News Where You Are

52

Three months after his mother’s move and Frank still found each visit to Evergreen Sea Breezes a uniquely disorientating experience. Everything, from the artwork on the walls to the faces of the staff, was almost but not exactly the same as Evergreen Forest of Arden. Identically carpeted corridors led to different rooms, the television in the residents’ lounge was located in the opposite corner, silver-haired heads would turn to reveal unexpected faces. He invariably turned the wrong way out of every doorway, and had mistaken Mrs Burton’s room for his mother’s so many times that she no longer smiled when she passed him in the corridor.

Aside from the spatial confusion, his visits to the home followed much the same routine as ever. His mother’s room for a cup of tea and then a game of dominos with Walter in the residents’ lounge. His mother still chose to rarely mention Walter, though occasional references might be made to ‘a friend’ having said something or been somewhere. It was only during the games of dominos that Frank would hear of walks they had taken, or tea shops they had visited and gain any sense of the friendship between them. Where Maureen was circumspect, Walter was open and forthcoming. He frequently told Frank how wonderful he thought his mother was. Frank never knew quite how to react, and sometimes found himself defaulting to a polite, ‘Thank you,’ in the absence of anything better.

‘I’ve never been happier, Frank. Can you believe that? I’m seventy-seven and really I’ve never felt more content and settled. I know your mother feels the same, though of course she doesn’t make a song and dance about it like I do.’

Song and dance were certainly lacking in his mother, but so, Frank had detected, was the sense that she was simply waiting to die.

He sat in her room now with Mo who was looking at the sea view through the window using a magnifying glass she had bought in one of the fossil and souvenir shops in the town.

‘Interesting,’ she said. ‘Very, very interesting.’

‘Mo,’ said Frank, ‘I don’t think it works for things in the distance, only up close.’

‘It works for both. Up close it magnifies, in the distance it blurs.’

‘Oh right — it blurs — that’s good, is it?’

‘Take no notice, Mo,’ said Maureen. ‘I think most things look far better when they’re blurred.’

Mo nodded. ‘I can pretend that I’m looking back in time and there are no people, only dinosaurs.’

‘Well, that might be an improvement. I’d imagine dinosaurs talk a lot less rubbish than plenty of people I know. So what’s the plan for this afternoon?’

‘I’m going fossil hunting with Mom and Dad.’

‘Hunting for fossils?’

‘Yes — this is the Jurassic Coast — there are loads of them.’

Maureen smiled. ‘Well, I know that, dear. I take breakfast with them every day.’

Later they walked across the beach looking for a good picnic spot. Andrea reached the middle of the beach and dropped the bags. ‘Here’s as good a place as any. What do you reckon?’

Mo nodded. Frank shook the rug out and laid it on the pebbles. Andrea started getting foil packages out of the carrier bags. Mo opened her backpack and pulled out her new fossil-hunting kit. It contained a hammer, a chisel, clear plastic bags, protective glasses and a small book on hunting for fossils. She put the big plastic glasses on to read the book.

As they drank tea from the flask, Mo looked up from her book and asked: ‘Do you think that one day in a trillion years someone will find our fossil? They’ll be sitting on a big rock eating a picnic and they’ll look down and there we’ll be — looking out at them?’

Frank pulled a face. ‘That’d put you off your sandwiches.’

‘But could it happen?’

‘I don’t think so. I think one day, a long time in the future, after we die, we’ll probably be buried or cremated and we’ll eventually become dust or soil.’

Mo was unimpressed. ‘Dust? I don’t want to be dust. Being a rock would be much better.’

Frank shook his head. ‘Do you really think? Being trapped in a rock forever sounds horrible to me, like being imprisoned, but if you were dust you could be blown by the wind and go wherever you wanted.’

‘But, Dad, nobody notices dust.’

Frank jabbed the air with his sandwich. ‘Well, maybe they should.’

They finished their sandwiches and then Mo set off with her hammer and chisel to look for fossils. Frank and Andrea watched her as she walked back towards the cliff. She tried to keep her balance on the mass of rounded stones beneath her feet. As she walked away, the contrast in size between her and the wall of rock grew, until she reached the bottom and stood dwarfed at the very foot of the cliff. They saw her remove her parka and lay it on the ground. She sat down on it at the base of the cliff, with her back to them and the sea, and with her magnifying glass clutched in front of her eye examined the surface closely for any signs of past life.