Mr Softee

By Marg Roberts

I left the care home at one to buy us a Mr. Softee with a flake. Mum had stopped eating, but I planned to tempt her, tracing her lips with chocolate and ice cream, trust she could smell them. I kept mum out of care for as long as possible. Our house was within yards of the police station and mum passed it on her way to the open countryside. Twice she crossed the main road, once causing drivers to brake, one to run into the back of the other. The police called. She was admitted to the care home on the same day as the first Coronavirus death in England. The manager’s ‘no worries,’ meant nothing. Mum wouldn’t move from her room, wouldn’t speak - not to staff, other residents who popped in, and worst, not to me. In the circumstances my headteacher was sympathetic despite the fact we would ultimately be closed. He allowed me to leave at two thirty every afternoon, my Year 1 colleague and our two teaching assistants covering my reception class as well as her own. I made up for it by going in early, working on play activity modules parents could use at home during lockdown. I organised the purchase of coloured paper, crayons and picture books. This busyness enabled me to forget mum, to add her to my ‘To Do’ list until the teaching assistant signalled it was time to unfasten the partition between the classes, and move the children so they could join in the sing-a-long and story time. When mum first confused day and night, neighbours pestered me because I lived nearby. Divorced, no kids, I was considered suitable by my brothers, friends – mum’s not mine – and the G.P. This led to leaving my house and precious garden to live with her. I hoped for the best during working hours, but I had to lock the doors at night. I had to restrain her when she screamed ‘Let me out,’ hammering on the window with her fists. On one occasion I weakened, walked round the close one night, she fully clothed in summer skirt and silk blouse and me with a dressing gown flung over my nightie. I hated her then as much as I have ever done, staggering cold and tired into the porch. If one of the boys had driven her to the home, left her in a room small as a prison cell, she might have borne it. But it was me. The one who married in haste and lived to regret it. The one who had no ambition – ‘A teacher! I didn’t bring you up to be a teacher.’ The one who became a vegan, demonstrated against leaving the EU. As I had entered her room, observed the set of her jaw, sat by her bedside watching her turned back, I came to recognise myself in her. I softened a little. I sang the hymns we used to bellow in chapel, took in my keyboard to play the Mozart and Chopin piano pieces she loved till she relaxed and fell asleep. It took me ten minutes to fetch that ice cream, to run through the bus station, push through crowds at the market stalls to the van. I took a bite of wafer on the pavement outside the home, unaware the gates had been pulled shut. When I looked up the caretaker was tying a notice between the bars. ‘What’s happening, Trev?’ ‘Covid-19. No one in. No one out.’ ‘My mum.’ I held up the cornet. ‘Sorry lovely. It’s deadly.’ ‘She’s dying.’ ‘It’s you we’re protecting, sweetheart.’ He abandoned the notice, leaving it flapping, one end of the string loose. The ice cream dripped down the cornet onto the back of my hand.

Marg Roberts is a novelist and poet. Her novel, A Time For Peace, was published by Cinnamon Press.

www.margroberts.co.uk