Anthem for Jackson Dawes

by Celia Bryce

  Megan nodded, still amazed, still looking around. ‘It’s just great.’

  ‘We think young people with cancer will do well in a place like this. They’ll feel better about being in hospital. Do you think they will?’

  It was hard to take it all in, hard to answer. ‘But … what about all the treatment and stuff? They must have to go somewhere else to get that …’

  Sister Brewster shook her head. ‘All done here.’ It seemed so simple, so wonderful.

  Megan stood in the middle of the unit absorbing everything. A thought struck her. ‘How did it all happen so quickly?’

  ‘Well, units like this cost over a million pounds to build new, but they completely gutted the old Outpatients Department. The builders have been here for ever. I’m surprised you didn’t notice … on your travels.’

  Megan smiled. How did she miss this?

  ‘Then we got some additional funding …’ Sister Brewster spread her hands as if to take in the whole place. ‘You’ll see who from when we go out. So, anyway, this is it. We get our first patients in next month. They’ll be coming from all over the place. This is the quietest it’s ever going to be, I imagine!’ They were making their way back to the entrance now.

  ‘Will you be working here?’ Megan asked.

  ‘Well, yes, actually.’ Sister Brewster smiled. ‘Can’t think why. There were a couple of teenagers I had to look after once, I remember. Nothing but trouble.’ Megan could feel herself blush. ‘But they were two of the nicest people I’ve met and one in particular is still talked about by cleaners, consultants, the mortuary technician …’

  So it hadn’t been stories after all! Good old Jackson!

  They were heading back towards the doors, towards the real world of hospitals, out from the magical place that was the new unit for teenagers. Sister Brewster pressed another button and they pushed back through the double doors. She paused by the plaque on the wall. It was made of polished wood with words cut into it, painted gold. Megan read the inscription, felt her eyes sting, felt her whole body almost crumble.

  ‘Well, what do you think?’

  Megan could say nothing at all, she was so full of pride and love and wishing.

  Sister Brewster put an arm around her shoulder. ‘I know,’ she said. ‘That’s what I think too.’

  Nineteen

  Megan pushed open the garden gate. Dad must still be in bed. Or in the bath. He liked to have a long steep, just like Mum, with lots of bubbles. He said it was never the same when he was away. The baths were never as nice as home.

  She didn’t go into the house, but sat on the seat Dad had made under the big tree. Somehow she couldn’t seem to think straight. Perhaps it was the visit to the hospital. Perhaps it was seeing the unit, seeing the staff again, but her head seemed full of pictures and sounds, memories and questions, all flying about like jigsaw pieces and she couldn’t solve any of it.

  She closed her eyes against the sun and she was there in the middle of it all, trying to sort it out. A squeal of rubber on the floor. She knew that sound. A wheelchair. Yes. She was lying on a bed with all sorts of machines around her, bleeping and wheezing. The room seemed full of people, their words scrambled. Yet beneath it all was someone talking in a low, mysterious voice.

  There was a famine in the land, and for months, no rain. Day after day the sun burn in the cloudless skies, the grass parch like a coffee berry. The trees also parch, and brown, same way. …

  There were murmurs, soft movements. Hushes and whispers. Footsteps. Sister Brewster’s maybe, or Siobhan’s. Or was it someone new? Where was this, exactly? She recognised Mum’s shoes with the low heel which clipped along the floor, and Dad’s lace-ups, creaking as he walked. There was a cough. Someone sniffing. The voice carried on in snatches. Some of it she caught, some of it drifted away.

  … Mister Anancy get up, next morning, dress in a long coat, tall hat and black bag, and he set off to Fish Country. When he get there, he take him an office, hang up a signpost: M. Anancy. Surgeon …

  Megan tried to find Jackson. It was his voice, but there was only darkness. Yet he was there, filling the place, talking like an old man from a faraway land.

  … his first patient is very large fish … Anancy look in her eye from all angle, he take a long, long, time … suddenly he just come up and say, ‘Your eye they is weak, but I think I can help you …’

  Megan moved in and out of the story as the words fell around her. There was some trick the spider played and money to be paid and oh she wanted to hang on to all those words, because it was Jackson, in the room, close by, close enough to touch.

  … and the fool, fool, fish pay him and he set off on his journey home … Anancy dash across the river …

  More movements. The air hissed with whispers. Jackson’s voice began to trail away as the story reached its end. There was that squeal of rubber again, the wheels of his chair swinging round, the sound drifting away and away.

  Another door. Her own back door. Dad was striding towards her, in his sunglasses, his shirt sleeves rolled up, showing his tanned arms. He looked big and strong.

  ‘Hello. You’re in a world of your own.’ He sat down next to her on the seat. ‘What’s wrong? If it’s to do with Grandad, then, don’t worry. We can sort it out.’

  Megan wiped her eyes. ‘It’s not. It’s just … I remembered the story Jackson told. Bits of it, anyway.’ She slipped her arm through Dad’s. He squeezed it. ‘It was about a fish,’ she went on. ‘Anancy cheats a fish out of its money. He pretends he’s a doctor. Was that it? Something like it?’

  Dad frowned. ‘You know, I think it was. I mean, he had this funny accent, which made it hard to grasp, but that was the gist of it, I think.’

  Megan smiled. ‘I knew it.’

  ‘Well, I never,’ Dad said. ‘Fancy you remembering that.’

  ‘And where was I? Not in my own room. Was I somewhere different?’

  Dad paused, looking uncomfortable. He stared into the distance. ‘We used to call it Intensive Care …’ He looked at her, his eyes glistening, face drawn, as if in pain. ‘Oh, you were so ill, love.’

  Megan pressed into him, leaning her head on his shoulder. ‘But I’m better now, Dad,’ she said, ‘you know I am.’ She’d won her battle, that’s what people said, yet it felt like a poor victory when Jackson didn’t, when Kipper didn’t.

  Dad was blinking as if the sun were in his eyes. ‘Yes, you are, thank God.’

  They sat for a while in silence.

  ‘So, where did you go off to, so early this morning? I woke up to find you gone. Didn’t want to pry, with you being so upset last night, but now, you say you’re better, so I’m asking.’ He raised his eyebrows and peered over the top of his sunglasses at her.

  ‘I went to the hospital. To the new unit.’

  Dad looked surprised. ‘Did you really? I thought you didn’t want to.’

  ‘I didn’t. But there’s this direct bus now, and I got on it.’ It seemed unbelievable, even though it was only an hour or so since she was there. ‘I just decided to go.’

  There was a sigh. ‘You were very brave to do it on your own.’

  More silence, though all around them the garden was alive with birds.

  Dad looked at his watch at last. ‘One of us needs to be getting on with things. There’s a party to go to.’ He turned to Megan. ‘You know, when this is all over and you’re back at school and everything, there’ll be shape to the days, a getting-up time, a going-to-bed time. You’ll be able to get back to something like normal. Start living your life again. And I know everyone says it, but I think you can.’ Dad said this as if he hoped it really could happen. ‘I know you can.’

  Megan wasn’t so sure. ‘At the new unit, they’ve got this plaque, with gold letters and everything. And Jackson’s name. They’ve called it the Jackson Dawes Unit. Sister Brewster showed me.

  ‘They got some money from Jackson’s family. It was his. I mean, it would have been his, when he was twenty-one.’


  Dad turned to look into her face, his eyes holding hers steadily. ‘Would he have liked it, do you think? Approved of it?’

  ‘Yes,’ Megan said, ‘he’d have liked it, but I wish …’

  ‘What do you wish, love?’

  How to put it into words. Wishing for the impossible was such a waste of time and yet …

  ‘I hope Jackson died happy,’ she rushed on. ‘He wanted to do so many things and be alive and everything, so I don’t know how he could have been happy, but I hope he was all right about it. I hope so.’

  This was it. The thing she didn’t know and couldn’t solve. Like a puzzle, with one piece missing. It had been there, worming around inside her, since who knew when, and only now was she able to catch it, pin it down.

  If only she could know that he’d been all right about it.

  Then her surviving wouldn’t seem so bad.

  And Grandad having a party on Sunday, with all the Poor Old Souls going to dance and sing and eat sausage rolls. And people saying he was amazing, ninety-six was so old.

  Because it was Jackson and Kipper who were really the amazing ones, wasn’t it? And all the others who didn’t survive?

  Dad pushed his hands into his pockets. ‘Megan, did you read the letter Jackson’s sister sent?’ She nodded, feeling bleaker than winter. ‘I don’t mean just the bit that told you he’d died. Did you read it all? Have you read it through to the very end?’

  ‘No.’ Megan froze, as if he’d splashed her with something, as if he was just about to do it again. ‘I don’t want to … I don’t have to.’

  There was no point.

  Nothing was going to change.

  The letter had been her constant companion since it came, but she should have thrown the horrible thing away.

  Dad stood there, solidly. ‘Where is it, love?’ Megan refused to answer, like a stubborn child. ‘Is it in your bedroom? Did you throw it away?’ He waited as if there wasn’t a train to catch, a party to go to, as if he had all the time in the world.

  At last, Megan pulled the tightly folded square from her pocket and thrust it at him. She didn’t want it any more. What was the point of carrying it around with her like that? Like some stupid girl with a crush, like some rubbish problem-page person, like it was part of her.

  It wasn’t going to bring Jackson back.

  ‘I know what it says. Mum read it out to me on the phone. All of it.’ Dad looked around the garden as if in search of the answer to an impossible question. ‘But you don’t know and you’ve never let Mum talk about it and to be perfectly frank, I think you’ve been a bit silly. More than a bit silly.’ The small blue vein at his temple looked rigid, his lips were pressed into a thin line.

  How dare he be angry? When she was the one who’d had her head cut open, and had chemo and everything, and lost Jackson, and her place on the football team, and her hair, and poor Kipper, and oh, the list was so long she could wrap it round the world. How dare he be angry with her?

  The letter stuck to her hand, she could feel it almost welding to her fingers.

  Dad relaxed slightly. ‘Look,’ he said. ‘I just want you to see the whole picture, that’s all, not just the bits that hurt. It doesn’t all hurt. You can’t let it all hurt.’

  Megan said nothing. It did hurt. All of it.

  ‘I’ve got to go and get ready.’ Dad sighed, as if it was all suddenly too much to cope with and he wished Mum was here to take over. ‘There’s a train to catch. I’d like it if you’d come to Grandad’s, but …’ he touched her cheek gently though his face was set like stone, ‘that’s not so important. You’ll be OK with Gemma. I can speak to her mum. What’s important is that you take some time, right now, and read that letter, right to the last word. Do you hear? I don’t want you coming through that door till you have.’

  Turning his back on her, he walked into the house.

  Megan watched, mouth open.

  Dad never ordered her around. He was the soft one, the cuddly one, who came home from work with presents and was jolly and fun and left things like bills and cooking and rules up to Mum. He never told her off. He never made her do stuff she didn’t want to.

  Yet here he was, ordering her to do something she couldn’t.

  Twenty

  The garden was filled with ordinary, everyday noises. There were children playing somewhere along the street, and a dog skittered by chasing a ball. Nothing felt ordinary inside. She was apart from it all, an outsider looking in. Or perhaps the other way around.

  Megan unfolded the letter, smoothing out the deep lines which were scored into the paper so that it looked like lots of small squares stuck together, not very securely.

  Like me, she thought.

  Glancing back at the house, she saw Dad in the kitchen. He was on the phone. Probably talking to Mum. His voice drifted through the window, chatting away as if nothing had happened. Or everything.

  The letter flapped slightly in the breeze as if to remind her of its presence. There was no point in not reading it. It couldn’t hurt any more than it did when it first came. Megan leaned up against the tree, its branches heavy with leaves, but already they were changing colour. One or two had fallen to the ground. Things were moving on. She spread open the letter, smoothed it straight.

  Dear Mrs Bright,

  My mother has asked me to write and tell you that Jackson lost his fight with cancer last week. She thought you might like to know and that you could tell Megan.

  The hospital did all they could, but as my mother says, there was another plan for Jackson and we have to accept it. We are trying not to be sad. Jackson wouldn’t want that, but we miss him very much, his good humour, his smile. You met him, so you know what I mean.

  It’s very hard for my mother, of course, but she wanted you to know that Jackson never stopped talking about Megan. We all think she made his illness and the end of his life so much easier for him. My mother says Megan was there with him, in his mind and in his heart, and she thanks God for the gladness she gave him, and for helping him through. She was there when he needed her, and that made him happy.

  Please let her know how grateful we all are for that. We hope that Megan is well, and stays well.

  On behalf of Elvira Dawes,

  Josephine Dawes

  The handwriting was perfect, as if Josephine Dawes had taken a lot of care, as if Mrs Dawes, round as a dumpling, had stood at her daughter’s shoulder, telling her exactly what to put, which words to use, and how to say them. They were plain and to the point. Not hiding anything, not making it sound better than it was. It must have broken their hearts to have to do such a thing. It must have burned right into them, to have to send such a letter.

  Megan gazed at the words now, to soak them up, to feel the work that had gone into them, the respect, and love. Because Jackson’s family did love him. Somewhere along the way she’d forgotten that. And they’d lost him. No wonder Dad was angry with her, when they’d had to sit down and write those words and she’d refused to read them properly.

  At last she folded it very carefully, back along the lines Mum had made.

  It wasn’t a horrible letter at all.

  It was a lovely letter.

  She didn’t hate it, not one bit of it, not even the words which told her that Jackson was dead.

  Putting it back into her pocket, Megan found something else. It was the picture she’d finished the night of his operation. Just larger than a thumbnail sketch. She’d cut it out and kept it close to her since the letter had arrived, a ritual of remembering, as regular as cleaning her teeth, or washing her face. Yet, she’d refused to look at it as much as she’d refused to read the letter.

  With a shock, she realised just how crumpled it had become. If she continued carrying it around like that, it would be ruined. And this was all there was of Jackson.

  She looked at him now, in the afternoon sun. She’d managed to capture some of the life in his eyes, the happiness beaming out from his face, as if it would neve
r leave him.

  ‘You were too young,’ she whispered.

  He looked as if he didn’t mind being young, or being crumpled, or stuffed into her pocket. It’s cool, he seemed to be saying.

  Don’t worry about me.

  I’m doing OK.

  I’m in a place where the bees don’t sting,

  and the sun don’t burn,

  and there’s no more trouble and pain.

  Megan gazed at the picture, absorbing the lines and curves of his face, so that her eyes and her head, her heart and her skin were full of him, never to be erased, capturing the echoes of him, the memories of him, so that he was still here with her.

  There was movement in the kitchen. Megan looked over to find Dad watching her from the window, wanting everything to be all right. He would be leaving in a few hours. and he wanted her on the train with him. He looked so alone standing there, so worried.

  If she could tell him she was OK, show him, then it would make him feel better, and Mum and Grandad, all the people who’d been worrying about her. All they were trying to do was move on, as if they’d had cancer too. Yet they wouldn’t, not without her. And that’s how it would stay, that’s how it would be, until she gave the word, the sign.

  It was up to Megan.

  The air was still. Not a leaf moved. There were no birds, no sounds. It was like being in a bubble again, and all around it the world was clamouring to get in. She had to let the world in. She had to give the sign, say the word, take control again.

  It wouldn’t be so hard to get the train with Dad, go to the party, celebrate.

  It wouldn’t be so hard to write to Jackson’s family, thank them, for taking the time to send her the letter. Maybe she could give them his picture. A copy of it.