The One Hundred Years of Lenni and Margot, Marianne Cronin [top fiction books of all time txt] 📗

Humphrey said in the corridor, ‘I just got old by accident.’

Silver

‘THE SILVERFISH ARE back.’

I thought I’d fallen out of bed. I felt a rush of sudden descent and an imminent ground swooping up to hit me.

I sat up, gasping for breath.

‘Sorry, I didn’t realize. I thought—’

It took me a moment to see the man standing in front of me. He was wearing jeans and a shirt underneath a smart blue jumper.

‘Father Arthur?’ I whispered.

‘Hello, Lenni,’ he whispered, because I was whispering.

‘You’re wearing jeans.’

‘I know.’

‘You look so …’

He smiled. ‘Yes?’

‘Different. It’s like a dog walking on its hind legs.’

He laughed. ‘It’s good to see you, Lenni.’ He took a seat at my bedside and tried not to disturb the new equipment I was attached to.

‘How long has it been?’ I asked.

‘A few weeks.’ He seemed embarrassed. ‘I’ve been at a conference. I, er, told some of my colleagues about you. I hope that’s okay?’

‘What did they say?’

‘They were very interested. I told them about your one hundred paintings. They thought it was a very meaningful endeavour.’

‘So I’m famous now?’

‘Among a group of recently retired priests, yes.’

‘That’s always been the dream.’

He laughed.

‘You know, I finished my seventeenth painting.’

‘You did?’

‘I did.’

‘So what did you paint to commemorate your seventeenth year?’

‘I think it might be my best one. I did one hundred hearts on a white canvas. Eighty-three of them in purple, seventeen in pink.’

‘To represent you and Margot?’

‘Exactly.’

‘It’s good to see you, Lenni,’ he said again.

I took a coughing break then. Father Arthur poured some water into my cup and handed it to me. The first sip went down smoothly, but then some of it got caught, and I coughed harder and had to catch the water dribbling out of my mouth in the cup.

Arthur was doing a terrible job of not looking at me like I was terrifying him.

‘Do I look ill?’

‘I, um.’

‘That’s a yes, then.’

‘I was taught a long time ago never to remark on a lady’s appearance.’ He smiled, but it was a sad smile.

‘So, the silverfish?’ I asked, once I’d swallowed some of the watery glue.

‘Ah, yes. I was dusting the bathroom and—’

‘Dusting?’

‘Sorry?’

‘It’s just … how dusty can a bathroom get?’

‘Well, mine’s never dusty. Because I dust it.’

When I laughed, he leant back in the plastic visitor’s chair as though it were a deep, cushioned armchair – comfortable, absorbing. I almost expected it to absorb him into its folds. Or to create some folds and then welcome him in.

‘Shall I tell you the story?’ he asked.

I nodded and he began, giving me an eye not to interrupt when he started again with ‘I was dusting the bathroom’.

I said nothing and he carried on. ‘I promised Mrs Hill that, as she isn’t allowed to bleach the floor, I would take over all cleaning responsibilities for the bathroom. “Unhealthy,” she kept calling it, “it’s unhealthy to have the floor covered in germs.” I asked her how she could be certain that the germs were even there, and she told me that she just knew. I told her I was worried about what the bleach might do to the silverfish. She asked me how I could even know they were there, and I told her I just knew. She laughed and let me be.

‘So I was dusting the bathroom, making sure not to disturb the part of the skirting board where the silverfish like to come in, and I saw one – underneath the sink, if you can believe it! The sink is a fair way away from the door, especially for something of a silverfish’s size. I watched him slither under the bin for safety and I retreated, whispering that I meant no harm, turning off the light and closing the door, and hoping that he would make it home to tell his friends that I come in peace.’

I smiled.

‘I’m not going mad,’ he said.

‘Of course not.’

‘I just feel I ought to protect them.’

I nodded. He sighed.

‘Would you like the truth?’ he asked.

‘Always.’

He leant forwards in his chair, resting his elbows on his denimed knees.

‘I haven’t known what to do with myself since I retired. I feel like I’m …’ He paused. ‘Lost.’

‘Did you like working here?’ I asked.

‘I loved it.’

‘Then come back.’

‘I can’t. My job has gone to Derek and he’s a nice young man, it wouldn’t be right. I’m far too old anyway. Oh Lenni, please forgive me for being so self-involved when it’s you who’s the patient and I’m meant to be the visitor.’

‘Come back,’ I said again.

‘I can’t.’

‘You can. Maybe not as Chief Priest, but as something else – you could volunteer, you could read to people, you could help Pippa in the art room.’

‘Perhaps.’

‘Not perhaps, definitely.’

‘Do you really think?’

‘It’s like you’re my silverfish.’

‘Sorry?’

‘I’m just dusting the bathroom and you’re already over by the sink! You should come back to the skirting board by the door, come back where you belong.’

I Have Loved the Stars Too Fondly

West Midlands, February 1998

Margot James is Sixty-Seven Years Old

We made a deal, Humphrey and I, shortly after he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. And the deal was this: on the occasion that Humphrey forgot who I was, I was to bid him goodnight, give him an unreasonably large kiss, and never return. At first, I’d resisted. I told him I’d never leave him and I’d stay until the very end, no matter if we were strangers by then.

But he’d persisted. He made me sign a contract. He wrote it up himself, so of course it was barely legible. ‘It would mean the world to me, Margot,’ he said, ‘to know you won’t spend months, or years, toiling with me when I’m already up somewhere with the stars.’

And I’d cried. And he’d cried. And I signed it.

We were lucky, in the end: there were eleven good months where memories and certain things eluded him but I did not. Only