Read Online Human Remains by Elizabeth Haynes - Free Book Online
Authors: Elizabeth Haynes
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to rinse the sweat away and then thirty laps of the pool, a nice easy rhythm to cool down. Even so I’ve got one eye on the clock. Last week I did this in nineteen minutes. It’s possible I can get it down to fifteen, which seems much more appropriate, but I will need to work up to it. Push myself.
When I moved to this gym from the one in town I was self-conscious about my workout. At the old place there had been a group of young women who always seemed to be there when I was, giggling and whispering behind their hands. And it was always packed – another reason to leave. There’s nothing worse than watching someone’s sweaty arse swivelling on a bike seat, waiting for them to finish.
This gym is more expensive, but to my mind it’s worth the difference. It’s much bigger, which means more equipment, and the cost of it means one can expect a certain standard of clientele. The women with nothing better to do with their time come during the day; the mothers come with their children after school. But later in the evening the gym is populated by other single professionals who are here to do their business and then get off home, or to the pub, or whatever else it is people do who are both like me and utterly unlike me at the same time.
It’s a year ago this week that we were told that Janice had died. Perhaps that’s why she has been on my mind so much recently. Something about the weather, the turning of the leaves, reminds me of decay and of her rotting corpse, slipping into liquid with nobody there to notice. I wish I’d paid more attention to her. There was so much beauty there that I could have observed, and I missed out on it.
But then again it would have just been more bother, more distraction, like that infernal woman from the nursing home. She called again this evening before I set off for the gym, and, expecting it to be Vaughn, I answered it without looking at the caller display.
‘Mr Friedland?’
I knew it was her. She has a way of pronouncing my name with the emphasis on the second syllable that is quite different from the way everyone else says it. Freed Land. The only reason I don’t correct her is that she possibly uses the same pronunciation in addressing my mother. The thought of this, and of course my mother’s inability to express her indignation, gives me some amusement.
‘Yes, speaking,’ I said, feigning ignorance.
‘Mr Freed Land, it is Matron here. From the Larches.’
‘Yes,’ I said again.
‘Your mother is quite well, there’s no need to worry.’
‘Oh, good,’ I said.
‘However she does miss you terribly.’
I doubt that very much
, I thought. ‘Really? Are you sure she even realises where she is?’
‘On occasion she does. She has lucid moments. And in those moments she seems to feel the loss of you most acutely. You haven’t been to see her in such a very long time, Mr Freed Land.’
‘I’ve been very busy,’ I said. ‘Work has been hectic.’
‘And at the weekends?’
‘Look, I’ll try to get up there on Sunday, alright? Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have things to attend to.’
‘Of course, of course. We will see you then.’
Damn the woman, ruining a perfectly interesting evening with her twaddle. What is the point of going to see my mother, anyway? The chances of her having a ‘lucid’ moment in the half-hour I happen to be there are so remote as to be negligible. And if she were lucid, the idea of it is almost too horrible to contemplate; after all this time, what would we even say to each other? Nevertheless, I will think about going on Sunday, if only to stop that dreadful woman phoning me for a while.
She calls less frequently now than she did. Last year, when my mother had the stroke that took away her ability to function as an adult human being, the nursing home was only too happy to accept her. It didn’t take me long to find a loophole in the government’s policy for critical illness care that meant her fees were fully funded. They
When I moved to this gym from the one in town I was self-conscious about my workout. At the old place there had been a group of young women who always seemed to be there when I was, giggling and whispering behind their hands. And it was always packed – another reason to leave. There’s nothing worse than watching someone’s sweaty arse swivelling on a bike seat, waiting for them to finish.
This gym is more expensive, but to my mind it’s worth the difference. It’s much bigger, which means more equipment, and the cost of it means one can expect a certain standard of clientele. The women with nothing better to do with their time come during the day; the mothers come with their children after school. But later in the evening the gym is populated by other single professionals who are here to do their business and then get off home, or to the pub, or whatever else it is people do who are both like me and utterly unlike me at the same time.
It’s a year ago this week that we were told that Janice had died. Perhaps that’s why she has been on my mind so much recently. Something about the weather, the turning of the leaves, reminds me of decay and of her rotting corpse, slipping into liquid with nobody there to notice. I wish I’d paid more attention to her. There was so much beauty there that I could have observed, and I missed out on it.
But then again it would have just been more bother, more distraction, like that infernal woman from the nursing home. She called again this evening before I set off for the gym, and, expecting it to be Vaughn, I answered it without looking at the caller display.
‘Mr Friedland?’
I knew it was her. She has a way of pronouncing my name with the emphasis on the second syllable that is quite different from the way everyone else says it. Freed Land. The only reason I don’t correct her is that she possibly uses the same pronunciation in addressing my mother. The thought of this, and of course my mother’s inability to express her indignation, gives me some amusement.
‘Yes, speaking,’ I said, feigning ignorance.
‘Mr Freed Land, it is Matron here. From the Larches.’
‘Yes,’ I said again.
‘Your mother is quite well, there’s no need to worry.’
‘Oh, good,’ I said.
‘However she does miss you terribly.’
I doubt that very much
, I thought. ‘Really? Are you sure she even realises where she is?’
‘On occasion she does. She has lucid moments. And in those moments she seems to feel the loss of you most acutely. You haven’t been to see her in such a very long time, Mr Freed Land.’
‘I’ve been very busy,’ I said. ‘Work has been hectic.’
‘And at the weekends?’
‘Look, I’ll try to get up there on Sunday, alright? Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have things to attend to.’
‘Of course, of course. We will see you then.’
Damn the woman, ruining a perfectly interesting evening with her twaddle. What is the point of going to see my mother, anyway? The chances of her having a ‘lucid’ moment in the half-hour I happen to be there are so remote as to be negligible. And if she were lucid, the idea of it is almost too horrible to contemplate; after all this time, what would we even say to each other? Nevertheless, I will think about going on Sunday, if only to stop that dreadful woman phoning me for a while.
She calls less frequently now than she did. Last year, when my mother had the stroke that took away her ability to function as an adult human being, the nursing home was only too happy to accept her. It didn’t take me long to find a loophole in the government’s policy for critical illness care that meant her fees were fully funded. They
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