Kate Mosse - An Extra Pair of Hands: A story of caring and everyday acts of love

an extra pair of hands

ALSO BY KATE MOSSE

T HE B URNING C HAMBERS S ERIES

The Burning Chambers

The City of Tears

T HE L ANGUEDOC T RILOGY

Labyrinth

Sepulchre

Citadel

O THER F ICTION & S TORIES

The Winter Ghosts

The Mistletoe Bride & Other Haunting Tales

The Taxidermists Daughter

N ON -F ICTION

Becoming a Mother

The House: Behind the Scenes at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden

Chichester Festival Theatre at Fifty

P LAYS

Syrinx

The Queen of Jerusalem

The Taxidermists Daughter

Kate Mosse

A story of caring, ageing & everyday acts of love

First published in Great Britain in 2021 by

PROFILE BOOKS LTD

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London

EC1A 7JQ

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Published in association with Wellcome Collection

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London NW1 2BE

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Copyright Mosse Associates Ltd, 2021

While every effort has been made to contact copyright-holders of reproduced material, the author and publisher would be grateful for information where they have been unable to contact them, and would be glad to make amendments in further editions.

Photograph reproduced on p.177 Peter Flude Photography.

All other photographs the author.

Lines from The Building (High Windows) by Philip Larkin Faber & Faber, Ltd. Lines from An Arundel Tomb (Collected Poems) by Philip Larkin the Estate of Philip Larkin and reprinted by permission of Faber & Faber, Ltd. Lines from Ash Wednesday (The Poems of T. S. Eliot Vol. 1) the Estate of T. S. Eliot.

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All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.

A CIP record for this book can be obtained from the British Library

ISBN : 978 1 78816 261 6

e ISBN : 978 1 78283 551 6

Audio ISBN : 978 1 78283 885 2

As always, for my beloved Greg, Martha and Felix

With love and admiration for my much-missed parents

Richard Hugh Mosse

(30 May 1924 18 May 2011)

Barbara Mary Mosse

(15 September 1931 21 December 2014)

And for my wonderful mother-in-law

Rosemary Turner aka Granny Rosie

(2 November 1930 still going strong!)

Freedom. It isnt once, to walk out

under the Milky Way, feeling the rivers

of light, the fields of dark

freedom is daily, prose-bound, routine

remembering. Putting together, inch by inch,

the starry worlds. From all the lost collections.

Adrienne Rich from For Memory, 1979

MY SISTERS AND I are sitting in the back of the car, our legs touching, and the seat scratchy.

Street lights flash by in quiet suburban towns, then were out into the darkness of country roads in the South Downs. Sleepy after a long day, a visit to my mothers favourite cousin and his wife, somewhere in Surrey. Sandwiches for the journey home. Edam cheese, something Ive never eaten before. I want to like it, but it doesnt taste of anything and its the texture of my swimming hat.

Its winter and were wearing flared jeans and striped polo necks, itchy at the neck. Beige and mustard yellow, the colours of the 1970s. Lava lamp prints. Or maybe not. Memory is a fickle friend and there were many journeys to relatives at Christmas.

But if the image is slightly blurred, Im certain its Boxing Day or thereabouts, coming up for six oclock. Were in our usual places me behind our mother on the passenger side, my middle sister perched and looking straight ahead, my youngest sister curled up behind our father, a folded coat against the window for a pillow. In the compartment beneath the handbrake, theres a packet of tissues and a metal tin of car sweets Foxs Glacier Mints and barley sugars, the brittle taste of day trips.

I wipe the inside of the glass with my sleeve and ask if the radio can be turned on. The relief! Were just in time for the tail end of the Top 20 and the Christmas No. 1.

In those days before personalised playlists and twenty-four-hour sound, the Radio 1 countdown on a Sunday night was a ritual. One of those things that made girls growing up in villages in Sussex feel connected to something bigger, beyond the realms of our lived experience. For the fifth week running, its Queen with Bohemian Rhapsody. Ive seen the video on Top of the Pops and, as I listen, I picture that split screen dividing into boxes, then dividing again and again. Singing along under my breath to words I dont understand, yet relishing the sound of them, the spirit of them, the promise of them.

I am fourteen and young for my age, but wanting to fit in with the more popular pupils at my 2,000-strong girls comp, the ones who smoke and have boyfriends, who roll their skirts up and wear platform shoes to school.

Blue eyeshadow. Imagine.

Im not sure why I remember this journey so clearly, when in truth it could have been any other December in the 1970s: perhaps visiting my maternal uncle and aunt in Addlestone (though I think that year the Christmas No. 1 was Slade) or an afternoon spent with my paternal grandparents in Hove. Memories fragment, slip and slide, put themselves back together like a kaleidoscope. Playing I Spy to pass the time until were bored of it. The ritual of seeing which of us could count the most Christmas trees in the windows of all the houses and flats as we drove along the old coast road from East to West Sussex, until the spire of Chichester Cathedral welcomed us home. Knowing that, because it was the holidays, wed have supper on our laps in front of the television. Knowing my father would have left the light on in the porch so we didnt come back to a dark house and that our Christmas tree would be sparkling red and blue. A holly wreath on the front door. Knowing all this in advance because this was how it always was.

I didnt, then, realise how exceptional this quiet, ordered childhood was, how ordinary and how precious. Knowing that I was loved. And because of those very many years of being loved unconditionally, and supported unconditionally, that what was required some thirty-five years later would be both possible and a privilege.

In the UK the number of carers has increased by around 4.5 million as a result of the pandemic, and Carers UK estimate that around 1 in 4, or 26% of adults are unpaid carers. This is not a how to book for those who find themselves carers, nor a social analysis of the structures and inequalities in the UK care system. Though there are common challenges, everyones experience is unique. My husband, our children, my sisters, my brother-in-law would write different stories of these same times and their roles as carers.