A Line of Blood. Ben McPherson

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      ‘Mum, that doesn’t sound like nothing.’

      ‘He took a little fall, Alexander. I’d to call an ambulance.’

      ‘Do you want me to come up, Mum?’

      ‘Ach, no, you’re awfully busy down there, son.’

      Millicent was awake when I went back upstairs. I told her about the call.

      ‘I should ring her,’ she said.

      ‘You don’t need to do that.’

      ‘Sure I do.’

      I lay on the bed. Downstairs Millicent spoke to my mother for ten minutes. I could hear the coaxing softness in her voice, the gentle laughter, the long silences she left for my mother to fill. Why are you so good at this?

      Something deep within me had feared that Millicent and my mother would hate each other. But a year into our marriage, when I had started to trust that there was a reality to our love, that I genuinely was more than a work permit to my wife, I had rung my parents in Edinburgh to tell them my old news.

      I suspected my mother minded terribly that I hadn’t wanted her at the wedding, and I wondered whether her long pauses on the phone were because she was crying. She had asked to speak to Millicent, and with great formality welcomed her to the family.

      Millicent was very touched, and profoundly embarrassed: even more so when my mother sent her the little gold bracelet that had belonged to my grandmother. She wrote back to her in the kind of flowing copperplate handwriting that they only teach in American schools, a long letter that she refused to let me read.

      ‘You’re really very well-brought-up, aren’t you, Millicent?’

      ‘What were you expecting, rube-face?’

      ‘Someone less nuanced, I suppose.’

      ‘And yet here you are with me.’

      My mother called Millicent Lassie, and occasionally Girl, and Millicent called my mother Mrs Mercer. They would write each other weekly letters that again neither of them ever let me read; they even spoke regularly on the telephone, which mystified me. My mother hated the telephone. Strange that they should have this bond: what could Millicent know of my mother, or my mother of Millicent?

      My father would openly disparage America at every opportunity, and Millicent would laugh gently, and quietly put him right. ‘No, sir, we really are no more stupid than anyone else. Education may not be fairly distributed, but that is because wealth is concentrated in a very small number of hands, sir. Surely we can agree on that?’

      They never agreed, but my father liked the fact that Millicent called him sir.

      Would I have worked as hard with her parents as she did with mine? It’s a question I’ve never had to answer: Millicent has never allowed me to meet them.

      I heard Millicent end the call, heard her toss the phone on to the table, heard her feet cross the living-room floor and climb the stairs.

      She came in and sat down on the bed.

      ‘OK, so I think maybe you have to face the possibility that this situation is worse than your mother is saying, Alex. I think maybe she really needs you there. She even cried a little.’

      ‘The timing couldn’t be worse, could it?’

      ‘Honey, listen to me: I think your dad had a stroke. That’s pretty much what your mom told me. They didn’t say it to her yet, I guess, because they’re still doing tests, but I think she already read between the lines. She’s scared and you need to be there.’

      The fall. The electrocardiogram. It made sense.

      ‘Millicent?’ I said.

      ‘Yes?’

      ‘Thanks.’

      ‘Sure.’

      ‘I’d be lost without you.’

      ‘Sure.’

      The grinding sadness of that last Edinburgh train, all shouting children and glowering men, Fruit Shoots, crisps, six-packs of beer. Millicent had bought my ticket for me; she had sent me out into the London evening, an overnight bag in my hand, long before I needed to go. Now I glowered too, alone at my table, hoping no one would sit down opposite me, hoping people could read it all in my expression. Stay away. All is not well here.

      My thoughts would not settle. My father was seriously ill – Millicent was always right about these things – and my mother would be out of her mind with worry. But when I tried to picture my mother at my father’s bedside I saw only the neighbour: the swollen tongue, the red-encrusted nostril. Please, I thought, don’t let that be my father’s fate.

      That blue-red tongue, I thought, pushing at my wife’s lips. That milk-white hand seeking out her breast.

       She as good as pushed you out of the front door.

      I sat, trying to feel the moment again. Did she want me gone? No. No, she had held me very tightly, her cheek pressed against mine. She hadn’t broken the embrace. I was the one who had pulled gently away from her.

      Millicent had thrown her arms around me then, kissed me very deeply. Her eyes did not flick to some imagined lover somewhere just out of sight.

      And yet, I thought. That pawing hand, that searching tongue. I worried at them; I couldn’t leave them alone.

       She as good as pushed you out of the door.

      My mother was not at the station. I rang her. There was no answer so I took a taxi to the hospital. Millicent had written the number of the ward on the train ticket that she had printed for me. For a moment I saw myself running from one end of the building to another, hopelessly lost, but the hospital was modern and the signs were clear.

      I was surprised to find two nurses at the Gerontology desk. It was almost one.

      ‘Hi,’ I said.

      ‘Hello,’ said the younger of the two.

      ‘Alex Mercer,’ I said. ‘That’s my name, and it’s also my father’s name.’

      The older nurse whispered something to the younger nurse.

      ‘Alex Mercer is a patient here,’ I said. ‘Just to be clear.’

      The younger nurse was looking not at me but past me. She stood up, and put a hand on my shoulder. So much kindness. Then she put her other hand on my other shoulder and turned me. How very gentle she was.

      It was then that I saw my mother, stiff-backed on a white plastic chair, immaculate in her dark blue fitted jacket and skirt. On a little table beside her was a cup of tea, two pink wafers crossed on a napkin beside it.

      My mother’s dark eyes were on me, and she smiled as I approached. ‘The nurses have been very good,’ she said. ‘Tea in a porcelain cup. Hello, Laddie.’

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