by Edward Docx
And now Ralph and Jack have dropped their brown baker’s bags and we’re all running as fast as we can and shouting. But the engine revs and the wheels spin faster and Dad can’t hear us. And for a slow-motion moment we watch him try physically to push the car back onto the tarmac – ‘Go on! Go on!’ he’s shouting . . . Then his legs do this horrible flailing-crumple under him and he collapses down beneath the front of the car so that the mud from the still-spinning wheels is spattering him; and now the driver stops trying to reverse because he can see what has happened so that the energy changes and the car lurches forward again back down into the ruts; and I’m thinking Dad’s legs are going to be run over because he’s fallen right in front of the car’s bumper, his feet all twisted over like they’re broken and they’ll go under the car, they’ll go under the car.
But Ralph is there and grabbing him and yanking and sliding him away.
And then Jack.
And I’m the last one because I’m still carrying the pastry box which I don’t want to drop or tilt.
And we don’t know how to be with each other or how to live with what is happening to us and Dad is on the ground and his dressing gown is gaping open and he’s got mud on his face and he’s crying.
I also found this essay by Seneca in my dad’s library. It’s called ‘On the Shortness of Life’. It is written to Seneca’s friend Paulinus. He says a lot of stuff. And you can see what the appeal is to my father. I picked out a few quotations that he underlined.
On time:
The life we receive is not short but we make it so; we are not ill-provided but use what we have wastefully.
On reading:
[Those who read] not only keep a good watch over their own lifetimes, but they annex every age to theirs. All the years that have passed before them are added to their own . . . We are excluded from no age, but we have access to them all . . . why not turn from this brief and transient spell of time and give ourselves wholeheartedly to the past, which is limitless and eternal and can be shared with better men than we?
On life:
The greatest obstacle to living is expectancy, which hangs upon tomorrow and loses today. You are arranging what lies in Fortune’s control, and abandoning what lies in yours. What are you looking at? To what goal are you straining? The whole future lies in uncertainty: live immediately.
We haul my father up. We sit him down in the passenger seat. He will not look up. He keeps his hands over his face. He mutters. We stand around at the door like we are waiting for someone else to arrive. His cheeks are wet – from the tears, from the spittle, the dew of the world. Mud is streaked in his beard.
I can feel that Jack wants to leave him alone – like he thinks Dad needs to regain his dignity. But – I don’t know – maybe Jack is using this as an excuse for something else – an excuse to absent himself. And I can feel that Ralph is moving into some sort of overt anger for the first time. Most of all, I can feel that my father just wants to die. That’s all. And so I’m suddenly sure that I have to do something – anything – to get us out from under this or else we’ll all be crushed; it’s like time is a massive triangle in the sky and the whole weight of the sharp end is on us here, right now. And I can see some wet wipes in Jack’s open bag, so I step over to the sliding door, past my brothers, and reach down and pull them out without asking Jack – like I’m going to start cleaning Dad up, like that’s what we do next, like there’s always a next.
This works because now Ralph walks over to talk to the driver of the car and persuades him to let him drive the thing out and into position. So then Jack goes to help and the two of them are pushing and revving the engine and shouting instructions. Meanwhile, I don’t know if I should touch Dad or not – so I am just standing there beside him – ready, not ready, with the wet wipes. And I can hear the birds all jittery in the trees.
Dad is sitting with his hand still on his face like I’ve never seen him. We’re being crushed.
And then Jack’s back – suddenly Mr Total Competence – with the jump leads. And he’s opening the driver’s door and hauling the seat forward and swivelling it round because that’s where the battery is stowed on our van. Meanwhile, Ralph is nosing the other car up sideways-on to the driver’s side so that Jack can reach the leads in. Which was what Dad was yelling about. And I’m still standing there under the awning, leaning on the passenger door next to Dad, trying to think of something, anything, to say. And still the world turns.
‘Is there a negative connection?’ Jack is asking.
But nobody is answering.
‘I’ll go straight on the chassis,’ he shouts to Ralph as if Ralph needs to know.
And I can hear Ralph shouting back: ‘Are we on?’
So Jack yells: ‘We’re on. They’re on. Give it some welly.’
And Ralph is revving some stranger’s engine. And I’m thinking that this is Dad’s domain. That he loves all this stuff. That he should be issuing instructions, overseeing. But he isn’t moving.
Jack climbs into the driver’s seat across from Dad. He ignores us. Ignores Dad. Ignores me. Like this is the task in hand and we’ll get to Dad in a bit. And I am still standing there with the wet wipes trying to live through the seconds that keep on coming while Jack tries the ignition of the van. But the engine doesn’t quite turn.
‘Dad?’ I say, soft as I can. ‘Are you OK?’
But Dad doesn’t speak and he won’t lower his hands from his face. I don’t know if he’s crying in there or if it’s shame, or pain, or what.
‘Dad?’
But there’s no point me shouting over the racket Ralph is making revving the other engine and I’m thinking maybe we’ve drained the battery so far that it’s never going to start again because it’s totally fucking dead.
The noise is too loud for the clearing and everything smells of petrol. I don’t want the memory that is being formed in my head. I don’t want to see this or hear it or smell it or feel it. I don’t know what we’re going to do. I have the sudden clear thought that I can’t go into that room and watch my father die because then I’ll see it and know that I was there – for ever.
‘Leave her alone. Just give her a minute,’ Dad says, quietly. ‘Tell Ralph he doesn’t have to rev so hard.’
Seneca also wrote: Learning how to live takes a whole life, and, which may surprise you more, it takes a whole life to learn how to die. He committed suicide. Tacitus gives us the story. Seneca was ordered to kill himself by Nero, who falsely accused him of plotting assassination. So Seneca duly severed some veins. But the blood loss was slow and the pain an extended agony. So he took poison. But that didn’t do it either. So he dictated his last words and surrounded by his pals he was carried into a hot bath in the hope that this would speed the blood loss. He died in the steam.
Below, through the trees, the river is the colour of empty wine bottles. The engine is running but we’re going nowhere. We’re afraid to turn it off in case we can never get it started again. We sit beneath the makeshift awning. Dad is on his chair; his face of tears and mud half-cleaned. Ralph is opposite, smoking. His jogging bottoms also spattered from mud. Jack squats on the van steps. We’re drinking tea. But we’re all broken down. The breakfast is untouched, muddy bags piled on the table like a parody of the future. And nobody can speak. Which feels like the end. Because we always talk. We always find a way to speak of things. We always find the words. That’s what we do. We keep talking. We enquire and we explain and we listen. We share our souls as best we can. And if not that?
I remember standing in a courtyard at night with an old house behind me, probably from six hundred years ago or more, and the hulk of a barn close by, and somewhere an owl hooting, and the dark shapes of creaking trees, their branches like the fingers of grasping witches from one of my childhood picture books. I remember looking up at the sky with my father. I remember my father holding my hand and there being so many stars that the dim are not so much scattered as smudged between the bright. This is wh
at it is like in the countryside, my father says. You can really get a good look. The problem with the city is that there’s so much light that you can’t really see.
I remember the cold and the murmur of the wind. The hope of snow. The excited talk with my mother of being snowed in. I remember that I had come out in my pyjamas with my coat thrown over and my wellington boots, which felt too small even though they were new. I remember that I didn’t want to let go of my father’s hand. I remember that my father somehow understood this and bent down and pointed with his other hand so that we wouldn’t have to part, even though it was awkward.
‘OK, so that’s Venus,’ my father said, ‘and that’s Jupiter.’
‘Those ones?’
‘The bright ones – low down.’
I didn’t know what the word planet really meant. I didn’t know why planets were different from stars. But I wanted my father to know how much I listened to him. And, above all, I wanted to be good at learning – at remembering – because I knew this pleased him.
‘Is that Mars?’
‘I think that one is Mars higher up.’
‘So that’s all three,’ I said. Even at the age of four, I knew my father liked it when we completed a task.
‘No – you remember. We’re supposed to be able to see four tonight. You’re forgetting Saturn.’
‘Oh yeah.’
‘Tell me about Saturn, Lou.’
I knew the answer and it filled me with happiness to tell my father what I knew: ‘It’s got rings.’
‘That’s right,’ he said. And I asked him if we could see the rings and he said not from down here but that we’d have to go into space. And I asked him how would we get into space. And he told me that humans had already been there. And I asked him – ‘Are we humans right now?’ And he said: ‘We are, Lou, we are.’
I remember how my father leant down to pick me up and how my father’s beard felt scratchy to kiss, but how I put my arms around my father’s neck, determined to press our cheeks together despite.
There was light in the kitchen window.
I remember that I was on my father’s shoulders as we crossed the courtyard and that I was taller than the rest of the world up there and closer to the stars and the planets and the moon which was so much bigger than I have ever seen. And I remember that I had to duck down so as not to bang my head on the low lintel of the door so that when we stepped inside my head was resting tight beside his.
My father is the one who saves us. Somehow, despite everything, he has his fingers still on the ledge and he is prepared to attempt to haul his sons back up to the cliff top one last time.
He takes a croissant and holds it aloft. ‘There was something I was planning on going to see, boys,’ he says. ‘It’s on the way. I want to . . . I want to . . . I want to just go and—’
‘Yes, Dad,’ I say. ‘Let’s keep going.’
‘My legs are killing me,’ he winces. ‘I need lots more painkillers. And my feet.’ He looks round. ‘Come on, boys, let’s pack up and get out of here.’
DENIAL
We chuck everything in the van. We drive to the office and the wash-house. This time all three of us carry him up the stairs. The pigeon has gone. We sit Dad down on the chair in the showers. He is full of purpose and chatter. He wants to tell us about the Upper Palaeolithic. All his life, he says, he’s wanted to visit this particular prehistoric cave and now he’s going with all three of us.
Ralph takes the credit card to settle the bill and ‘see what else they’ve got’. Jack goes to tidy up the van – he’s going to change the bed, wash the utensils, re-pack.
I help Dad. I dress him in clean clothes. He has purple bruises on his ankles. They look terrible. He says more ibuprofen will do it; he has hundreds of pills in his wash bag. He says he was expecting a lot of pain. He’s already taken three. He’s never taken more than one at a time in his life before. Of anything. He swallows two more. I am silent.
The others come back in and we haul him out and sit him on a bench. Jack is actually doing the whole dustpan and brush thing inside the van. He’s using his baby wipes on the ‘upholstery’. Ralph comes out of the shop. He’s bought salami, cheese and tomatoes to go with our bread and the remaining four million croissants. Jars of artichokes. Cigarettes from hell, he says, it’s all they had. He sits next to Dad and smokes and watches Jack while making cheery sarcastic comments. But there’s something about Jack that is impervious or unreachable – like he knows for certain that the secret to human happiness lies snugly curled up inside a life devoted to minor sacrifice.
I text Eva. She’s with her phone and free and we do some back and forth. I tell her we’re on the move and that’s somehow good.
Jack is ready. We all climb in. Ralph takes the wheel. I slam the door too hard. I help Dad arrange himself. He’s pleased to be clean and in fresh clothes. He’s lying down with his feet towards the back and his head at the front so he can ‘join in’. His shampoo smells of apples like we’re straight from some gently billowing summer orchard in Normandy. He wants his pillows piled so he can swivel his head and see forward. I sit up beside him, also leaning forward onto the back of Jack’s seat. The engine starts OK but the dashboard is beeping and clacking as if something is urgently wrong. Many things.
‘Low fuel?’ Jack suggests, in a mock-helpful voice. ‘Lights? Oil pressure? HIV?’
I poke my head between my brothers’ seats into the cabin. ‘Are the hazards on?’ I ask.
‘No, Louis,’ Ralph says. ‘Thank you. The hazards are not on.’
‘Bloody hell.’ Dad is shaking his head and frowning with the pleasure of puzzlement. ‘I don’t understand it. Must be something to do with the jump leads. Or fuses. But it doesn’t make any sense though. How can the jump leads affect the circuit board?’
‘The van is going insane,’ I say.
Dad and I are both leaning into the cabin now; it’s like we all want to be in the front, like suddenly we all want to drive.
The clicking noise won’t stop. Ralph raises his hands above the steering wheel as if to surrender.
‘I think it’s because you haven’t got your seat belt on, Jack,’ I say.
‘Somehow all the defunct alarms have been reactivated,’ Dad says, shaking his head. ‘The dash used to beep when you didn’t buckle up in the front. But I don’t really see how—’
‘No,’ Jack says, fastening his belt. ‘Not insane. The van is coming back to life.’
The clicking stops.
‘It is the fucking seat belts.’ Ralph exhales like the world is entirely new to him. ‘Amazing.’ He revs the engine unnecessarily. ‘OK. Stand by.’
He stalls.
Silence.
‘I just don’t think we’re going to make it, Dad,’ I say.
‘The gods are against us,’ Ralph says.
‘Or the gods are for us,’ Jack says.
‘It’s always been so hard to tell,’ Dad says, lying back down into his pillows with a sigh. ‘I told you, Louis.’
‘What? What did you tell me? Why does everyone keep telling me things?’
‘That a man meets his destiny on the path he took to avoid his destiny.’
After an hour or so, the road becomes narrow and more dramatic. This is mountain country. Dad wakes up and lies on his pillow looking backwards out of his window. I do the same. Up front, my brothers are talking about Siobhan’s Monday-night yoga. We pass along a deep gorge. Then we begin to loop precariously this way and that up the steep-shouldered valley. Now and then, there is a short tunnel cut through the tawny overhanging rock. A river runs swift below us – turbid, opaque, the colour of Oxford stone. I have a new game that I am playing with myself. I imagine that I am seeing the world with my father’s eyes. It doesn’t work at first – I’m telling myself things about the beauty of the landscape, but I’m not experiencing it; I’m too self-consciously aware of what I’m doing. But then the thoughts that notice the thoughts I think about what I’m thinking start t
o quieten or drop away and the trick begins to work . . . And gradually everything does seem miraculous and inexplicable to me: the fact that I am here with Dad and my brothers – on this day in all of history, on this planet in all the universe. And that’s when I get the thought that if there’s one thing – and maybe it’s the only thing – that is good about what we’re doing, about this journey, then it has to be that we’re getting to feel what it means to be alive together. Truly alive. Truly together.
I breathe the air coming in through Dad’s window. I look out at the world. I listen to my brothers. Their talk is a comfort to me. We’ve always talked in the van. Dad and Mum and Ralph and Jack. I used to lie half-sleeping in the back when I was little – listening to my family taking everything apart and putting it back together again; and then dreaming of the world.
Jack is saying: ‘. . . All I am suggesting is that maybe you should take up meditation. Give it a try. Lots of troubled people swear by it. It teaches you mindfulness.’
‘You mean mindlessness?’
‘I don’t think that’s what they say. I think—’
‘Well, doesn’t it teach you – specifically – to think about nothing? Isn’t that meditation?’
‘That’s one aspect of it.’
‘And isn’t the essence of your humanity to do with your reason and your ability to think?’
I glance across at Dad. He half turns and he shakes his head a little on his pillow. But he’s listening, too. He is greedy greedy greedy to listen to Ralph and Jack regardless of the conversation – can’t help himself – like they’re two of his pupils who have become famous but whose essays he never bothered to read at the time.