and was surprised to see that I’d missed six calls from my mother in the last fifteen minutes.
‘Mum – are you OK?’
‘Viola, at last. I’ve been calling and calling. Your phone was switched off.’ Her peevish voice filled my ear.
‘Mum, I was at work.’
‘This late?’ she snapped, so I refrained from making the obvious comment. While Mum did know what I did for a living, she never seemed to be able to equate it with real work. When it was more convenient to her, she liked to assume it was part-time and I just popped in and out of the theatre when I felt like it and had plenty of time on my hands, which needed filling. Actually, most of my family were of a similar view.
‘Yes, Mum. Are you all right?’ But she wasn’t listening.
‘You should keep your phone with you for emergencies. Honestly, why would you switch it off?’
Yeah, right, Mum. While I’m playing a complex piece in front of an audience of two thousand people, I’ll just down my bow and take your call. I could just imagine the conductor’s reaction to that.
‘Our phones have to stay in our lockers.’ I was sure I’d told her this before.
‘Hmph,’ she said, her disdainful tone loud and clear down the line. ‘Luckily, Ursula next door answered her phone. She wasn’t too busy to come and help me.’ There was a distinct ring of triumph in her words and of course the guilt kicked in.
‘Oh, Mum – what’s happened? Are you all right?’
‘She had to call an ambulance.’
Despite being nearly midnight, St Mary’s Hospital buzzed with purpose and activity as I half-walked and half-ran to find the entrance to Accident and Emergency. I’d spent the cab ride fiddling with my phone but not actually contacting anyone. It was too late to call either of my cousins and Dad was five hours behind us, so probably still holding court to a packed lecture theatre; besides, until I’d seen Mum, there was no point worrying him.
I sighed, following the signs to A&E, some of which were hung with hopeful strings of tinsel and plastic holly, going over the sketchy information she’d told me on the phone. Apparently she’d fallen in the library; in most homes it would be called the study but this book-lined room in my parents’ apartment was most definitely the library. She’d avoided saying how but I could bet it was from falling off the ladder while stretching up to reach a book. She’d hurt her leg so badly she couldn’t get up off the floor. Thankfully, she’d been able to crawl to reach her mobile from the table on the other side of the room.
At the busy reception desk, manned by two dancing penguins, a bear dressed as Santa and an elf, I had to wait a while to get anyone’s attention, anxiously scanning the packed waiting room for Mum. The soft toys on the desk weren’t the only homage to the festive season. Even though it was a few minutes into the fourth of December, it seemed as if the local Christmas elves had been determined to cheer everyone up, no matter how poorly they were feeling, with a wealth of Christmas bling. Silver foil decorations and paper chains obscured the grey ceiling tiles and there were not one but two Christmas trees, one of which was a fibre optic tree which eased its way through a rainbow of colours in a surprisingly soothing way. It was so over the top that you couldn’t help but smile.
I couldn’t see Mum anywhere, which hopefully meant that she was being seen. When I’d spoken to her, forty minutes ago, she’d already been here for an hour.
At last a harried-looking nurse at the desk gave me a tired smile.
‘I’m looking for my mother, Dr … Mrs Smith – she came in an ambulance.’
‘Ah, yes, Dr Smith.’ She gave me a quick measuring glance, the sort that made me wonder if she’d already had some sort of run-in with Mum and she was trying to decide whether she needed to take cover. I responded with a reassuring friendly smile. I am nothing like my mother.
There were a few muttered conversations before another nurse appeared at my side. ‘Your mother’s in triage. Would you like to follow me?’
She led me back through a set of double doors at the very end of the waiting room, through which many of the waiting patients looked hopefully. This was obviously the medical equivalent of Nirvana in A&E.
‘Here you go.’ The nurse opened the curtain around the cubicle and then beat a hasty retreat.
‘Mum …’ I darted forward through the curtain and then stopped, not sure what to do. She’s not big on physical displays of affection.
‘Well, you took your time – I’ve been here for hours.’
I studied her for a moment; no doubt she’d been giving the nurses hell already. Judging from the nurse at the reception, she’d already made an impression. Mum’s a striking-looking woman, tall and broad, who likes to make her thoughts known. No one would accuse her of being a delicate wallflower and she doesn’t know the meaning of the word humility. I do, and I seem to have spent an awful lot of time being embarrassed on her behalf over the years. She has a head of curly hair that as a child I desperately envied, which was once a rich auburn colour but is now in the throes of turning grey.
She was sitting in a wheelchair with her leg propped out in front of her, dressed in her work clothes, a cream shirt, one of her usual tweedy skirts and the perennial American tan tights, the left leg of which was laddered below the knee. She had no shoes on. I stared at her feet. It made her look uncharacteristically unfinished. Where were her sensible brown courts, the Russell & Bromley pair she’d had for at least six years? The sight of her unshod feet unsettled me.
‘Have you been seen yet? What’s happening?’
‘I’ve been triaged,’ said Mum with disdain, ‘which translates as being seen by a nurse and offered some painkillers. And that’s all. The place is a shambles. No one seems to know what’s going on. The place is full of drunken idiots. I’d throw them all out on their ear.’
I crossed the room and took one of her hands. My mother is normally indefatigable. Dad and I call her Boudicca, which she pretends to be irritated by but secretly she’s rather pleased about it. She’s a professor of history, so I guess that makes sense. Boudicca is one of her heroines.
‘Are you all right?’ I squeezed her hand, my heart aching a little when I saw the brief sheen of tears in her eyes.
‘I wish your dad was here,’ she whispered, squeezing my hand back as I crouched down next to her. She leaned back into the wheelchair and closed her eyes as if her get up and go had got up and gone. Up close I could see the lines in her cheeks. She was seventy-one, not much younger than some of my friends’ grandparents. As a child I’d always been conscious of having older parents but that was because they were slightly stuffy and set in their ways rather than lacking in energy or drive. They’d have been the same if they’d become parents in their twenties rather than their forties. Today, for the first time, I realised that my mum was getting old. There was a vulnerability about her I’d not seen before.
‘Do you want me to call him?’ I asked gently, pulling over a chair so that I could sit next to her and hold her hand.
‘No, he’ll only worry and there’s nothing he can do.’ She opened her eyes and gave me a determined smile, which suggested logic had just bested emotion.
‘He could book a flight back.’
‘That would be ridiculous.’ She lifted her head and with her haughty tone I saw some of her usual indomitable force reassert itself. ‘I’ve probably just twisted my ankle or something. Let’s see what the doctor says. To be honest, I wouldn’t have called an ambulance; it was just Ursula fussing.’
‘Can I get you anything?’
‘I don’t think I’m allowed anything until I’ve been seen by a doctor. All a load of nonsense. You could pass me my bag. I’ve got a couple of essays I could be marking. This lot of undergrads are actually quite intelligent