made out of whale fat? She wished she wouldn’t retain every canard fed to her by her listeners.
Whenever Margot was tempted to give up radio work, she’d imagine what life would be like in a cheap rented flat above Central Jewellers, with the wind blowing plastic bags and takeaway cartons against the steel steps of the fire escape. It kept her motivated.
She turned left at the traffic circle and they rose up out of the valley and instantly everything was pretty once more. The narrow road through Sunny Cove seemed to carry the imprint of her childhood on it. She might see an untroubled housewife in a headscarf carrying a wicker hand basket, or her own family setting off for a picnic at Miller’s Point on the last day of the school holidays. Their old Anglia had been so much more innocent-looking than the cars around her today. She could speak to Curtis about that: he would love to talk to her about evolving car shapes.
It was disconcerting to feel the pull of the past so distinctly at that particular curve of the road, just where the mountain stream flowed beneath the road and out to the sea from a pipe below Jager’s Walk. Mr Morland said water was the photographic paper of the psychic world. Ancient battles still raged on the world’s river banks, he said.
Margot steered the car along the rocky coast, following the single-gauge railway line to Simon’s Town. They passed the disused stone quarry before Glencairn beach. A rock kestrel rode the thermal. It was a pity about the houses built too high on the mountainside, clinging there with their absurd sheets of glass. The road curved again, and there was Dixie’s Restaurant, where Margot had first tasted Indonesian food.
“Do you remember when we ate here and you thought the chef had accidentally stirred peanut butter into your plate?”
But Zoe didn’t remember. “Why don’t you just drive us off the edge here?” she suggested. “We could die together. You’re not happy either.”
“I am happy.”
Margot wasn’t happy. You, she wanted to say, it’s you who make me unhappy.
If it weren’t for Zoe, Margot could spend Sunday any way she liked. She could invite friends around for lunch . . . assuming she could change into the kind of person who tossed lunches together with ease after being awake all night. Assuming she wanted to see anyone at all. All she really wanted was to lie in a locked, curtained room reading a book in which nothing happened. She wanted to drop off to sleep with a book still in her hands, then wake and eat Salticrax straight out of the box for supper and speak to no one; never again, in fact, to have to dredge up another topic of conversation.
“You’re the saddest person I know,” said Zoe. “Living or dead.”
The phrase “idiot savant” came to Margot’s mind.
They were passing the site of the defunct marine refinery now. A historic reflex caused Margot to wind up the car window. It used to stink so much, adding to her childhood carsickness. Who would eat margarine, knowing that smell? On the left, behind barbed wire, the Lower North Battery pointed its fixed gun at enemies unknown. Like me, she thought. I do that.
In Simon’s Town they parked at Jubilee Square. The two women progressed slowly to the quayside, Zoe leaning heavily on her daughter. Margot should have had breakfast – she could feel the nausea rising. Think you’re going to throw up, but then you faint instead: life had taught her that much. The light was far too bright, bouncing off the water and the white hulls. The halyards hitting against the masts in the light breeze mocked her queasiness.
“I have to sit down,” said Margot. They were descending the stone steps past the shops, heading towards the slipway. Margot sat down abruptly with her head resting on her knees. Zoe was forced to cling to the railing.
“What is the matter, darling? Whatever is the matter?”
Margot felt the skin on her face lose all its warmth as her sweat reached the surface and cooled. “It’s just low blood sugar. I’ll be alright in a moment. Perhaps we should have coffee before we stroll.”
What with Margot’s bottom occupying the steps and her mother hanging on the railing with both hands, they were thoroughly offending other members of the public. “Really, this is a most inconvenient spot for you to stop,” said a robust woman with pursy lips.
“Aren’t you Margot from the radio?” asked another passer-by. “I’ve been wanting to get hold of you because my son wants to become a radio presenter too. Here’s my card – I’d appreciate it if you could drop me a line and we can chat about his future. He really is extremely talented. He was the announcer at the school fête and everyone said how brilliant he was.”
Only endure, thought Margot, as she heaved herself up and guided her mother towards the quayside restaurant. She ordered coffee and a bran muffin to share.
“Aren’t you famous?” asked the waitress. “You look like someone famous.”
“Well, I’m on the radio,” said Margot.
“I don’t listen to the radio,” said the waitress. “It must be from somewhere else.”
Let’s get this over with, she thought. “The company I work for has recently put up billboards with photographs of me and my colleagues along the M5.”
“Mmm.” The waitress shook her head as she considered Margot.
“I really urgently need the coffee and the muffin. Maybe it’ll come back to you.”
When the waitress returned with their coffee, her expression of doubt had been replaced by one of enlightenment.
“I’ve just spoken to the chef. He says you’re quite famous. He listens to you when he has insomnia. He wants to meet you.”
The chef arrived with their muffin. “Here you are, ladies. Great to meet you, Margot, really great. But you know who I really used to love in the old days was Robin Alexander. What a legend. Always so positive, no matter what. I really miss that guy. You should try to reach out the way he did. Anyway, enjoy your muffin.”
The more public the place, the greater the loneliness. Her mother’s presence only made it worse. Rather be solitary, with all the freedom of one’s flitting thoughts, than sit opposite a communicative cul-de-sac. Once Zoe would have held forth about Simon’s Town’s history, or joined Margot in making up stories about the other restaurant patrons. Most likely of all, her mother would have discussed the muffin: its texture (too dry – add grated apple). But today she looked disorientated and nervous, as if morning coffee were as intimidating a prospect as the security cordons at Heathrow.
Zoe was spooning jam and cream onto her plate and some onto the tablecloth. Margot used the paper napkins to clean up after her. What had happened to life? There was the briefest window of freedom between raising a baby and caring for an ancient parent – that was all. And she had missed it. The tedium of her mother’s custody was as confining as being responsible for a baby, but in this case, there were no rewards: no beaming smile, no gummy I love you’s, no flashes of verbal precocity, no astonishing leaps of development. Rather, the reverse: the failure to smile, to reach out, to converse. The inexorable downhill. Oh, she’d been on the Internet and read all the saccharine propaganda put out by the NHS about how looking after someone with dementia could be so fulfilling. Utter garbage. The truth about senility of a parent was that you had to sit still and watch your mainstay sink. You had to do it in a world that seemed not to notice your trouble. You could faint in a pedestrian thoroughfare and people would step over you to get to their own
