"So that's what I was telling him I'd done," he said, "when … when I saw his eyes change."
This time he managed not to cry, just.
"Something to do with the boat, do you think?" said Lena, frowning.
"I've told him about her quite a bit. She wasn't quite finished, you see, so I've been doing that, and it was something to tell him—I knew he'd be interested. I've finished now, except for the name—I don't seem ever to get the stencils neat enough. But… Lena, we've only got a week left, haven't we?"
"What do you mean?"
"Don says you'll give Grandad a month and then make up your minds how he's doing and if you decide he hasn't got any better you'll move him out to the Kincardine or somewhere. And he isn't, is he?"
Lena sighed.
"That's what I was talking to the consultant about. I still in my heart of hearts believe that we could get through, if only we could find the key—just get in, somehow, and stimulate him to try and get himself out—he's the only person who can do that, but he doesn't realize because he can't understand what's happening to him. The consultant is sympathetic, and there's been a bit of a lull for once, but it looks like that's over, and he's got other patients to think about. He can't keep your grandfather on here just because I've got a hunch about him. But if I could show him some definite sign—it's got to be more than a gleam in the eyes or a twitch—a voluntary movement perhaps, a response to something I've said or you've said— then he'd have an excuse to say, ‘Yes, we'll keep him on for a bit.’ You see?"
"Yes, but … Well, what about … ? Oh, I don't know…."
Lena smiled.
"Like I said, we're clutching at straws," she said.
Gavin nodded. What he wanted to try was certainly that.
That evening, after supper, he climbed wearily up to the attic to have another go at cutting stencils for Selkie's name. He'd started trying as soon as he'd finished the stand. He needed three stencils, two with just the name for the bow, so that he didn't have to reuse one, and a third one for the stern, with the home port, Stonehaven, below it. Plus a couple of spares in case something went wrong. That meant that all the "Selkies" had to be exactly the same. It shouldn't have been too difficult, using one of Grandad's tiny, sharp knives, as there were no completely separate bits in any of the letters of the main name, and only the "O" and the "A" in "Stonehaven." He could leave little bridges of paper to hold those two in place and paint over the gaps by hand when he took the stencils away.
Usually he was pretty good at this sort of thing, but even on ordinary, Stonehaven-Gavin days, when he wasn't worn out from visiting Grandad, he kept making botch after botch. He'd no idea why, except perhaps he was really caring too much, but with a tiny corner of his mind he half believed that the selkies didn't want him to name the boat after them—though he called her Selkie whenever he talked or thought about her— because they hadn't yet given him permission. Anyway, he hadn't even tried for the last few days. The evenings were getting longer, so he'd taken Dodgem down to the beach instead.
Now, though, it had got to be done, somehow. The straw he was clutching at was that he would take the boat over to the hospital on his birthday so that Grandad could hold it in his hands and give it to him. If that was going to work either way—in Lena's world or the selkies'—Selkie had to be finished. He didn't know how he knew that, but he did.
This time the stencils went better. He still made mistakes, and threw away twice as many as he kept, and after forty minutes' intense concentration his eyes were weeping and his fingers became clumsy and stupid and he had to give up. So it took him three evenings, which left five more before his birthday. He'd already painted a bit of spare wood the right hull color, so he spent most of the first one practicing with some of the stencils that he hadn't got quite right. When he'd worked out just how thick the paint had to be, and how much to put on, and which brush to use, and so on, and then decided he'd got as good as he was ever going to, he taped his three best stencils in place, tidied up, and went to bed.
Next evening, working very carefully, he painted the names in and left them to dry while he caught up with Grandad's e-mails. Then he painted in the gaps on the "O" and "A," certain that at this very last minute he'd make a splodge and there wouldn't be time to paint it over and try again, but he didn't. With a sigh of relief he cleaned the brush, tidied the workbench, moved the small round table to the middle of the room, put a blue cloth over it, and set Selkie, on her stand, in the middle of it. He arranged the lights the way he'd seen Grandad do when he'd finished a model and was ready to photograph it. Grandad had shown him how to use his camera, and he took a whole spool.
That was Friday evening. His birthday wasn't till Wednesday, but Veronique would be on duty on Sunday, and he wanted to show the photographs to her as well as to Grandad. She'd been interested in Selkie in the first place, and she usually asked how he was getting on, and she was very good at managing Sister Taylor.
That was important, because there was this … this feeling Gavin had—it didn't make sense—he wouldn't have wanted to tell anyone else about it, just as he hadn't wanted to tell Lena when it had first come to him. It had been weaker then, but more and more, while he'd been working on the stencils, he'd begun to believe that this was their last chance—that everything depended on the moment when he would put Selkie into Grandad's hands, so that they were both holding her, together. This was going to be the moment and the place for which he'd been waiting. Selkie was going to become a kind of bridge between them, a channel, a way for the buildup of pressure to break through and reach in to Grandad and wake him from his long sleep. So he didn't want anyone who knew Grandad in ordinary kinds of ways, like Mum or Gran, coming in and taking over and talking about her.
He knew this feeling was silly—crazy, even—but it was very strong.
avin left Mum and Gran talking across Grandad's bed, and followed Veronique out of the ward when she went to make herself a cup of tea in the tiny kitchen behind the office. She looked at the photos one by one.
"Oh, but she is beautiful!" she whispered. "He make this for you/
"It took him four months. He only makes two or three a year, and mostly he sells them for quite a lot of money, but Selkie's for me, for my birthday. It's on Wednesday. I got her finished just in time…. Veronique, do you think I could bring her in with me on Wednesday, so that Grandad can give her to me himself?"
"Why not? I must ask Sister, but of course she say yes when I show her the photographs. You leave me this one, and this one? She is here tomorrow. She tell you then."
"Great. Thanks a lot. And don't say anything to Mum about it now. She'd just start making plans."
"Understood. My mother too is like this."
That evening Gavin rang Robert on Grandad's extension and asked if it would be all right to pick him up from home on Wednesday, a few minutes later than usual, as there was something he needed to take over to the hospital. Robert said fine. He did this on sports days anyway, when Gavin had kit he didn't want to ferry back and forth to Aberdeen, so he knew it was okay with Mum.
On Monday Sister Taylor gave him the photographs back.
"You want to bring the boat over so that he can give it to you himself, Veronique tells me," she said.
"If that's all right."
"I don't see why not. He's perfectly stable. We'll move him into the single-bed ward for the day, provided nobody comes in suddenly. You'd like to be alone together a wee while?"
"Oh, yes, please! That'd be terrific."
"When I was little my gran looked after me because my ma went out to work. She was the most important person in my life. Then she got ill and I used to get taken to see her in hospital. It's why I went into nursing, really."
"Did she get better?"
"It wasn't the sort of thing you get better from. Mind you, it took her a wee while to die still."
Gavin felt himself go cold. A few evenings ago, when he'd gone downstairs to say good night, Gran had bee
n watching the TV, or rather channel-surfing for something she might want to watch. For a moment she'd clicked onto a program about old people who get sick and aren't going to get better— there'd been this long, bleak room, these two rows of beds, these shapes in the beds…. Now he had a sudden picture in his mind of a plump, pale little girl who watched everything that was going on around her and never said much about it and never told anyone else what she was thinking or feeling. In the picture she was standing beside a bed looking at somebody she loved more than anyone else in the world. The bed was in a place like the one he'd seen on the TV. A people dump, the man had called it. Even if they took Grandad to the Kincardine, that was where he'd be going really. To a people dump.
On Wednesday they got up early, and all three had breakfast together while Gavin opened his family presents. (His official birthday party with his friends was going to be down at the Leisure Center on Saturday.) Mum, rather surprisingly, had come up with a mobile phone.
"For you to keep in touch now you're beginning to gad about on your own," she explained, laughing.
And Gran, bless her heart, had come up with a set of modeler's carving tools, nestling in their own special box. She had a good time telling him who she'd consulted down at the hardware store to make sure she got the best ones, which you wouldn't have found in ordinary shops. That gave Gavin time to pull himself together and thank her properly. A month ago he'd have been thrilled with them, but what was the point now, without Grandad?
"Aren't you going to bring Selkie down too?" said Mum.
"I'm taking her over to Aberdeen, so Grandad can give her to me himself," he said. "Robert's picking me up here, so I don't have to take her in to school. I didn't want to bother you."
Mum blinked.
"High time you had that phone, obviously," she said, and laughed again. He realized that she understood quite well why he wanted to make his own arrangements. Some of it, anyway.
Just as Sister Taylor had promised, Grandad was in a small, separate ward. Angie showed him in and left. There were two beds, one pushed against the wall and the other one with Grandad in it. Gavin guessed that the nurses must simply have wheeled Grandad through in his own bed and shoved the other one out of the way. There was a card on the bedside table saying "Happy Birthday, Gavin." All four nurses had signed it, and someone else called Enid. It took him a moment to realize that this must be Sister Taylor.
He put Selkk and his satchel and stuff down on the floor and turned to the bed. The nurses shifted Grandad's body around during the day, to stop him getting bedsores, but by the time Gavin came Lena had usually left him lying on his back, with his head propped on pillows and both arms out on the counterpane, ready for the exercises. Gavin rearranged them on the central hummock of the body, with the hands close together, palms upward, and stuffed the bedclothes up under the elbows to hold them in place. They came loosely, without any resistance. It struck him how much thinner and lighter they seemed than when he'd first started helping Grandad do his exercises.
When he was ready he turned and picked up Selkk from her stand.
"Hi, Grandad," he said. "How's things? Look, I've brought Selkk for you to give me. I managed to get her finished. The names were a bit of a fiddle, but I did them with stencils. I hope you think they're good enough. Isn't she absolutely beautiful?"
Leaning over the bed and twisting his body sideways, he carefully lowered Selkk between Grandad's hands, with her keel resting on his body, then, one hand at a time, let go and lifted Grandad's hands and held them against the hull, so that Grandad was holding Selkie with Gavin's help. It was an incredibly awkward posture but he stuck it out as long as he could.
Nothing happened, nothing at all. Gavin didn't know what he'd expected—some change, some twitch, some answer. Nothing. Only the same, unfaltering feel of the backs of Grandad's hands against his fingers and palms, one not alive, not dead; one just sleeping. When every joint and muscle in his body seemed to be screaming at him to move he gave up, eased Grandad's hands free, and straightened up, cradling Selkie against his chest.
"Thank you so much," he whispered. "I think she's the most beautiful boat anyone ever made."
He stood for several minutes by the bed, cradling Selkie in his hands. No, he thought, this was the wrong way. I got it upside down. There's been just three times since Grandad's stroke when anyone's got through to him, and each time it's been me, and he held my hand to tell me. And each time I'd been saying something about the selkies. It isn't Selkie that really matters, not that way—it's the selkies. But I was right about Selkie being a sort of bridge. Not to Grandad, though. To them … Yes …
Slowly he settled Selkie back on her stand, pulled his stool up to the bed, and started to read Grandad his e-mails.
The nurses left him alone a long while. He'd almost finished his homework before Angie poked her head round the door.
"Can we come in now?" she said. "We're just going off."
"Yes, of course. Mum and Gran will be here soon anyway."
Angie opened the door wide and held it for Janet to come marching through, proudly bearing a small chocolate cake with eleven lit candles on it, as if she were carrying the boar's head into a king's banquet. Veronique and Duli followed her.
"Sister's keeping an eye on the ward," Angie explained. "And Janet made the cake, so you'd better tell her it's wonderful."
Gavin didn't know what to say. His feelings seemed to be all muddled up. It was really nice of them, but it wasn't what he wanted, and he couldn't tell them that. He managed to stammer thank-yous, and blow the candles out, and make his face smile, and tell Janet the cake was really wicked, which it was, and save pieces for Gran and Mum and a bit for Gran to give to Dodgem—all that—and go on doing that sort of thing when Mum and Gran showed up, and no one seemed to notice anything was wrong, but when they all left and he went to say thank you to Sister Taylor for letting it happen, and show her Selkk, he thought he could tell, just from the way she looked at him, that she understood some of what he might be feeling. Not all of it. Nobody could know or guess that.
Mum had got Gavin's favorite pizza for supper, but he could hardly eat a mouthful. He felt empty, meaningless, useless, utterly exhausted, body and soul, and went to bed early, though he was certain he was hardly going to sleep at all. How could he, knowing what he was going to have to do before he next went to see Grandad, the day after the next?
n fact he fell asleep almost at once and slept without dreams and woke at the usual time to face a Stonehaven day. He'd been tempted to do the thing at once, to get it over, but he decided to give himself this ordinary, no-pressure day to make certain that he still knew for sure that he'd got to do it.
He'd become pretty good at not thinking about Grandad on Stonehaven days, but this was different. He positively wanted to have his idea at the back of his mind all the time, as if he were testing it against the ordinariness of the world he knew, school, and meals, and messing around with Garry and Ian and the others. There were times when it surged up and almost overwhelmed him, until he nearly decided he couldn't bear to do it, but in the end it stood the test and he went to bed with his mind made up.
The alarm went off under his pillow at half past four. He lay and listened. Mum's light snore was still coming steadily from her room next door. Gran's room was upstairs, where she wasn't so likely to hear anything. Carefully he slid out of bed.
He'd laid all his clothes ready and left the door slightly ajar, wedging it in place with a T-shirt so that he could open it without the lock rattling. When he was dressed he put Selkie under his arm and crept down the stairs in his socks. The inner door clicked slightly. Holding his breath, he stood and listened. Mum's snore had faltered, stopped. Very carefully he let out his breath and waited. Silence, no rustle of a duvet being moved aside, no call. He slipped through the door and managed to close it without a click.
They all kept their wellies in the little lobby. He slid his on and put Selkie down on her side so that he had
two hands free and could stop the security chain from clanking when he unfastened it. This lock clicked slightly too when he opened the door, and again when he closed it behind him, but he didn't think Mum would hear with the other one shut.
Summer nights had begun to get very short this far north, so it was already bright day, though the sun wouldn't be up for a bit yet. If anybody saw him he was ready to explain that he was taking his new boat down to the bay to see how she sailed, before he had to get ready for school, but he'd much rather not talk to anyone, so he turned down the alley just beyond the hotel to avoid the main street. An early jogger passed him in Slug Road, but barely glanced at him.
There were a few strollers, as well as the joggers, out on the seafront promenade, so before crossing it he waited till nobody was near enough to notice how beautiful Selkie was, and to want to talk about her. But once he was down the steps and onto the beach there was no one else about. The tide was well out, with light waves lapping against the shingle, and a gentle offshore breeze blowing, just as he would have expected with the sea warmer than the land after the cooling night.
He waded into the water far enough for the keel to clear in the troughs between the light waves, set Selkie afloat, and adjusted the sails and rudder. Deliberately he'd left the radio control box behind in case at the last minute he couldn't bear it and changed his mind.
When he was satisfied with the setting he turned his head seaward and called out in a strong voice, "This is for you, selkie. It's the most precious thing I can give you. Please, please help me get Grandad back."
Then he let go for the last time.
Inside Grandad Page 7