A 92-year-old woman in Maespoeth has been found dead. Police have arrested a man, 64. They said the woman and man were known to each other and have described it as a ‘very sad case’. Valleys Radio news website.
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Perkins looks at himself in the dresser mirror. The lines on his forehead remind him of the staves on a sheet of music. He’s a semi-professional bass player, makes a bit of living from it. Those days are over now. He pulls out his mobile and taps 999.
Latterly it’s been tough. The privatised caring company, profit before people, make their first visit at eleven in the morning. No good at all that. So he’s been getting her up, showering her, changing her himself. He sort of switches off when he does it, same as when you accompany an uninspiring melody. He just makes out he is himself a paid carer, dealing with somebody else’s mother, not thinking it odd that he’s washing the naked, broken body of an elderly female. Switched off yet kind, that’s the way he does it.
‘Which service?’ the voice on his phone says.
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‘Are you going to introduce me?’ his mam says, so he does. ‘Nice girl,’ Mam tells him after she’s gone.
‘But not as nice as you, Mam.’
On and off with Siân it is for a few years, like a band that rocks but doesn’t roll. In the end she’d gets tired of it. ‘You won’t commit, Ian. Or you can’t?’ Then she makes some comment about his mother refusing to let go of him. ‘Still suckling you, she is.’ He deletes the tape of those words from his brain: more or less.
/
‘I’m getting old. Will you look out for me?’ He nods. ‘My memory isn’t good any more. Will I one day forget who I am?’
‘I’m here for you Mam.’
‘Oh you are kind.’
He looks in her wardrobe. A row of crimplene slacks, another row of tops that look like wool but are polyester. A gaggle of worn shoes, crumpled odd socks. None of them will ever be worn again. She’s in bed day and night now, sleeps most hours. He’s supporting her fulltime, touching her cold hand while she sleeps, a fluttering sound from her trembling lips sometimes. She wakes and says, ‘I want to go back to Merthyr’. Her happy childhood days are all she can remember and now he is no longer Ian, he is her father.
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‘She kept saying Merthyr,’ he told the cops when they came.
‘Mercy?’
‘Merthyr. Heaven it was. She told me that once.’
‘I see.’
‘She wanted to get back to heaven, can’t you…? She was telling me she…’
One of the cops said: ‘We’ll have to take you in.’
‘She wanted to die! She was asking me to…’
He looked at his mother, blank as a stave awaiting music. He could write a song for her now, he really could.
A cop took his arm.
