Alex

I have to stop and phone. I do remember the name of the road, and what the house looks like and that it is on a corner but now that I’m here I don’t recognise it. This whole visit could be scuppered before it’s even begun.

The phone rings five times and then she picks up.

“Sorry, I say.  I’ve forgotten which number you live at.”

“Just a minute,” she says. “I’ll have to go and look.” She’s only gone a few seconds. “35. It’s number 35.”   

I arrive a few minutes later. Physically, she looks no different. But her eyes dart about a little and she seems constantly bewildered.

“Would you like a cup of coffee?” she asks.

“Yes, that would be nice.” I’m gasping.  I’ve been in the car for two and a half hours. 

I never do get my cup of coffee but we manage to talk about old times as if they were yesterday.

“Do you remember when the Germans came over and we drove for miles on the right across the moors without realising?” she says.

“What about when we were in Stuttgart and we kept going for Zwiebelkuchen?”

“Oh, and Betsey in Filey street? She always used to leave her window open. My dad used to freak.”

Suddenly she stops talking and her smile vanishes. “Look,” she says, “he’s left me a list.”

We look at it together. She’s to go to the Post Office and return a letter that was not meant for them.  She’s to buys some stamps while she’s there. “Go for a walk around the animal park if the sun’s shining. Don’t attempt to put the alarm on. Marianne will be here at 3.00,” Daniel has written.  I wonder who Marianne is.

“Let’s buy something for lunch while we’re out,” I suggest. She nods. She makes sure she has her key and she locks the door.

They clearly know her in the Post Office. They treat her like a child who is running an errand for her parents. We go to the delicatessen and although I do all the buying I ask her opinion which she gives quite expertly. The sales assistants there as well are kind to her.

“Shall we go to the animal park?” she asks.  

“Yes that would be nice,” I reply.

We go to the park. It’s just a little grass, a few trees and a few petting animals, mainly goats, set between the two sides of a wide suburban boulevard.  I’ve been here before when she and Daniel first came to live in Holland and all of our children were quite small. It’s amazing how well she knows the way, considering what she doesn’t know any more. 

But I’m still longing for my caffeine fix. “Shall we go and get a coffee?” I suggest as we turn our back on the animals. “Perhaps we could go to that place we went to last time I came here?”

“There’s a new one open and it’s better,” she says, surprisingly lucid, and confidently leading the way.  But seconds later: “I usually have, you know, it begins with a ‘c’.”

“Coffee?” I suggest inanely.

She shakes her head.  “You know. It’s all frothy and it whizzes.”  She’s trying to remember the word “cappuccino”. 

We chat easily over our coffees. It’s hard to remember she’s ill. Then back at her house I help her unpack the cheese, cold meat and rolls we bought at the delicatessen. “I’ll get the lunch,” she says and sets the table for one.

“Have you got another knife and fork and table mat?” I ask.

She points to a drawer. She goes to the fridge, takes a note off the door, reads it, then opens the fridge and takes out three bottles of pills. “These are from the doctor,” she says, holding up one of them. “And these are vitamins”. She points to the other two. She reads the note. “I have to take two of the white ones and one each of the red and the green.”

She hands me the piece of paper and I help her to sort out the required pills. I notice that the one the doctor prescribed is for a drug not sanctioned in the UK and I’m thankful she lives in Holland. I get us both water.

Later that afternoon she tells me about some of the things she used to do at the school. “I organised a recipe book once,” she says. “An international one. That was when all the students and their parents liked me. But now that I’ve gone peculiar they keep out of the way.”  She laughs at herself.

My friend is still there, even though she’s partly hidden by the veil of her own bewilderment and forgetfulness. 

At three o’clock Marianne arrives. She’s a pleasant woman, a little older than Alex and myself. It’s time for me to go. We introduce ourselves as it seems beyond Alex.  She’s getting tired now.

“Thank you so much for being here,” said Marianne. “Daniel was so pleased you could come.”    

A few weeks after my visit Alex wanders out one night. Daniel goes everywhere she might have gone but has no luck. He has to get the police involved.  They find her safe and well but she has to be hospitalised until they can find her a place in a nursing home.

A few weeks after that, Daniel gets into the habit of visiting her daily and taking her for walks. “It’s a little disconcerting,” he says. “She insists on smiling at everybody and saying hello.”

Thank goodness, I think.  That's our Alex.