Victoria Hotel

April 1995 (editing)

Lunch with Nana and Pop at the Victoria Hotel I ordered martini and remembered vividly Nana telling me – before I was allowed to drink – a lesson in etiquette –  that vermouth and tonic was her favourite. A long drink to sip over hours.

I ordered martini and waited for the frowns but Nana said what a nice name I think I’ll have one too. She couldn’t remember the vermouth and tonic, which she’d spent years elegantly sipping, risking neither pocket nor virtue. I watched her struggling with the names
What was it Fred, that drink?
I don’t know May, I think I’ll have a beer.
I said Nana could taste my martini but that she’d probably prefer a chardonnay.

Pop worries about her forgetfulness. He thinks she may have had a stroke – sometimes when I phone she slurs and mumbles and can’t process what Pop is saying in the background to repeat it to me.

I like to think that I have just woken her up when that happens, but I know that she’s going to sleep.

Nana’s going to sleep

her eyes half closed like a woman seduced

cataracts sliding over – a cat’s inner eyelids

I watch her face, her glistening pouted lips and her cheeks that bring to mind the perfumed cream oil of ulan so strongly to me even thinking about them, when I acted as Antigone and had to kiss the pimply cheek of a classmate on stage I held firm to Nana’s face in my mind …

“Let me kiss you Nana, your cheeks are so soft they remind me of rosy withered apples” (Anouilh)

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She measures time by how good the food is.

Funny how we measure time. As if nothing has happened until we recount it to someone else. Or write it. Checking that their memory is the same, that we didn’t get it wrong somewhere.

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Nana told me another story, she was visiting us and we were sent from the room for making too much noise. As a three year old I was chosen as spokesperson “I’ve never seen anything like it – you Lee, so boldly coming and standing at the door with your back straight and hands clasped behind you saying “I want to see my Nana”.  Then you marched across the room and sat on my lap. Adrian followed timidly a few minutes later.”

My grandparents were so young then, in their early 60s. We used to hide behind the door and listen to them both snoring. Stifling our giggles and thinking of the arguments that would come later as to which one it really was.

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Nana taught me how to touch.

Caressing my knee for hours whilst watching tv and I wouldn’t want to move for fear she’d stop – that perhaps it was some kind of absentmindedness.

But it wasn’t. I could get up and make her a cup of tea and when I came back her touch would move to my shoulder. Gentle. Insistent.

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I know she’s forgetting things because she does it to the table now.

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