The Sense of an Ending

makes me think of Margaret’s way of roasting a chicken. She’d gently loosen the skin from the breast and thighs, then slip butter and herbs underneath. Tarragon, probably. Perhaps some garlic as well, I’m not sure. I’ve never tried it myself, then or since; my fingers are too clumsy, and I imagine them ripping the skin.
    Margaret told me of a French way of doing this which is even fancier. They put slices of black truffle under the skin – and do you know what they call it? Chicken in Half-Mourning. I suppose the recipe dates from the time people used to wear nothing but black for a few months, grey for another few months, and only slowly return to the colours of life. Full-, Half-, Quarter-Mourning. I don’t know if those were the terms, but I know the gradations of dress were fully tabulated. Nowadays, how long do people wear mourning? Half a day in most cases – just long enough for the funeral or cremation and the drinks afterwards.
    Sorry, that’s a bit off the track. I wanted to get under her skin, that’s what I said, didn’t I? Did I mean what I thought I meant by it, or something else? ‘I’ve Got You Under My Skin’ – that’s a love song, isn’t it?
    I don’t want to blame Margaret at all. Not in the slightest. But, to put it simply, if I was on my own, then who did I have? I hesitated for a few days before sending Veronica a new email. In it, I asked about her parents. Was her father still alive? Had her mother’s end been gentle? I added that, though I’d met them only once, I had good memories. Well, that was fifty per cent true. I didn’t really understand why I asked these questions. I suppose I wanted to do something normal, or at least pretend that something was normal even if it wasn’t. When you’re young – when I was young – you want your emotions to be like the ones you read about in books. You want them to overturn your life, create and define a new reality. Later, I think, you want them to do something milder, something more practical: you want them to support your life as it is and has become. You want them to tell you that things are OK. And is there anything wrong with that?
    Veronica’s reply was a surprise and a relief. She didn’t treat my questions as impertinent. It was almost as if she was pleased to be asked. Her father had been dead some thirty-five years and more. His drinking had got worse and worse; oesophageal cancer was the result. I paused at that, feeling guilty that my first words to Veronica on the Wobbly Bridge had been flippant ones about bald alcoholics.
    After his death, her mother had sold the house in Chislehurst and moved up to London. She did art classes, started smoking, and took in lodgers, even though she’d been left well provided for. She had remained in good health until a year or so ago, when her memory began to fail. A small stroke was suspected. Then she started putting the tea in the fridge and the eggs in the breadbin, that sort of thing. Once she nearly set the house on fire by leaving a cigarette burning. She remained cheerful throughout, until she suddenly went downhill. The last months had been a struggle, and no, her end had not been gentle, though it had been a mercy.
    I reread this email several times. I was looking for traps, ambiguities, implied insults. There were none – unless straightforwardness itself can be a trap. It was an ordinary, sad story – all too familiar – and simply told.
    When you start forgetting things – I don’t mean Alzheimer’s, just the predictable consequence of ageing – there are different ways to react. You can sit there and try to force your memory into giving up the name of that acquaintance, flower, train station, astronaut … Or you admit failure and take practical steps with reference books and the internet. Or you can just let it go – forget about remembering – and then sometimes you find that the mislaid fact surfaces an hour or a day later, often in those long waking nights that age imposes. Well, we all learn this, those of us who forget things.
    But we also learn something else: that the brain doesn’t like being typecast. Just when you think everything is a matter of decrease, of subtraction and division, your brain, your memory, may surprise you. As if it’s saying: Don’t imagine you can rely on some comforting process of gradual decline – life’s
much
more complicated than that. And so the brain will throw you scraps from time to time, even disengage