Another short story from the early days of David’s unusual career. It is the Year 2000, nearly two years since he gave up his career as an industrial chemist to become a researcher in the strange world of paranormal sciences.

It was an odd thing to be doing, waiting for somebody to die.

David had not even been told her name. That was part of the agreement. This had to be as impersonal as possible, but seeing that for all intents and purposes the old woman was already dead, it was difficult to imagine why this mattered.

She was a relative of somebody high up in the making of the television programme that David now hated. He had been hired the previous year, supposedly to be the voice of science, to provide the rational view of the hauntings they investigated.

It soon became clear that he was actually hired because they heard he could sense some of the sounds, visions, and feelings, that prompted beliefs in the many and weird experiences that became ghost stories and folklore. His irrelevant PhD in Chemistry made him Dr David Hammond, something they made more use of than David ever did.

This combination of circumstances landed him the job in the first place, but it had not been an enjoyable experience. As a trained scientist with a genuine interest in what may or may not be paranormal, he hated all the fakery, conveniently finding ghosts on demand as the cameras recorded, the whole sorry business of night vision cameras and screams.

Thankfully, this was not being filmed for television, and it had been the old woman herself who had requested David to be there. That had been months ago, when this had been something that would happen in the future. Her illness may let her live for another year or two, even longer perhaps? Now that future was here. Her time had run out.

Having heard so many claims that some sort of spirit was seen to part company with the body, a miraculous spectacle at the very point of death, she had offered her last moments to test this theory one way or another. She believed that if anybody could sense such a thing happening and give a true account of the experience, it would be David. That had been when she could joke about her own death, and of coming back to haunt people. She no longer joked about it, was not able to. It had been weeks since she last said anything coherent, days since her last mumbled words had been spoken, unheard by anybody.

That was as much as David knew. He could have turned it down, but in the closed world of those who made a living from anything paranormal, that would have been unwise. He had already made himself a pariah by handing in his notice, turning down the offer of appearing in a third series. To further annoy those who held the best cards, the people who had influence and were listened to, would probably not go well for his future.

Why were they so preoccupied with death? For every location they visited, the research team would desperately try to find a link with death. Who had died there? Was there a murder or some other bloody tale with a tenuous link to somebody with an even more tenuous link to where they acted for the cameras?

David had given up telling them that anything they found was evidently to do with the people who had lived there, not those who died. He no longer cared, merely marking time until the end of his contract, then some other fool could take his job and be welcome to it.

But a contract is a contract, which is why he found himself sitting in the dining room of a fine but tired Victorian house, the house where the frail woman who lay unconscious must have lived for most of her life. There were traces of happy memories here. Was she able to relive some of those memories now, or had she already passed into a senseless void of darkness? As her body continued to function, slowly shutting down but somehow keeping going, had her mind already gone?

The room told its own story. Expensive wallpaper, now faded and of another time. Furniture unchanged for decades. A table had once filled the centre of the room, leaving its shadow on the carpet. Had it been moved upstairs into a room she had no more use for? The hospital style bed sat in the room like an imposter, and the old woman lay upon it, unmoving.

David had a dining chair, out of the way of the people who came and then left again. He was merely required to be present in the room when her time came, then stay for a few hours afterwards, nothing more. He had been there since the dark hours of the night when he had received the call. It was unlikely she would see another day, so he had made the short drive to the given address, and now he sat and waited.

Nursing staff of one kind or another came and went, disturbing the old woman’s dignity without her knowing. Interfering with a body that no longer responded. Checking the morphine pump that may or may not be keeping her free of suffering, and free of existing.

She had lost her husband some time long ago. David had worked that out within the first hour of sitting in the stale room that smelled of sickness. It had been sudden, unexpected. David could tell that from the grief she left behind. A death like this, slow and protracted, would have left a weariness, of being worn down by sadness. The brittle strength that is found when coping, and the relief when it was all over. David found none of this in her memories. It had been a sudden wrenching grief, a torrent of unanswered questions. Unexpected loneliness borne quietly.

Had her husband been the one fond of Wagner, or was that her choice? He wished he had a name for her, to make her somebody instead of just an old woman, dying on a mechanical bed. If she was so fond of Wagner’s music, why couldn’t somebody have the decency to play some instead of this clinical silence? Perhaps there was another reason for her son and daughter to be called Tristan and Isolde? He knew Wagner’s opera had been based on a much older story, and now he regretted not knowing such things.

Tristan had been the one sitting next to the bed for the past two hours. David had a natural talent for avoiding unnecessary conversations, and perhaps Tristan was simply not in the mood to talk. For whatever reason, they did not speak. He occasionally took out a tiny mobile phone and fiddled with the buttons. David guessed he must be texting, not something David had tried, nor did he want to.

This bored man, who David guessed must be in his fifties, looked successful and in desperate need to be somewhere else. He was here out of some sense of duty, no doubt pressured to do so, because he clearly did not want to be here out of choice. Was his mother taking too long to die? Was she upsetting his schedule? Occasionally, he would look around the room as if assessing if anything was worth keeping?

This room was almost unchanged from when his mother had loved him here. David had found a memory, a birthday party when Tristan had been perhaps ten, or a little younger? Shades of light brown suggested the 1960s, but the furniture was the same, timeless antiques of dark wood.

It was such a happy memory. A mother doting on her son, proud of her little boy. How much time and love had she lavished on that boy who now sat next to her, fiddling with his phone, waiting for the time when he could go back home, or back to the office?

The daughter, Isolde, looked like she had been here all night when David arrived, and many nights before this one. They were working this in shifts so that at least one of them would be here at the end. Was that who Tristan had been sending his text message to? Where are you? I need to get back to the office.

Isolde returned looking more tired than when she had left, as if nearing the end of an endurance that stretched a long way back in time. ‘Do you need to get away?’

David kept his attention on his book, trying his best to look invisible, but he could sense the feelings in the room. Tristan was making a point of not looking like he wanted to rush away and get back to more important things.

‘If you don’t mind.’ Tristan stood, his movements slow and unrushed. He would quicken his pace when out of sight. No offer was made to make his sister a cup of tea or coffee before he went, not even a word of greeting, never mind gratitude.

Isolde took his place on the solitary chair next to the bed. Tristan had already left the room by the time she took her mother’s hand in her own. She seemed to wait for the sound of the front door before she spoke.

‘Hi Mum. I’m back.’

The sound of those four words brought an instant change to the room. They were spoken so softly, as if she were used to speaking like this in one-sided conversations.

‘I’ve just come from Kathy’s. She sends her love.’ She squeezed her mother’s hand affectionately, as if that would help to convey the message. ‘Claire will be going back to university at the weekend and still hasn’t got anything ready. She’ll never change.’

David felt like an intruder, listening when Isolde should be alone with her mother. He put the bookmark in pages he had no memory of reading, and stood up.

‘I’m going to make a cuppa. Would you like one?’

‘Oh, if you don’t mind. Thank you.’

‘What can I get you?’ David looked around and found an empty mug to take with him.

‘Just tea, thanks. White, no sugar.’

He walked quietly out of the room as if his very presence was an unwelcome intrusion. He suspected that for Isolde it probably was.

The kitchen seemed cold with a lifeless Aga as its focal point, no longer needed by anybody. As cold as stone. David found another momentary image of Tristan, a little older this time. His face white, but flushed red, dressed warmly as if he had just come in from playing in snow. Both oven doors open as he warmed himself in a house full of love and cheer.

Another image took its place. He was younger again, perhaps six or seven years old, pouring more cereal into his breakfast bowl, then smiling up at his mother. He had been a beautiful and happy boy, or is that just how his mother remembered him?

As David found the mugs and tea bags, waiting for the rumbling electric kettle to boil, he cleared his mind for the first time since he had arrived. He had not felt comfortable doing so earlier while Tristan had been in the room. There had been a sense of irritation pervading the house, but now it seemed calm. A disturbing sense of unquiet had been lifted.

Two years earlier he would have found this difficult, but now it was almost second nature to tune out his other senses and allow anything within the house to become known. There was a man. Good looking, confident. Was this her husband? David thought he probably was. In his thirties perhaps? Forties at the most. He was with the boy, Tristan. David could make no meaning of this vision except that they were clearly happy together, enjoying each other’s company, and a strong sense of contentment. That was the way the mother, the keeper of the memory, wanted to remember the moment.

Other memories, fragments of past days, meant nothing to David either. Just small reminders of happy times she had kept in a special place. Apart from a heartbreaking sadness that could only be from the loss of her husband, this was all there was to find in this tired house, and all of them were in one way or another, fond memories of a mother towards her precious boy. Was that how she still saw him? When the impatient man sat next to her in the saddened room where there had once been celebrations and joy, did she instead see a smiling boy?

David picked up the mugs and returned the way he had come. In the dining room, there was now soft music from somewhere which brought comfort where before there had been none.

‘Oh, thank you,’ Isolde said as she took hold of the mug. ‘You don’t mind the music do you?’

‘No, of course I don’t mind. It’s been so quiet in here. A bit of music’s nice. Is it Wagner by any chance?’

‘Elgar, cello concerto,’ Isolde smiled. ‘Dad was the Wagner nut. Mum was a cellist, a wonderful player.’ She stroked her mother’s hand softly. ‘These hands made such beautiful music.’

‘Do you play?’ David asked as he settled back in his dining chair.

‘Piano.’ Isolde rubbed her mother’s hand gently again. ‘I didn’t play for years, but Mum talked me into it again, so I’ve been practising every day.’

A silence fell for a moment as Isolde enjoyed a memory.

‘I gave up work when Mum needed a bit more help. I didn’t have to, but it was a good choice, so I’ve made time every day to play again.’ She fussed around rearranging her mother’s blankets. ‘We’ve had some lovely times, even when she was stuck in hospital for weeks on end. And music, oh the music! We had both stopped listening to music like we used to, just the radio sometimes, but it’s not the same. It’s always been such a part of our lives, so it was nice to have it back again.’

‘Was your dad a musician?’

‘He was, but amateur, not full-time like Mum. He was a tenor, traditional music style rather than opera, and sang in choirs for years. That’s how he met Mum, at a recording of Bach’s St John Passion, still rated as one of the best ever made. I’ll put it on next. It’s quite something.’

‘Yes, please do.’ David didn’t know his Bach from his Beethoven, and had always regretted not getting to know classical music.

‘We’ve had all our favourites on, haven’t we Mum?’ Again she took her mother’s hand tenderly in her own.

Another silence allowed the music to be heard, disturbed only by a tick from the morphine pump. David was no good in situations like this. He had not been part of a close family, and was always conscious that he never knew the right thing to do or say.

It seemed that talking was over for the moment, so David picked up his book and did his best to disappear into the corner of the room again. He did not read, however. He allowed his mind to close down everything he could see and hear, so the faint memories left behind in this house could come to him again. Would these remain when Isolde’s mother was no longer sustaining them?

David did not know. It was unusual to find so many memories and lingering thoughts, so he suspected they would not. He allowed each one to come to him but found nothing new, and not a single memory of Isolde. It seemed there were only fond memories of her son, as if Isolde had never existed. Yet here she was, having given up her job to look after her mother so kindly, while her son had been there only reluctantly, and eager to leave as soon as he could. Was there a story there, or is this just what families are like? It seemed somehow unfair.

A small noise drew David back from the discarded memories that lay in the house. Somewhere between a cough and a sigh.

‘Mum?’ Isolde lifted her mother’s hand then set it down gently, but she did not let go as she looked sadly at the silent and still form in the bed. Even though she had prepared herself for this moment, had willed herself to be strong, when it came, it was still hard to accept. ‘Oh Mum, don’t go yet. You’re going to miss Bach. It’s your favourite.’

David felt awkward, that he should not be there at such a time. There had been no sense of a spirit lifting into some other world, nothing at all to mark somebody’s passing. He merely felt that before there had been three people in the room, and now there were only two.

He put his book down and stood to leave the room. ‘I’ll give you some time.’

‘Thank you.’ Isolde looked up, tears breaking free but not yet lost in grief. ‘But don’t you have to stay?’

‘I can be anywhere in the house. It’s okay.’ He reached the door. ‘Is there anything I can do?’

‘We’ll be fine.’ She wiped away her tears, then patted her mother’s hand. ‘Thank you.’

As he pulled the door gently closed, David could feel that the memories her mother had held onto for so many years had already faded away, lost forever. He would say nothing of what he found here. Nobody would ever know, and it seemed best to leave it that way. There were some truths that could only hurt if told. He wondered if the frail old woman felt any joy in having her daughter to comfort her at the end.

Had she even known, or had she been thinking only of her son?

Thank you for reading.

If you would like to learn more about David Hammond and his stories, visit www.nigelcode.co.uk

Other David Hammond short stories on Substack:

Last Orders at the Bar.

Emma’s Secret.

The New House.