Aunty Molly

It's only just gone 7 .15am when I pull up outside. The call isn't officially until 7.30am but if I am covering calls I tend to start early to allow for the fact that I am slower than the regular girls because I am constantly the new girl, not knowing the routine, not able to find the tea bags or the clean underwear.
She is well over ninety years old, she likes the staff to call her Aunty Molly and it is a tribute to her that even the most cynical carer does it without irony. She met Lloyd George when she was a little girl, it still stands out in her memory still though she never voted anything but Labour. She is known throughout the village by her first name, the sort of fame shared by Madonna and Sting, but on a small town Welsh scale. She delivered babies and laid out the dead and was the woman that the local kids ran to when Mammy wasn't well. She is a local legend.
Her life has shrunk now, she is all but blind but she is fine in her own environment - knows her way round the terraced house she came to as a newlywed by touch and memory. I let myself in and call her name up the stairs but the answer comes from the kitchen. She is up and eating breakfast, sitting at the scarred kitchen table buttering toast and drinking tea from a china cup with roses on it. She doesn't need me for much, make the heavy old feather bed, put out her meds, what she really wants is a chat. It's a debatable point whether she needs the call but she is one of the ones we lay low about because we know the day will come soon enough when she will falter and knowing the girls who care for her may make that easier for her.
She always tells me the same tales, I don't know if that's because she does that to everyone or because she rarely sees me and forgets between visits. She says she is lucky, "she doesn't have an ounce of pain" She doesn't mention that she can no longer read or see television, her hearing is too poor to hear the radio and though her son phones every day she only knows it's him for sure because her speaking clock tells her it is twelve o'clock, the time he always phones. She used to have two boys but she lost the younger one in a road crash at twenty one. Her husband went five months later, a broken heart she reckons, she tried to revive him on the rug that is still in her front room but he died in spite of her efforts and she was widowed at fifty six. She was left without much money and with a grieving son to care for so she took in lodgers. Her face brightens as she talks about "her boys", mostly mine workers who lived in her back bedroom for a few months or a year or so and gave her a purpose in the dark days and an income in days when the State contributed little.
I listen to the stories again, sharing the stewed tea and enjoying her laughter but I have one eye on the clock and soon enough I have to extract myself and go on to the next call. As I stand to go she says musingly. "I had a strange dream last night girl, made me feel quite funny - I had to come down and have a cup of tea". I sit back down and she looks at the spot where she knows I am. "I dreamed I was stood on one side of a little brook and my Billy was stood on the other side. He looked so sad and he said "There's a long time you've been Molly, When ARE you coming girl" We are both silent for a moment and I reach out and touch her hand. She seems to give herself a little shake and smiles again. "I can't go can I?" she says in a brisk tone "My boy needs me".