Weaveworld

3

The nurse wore her show of compassion indifferently well. ‘I’m afraid Mrs Laschenski’s very sick. Are you a close relative?’

‘I’m her grand-daughter. Has anybody else been to see her?’

‘Not that I know of. There really isn’t that much point. She’s had a major stroke, Miss – ’

‘Parrish. Suzanna Parrish.’

‘Your grandmother’s unconscious most of the time, I’m afraid.’

‘I see.’

‘So please don’t expect too much.’

The nurse led her down a short corridor to a room that was so quiet Suzanna could have heard a petal drop, but that there were no flowers. She wasn’t unfamiliar with death rooms; her mother and father had died three years before, within six months of each other. She recognized the scent, and the hush, as soon as she stepped inside.

‘She’s not been awake today,’ said the nurse, as she stood back to let Mimi’s visitor approach the bed.

Suzanna’s first thought was that there’d been some colossal error. This couldn’t be Mimi. This poor woman was too frail; too white. The objection was on the tip of her tongue when she realized that the error was hers. Though the hair of the woman in the bed was so thin that her scalp gleamed through, and the skin of her face was draped slackly on her skull like wet muslin, this was, nevertheless, Mimi. Robbed of power; reduced by some malfunction of nerve and muscle to this unwelcome passivity; but still Mimi.

Tears rose in Suzanna, seeing her grandmother tucked up like a child, except that she was sleeping not in preparation for a new day but for endless night. She had been so fierce, this woman, and so resolute. Now all that strength had gone, and forever.

‘Shall I leave you alone awhile?’ said the nurse, and without waiting for a reply, withdrew. Suzanna put her hand to her brow to keep the tears at bay.

When she looked again, the old woman’s blue-veined lids were flickering open.

For a moment it seemed Mimi’s eyes had focused somewhere beyond Suzanna. Then the gaze sharpened, and the look that found Suzanna was as compelling as she had remembered it.

Mimi opened her mouth. Her lips were fever-dried. She passed her tongue across them to little effect. Utterly unnerved, Suzanna approached the bedside.

‘Hello,’ she said softly. ‘It’s me. It’s Suzanna.’

The old woman’s eyes locked with Suzanna’s. I know who you are, the stare said.

‘Would you like some water?’

A tiny frown nicked Mimi’s brow.

‘Water?’ Suzanna repeated, and again, the tiniest of frowns by way of reply. They understood each other.

Suzanna poured an inch of water from the plastic jug on the bedside table into a plastic glass, and took the glass to Mimi’s lips. As she did so the old woman lifted her hand a fraction from the crisp sheet and brushed Suzanna’s arm. The touch was feather-light, but it sent such a jolt through Suzanna that she almost dropped the glass.

Mimi’s breath had suddenly become uneven, and there were tics and twitches around her eyes and mouth as she struggled to shape a word. Her eyes blazed with frustration, but the most she could produce was a grunt in her throat.

‘It’s all right,’ said Suzanna.

The look on the parchment face refused such platitudes. No. the eyes said, it isn’t all right, it’s very far from all right. Death is waiting at the door, and I can’t even speak the feelings I have.

‘What is it?’ Suzanna whispered, bending closer to the pillow. The old woman’s fingers still trembled against her arm. Her skin tingled at the contact, her stomach churned. ‘How can I help you?’ she said. It was the vaguest of questions, but she was shooting in the dark.

Mimi’s eyes flickered closed for an instant, and the frown deepened. She had given up trying to make words, apparently. Perhaps she had given up entirely.

And then, with a suddenness that made Suzanna cry out, the fingers that rested on her arm slid around her wrist. The grip lightened ‘til it hurt. She might have pulled herself free, but she had no time. A subtle marriage of scents was filling her head; dust and tissue-paper and lavender. The tall-boy of course; it was the perfume from the tall-boy. And with that recognition, another certainty: that Mimi was somehow reaching into Suzanna’s head and putting the perfume there.

There was an instant of panic – the animal in her responding to this defeat of her mind’s autonomy. Then the panic broke before a vision.

Of what, she wasn’t certain. A pattern of some kind, a design which melted and reconfigured itself over and over again. Perhaps there was colour in the design, but it was so subtle she could not be certain; subtle too, the shapes evolving in the kaleidoscope.

This, like the perfume, was Mimi’s doing. Though reason protested. Suzanna couldn’t doubt the truth of that. This image was somehow of vital significance to the old lady. That was why she was using the last drops of her will’s resources to have Suzanna share the sight in her mind’s eye.

But she had no chance to investigate the vision.

Behind her, the nurse said:

‘Oh my god.’

The voice broke Mimi’s spell, and the patterns burst into a storm of petals, disappearing. Suzanna was left staring down at Mimi’s face, their gazes momentarily locking before the old woman lost all control of her wracked body. The hand dropped from Suzanna’s wrist, the eyes began to rove back and forth grotesquely; dark spittle ran from the side of her mouth.

‘You’d better wait outside.’ the nurse said, crossing to press the call button beside the bed.

Suzanna backed off towards the door, distressed by the choking sounds her grandmother was making. A second nurse had appeared.

‘Call Doctor Chai,’ the first said. Then, to Suzanna, ‘Please. will you wait outside?’

She did as she was told: there was nothing she could do inside but hamper the experts. The corridor was busy; she had to walk twenty yards from the door of Mimi’s room before she found somewhere she could take hold of herself.

Her thoughts were like blind runners; they rushed back and forth wildly, but went nowhere. Time and again, she found memory taking her to Mimi’s bedroom in Rue Street, the tall-boy looming before her like some reproachful ghost. What had Gran’ma wanted to tell her, with the scent of lavender?; and how had she managed the extraordinary feat of passing thoughts between them? Was it something she’d always been capable of? If so, what other powers did she own?

‘Are you Suzanna Parrish?’

Here at least was a question she could answer.

‘Yes.’

‘I’m Doctor Chai.’

The face before her was round as a biscuit, and as bland.

‘Your grandmother, Mrs Laschenski …’

‘Yes?’

‘… there’s been a serious deterioration in her condition. Are you her only relative?’

The only one in this country. My mother and father are dead. She has a son. In Canada.’

‘Do you have any way of contacting him?’

‘I don’t have his telephone number with me … but I could get it.’

‘I think he should be informed,’ said Chai.

‘Yes, of course,’ said Suzanna. ‘What should I…? I mean, can you tell me how long she’s going to live?’

The Doctor sighed. ‘Anybody’s guess,’ he said. ‘When she came in I didn’t think she’d last the night. But she did. And the next. And the next. She’s just kept holding on. Her tenacity’s really remarkable.’ He halted, looking straight at Suzanna. ‘My belief is, she was waiting for you.’

‘For me?’

‘I think so. Your name’s the only coherent word she’s spoken since she’s been here. I don’t think she was going to let go until you’d come.’

‘I see,’ said Suzanna.

‘You must be very important to her,’ he replied. ‘It’s good you’ve seen her. So many of the old folks, you know, die in here and nobody ever seems to care. Where are you staying?’

‘I hadn’t thought. A hotel. I suppose.’

‘Perhaps you’d give us a number to contact you at, should the necessity arise.’

‘Of course.’

So saying, he nodded and left her to the runners. They were no less blind for the conversation.

Mimi Laschenski did not love her, as the Doctor had claimed; how could she? She knew nothing of the way her grandchild had grown up; they were like closed books to each other. And yet something in what Chai had said rang true. Perhaps she had been waiting, fighting the good fight until her daughter’s daughter came to her bedside.

And why? To hold her hand and expend her last ounce of energy giving Suzanna a fragment of some tapestry? It was a pretty gift, but it signified either too much or too little. Whichever, Suzanna did not comprehend it.

She went back to Room Five. The nurse was in attendance, the old lady still as stone on her pillow. Eyes closed, hands laid by her side. Suzanna stared down at the face, slack once more. It could tell her nothing.

She took hold of Mimi’s hand and held it for a few moments, tight, then went on her way. She would go back to Rue Street, she decided, and see if being in the house jogged a memory or two.

She’d spent so much time forgetting her childhood, putting it where it couldn’t call the bluff of hard-won maturity. And now, with the boxes sealed, what did she find? A mystery that defied her adult self, and coaxed her back into the past in search of a solution.

She remembered the face in the tall-boy mirror, that had sent her sobbing down the stairs.

Was it waiting still? And was it still her own?