She may be exhausting but she’s also next-level adorable. I mean it. There is nothing, no one in the world, that makes my heart beat as fast as this child does. She makes me feel all Mother Lioness – proud, maternal, and ready to rip any possible danger into shreds before I allow it within an inch of her.
However, I am more than ready to hand her back to her mother, get home and spend some time lost inThe Winter’s Tale, the last of Shakespeare’s plays that I am working on and my absolute favourite. I have loved – no, been obsessed with – Shakespeare ever since I was a very small child. He represents all that is good in the world to me and all that is real as well. And whilst I could witter on in praise of his works for weeks at a time, I know my adoration stems from something far more simple than his skill in iambic pentameter. It stems from love.
I grew up in a house full of extroverts; drama was crammed into our house, flounces, sighs, screeching, all bouncing off the walls, the windows and the floorboards. It used to make me want to scrunch my shoulders up and fold my whole being into a teeny tiny scrap. I wished for a shell I could escape into, a small one in which I could hide and take up all the space, maybe with a fairy door attached to pull shut and keep the noise away.
Nana understood, she would swoop in with gentle grace and poise, a hint of lily of the valley in the air, and an unruffled tranquillity that made me wonder how my own mother could be related to her. She would spirit me to the garden or my bedroom, wrap me in a cloak of calm and ask what I was reading.
When I was about seven she bought a copy ofMidsummers Night’s Dreamand suggested we start to read a part each, telling me it was a tale of fairies and donkeys, kings and queens and teenagers. I think most seven-year-olds are split between wanting to be a fairy and a teenager.
She’d been a wardrobe mistress for a theatre company for years, and was used to glamour and shrieking, but also recognised the value of quiet. Over the next few years she would bring over all sorts of props every time she visited, which we would wield as we each took a part. She died when I was eleven and we moved into her house soon after. Her loss impacted me greatly – she had been my touchstone, the one I belonged with and the one that made me feel I belonged somewhere. From that point on, I worked through every single play, every single sonnet and then went back and did it all again.
I still am. For the last few years I have been working on my Shakespeare project, gathering in one place all the knowledge I have sought out over the last twenty years. I have very little left to do but I am excited about wallowing in some last-minute additions toThe Winter’s Talepackage that I thought of whilst on godmother duty.
Marsha is feisty like Paulina in that play, feisty, determined and focused. She’s going to be a cracking adult, it just means she’s a slightly terrifying child. The number of household incidents that have occurred whilst I’ve been looking after her are high – but Luisa (whom I’ve informed of each one over the phone) always laughs and reiterates that looking after Marsha is like driving abroad: with everything flying at you at speed from all angles.
As we enter the airport, Marsha spots the shop by the arrivals gate, wriggles out of my grip and races towards it, hair streaming behind her as she screams ‘Percy Pigs!’ at the top of her voice.
For all Luisa’s laid-backness about most things Marsha-related – which I suspect is born out of necessity as much as experience – she is a nutrition diva. Nothing but the highest quality of food is to pass Marsha’s lips; if it isn’t organic, free-range and farmed by nuns then she isn’t allowed it. But the worst sin by far – as I discovered when she found me giving Marsha a Milky Bar last year – is sugar. You would have thought I was teaching her to freebase on the way to nursery school. The language Luisa used – that hasn’t changed over the years – meant I learnt that sugar was the devil and was only allowed near Marsha’s lips at Christmas.
I start to run after her, spying a display of wind-up musical boxes as I do so and I grab one on the way past. Persuading Marsha against the pink rubbery deliciousness of pig-shaped sweets will take next-level negotiation skills.
‘Marsha! Wait!’
This is not going to be an easy sell.
Rory.
The flight from Australia was long, but I’m finally here, back in the UK for the first time in five years. I pull my phone out the second I’m through immigration and call my step-dad, Dave. For the preceding few days, my mind has been unable to focus on anything other than getting home. I am here now though, realising that I should have come before, that by hiding away and avoiding reminders of my grief I have neglected my responsibilities and become the sort of man I never wanted to be. I can’t turn the clock back and undo that, but I can make good now. I’m keen to see Mum, to get all of this sorted.
‘Hey, Rory, good to hear you.’ Dave answers immediately and reassures me that everything is in hand. I love Dave for many things, his calm manner being at the top of that list. He manages to soothe every situation, possessing powers only known to Jedi Masters. Still, it’s going to take more than a reassuring tone to put me at ease. From the minute I heard Mum’s words last week,theword, my heart has been in my throat. I had immediately booked a plane and rented a winter let for a month in Bath.
Bristol is still a bit too raw.
I may not be the most self-aware man in the world but I know waking up every morning and seeing the skyline of a city I once loved is a step I’m not able to deal with just yet. But with Bath as my base I can sideline my own baggage, support Mum, talk to her consultant and make sure she’s getting the best care possible.
‘Your mum is so excited to see you. We can’t move for quiches and cakes, biscuits and sausage rolls. She’s made you a cheesecake in the shape of a heart!’
‘Don’t tell him about that, that’s a surprise!’ I hear Mum shout at him in the background before she wrestles the phone from his hand.
I laugh. I can picture it, both the wrestling (she’ll stamp on his foot to take him by surprise and then grapple the phone from his hand as his indignation kicks in) and the mountains of food. Mum is a feeder, not in a lock-’em-in-a-basement-and-pipe-them-full-of-cream kinda way, obviously, but in a I-love-you-so-much-words-can’t-express-it-so-I’m-going-to-feed-you-and-feed-you-and-feed-you way.
‘It’s a silly fuss you flying back like this…’ She pauses before adding more quietly, ‘But I’m pleased that you’ve come.’ Her voice returns to its usual strength. ‘And don’t listen to him. I haven’t made anything special.’ Him, I imagine, is jumping around on one foot and looking pained. Whereas she will be half overjoyed at the thought of me flying back, and half terrified – not just of the diagnosis but of being burdensome.
‘It’s important to me.You’reimportant to me, so of course I was going to come home. I’ll be here for a month, I’ve a few business contacts I want to chase up as well, see in person whilst I’m here. Let me get involved, tell me how I can help.’ I knew if I pitched work opportunities, she’d feel better.
Mum has made it clear my whole life that I amherwhole life and she won’t have it any other way. I can’t be on the other side of the world when she has news that will rock her very being, shock her out of a future she imagined she had years before she had to face the disease that had taken her mother, her grandmother.
‘I don’t want you making a fuss about the … well, you know … but you could come and help us eat some supper. I can’t quite fit everything in the fridge and I’mThe Mont’s Jenga Champion you know, five years in a row.’ She namechecks the local pub. She’s lived in Montpelier since I was born, back before the area was as chi-chi as it is now.
‘I do know that. Unbeaten, I believe.’ I can practically hear her smile down the phone, picture the upwards curve of the corners of her mouth. ‘Right, I’m going to jump into a taxi so, traffic willing, I should be with you within the hour.’
The loud shriek of a small child, haring into the Marks and Spencer outlet in Bristol Airport Arrivals, interrupts my thoughts.
‘Perrrrcy Pigs!’ It sounds as if she’s about to launch a pirate attack, so firm is her intent and I can feel the grin cross my face. Small children are terrifying. I’ve always thought that if marauding hordes from days gone by had lots of small children with them they could have achieved their levels of destruction much quicker than mere battle-hardened men with swords.
I stand on the spot for a minute, the return to these shores after five full years away hitting me. I had always hoped for a life with children, lots of them, running around, playing football in the garden, barbecuing, helping them learn to read. A life where I would stick around, be involved as a father, prove myself a product of my environment not my genes. Turns out that isn’t for me after all, and that’s okay.
I hope the girl gets her Percy Pigs. I see a woman with dark wavy hair bomb into the shop behind her, calling her back and trying to persuade her to swap the seven odd packets of sweets in her hand for a Musical Biscuit Tin that’s shaped like a Christmas tree. I can only see the back of the woman but I don’t fancy her chances; that child has devilment shining from her eyes all the way over to where I’m standing.
