Agnes and Bim
Agnes and Bim :: 1
Hi, I wanted to get another chapter of "FLID" done, but I'm filming this week so I reckon there is little chance that I'm going to get time to write. So I'm going to serialise this short story instead. Its a moving little tale of a son caring for his dying mother.
1
A pigeon flies over Bristol. It looks down at the quiet streets. It glides on the wind. It swoops down to a rooftop, circles and comes to land in its nest. There is one chick. It flicks it some food.
An egg lands in a frying pan. A slice of bacon. A sausage is nearly done. The kettle boils. Water is poured into a cup which sits on a tray next to a full fried English breakfast.
2
Agnes is old and lying in her bed. Her breathing is deep, her eyes sucked back, the sockets pruned. The door opens. Agnes’ eyes weekly stretch forward to look. Her body can’t move.
Bim comes in on his wheel chair with a tray lying on his legs. He crosses the room, places the tray on the bedside table and then opens the curtains. The sunlight is too strong for Agnes.
Bim pulls himself up onto Agnes’ bed and begins to feed Agnes from the breakfast he has brought in for her. “You alright there mum?” He asks.
She has trouble eating and some food falls on her chest. He cleans it up.
“I wasn’t half stiff this morning,” he explains, “yeah, wasn’t half. Mi back damn near crippled. Can you imagine, and then what would I be? And what would you do with me laid up like you eh? Probably not half a good deal eh?”
Some more food falls onto her chest. “Never mind, never mind,” he says.
He wipes her chest and resumes feeding her. “There you go,” he says, “ we’re not far off eating it all are we, just a little bit more an before you know it we’re all done, that’s right, just a little bit more and we’re all done.’
3
A little later, Agnes is watching an early morning chat show on the television. The door opens. Bim wheels in with a bowl of warm, steaming water and a towel on his legs. He crosses the room and puts the bowl on the bedside table. He pulls himself up onto Agnes’ bed. He shudders. “Christ, some-one just walked on mi grave, ain’t that right eh? It ain’t cold in here, heating’s on. You’re not cold are ya mum? No, I knows you ain’t. Telly good?”
He undoes the button on her nightie and peels it off her shoulders. He lifts her arms up and takes off her vest. He pulls back the covers of her bed and unpicks the rest of the buttons. He removes the nightie from her naked body. He takes a sponge and washes her face, her hands, her arms, her armpits, her withered breasts, her deflated stomach, between her legs, her bottom, her legs, her feet, and then her back. He takes the towel and dries her.
He opens the door to the bedside table and pulls out a clean vest and nightie. He slips the vest over her and pulls her arms through. He puts the nightie over her shoulders and then squidges it under her bottom. He then buttons it up.
Bim looks at his mother. “Luv ya mum.”
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License.