I study the elderly people on the front of the leaflet, sitting in a row of plastic chairs as if they’re waiting for a bus to take them away. They look fine to me, a bit bored. If you ask me, these leaflets are too quick to label people. I once read one that told me that onychophagia was a common stress-relieving BFRB. The terms alone make you want to rush off to Accident and Emergency. Then I read that onychophagia means biting your nails and BFRB stands for body-focused repetitive behavior. Surely it’s a habit, not an ailment.
I open up the leaflet and read the first paragraph: “Today the only definitive way to diagnose Alzheimer’s disease is to find plaques and tangles in brain tissue, but to look at brain tissue doctors must wait until they do an autopsy, which is an examination of the body after a person dies.”
That’s not much use, is it? So, I might have Alzheimer’s and not know it. Would I feel any different if I did? Then I go on to read that doctors can diagnose only “probable Alzheimer’s” and that one set of symptoms may have many different causes, and that an easily curable thyroid complaint may manifest similar symptoms…. I stop reading. It’s obvious no one ever really knows and that they should leave people alone to become old, not tag them with all sorts of mental illnesses.
Vivien comes into the library with a tea tray, Belinda’s pot, two cups and saucers, and some ginger biscuits she’s arranged in a circular motif round the edge of a plate. Simon trots in after her. “Anything interesting?” she asks, putting the tray down on an occasional table by the fireplace.
I read her the leaflet. “I remember the days when people just got old, or eccentric,” I comment afterwards. “They weren’t mental. Like Mr. Bernado—remember? He was often caught fishing in his underpants. Someone would just take him home again and point to the wardrobe—”
“Virginia!” Vivien reprimands me sternly. “You don’t say mental these days. It’s offensive.”
“Well, all I’m saying is that most of them went barmy but we called them eccentric. Or old. They didn’t need a medical certificate.”
“I think people have a right to know as much as they can about what’s”—Vivien pauses—“different about them.”
“Ah, but does it help them?”
“Yes. Yes, I think it does, actually,” Vivien says ardently. “I think it would. If you knew there was something wrong with you, medically, if you were actually diagnosed as intellectually challenged in some way—”
“Intellectually challenged?” I butt in, and laugh—but Vivien isn’t laughing.
“If you were told,” she perseveres, “you might find you understood yourself better. You could find ways of adjusting yourself—if you wanted to—or at least being aware of it. It’s far better to know,” she says, swirling her tea to dissolve the sugar. “It’s a great shame not to know, not to be told. It’s not right,” she says as she moves to the window, cup and saucer in hand, and stares private thoughts into the jungle beyond.
“If you’re that barmy, it won’t make much difference,” I say jovially, a little to fill the silence and a little under my breath. I am not sure about her mood.
“Maybe,” she says softly.
I thought she’d find it funny, but I can tell she’s elsewhere in her thoughts. Could that be sadness in her stillness by the window? It was just an observation, and I wouldn’t want it to turn into a serious dispute, but I don’t mind being old-fashioned. I don’t take to all these modern ways of thinking that Vivien’s latched on to. What about all the poor old ladies who don’t have the wit to see through all the mental diseases they’ve been labeled with and can’t get on with being themselves? They’ll turn into nervous wrecks, worrying about their next affliction. Then, after all that, they might find they’ve only got an overactive thyroid. It occurs to me that Vivien might be thinking of Clive.
“Do you think Clive knew?” I ask softly.
“What happened to Clive was different,” she says sharply, turning back to face me. “That was all his own doing. He deserved every demon he got and he knew it.”
I hadn’t meant to provoke another onslaught about Clive. “I think you’re taking your anger with him a bit far. Why don’t you just admit you had differences and accept them?” I say, very reasonably, I think.
“Oh, Ginny, it’s always so simple with you, isn’t it? Don’t you ever see that?” Vivien’s cup rattles on its saucer as her temper starts to simmer.
“I’m only trying to—”
“Well,” she cuts me off, “I’ve been trying desperately,” she says, putting the cup and saucer on the window seat beside her, “to help you see it, to help you understand things, to help you see for yourself that things aren’t so simple and sometimes they need to be questioned. I didn’t come home to tell you this, but I can’t hide the truth anymore. I can protect you from other people but not from the truth.”
There she goes again, talking in riddles. I never asked her to come home.
“The problem is,” she continues, “that you wouldn’t know the truth if it came and looked you in the eye. That was always your problem.”
I’m not listening to her rant because I don’t want to. I’m trying to work out what might have happened in Clive’s head, I mean at the molecular level, to lead to his dementia.
I flinch as Vivien clutches my shoulders near my neck and shakes me. “Ginny!” she shouts.
“What?” I say, startled out of my reverie.
“You’re not there. It’s so convenient for you to go off somewhere else and not listen, isn’t it? Don’t you want to know the truth?”
“What truth?”
“All of it. Everything.”
“Like what?” I raise my voice, exasperated with her.
She pauses for a moment, enjoying my full attention. “Like your own mother was murdered,” she says finally.
I watch her studying me. It’s as if she’s looking for the pain she may have inflicted. Then I laugh. I mean, what can you do? Actually, it’s a proper little giggle, as if she’s made a joke. And I can’t believe she’s not laughing too. I can’t believe she’s serious.
“Don’t be ridiculous, Vivien!” I sputter.
Then she does something most peculiar. She clenches her fists and stamps her right foot hard, three times in a row, as if she’s stamping on a scorpion and making sure she’s done the job properly. She looks like an eight-year-old having a tantrum.
“How can I make you just try to understand?” she shouts. “Once. Just think about it once. Look at me! Look at me!” She grabs either side of my face and directs it up to hers. “Do I look like I’m making it up?”
She doesn’t.
I tell her again, softly, “Vivien, she fell down the cellar steps. I was there. I saw her lying at the bottom. I promise you, it was an accident.”
“You’re wrong, Ginny. You saw it wrong,” she shouts.
“What on earth makes you think so?” I say quietly, flabbergasted.
“I just know.” For a moment she’s lost for words. “Most people just have that sort of intuition, Ginny.”