A Book at Bedtime

by Barrie Shore

  She’d been frightened of the lift at first and refused to use it, just as Jack refuses it now. But Margaret is not a woman easily defeated. She cajoled and bullied to no avail and, in the end, resorted to bribery in the form of chocolate or, if Eva was more than usually intractable, a nip of cherry brandy. Jack had been startled by Margaret’s strategy, saddened by how effective it was. At the same time, he admired her ingenuity and is only surprised that she hasn’t tried the same tactic with him, takes the fact that she hasn’t as a tribute to his unassailable moral character. But he sometimes finds himself wondering, in those moments that happen increasingly often, when his mind declines to engage with serious matters, such as the shop accounts or the peeling paint and the damp patch in the intervening wall, and drifts away on the becalmed boat of idle speculation… he finds himself wondering if he, too, is open to bribery and if so, what his price might be. Not chocolate, certainly, he’s never had a sweet tooth; nor alcohol, he drinks very little, a legacy from his father’s devotion to drink and his mother’s to temperance. But say that Margaret, however improbably, offered him a first edition by one of his favourite authors, Dickens, James, Trollope, Hardy… would that prove to be his breaking point? Would he give in then and use the stairlift?

  Answer no. The lift is Jack’s enemy. So long as he can get up and down stairs under his own steam, one foot after the other, no matter how slowly, he can hang on to his independence (and to the banister, by the way); but once he resorts to mechanical means of transportation, it’s the end of the road, time to admit defeat, submit to the future he dreads the most. Sheltered Accommodation.

  He quotes his GP in justification: ‘You’re not in bad shape for a man of your age, Mr… um, Jack.’ The GP is a recently appointed, blasé young man who ignores the actual persons of his patients in favour of their electronic profiles. ‘Just keep on the move, don’t sit for too long, got to keep those arteries open.’ But Margaret, who has a bewildering habit of altering her opinion according to her argument, disposes of the medical profession with a swift, dismissive strike: ‘Doctors, what do they know? Doesn’t know his stethoscope from his arse, that man, if you’ll pardon me saying so, Mr C.’ A point of view with which Jack privately agrees but wouldn’t dream of admitting. He’s considered putting an end to the argument once and for all by having the stairlift removed. After all, Eva hasn’t been downstairs now for two years or more, she seems not to notice what room she’s in or to care whether Jack is with her or not.

  On the other hand, the lift still has its uses. He sets the breakfast tray on the seat, sends the lift humming upstairs and follows it as fast as he can. Going up is easier on his knee than coming down and although the lift always wins, he enjoys the little race they run each morning, feeling that he has triumphed over Margaret, appeased the medical profession but, above all, remained true to himself.

  Eva is in the living room, strapped into her wheelchair, the hospital table set ready at her side. And they’ve left her in front of the television. Again.

  ‘Blast the damn thing.’

  Jack is both irritated and intimidated by the television. It’s a new set, provided by Margaret for Eva’s especial benefit, a chrome monster that crouches in the corner as if it’s waiting to pounce the moment Jack’s back is turned. Margaret, who is of course an authority on the subject of dementia, informs him in the special voice she uses to demonstrate her professional expertise, that the telly stimulates dying brain cells. She maintains that Eva particularly enjoys the children’s programmes and commercial breaks, has even heard her, or so she claims, singing along to the jingles.

  Pusillanimous Jack humbly agrees that he knows nothing and that Television is God. And although he is sometimes tempted, like a delinquent parent neglecting his child, to switch the beast on when Eva is being particularly fractious so that he can watch a Test match, for example, or a round of golf, he resists such temptation, resenting the television’s role as all-purpose babyminder and the implied insult to Eva’s intelligence.

  The morning news is in progress, the studio presenter wearing a sombre expression to underline the gravity of the information she is transmitting to an avid nation.

  ‘Scenes of devastation continue in the wake of Super Typhoon Durian which hit the Philippines on November the thirtieth, killing at least four hundred and six people and injuring four hundred and eighty-nine others.’

  The picture switches to an aerial shot of a steaming volcano, crippled pylons, broken palm trees, followed by a close-up of Our Man in Manila picking his wind-torn way through the muddied remains of a small village.

  ‘Yes, I’m here in what once was the village of Godzhor just two miles away from the Mayon Volcano.’ The presenter turns to a group of villagers behind him, digging through mud with their bare hands, and the camera homes in on a small child crying, gap-toothed, bloody-nosed.

  Jack glances at Eva quickly, expecting her to be upset at the sight of the child, but she’s gazing at the screen with the same look of blank concentration that she has when she reads the wall. He deposits the breakfast tray on the table beside her and searches for the remote control. By the time he finds it, Our Man in Manila has finished his report and the studio presenter is smiling brightly, releasing her devastated viewers from international pain to the comfort of parochial matters.

  ‘And now to the news where you are…’

  Swirling patterns and portentous music usher viewers from one glossy presenter to another, making Jack huff and puff as he searches for the ‘off’ button.

  ‘Jill. Thank you. And a very good morning from the South West.’

  ‘Oh, shut up,’ says Jack, fishing for his glasses.

  ‘And breaking news this morning comes from Castlebridge in Dorset where the Council has revealed plans to create a major new Heritage Centre.’

  ‘Oh,’ says Jack, a bleary thumb poised over the ‘off’ button.

  A still picture appears on the screen of a wrought iron gateway, rusty and padlocked, protected by a roll of barbed wire and a large sign hanging askew: Danger! Falling Masonry! Keep Out!

  ‘Good Lord,’ says Jack, ‘that’s the brewery.’

  ‘Local entrepreneurs, Edward Hope and Henry Hopcraft,’ continues the presenter, as if she has heard and confirms his words, ‘established a small brewing concern on the outskirts of the town in 1795, transferring to the present site in 1827, where the business flourished through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, as can be seen in this rare footage from 1935.’

  A grainy black and white film of the brewery yard appears on the screen: half a dozen men in leather aprons rolling out barrels; a woman in a doorway with a notebook and pencil, counting the barrels; a couple of lads attaching two shire horses to the delivery wagon, another one polishing tack; a boy with a broom sweeping up straw… and a man with a dray cart in the background, feeding his pony. Jack peers at the screen with a lift of excitement, thinking the man might be his father with old Nell, until he remembers, with a dip of disappointment, that by 1935 his father and, presumably, Nell were both long dead.

  ‘But business declined through the eighties and nineties,’ the presenter informs him. ‘The last barrel of beer was rolled out in October 2001, and the site has been empty ever…’

  ‘Yes, I know,’ says Jack, ‘you don’t have to tell me.’ And misses the next bit because Eva is squawking, which means that she’s hungry. ‘All right, all right, I’ll be with you in a minute.’ He picks up the honey jar from the breakfast tray and unscrews the lid.

  ‘The Centre is due for completion in 2008,’ says the presenter with a beaming smile, ‘and will be dedicated to the life and work of the town’s most illustrious citizen.’

  Another black and white photograph fills the screen. An old man sitting at his desk, reading a book. An old man, so familiar to Jack, with his hooked nose, his bushy moustache, the magnificent eyebrows. The Great Man.

 
‘And more on that story at six-thirty tonight when…’

  ‘Well, I’ll be damned.’ Jack switches the television off and proceeds to the business of breakfast.

  Jack has looked after the domestic arrangements for so many years that he can scarcely remember a time when he didn’t. He enjoyed housework at first, finding it soothing in the same way as he does when he’s minding the shop. He used to nip out to the back between customers to hang out the washing or finish the ironing, and discovered, to his surprise, a talent for cooking. In spite of his aversion to television, he found himself watching cookery programmes, looking forward to his trips to the supermarket, scouring the shelves for bargains: Meal Deals, Meal Solutions, Dining for Two, only £10. He took a pride in his table, laying it with a linen cloth and napkins and the best china in the way that his mother had taught him in the old days at Temperance Terrace on the rare occasions when important visitors came to call – the Reverend Bright, perhaps, or Mrs Hopcraft from the brewery. But since he and Eva have been eating upstairs from a tray, he has cut one culinary corner after another so that now, this morning, at breakfast he doesn’t even bother to decant the porridge into bowls but serves it straight from the saucepan, sharing a single spoon to save washing up.

  He hooks the plastic bib round Eva’s neck and notices that she’s wearing a cardigan he hasn’t seen before. This isn’t unusual: Margaret takes a pride in Eva’s appearance and keeps her supplied with clothes cast off by her numerous friends and relations. She likes Eva to be, as she puts it, colour co-ordinate, and today she’s in pink and green: bottle green skirt and matching cardigan embroidered with sprigs of pink rosebuds, and a paler green silk blouse with pearly buttons. And although he remembers sadly that green is a colour Eva always disliked, and although her hair could do with a wash, it’s tied up in a topknot with pink ribbon, and she looks very fetching

  ‘I say, old chap, how pretty you look.’ He pushes the hospital table over her knees, tastes the porridge and licks his lips. ‘Mm, lovely porridge.’

  ‘Yum,’ says Eva.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Yum.’ She says it again with a beaming smile.

  ‘Oh, quite,’ he says. She hasn’t spoken for weeks and he is delighted, as if this one small word, like a barometer, has set the day fair. ‘Yum, yum, yumpety-yum.’

  Little bird Eva waits to be fed. She opens her mouth and chomps and smacks whether she has a spoonful or not. Jack’s chair is set close beside hers but he has to perch on the arm to reach her. He manages the first spoonful with practised ease, takes a spoonful for himself, and thinks of honey and hops and the taste of the brewery.

  ‘What was it they said it was going to be? A Cultural Centre? Arts and Culture. What would my father have made of that? “Oh-ah, very fancy”. He’d got no time for airs and graces, my dad. Simple man with simple pleasures, that’s what he was. And as for his son working in a bookshop, he’d have just laughed. Mind you, I’d never have gone there at all if he’d been alive, he’d have wangled me a job at the yard, sweeping up, like that lad in that film. How different life would have been then, eh? We wouldn’t be sitting here for a start, would we, old chap?’

  Eva is still munching her first mouthful of porridge, pushing it round in her mouth, forgetting what she’s supposed to do next. He tips up her chin and strokes her throat to remind her, and she swallows at last.

  ‘That’s my girl.’ He waits till she opens her mouth again and feeds her another spoonful. ‘I sometimes wonder why Bob kept me on at the shop. I certainly didn’t do much work, bit of dusting, tidying the shelves… and learning. Learning the books, where each of them went on the right shelf in the right section. Fiction on this side, non-fiction on that, that’s what he said, that very first day. I didn’t know what he was talking about, I didn’t even know what fiction was, can you believe that? He was very patient. You know what he did the following Saturday? My second Saturday, still shaking in my boots, still terrified about that goblin in the cellar… he’d cleared one end of the table in the storeroom and laid out an exercise book, a pencil, a sharpener, a rubber. I can see it now… he’d written my name on the cover: John William Carter, and underneath, His Stories.’

  Eva has managed to swallow by herself, so he puts a congratulatory kiss to the tip of his finger and transfers it to her nose. ‘Well, done, old chap,’ and feeds her another spoonful.

  ‘It’s a funny thing, writing. I remember opening that exercise book, picking up the pencil, staring at the empty page, knowing I had to fill it with words in my best writing. It was terrifying, like a test at school, only worse, I almost wished the goblin would come and gobble me up so that I didn’t have to do it. Bob must have realised the state I was in, but he didn’t come in and check up on me, he called out from the shop, just write your name, or the alphabet, anything at all. And remember those stories your father told you. So I did. I put Dadda into my head, sitting on the end of my bed, or out on the cart, telling his tales. I used to sit between his knees and he’d give me the reins and we played let’s pretend. He didn’t read much but he knew what fiction was all right, he was a born storyteller… pirates and soldiers and battles and blood, and beautiful maidens with golden hair. I don’t know where he got it all from, although he had an uncle who was a sailor, Uncle Silas, that was his name, perhaps it was him, that would account for the pirates, and the beautiful maidens with golden hair – mermaids, perhaps. Anyway, it was easy after that, all I had to do was listen to his voice telling me the stories all over again, as if he was dictating them. It was glorious, as if I was bringing him back to life.’

  Eva is smacking away, screwing up her face with disgust, spits the porridge into her bib.

  ‘Oh, sorry, isn’t it sweet enough?’ Jack licks the spoon clean, stirs a spoonful of honey into the porridge and feeds her again. ‘Better?’ And is rewarded with a porridgey smile.

  ‘And I read, of course, oh, how I read. Stevenson, Scott, Marryat, Defoe, Forrester, Hope… and Dickens of course when Bob thought I was ready. He chose very carefully, started me off with Treasure Island… I read it every minute I could, under my desk at school, in the playground, dawdling home, under the bridge down by the river, I swallowed it up in great gulps. And I started blundering about with my eyes shut, growling to myself, pieces of eight, pieces of eight. Mother ignored it until I started limping, and oh, my word, wasn’t she angry then. No, not angry, she was worried. She thought I’d got rickets and there was something wrong with my eyes so she’d have to fetch the doctor and she couldn’t afford it. So she wasn’t angry with me at all, she was angry with her lot, with my father for dying, with the damp running down the walls in Temperance Terrace and the back door that stuck, and the neighbours for noticing and blaming her for neglect. She was even angry with Bob because of his club foot in case it was catching. And Bob was angry as well for a minute because he thought I was… what is it Margaret says? Taking the piss. And then he realised what it was all about: I was Long John Silver and Blind Pugh and the parrot. And Jim Hawkins. I didn’t just pretend to be Jim, I was Jim. I hid in the coal bunker in the yard once, only it wasn’t the bunker, it was the apple barrel on board The Hispaniola and I was in fear of my life from the pirates. And when mother found out, oh, what a wallop I got.’

  He tries Eva with another mouthful but she turns her head away and reaches out for the honey jar again, so he feeds her a spoonful of honey instead. And one for himself.

  ‘Bob gave me three books every Saturday after that. I used to smuggle them home, hide them under the mattress, and I read them whenever mother wasn’t looking. I don’t know why, I suppose I knew she would disapprove. No, it was more than that: the books were my secret, I wanted to keep them all to myself, it was the first time I’d had something of my own that was nothing to do with her. And maybe I knew she’d be jealous, and she’d be angry about the jealousy and then she’d be…’

  ‘Forgive my intrusion, but why are
you telling her all this?’

  Jack isn’t surprised to see the Great Man again, although he could wish he’d had a little warning, so that he might have changed out of his pyjamas and dressing gown and got breakfast over and done with. The Great Man, however, seems unperturbed. He’s leaning against the bookcase with his ankles neatly crossed, holding his hat before him like a votive offering, and is observing Eva with a kindly eye. ‘Do you suppose that she’s listening to you?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ says Jack. ‘Probably not.’

  ‘Then why, might one venture to ask, do you bother?’

  ‘Because…’ Jack finds himself helpless to reply, as if he’s been caught doing something shameful and is being called to account. Why does he, after all, talk to Eva when he so seldom, if ever, gets a response?

  ‘Because,’ the psychiatrist said, ‘we mustn’t assume she doesn’t understand what we’re saying just because she doesn’t respond in the normal way.’

  Jack and the Old Age Psychiatrist, an impossibly young woman with a tired face, sitting like acolytes on either side of Eva’s hospital bed. Eva nodding sagely from one to the other, as if she was chairing a meeting.

  ‘I talk to her,’ says Jack, ‘because she smiles at me from time to time, as if she knows exactly what I mean, and sometimes she laughs. She actually spoke a little while ago.’

  ‘Did she indeed?’ says the Great Man, ‘How very encouraging. What did she say?’

  ‘Yum.’

  ‘Yum?’

  ‘Yes, she said “yum”.’

  ‘Not a word that’s familiar to me. What does it mean?’

  ‘It means… it doesn’t mean anything, really. Except that she was happy.’

  ‘Ah, happiness, a mere episode in the general drama of pain.’

  ‘Yes, she was happy for a moment. That’s good enough for me.’

  The Great Man lays his hat on top of the bookcase and takes a notebook and pencil from his jacket pocket. ‘Yum,’ he says, writing it down, ‘I must remember that.’ He tucks the notebook and pencil away and looks at Eva in a considering way as if she were a rare artefact on display in a museum.