“You’re not listening to me at all, are you?” she says again, clattering the glass onto the table and filling it with water. I nod my head but to tell you the truth I’m finding it hard to concentrate. If I twist my head, I can still see it: a small silver key gleaming in the light from my reading lamp. I want to hold onto the feeling of suspense for a bit longer so I don’t look at it too closely in case I remember how it got there. I don’t mean how it came to be on top of the sideboard because of course I put it there amongst the detritus of receipts and shrapnel I found in my pocket. How it came to be in my pocket is the question. I’m almost certain I didn’t put it there.
“I don’t think I’m asking much. I just wish you’d take more care,” she says interrupting my thoughts. With one brisk motion, she wipes a dishcloth over the surface of the table, moping up the dribble of gravy that runs from my plate.
“I didn’t do it deliberately,” I mumble, lifting my plate out the way so she can wipe underneath.
“I know, but it doesn’t take much to clean up after yourself. It was the same thing yesterday, I come in after a hard days work and there’s towels all over the floor and the water’s running over the edge of the sink.”
I look down at my plate and push the carrots underneath the soggy mashed potato. She knows I hate carrots. “I said I was sorry. But my film was starting. I must have forgotten I left the tap running.”
“I should have known: you and your bloody films. I wish you’d think about something else for a change.”
“What else have I got to think about Lyn?” I say, frowning at her. “I’m stuck in this house all day; I can just about make it to the paper shop. All I have to look forward to is you coming to see me, and it’s not like you do that every day.” I have to admit I throw the last bit in to sting her a little. It works as she stops throwing my plates into the sink as though they’ll bounce and comes and sits down in the chair opposite.
“I know Dad, it’s awful for you. I’m just worried. I’m not exactly thrilled about you walking to the paper shop either. What would happen if you collapse on the main road? People don’t stop to help any more, you know. They’d just think you’d been drinking.”
I shake my head and cross my arms. It always comes back to this. “I can make it to the paper shop to get my fags. You’re not going to get them for me are you?”
“No I’m not! Horrible things. Seriously though, I’m sorry I snapped. I’ve just had a bad day. The girls got in late last night and I was tearing my hair out, they didn’t even phone. Then I overslept and had to go to work without a shower,” I stopped listening to her but smiled across the table in my best fatherly manner. Lyn was always a serious child, too much like her mother. Neither of them ever laughed at my jokes. She was one of those little girls who seemed to delight in pointing out your faults, “Daddy why don’t you stop smoking? Daddy why did you forget my birthday? Daddy why did you make mummy cry?” I suppose it was natural she would join the police, though it’s had the unfortunate effect of making her all the more aware of other people’s failings, especially mine. Now it seems like all her worries are pressing down onto her forehead making two deep frown lines between her eyes.
I lean over to pat Lyn’s hand, “Well I think you work too hard. You should relax more.”
“Relax? I have a full time job, two teenagers and you to look after, remember. I don’t have time to relax.”
“You don’t need to worry about me. I’m fine.”
“No you’re not, Dad. You hadn’t even noticed the water was running upstairs and last week you nearly burned the house down. We have to start thinking about options.”
“Options?” I say. The word sounds ominous.
“You know you’re not going to be able to live here by yourself forever.” I make a noise like harrumph and stand slowly to shuffle to the next room.
“You can’t avoid the subject forever,” she calls after me.
I settle into the armchair and switch the telly on. I turn up the sound, not because my hearing is bad as it’s the one thing that hasn’t disintegrated yet, but because it makes talking impossible. I’m tired of talking now and just want to be alone to think about my key. I take it out my pocket where I hid it from Lyn. I try to think through the last couple of days to work out where it came from but it’s like running through snow. I met an old friend at the shop this morning (at least I think it was this morning). We worked together in the factory making wing nuts while the kids were growing up. Bill was his name. Bill Wyatt or Williams or it might have been Will Bryant. I always thought he had a thing for my Jenny. Funny how you forget the names but the emotion clings on, as soon as I saw him that old jealousy filled my mouth like bile. Still it was good to see an old face, to talk about the past.
He told me it was my anniversary; I married Jenny sixty years ago. I had forgotten. My memory is mangled and broken; the warranty expired years ago so there’s no hope of a replacement. How soon will it be before I forget Jenny’s name, or forget Lyn is my daughter, forget I ever had a daughter? Not long I think. She’s a good girl really. I wish she’d sit down and watch a movie with me.
Of course, if I want the mystery of my key solved, the best thing would be to ask Lyn. But there’s a part of me which doesn’t want to find out straight away, it’s nice to have something interesting to think about for a change. The key is so very tiny, the size of my thumb from the knuckle to the nail. It’s too small to actually be of use. It reminds me of the story about the little girl who fell down a rabbit hole; perhaps it’s the key to a miniature door. If I ask Lyn, there will be some mundane solution. In fact, it’s likely she put it there to remind me of something, she does that sometimes, the way we used to put knots in our handkerchiefs. These days my memory is such a slippery, sliding kind of thing, I’d be scared not only that I would forget what the knots were for but also that I have a handkerchief or a nose to wipe it with.
It’s a strange thing, memory. In the factory, they called me Stato, I could remember every capital city in the world and the position of every team in the football leagues since 1944. I was celebrated for my vocabulary; I could recite whole pages of definitions from the dictionary. Yet it was the words that went first. I would be talking and suddenly the word I was trying to use would go completely out my head. ‘Tomorrow’ was the first to vanish, as if the shortening days ahead of me no longer needed a label. I can remember the word ‘yesterday’ clearly enough, there’s a whole lifetime of the damn things following me around; I suppose it’s natural I dwell on them.
Time, so pernicious, has always been an enemy. When I was a child, I was greedy for the tomorrows, stuffing them hungrily into my mouth. I was always pushing on to the next thing, pushing forwards; not realising that time would eventually be eaten up until I’m left desperately scrabbling for the last crumbs. Increasingly I find it’s not just tomorrow which is fast retreating but also today, and that’s more of a worry. Only last week, I left a pan of water boiling on the stove until all the water evaporated away. I was reading the newspaper when Lyn burst in screaming like a siren. Of course, she was right, the house could have burned down, but she didn’t have to shout so loud.
Lyn has come in with a cup of tea and is still talking about her day. Her story seems to have got more interesting. “Of course that will teach me to leave without checking I had everything first,” she says, pausing to sip her coffee. “It was such a stupid mistake, the thing you joke about that you must never forget. Honestly, I was so embarrassed. There I was handcuffed to the desk in front of thirty hysterical ten year olds. I’m supposed to be teaching them how to keep safe and all they learnt was that police are stupid. I had to wait half an hour before they brought the spare. I’m never going to live it down. The guys on the shift thought it was hilarious.”
“What on earth were you doing handcuffed to a desk?”
“I’ve just told you dad, weren’t you listening? The strange thing is I still can’t find it. I thought I must have left it in my locker but I looked and it’s not there.”
“Well in my day police officers wouldn’t be caught doing that sort of thing.”
“I hardly intended it to happen,” she says, tilting her eyebrows, looking just like Jenny. She gets up and takes the cups into the kitchen.
I look at the key again. Perhaps Bill gave it to me this morning; if so I wish I could remember what it’s for. Perhaps he asked me to do something for him, open something small, a safe deposit box with his savings inside. Perhaps it’s for my own safe deposit box. I’ve never trusted banks: who knows what they do with your money. Perhaps it was something that belonged to my wife, a locket or a diary. If so, it makes me cross to think how Bill got hold of it. I’m getting sleepy by the gas fire and the last thing I think is perhaps it unlocks that final door, the one that waits for us all.
Lyn comes in the room and pulls the blanket over my knees. I feel her warm hand rest on my cheek and half open my eyes. I see her pick up the key and put it in her pocket.
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