Hilary Bonner - When the Dead Cry Out

Not for the first time she noticed that her mother was wearing somebody else’s clothes. However much she complained to the nursing staff this happened repeatedly. On this occasion Margaret Meadows was wearing a blouse Karen did not recognize.

Abruptly her mother sat up. Karen noticed then that not only was the blouse not hers but that two of the buttons were missing. You could clearly see her breasts, hanging low and encased in an inadequate bra.

Karen felt the tears welling, and fought them back. She had no right to cry. This was, after all, her fault, she felt. She was not equipped to look after her own mother, and she knew it, but that didn’t make her feel any better about not doing so. It wasn’t just the demands of her job and her desire, her need even, to have a life of her own. It was more than that. She was just not able to do it.

Margaret Meadows looked up at her daughter. Her eyes were very dark, surely much darker than they had been when she was well, and very bright. She wore no make-up but her cheeks had a pink and healthy shine to them. Her body, though emaciated with premature senility, was agile, and she still contrived to move in her chair in a quick, almost youthful fashion. Often she sat with her legs curled up in positions Karen thought most people half her age would probably be unable to achieve.

“Hello, Karen,” she said. “Have you come to take me home?”

Karen clenched her fists behind her back. The tears nearly broke through. Tears of guilt every bit as much as of pity. She mustn’t let them happen. She had on one or two previous occasions been unable to stop herself crying, and her mother had been bewildered and upset. This was, after all, only what her mother said to her every time she visited. She should be used to it by now. But she knew she would never get used to it. The words cut through her, cold and sharp as a knife, every time.

“Yes, darling,” she lied. And she hated herself for the lies. Hated herself for making a fool of her mother.

Margaret Meadows nodded contentedly and slumped back over the arm of her chair again. Visits were all too often like that. Her mother asleep in some contorted uncomfortable position, and Karen sitting quietly immersed in her own silent guilt.

She knew that when her mother woke again, in just a few minutes probably, she would either have forgotten what she had asked or would simply ask it again. The only replies you could give Margaret Meadows were those that she wanted to hear, the ones that would keep her quiet and moderately contented. If Karen had told her that she had not come to take her home, Margaret Meadows would have been distressed. And Karen knew that as long as she told her that was what she was going to do, all would be well. She never actually made a fuss about going with Karen. Indeed, she hardly knew where she was, and when she talked about home she was invariably referring to the little North Devon seaside village where she had been brought up. All the intervening years had disappeared into the indecipherable mists within her head.

Karen knew all that. It didn’t make any of it any better. Didn’t make what she felt she had done to her mother any less terrible. She knew that she had not really done anything to her mother. She knew that she was not responsible. She knew that she was not capable of coping with her mother in this state. She knew that she had done her best. And that at least she cared, cared deeply. It made no difference. The pain was a stabbing feeling in her heart, the pain was a contraction in her gut, the pain was inside her head, and ran through every vein in her body.

She was the only person in the world her mother still recognized and called by name, and sometimes she found herself actually wishing that this was no longer so, and that made her feel even guiltier than ever.

Margaret Meadows started to stir again. She sat bolt-upright in that sudden way she had and stared directly at her daughter. Then she gave a small weak smile. Karen felt like jelly. She forced herself to smile back, reached out and took her mother’s hand in hers. But what she wanted to do was to run. To take off. To hightail it out of the Old Manor and never return. Not ever.

“Have you been to see Mummy and Daddy?” asked her mother abruptly.

“Yes,” replied Karen immediately, embarking on another lie.

“And are they all right?”

“Oh yes, they’re fine.” Karen concentrated on smiling at her mother. Her grandparents had died almost twenty years earlier. Once she had told the truth, and reminded her mother that they were dead. Margaret Meadows had burst into tears and had sobbed uncontrollably until one of the nurses had come to the rescue by telling her that her daughter had made a silly mistake. Of course Mummy and Daddy were alive and well.

After that Karen had allowed herself to become immersed in the web of deceit which invariably seems to surround dementia sufferers. More often than not it is centred on kindness, its purpose only to keep the sufferers at peace within their troubled minds. It was still deceit, though. It was still lying to the people you were supposed to care most about. But the alternative was to create turmoil inside already tormented heads.

Karen stroked her mother’s hand.

“Do you remember Richard Marshall?” she enquired casually. It was, after all, however much she tried to convince herself that she also wanted just to visit her mother, the question she had come here to ask that morning. The first of so many questions concerning that time so long ago that she would like to ask.

Her mother stared at her blankly. Then her face acquired that look of panic which Karen was accustomed to, and which hurt her so much. It was the look she got whenever she was challenged, however mildly, when she was asked even the simplest of questions. Karen understood. She had seen enough of it now, with her mother and the others. It happened when her mother felt she should know something but then realized that she didn’t.

“Richard who?” asked Margaret Meadows, her face contorted with the strain of trying to make her brain work, a brain that no longer did anything she asked of it.

Karen squeezed her hand tightly. “It’s all right,” she murmured, trying to sound soothing. “It’s all right. You don’t have to remember him. You don’t have to remember anything.”

Back at the station Karen formally charged Richard Marshall. She had been greatly looking forward to doing so, but the man gave her little satisfaction. She had no idea what his true feelings were, as he gave so little sign of them. If charging him might weaken him in the way she had suggested to the chief constable and to James Cromby-White, then so far there was no indication of that. Marshall had let his mask slip once and he wasn’t going to do it again.

“You will appear at Torquay magistrates’ court some time tomorrow to be formally charged,” she said. “I would suggest you contact a solicitor before then. If you do not have one you wish to represent you, we can provide you with one.”

“I’ll bet you can,” said Marshall.

“Take him back to his cell,” she said to the two uniformed constables who had brought Marshall into the custody suite where the procedure had been formally recorded by the sergeant in charge. Marshall looked back over his shoulder as they led him away.

“You’ll never make it stick, Karen. You do know that, don’t you?” he remarked casually.

“Detective Superintendent to you,” she responded sharply, and made no other comment, her face expressionless as she watched him disappear down the corridor to the cells.

“What do you think, boss?” asked Phil Cooper. “We will make it stick, won’t we?”

Karen smiled wryly.