished for? There was that woman in France who’d lived to one hundred and twenty-two, which was simply freakish. She was glad her mother had eaten cream with everything and sorry that she’d given up cigarettes. No other daughter felt this way about an elderly mother, she was sure of that. She was a hateful, lonely murderess.

      The wind had blown a thick mixture of sea water and grime against the windows. If only Curtis, Pia and Mr Morland would return. Even Leroy – or perhaps especially Leroy, with his all-devouring ego. These minutes alone with her mother were completely different from the minutes that rocketed by when she ran errands or prepared to go on air.

      “Shall we do the crossword?”

      They did the simple clues these days.

      “A four-letter word meaning ‘woman’?” asked Margot.

      “Lady,” said Zoe. There was a note of archness, even sarcasm, in her tone, as if Zoe knew how insulting the clue was.

      “Lady” wasn’t really a synonym for “woman”, thought Margot. There’d been a time when the two of them might have discussed this question, but no longer. Words that Zoe would have tossed off merely two years ago left her baffled.

      “A seven-letter word for ‘beginners’.”

      “N-n-n nouveau riche,” offered Zoe.

      Margot imagined how the key letters “n”, “o” and “v” had flipped up in Zoe’s mind like judges’ scorecards. It was almost heroic, really, the mind’s last stand.

      There was a light knock on the door. It was Joylene, the carer, arriving to meet Zoe. Margot introduced them. Zoe stared up at her nurse through thick-paned reading glasses. A wad of sticky tape attached the arm of her spectacles to its frame.

      “Mrs Thesen, I’m Joylene Adams and I’m going to help take care of you from tomorrow.”

      “How do you do?” said Zoe. “It’s so kind of you to come, but in fact there’s been a mistake. My daughter can take care of me.”

      “Mommy, I need Joylene to help me now that you are so anxious and forgetful.”

      “Maybe Margot can leave us alone for a while and we can get to know each other,” said Joylene.

      It was odd to hear oneself referred to in the third person. “Well, yes, of course. I’ll just be in the kitchen washing up the tea cups,” said Margot.

      Zoe looked at her in disbelief. Margot felt her own treachery keenly, as she’d done years before, dropping Pia off at daycare for the first time. The look in her child’s eyes as she’d left her sitting on a bare wooden floor surrounded by strange babies: Et tu, Brute?

      She put the cups in the sink and went out into the yard to take down her mother’s washing. The clothes had sucked in the damp, salty air. Perhaps ironing would help. She stood under the washing line feeling the way smokers do when they creep outside with the excuse of wanting a smoke when in fact they just want to be leaning against a wall, scuffing their feet in the gutter. It was happening – she was simply handing her mother over to someone else, in exchange for money. She could be alone these few minutes, before Joylene came to call her, before Curtis and Pia returned. Solitude was like a bed newly made up with clean cotton sheets, the covers turned down and inviting.

      Curtis parked the Toyota at the Clovelly end of the beach and they crossed the railway line. The southeaster was up, blowing sand against the bagged wall, and beyond it onto the tracks and the main road. “Seven maids with seven mops,” said Curtis, trying to be cheerful in the wind.

      Pia didn’t mind, even though the sand attached itself to the sunblock on her face. She and Bella ran alongside the dark brown river where it meandered to the sea. The water was still flowing strongly from the last of the rains, causing the sandy river walls to collapse suddenly as they were undermined. Pia slid down the subsiding banks and then scrambled back up to safety. Bella entered the river and simply sat down, enjoying the rush of water through her thick coat.

      Curtis went in search of a piece of seaweed to throw for Bella. A lonely figure walked at the water’s edge, stooping to pick up bits of litter deposited by the tide and dropping them into a large garbage bag. It was the widow from Duignam Road, Curtis realised. He greeted her and commended her on her civic-mindedness.

      “Terrible that all this stuff gets into the sea, isn’t it?” she said.

      “People shouldn’t eat all this junk food anyway,” said Curtis. He frowned at the chip packets, cool-drink containers and the accompanying detritus of screw tops and plastic pull-off strips.

      For a while he helped the widow, gathering as much junk as his hands could manage and then jogging back to deposit it in her bag.

      “Everything alright with you?” he asked. “Are you managing all alone in the house?”

      “I’m planning to sell,” she said. “I’m a bit worried because Edgar never got around to cleaning the mould off the bathroom ceiling. People are very fussy about bathrooms these days, aren’t they?”

      “I can do that for you. Let me come by tomorrow.”

      “My dear, I couldn’t put you to all that trouble. I’ll get a handyman in.”

      “No, no. He’ll charge you the earth and it’s really such a simple thing. I have a reading lesson to give in the morning at the Mission School. I’ll come by afterwards.”

      He jogged back to Pia and Bella feeling elated. Though the sand was soft, his steps were as light as the gavotte by Prokofiev that played in his head.