The mother I loved

She was ill this year, and I thought of myself as on call. We lived five minutes S apart by car

- CHARLOTTE GRIMSHAW

There were spells in hospital, a pain crisis where I sat by her waiting for the ambulance; there were dramas and periods of calm. She remained stoical, good-humored, extraordinarily sharp. All through it, my father looked after her devotedly, assiduously. He rubbed her back and brought her food. He got up in the night and made her tea. They read together. They lay side by side and remembered together. They received visitors, even talking through masks on the deck when they'd both caught Covid.

All through it, the thought that could bring me to shattering tears was the story of them, through so many decades: they had such style, humour and courage, and a faith so strong it seemed pure and even naive, in the importance of ideas, of books and art and intellectual rigour. My parents: sometimes they seemed to me fierce and poignant and ridiculously young.