Blood Lines, page 5
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I LOVE MY love with a ps because she is psychic; I hate her with a ps because she is psilotic. I feed her on psalliota and psilotaceae; her name is Psammis and she lives in a psalterium.
Forgive me. I am carried away by words sometimes, especially those of Greek etymology that begin with a combination of unlikely consonants. I love my love with a cn because she is cnidarian . . . But, no. Let us return to psalliota. If you want to know what all those other words mean you must look them up in a good dictionary. Psalliota is nothing more nor less than the common mushroom: psalliota campestris, to be precise.
I became interested in fungi only recently. Since being made redundant I have, of course, had time on my hands, leisure to notice things. I try not to brood. That this year was exceptional for an abundance of fungi first struck me while taking a train to see my wife. I can no longer afford to run a car. From the economy-class window I observed meadows covered with whitish protrusions among the grass. It took me only a little while to realise that these were mushrooms, though I had never seen such a sight before.
Back at home after my day out, I explored my garden. Largely untended (I sometimes mow the lawn) since my wife was stolen from me ten years ago, it has gone back to nature in rather a pleasing way. For instance, shrubs which she planted have transformed themselves into trees. Under them, and in mossy corners against the walls, I came upon a variety of fungi: agarics, lepiotas, horns-of-plenty and, of course, the puffball. These names were unfamiliar to me then. Two books and a video started me on what may become a lifelong obsession.
I am not a mushroom eater myself. My wife was particularly fond of them. But in those days – I won’t say when I last saw her, for I make a point of seeing her, but when I last spoke to her – the only mushrooms obtainable in the shops were the common kind, and the only differentiation that between ‘large’ and ‘button’. Things have changed. To the uninitiated these supermarket cartons, wrapped in clingfilm, may appear to contain only ‘mixed mushrooms’; I, however, can name them as shitaki, canterelles, boletus and morels, pale slivers resembling slices of blood-drained flesh, lemony fibrous strips, plump glutinous gobbets, chocolate-brown elastic lumps. Well, there is no accounting for tastes.
The day I came upon amanita phalloides in my garden, under the sessile oak, was the day I saw my wife for the first time for some weeks. You understand that though I think about her every day, go to the town where she lives, keep an eye on her house and spend some time in her local shopping centre, I do not always see her. Needless to say, she never sees me. But on this occasion, invisible among the racks of shellsuits, I spotted her in the distance approaching the vegetable counters. I am not exaggerating when I say my heart quaked. It is always a shock, even after so long.
I watched from my sartorial hideaway. Too far away to see what she bought, I followed her with my eyes from vegetables to pizzas, from pasta to mineral waters, and thence to the check-out. That night I ran the video through once again. Yellow and white, with pallid gills and raggedy hat, phalloides blossomed on the screen in all its deadly glory. The death cap, as the voice-over called it, adding cheerfully that very small quantities cause intense suffering, then death.
If I were to grow cannabis sativa I would be breaking the law. The police would come, root up and destroy the plants. But it is no offence to grow phalloides, most deadly of all indigenous fungi. With impunity, I might if I wished turn my shady half-acre into a death cap plantation. If only I could! But fungi are capricious, inconstant, fungi are fitful and vicissitudinous. Who has not heard of those would-be mushroom farmers who have the kit and precisely obey the instructions only to find their growing barns empty and psalliota flourishing in the fields outside their property?
I have had to be content with what nature has supplied, and for my part can provide only encouragement in the form of shade, moisture and protection. It was in October that the young fruit first broke through and the stipe pushed above the ground, its snowy veil bursting to reveal the olive-yellow cap. The flesh, my book says, is white and smells of raw potatoes. How gratifying to discover that this was indeed so and I had not confused phalloides with, for instance, xerula. (I love my love with an x because she is xanthic, I hate her with an x because she is xylophagous.)
Careful not to touch the fruit bodies, using a knife and fork, I sliced into thin strips the cap and stipe of three specimens. They filled a large yogurt pot. With closed eyes, I stood there remembering my wife’s ways, her fashion of cooking, her pleasure in eating, her smile. I remembered her slicing raw potatoes and I could smell the smell in my mind.
I took the yogurt pot with me next day and went straight from the station to the supermarket. There was no question of my wife’s arriving for at least two hours; I have my memories, all too many of them, and I know her timetable, the order and regularity of her life. But for a while I waited, pacing, deep in thought, between bedlinen reductions and kitchenware. You must appreciate that until then, apart from the audio-tapes and the carefully chosen articles sent her, and the enlightening letters posted to her relatives, I had taken no positive steps against my wife. The time had come for action. I hesitated no longer.
With a little practice, it takes only seconds to detach the clingfilm from the base of a mixed mushroom carton, slip in a slice or two of phalloides and re-adhere the film. Among the fronds and filaments, the shreds and slivers, my delicate cilia passed unnoticed or passed for wisps of shitaki. I operated on some ten cartons, about half the stock, in this way. The place was not frequented at lunchtime. No one saw me, or if they did, they approved the prudence of what they took for close examination prior to purchase. I have noticed how, for example, in these hard times, it is not uncommon for shoppers to taste the grapes before they buy.
I waited long enough to see my wife come in. My heart began to jog. One day, if this does not stop, it will kill itself and me with it. Of course I realised that there was only a fifty per cent chance of my wife consuming one of the fatal batch. But in this game of culinary Russian Roulette, these are very favourable odds. Still, on my next visit with fresh supplies I operated on fifteen cartons. After all, she is not the only one to consider but also her live-in paramour and her extended family who all live nearby and whose sheepish faces and obese forms I often see in the aisles between the sauces and the frozen desserts.
At last, having heard and seen nothing of the consequence of my actions, I was obliged to sacrifice the last of phalloides, stripping the leafmould under the sessile oak bare of its potato-scented crop. This time – I was a little late – only fourteen cartons of mixed mushrooms remained and in less than two minutes the contents of the yogurt pot were nestling among the sinuate gills and elliptoid membranes. In fact, I had barely finished when I spotted her entering by way of exotic fruits and, my heart on its treadmill, I slipped away.
Three days later a small paragraph in the newspaper told me that the supermarket had withdrawn all ‘mixed mushrooms’ due to two unexplained deaths and several cases of severe illness. But the deaths, alas, were not hers nor his nor theirs. When it has blown over and ‘mixed mushrooms’ are back on the counter, I shall have to begin all over again next year.
At present the ground under the sessile oak is covered with snow. All fungi have succumbed to frost. I shall mark the spot where the spores of phalloides lie deep in the earth, for there must be no trampling or digging. And some mnemonic must be contrived to help me remember the precise location. Oh, I love my love with a mn because she is mnemic, I hate her with a mn because she is mnemonical, her name is Mnemosyne and she is the goddess of remembrance . . .
Burning End
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AFTER SHE HAD been doing it for a year, it occurred to Linda that looking after Betty fell to her lot because she was a woman. Betty was Brian’s mother, not hers, and Betty had two other children, both sons, both unmarried men. No one had ever suggested that either of them should take a hand in looking after their mother. Betty had never much liked Linda, had sometimes hinted that Brian had married beneath him, and once, in the heat of temper, said that Linda was ‘not good enough’ for her son, but still it was Linda who cared for her now. Linda felt a fool, for not having thought of it in these terms before.
She knew she would not get very far talking about it to Brian. Brian would say – and did say – that this was women’s work. A man couldn’t perform intimate tasks for an old woman, it wasn’t fitting. When Linda asked why not, he told her not to be silly, everyone knew why not.
‘Suppose it had been your dad that was left, suppose he’d been bedridden, would I have looked after him?’
Brian looked over the top of his evening paper. He was holding the remote in his hand but he didn’t turn down the sound. ‘He wasn’t left, was he?’
‘No, but if he had been?’
‘I reckon you would have. There isn’t anyone else, is there? It’s not as if the boys were married.’
Every morning after Brian had gone out into the farmyard and before she went to work, Linda drove down the road, turned left at the church into the lane, and after a mile came to the small cottage on the large piece of land where Betty had lived since the death of her husband twelve years before. Betty slept downstairs in the room at the back. She was always awake when Linda got there, although that was invariably before seven-thirty, and she always said she had been awake since five.
Linda got her up and changed the incontinence pad. Most mornings she had to change the sheets as well. She washed Betty, put her into a clean nightgown and clean bedjacket, socks and slippers, and while Betty shouted and moaned, lifted and shoved her as best she could into the armchair she would remain in all day. Then it was breakfast. Sweet milky tea and bread and butter and jam. Betty wouldn’t use the feeding cup with the spout. What did Linda think she was, a baby? She drank from a cup and unless Linda had remembered to cover her up with the muslin squares that had indeed once had their use for babies, the tea would go all down the clean nightgown and Betty have to be changed again.
After Linda had left her the district nurse would come, though not every day. The meals-on-wheels lady would come and give Betty her midday dinner, bits and pieces in foil containers, all labelled with the names of their contents. At some point Brian would come. Brian would ‘look in’. Not to do anything, not to clear anything away or make his mother a cup of tea or run the vacuum cleaner around, but to sit in Betty’s bedroom for ten minutes, smoking a cigarette and watching television. Perhaps once a month, the brother who lived two miles away would come for ten minutes and watch television with Brian. The other brother, the one who lived ten miles away, never came at all except at Christmas.
Linda knew if Brian had been there by the smell of smoke and the cigarette end stubbed out in the ashtray. But even if there had been no smell and no stub she would have known because Betty always told her. Betty thought Brian was a saint to spare a moment away from the farm to visit his old mother. She could no longer speak distinctly but she was articulate on the subject of Brian, the most perfect son any woman ever had.
It was about five when Linda got back there. Usually the incontinence pad needed changing again and often the nightdress too. Considering how ill she was, and partially paralysed, Betty ate a great deal. Linda made her scrambled egg or sardines on toast. She brought pastries with her from the cakeshop or, in the summer, strawberries and cream. She made more tea for Betty and when the meal was over, somehow heaved Betty back into that bed.
The bedroom window was never opened. Betty wouldn’t have it. The room smelt of urine and lavender, camphor and meals-on-wheels, so every day on her way to work Linda opened the window in the front room and left the doors open. It didn’t make much difference but she went on doing it. When she had got Betty to bed she washed the dishes and teacups and put all the soiled linen into a plastic bag to take home. The question she asked Betty before she left had become meaningless because Betty always said no, and she hadn’t asked it once since talking to Brian about whose job it was to look after his mother, but she asked it now.
‘Wouldn’t it be better if we moved you in with us, Mum?’
Betty’s hearing was erratic. This was one of her deaf days.
‘What?’
‘Wouldn’t you be better off coming to live with us?’
‘I’m not leaving my home till they carry me out feet first. How many times do I have to tell you?’
Linda said she would see her in the morning. Looking rather pleased at the prospect, Betty said she would be dead by the morning.
‘Not you,’ said Linda, which was what she always said, and so far she had always been right.
She went into the front room and closed the window. The room was furnished in a way which must have been old-fashioned even when Betty was young. In the centre of it was a square dining table, around which stood six chairs with seats of faded green silk. There was a large sideboard but no armchairs, no small tables, no books and no lamps but the central light which, enveloped in a shade of parchment panels stitched together with leather thongs, was suspended directly over the glass vase that stood on a lace mat in the absolute centre of the table.
For some reason, ever since the second stroke had incapacitated Betty, all the post, all the junk mail and every freebee news-sheet that was delivered to the cottage ended up on this table. Every few months it was cleared away but this hadn’t been done for some time, and Linda noticed that only about four inches of the glass vase now showed above the sea of paper. The lace mat was not visible at all. She noticed something else as well.
It had been a warm sunny day, very warm for April. The cottage faced south and all afternoon the sunshine had poured through the window, was still pouring through the window, striking the neck of the vase so that the glass was too bright to look at. Where the sun-struck glass touched a sheet of paper a burning had begun. The burning glass was making a dark charred channel through the sheet of thin printed paper.
Linda screwed up her eyes. They had not deceived her. That was smoke she could see. And now she could smell burning paper. For a moment she stood there, marvelling at this phenomenon which she had heard of but had never believed in. A magnifying glass used to make boy scouts’ fires, she thought, and somewhere she had read of a forest burnt down through a piece of glass left in a sunlit glade.
There was nowhere to put the pile of paper, so she found another plastic bag and filled that. Betty called out something but it was only to know why she was still there. Linda dusted the table, replaced the lace mat and the glass vase and, with a bag of soiled linen in one hand and a bag of waste paper in the other, went home to do the washing and get an evening meal for Brian and herself and the children.
The incident of the glass vase, the sun and the burning paper had been so interesting that Linda had meant to tell Brian and Andrew and Gemma all about it while they were eating. But they were also watching the finals of a quiz game on television and hushed her when she started to speak. The opportunity went by and somehow there was no other until the next day. But by that time the sun and the glass setting the paper on fire no longer seemed so remarkable and Linda decided not to mention it.
Several times in the weeks that followed Brian asked his mother to come and live with them at the farm. Betty responded very differently from when Linda asked her. Brian and his children, Betty said, shouldn’t have to have a useless old woman under their roof, age and youth were not meant to live together, though nobody appreciated her son’s generosity in asking her more than she did. Meanwhile Linda went on going to the cottage and looking after Betty and cleaning the place on Saturdays and doing Betty’s washing.
One afternoon while Brian was sitting with his mother smoking a cigarette, the doctor dropped in to pay his twice-yearly visit. He beamed at Betty, said how nice it was for her to have her family around her and on his way out told Brian it was best for the old folks to end their days at home whenever possible. He made no comment on the cigarette. Brian must have picked up a pile of junk mail from the doormat and the new phone book from outside the door, for all this was lying on the table in the front room when Linda arrived at ten to five. The paper had accumulated during the past weeks but when she went to look for a plastic bag she saw that the stock had been used up. She made a mental note to buy some more and in the meantime had to put the soiled sheets and Betty’s two wet nightdresses into a pillowcase to take home. The sun wasn’t shining, it had been a dull day and the forecast was for rain, so there was no danger from the conjunction of glass vase with the piles of paper. It could safely remain as it was.
On her way home it occurred to Linda that the simplest solution was to remove, not the paper but the vase. Yet, when she went back next day, she didn’t remove the vase. It was a strange feeling she had, that if she moved the vase on to the mantelpiece, say, or the sideboard, she would somehow have closed a door or missed a chance. Once she had moved it she would never be able to move it back again, for though she could easily have explained to anyone why she had moved it from the table, she would never be able to say why she had put it back. These thoughts made her feel uneasy and she put them from her mind.
Linda bought a pack of fifty black plastic sacks. Betty said it was a wicked waste of money. In the days when she had been up and about she had been in the habit of burning waste paper. All leftover food and cans and bottles got mixed up together and went out for the dustman. Betty had never heard of the environment. When Linda insisted, one hot day in July, on opening the bedroom windows, Betty said she was freezing and Linda was trying to kill her. Linda took the curtains home and washed them but she didn’t open the bedroom window again, it wasn’t worth it, it caused too much trouble.
But when Brian’s brother Michael got engaged she did ask if Suzanne would take her turn looking after Betty once they were back from their honeymoon.
