Let Go My Hand

by Edward Docx

  We drive up slowly. Jack and Ralph are laughing. But a child’s joy is dancing in the blue of Dad’s eyes. Gone the furrowed brow, the drooping eyelids, the horizontal lips, instead his face is an adolescent grin radiant with excitement and with being one of the boys – one of us – but one of the boys and the winner.

  ‘Fair and square, Lou,’ he says, as I come to help him up. ‘Fair and square.’

  ‘Hamilton-esque,’ I say.

  ‘Schumi,’ Ralph says as he pulls into parc fermé.

  ‘Prost,’ Jack says.

  ‘Lauda,’ Dad says. ‘Lauda.’

  He’s still got his hands on the controls. And it’s like he doesn’t want to get out of his cart ever. He thinks he’s on the start–finish at Monaco and all the world’s most beautiful people are cheering as he takes off his helmet and ruffles his hand through his sweat-soaked hair. And he just can’t help his gloating and his pleasure.

  This is it, people, I’m thinking; this is happiness.

  THE WHEELCHAIR

  ‘You shouldn’t spend his money without asking him,’ Jack says, eyeing the fifty-euro notes that Ralph fans with clever thumbs. ‘Did you just take those?’

  ‘If I asked him, he would never spend it on anything except fucking croissants. And there are only so many croissants you can buy . . .’

  ‘It’s not your money, Ralph.’

  ‘Thank you, Jack. I realize that. Which is why I’m buying things for him. I myself do not require a wheelchair. Yet.’ He strikes a match. ‘And when I do, boys, please don’t hesitate.’ He has a way of shifting his cigarette to the very lowest angle in the corner of his mouth. ‘And it’s not just the wheelchair, is it? Actually, I am buying Dad experiences, comfort, happiness. More than this: possibility.’

  Jack is quiet – like maybe he shouldn’t block this gesture towards the future – and Ralph sees this as he squints against the smoke. So he presses home his advantage: ‘You should be delighted. This is what he is incapable of doing for himself. What else are we going to do with the money? Or – don’t tell me – he was keeping cash for the boys at the clinic.’

  ‘It’s not a clinic,’ I say.

  ‘Do they do cash discount?’ Ralph exhales through his nose.

  But Jack is dogged. ‘It’s not your money and it’s not your decision what to do with it.’

  ‘It will be soon. How about this? I’m spending my third.’

  ‘Oh, Jesus,’ I say.

  ‘Do we even know it is going to be thirds?’ Jack asks.

  ‘Oh, Jesus,’ I say.

  ‘Well, I’m going to put it back,’ Jack persists. ‘How much have you taken?’

  ‘Two hundred for the grand prix event. And a hundred for this.’

  The door starts to jiggle; someone or something is trying to enter the store-room backwards with his arms full.

  Ralph affects to relent: ‘Maybe you’re right. Maybe extending your life is even more expensive than a funeral. At what stage does the cost of living outweigh the cost of death? There’s a question for your new actuarial pals, Jack. Thank you, Armand.’

  With much clatter and awkwardness and grimacing, Armand has finally arrived in the room; he turns and puts down what must be the wheelchair that he has agreed to sell us. Last-generation, he avows, never been used. They shipped him fifty from Paris. Before they’d even opened the cave. Then they sent les fauteuils roulants électriques. He has never been to Paris but, clearly, he thinks of it as some kind of El Dorado where an endlessly prodigal elite lie around half-naked frittering the national wealth and idly cycling though vice. He’s going to put the rest of his stock on eBay one at a time when ‘things’ ‘die down’. He’s not clear what things or why they need to die down.

  With several sweeps of his arms and kicks of his feet, Armand clears a space amidst the stacks of leaflet-guides to the cave – Polish, Flemish, Portuguese – and begins to demonstrate how the wheelchair unfolds and how to slot in the wheels. I was expecting something from a First World War mental asylum but this is sleek, cool, useable. Ralph smokes. Jack and I pay attention to the various demonstrations. No tools needed. Quick-release wheels, like so. Anti-tip stabilizers here and here. Cup-holder. Brake. Armand starts to show us how to pack it away again. Ralph re-counts the money in bad French. Armand joins in. He is a paragon of enthusiastic corruption; the sight of cash being offered to him for stealing or re-selling his nation’s assets strikes him as nothing less than long-awaited justice, vindication and due. He takes the banknotes with a nod that says – ‘Finally, recompense.’

  A bell sounds.

  Jack speaks in French. ‘I think someone else is trying to see the cave, maybe. We should let you go.’

  ‘No, it’s fine,’ Armand says. ‘We shut at two, today.’

  Outside, the sun is searing the red lands as though we’re in a movie about the first epoch of Martian terra-forming. The van seems to shimmer in the heat haze. Dad is sitting on his bench in the shade looking out across the gorge.

  ‘Bad luck,’ Ralph says in a voice of commiseration to the two gap-year students standing earnestly at the ticket booth looking at Armand’s improbable ‘fermé’ sign. ‘If it’s any consolation, these particular cavemen were terrible at drawing.’ He indicates over his shoulder with his thumb. ‘The buffalo look nothing like buffalo; and the horses – really infantile. Scribbles, to be honest.’ He makes a flailing gesture. ‘No hand-to-eye coordination.’

  Another difference between Jack and Ralph is that Ralph doesn’t give a fuck what is in Dad’s will. But it now occurs to me that Jack does. He’s anxious Dad is going to have done something he finds dumb or divisive. So he wants to know. He wants to talk to Dad about it. And maybe that is part of why he wants to keep him alive.

  Dad is still sitting on his bench half-swivelled round as we walk up with the wheelchair. ‘Look at the view,’ he says, ‘it’s beautiful, boys.’

  My mother had this way of beckoning you over to sit beside her, too; but not to look at the external view; rather, to talk as if in deepest confidence. Like you were great friends, intimate friends; and only you two together were really able to see and judge things as they truly were. She did it with men and women the same – but, if it was a trick, then it worked. Because you felt special beside her – simply because that come-over-here-and-sit-beside-me-because-I-need-to-talk-to-only-you-in-all-the-world conferred something unavailable from anywhere else. She liked to sit on our ragged old purple sofa and watch the sceptical London birds in our tiny garden.

  She liked to say that ‘her predecessor’ had ‘given birth’ to ‘two archetypes of masculinity’. She tabled this as a joke, I suppose. But who is happier, Lou? she would ask – not rhetorically. And what is happiness? Is it contentment, ease, dependability? Or is it elation, excitement, exultation? Or does it turn out that the consolation prize for never having the elation is contentment? And the consolation prize for never having experienced any contentment is elation? Can the one turn into the other? She used to ask me these things straight out and it made me feel grown up and embarrassed at the same time. I don’t know why. But I told my father some of this after my mother died. And he said something which I will never forget: ‘Don’t make the picture too narrow, Lou, because there’s nobility on both sides.’

  Another time, she told me that she believed the boys’ ‘basic issue’ was not that they didn’t feel any love from Dad, but rather that they felt that for a long time Dad had thought of their existence as a problem. They thought that if they hadn’t been there, the divorce would have been cleaner, the new life easier. Everything. They were the problem. Or they were the manifestation of all the problems. And because they were children and dealt with all the stress, they internalized it. That’s what children do, she said to me. And probably your father gave them that impression at times because he’s so bad at hiding his feelings . . . and so bad at expressing them. And so now we must work hard to counter this stuff. We have to help your dad and your brothers. Our job is to m
ake Ralph and Jack realize that your dad never stopped loving them – realize it in their hearts, I mean. My mum was always placing her palm softly against my heart to make her points. Like she was sealing in secrets. Like maybe she always knew she was going to be gone.

  One of the last thing she said to me: now the Mighty River flows through you a while.

  ‘Where next?’ I ask.

  ‘Lunch,’ Ralph says.

  ‘Lunch on the road,’ Jack asks, ‘or lunch in a restaurant?’

  ‘I’m starving,’ I say. ‘Lunch quickly.’

  ‘That’s the hangover, Lou,’ Ralph says.

  ‘If you don’t want to wait,’ Jack says, ‘then we’ll have to drive and eat. We’re miles from anywhere.’

  ‘Yeah, but drive where?’ I ask.

  ‘We don’t have to go to Zurich tonight,’ Dad says.

  ‘Dad,’ I say.

  ‘We’re not going to Zurich,’ Jack says.

  ‘Jack,’ Ralph says.

  ‘For fuck’s sake,’ I say.

  ‘So let’s just . . .’ Ralph shrugs. ‘Let’s just drive.’

  ‘You drive,’ Jack says.

  ‘I drove us here. Now I want to drink. You’re the one who’s going to start moaning if I do both.’

  Dad inhales deeply. ‘Open the champagne then, why not? I think it is time for Thierry. Will you look at that view, boys.’

  The sun sears the cliffs, ignites the gorge, pours molten light towards us – as if all the world were but a narrow cast for the forging of mighty swords.

  ‘OK,’ Jack says, ‘I’ll drive. But just to be clear I am not driving to Zurich.’

  ‘Please, Jack,’ I say, ‘don’t—’

  ‘I’m not. But I’m just saying—’

  ‘—don’t “just say”—’

  ‘—that I’m not driving this van anywhere near Switzerland. Apart from anything else, we’ve just bought you a state-of-the-art wheelchair, Dad.’

  ‘Which is awesome,’ I say.

  Ralph winces: ‘Don’t say awesome.’

  ‘Awesome.’

  ‘OK,’ Jack offers, ‘so where would you like me to drive?’

  ‘London,’ I say.

  ‘How about a strip club in Barcelona? I hear they’re the best. Or it might be Bucharest. I never get definitive information. Anyone?’

  ‘Dad?’ Jack asks.

  ‘I’d like to go somewhere good for dinner. Michelin stars. Actually . . . you know what? Truffles. I really want truffles. Is that possible?’

  Ralph nods slowly. ‘Two days to go and at last – at last – you’re starting to talk like a serious human being.’

  ‘I’d also love a concert,’ Dad says. ‘To hear some music. Bach. Mozart. Chopin.’

  ‘OK,’ Ralph says. ‘Concert. Truffles. Armageddon. This has got to be possible somewhere in Europe. We need a city. Where is the nearest city? Where are we?’

  ‘No idea,’ Jack says. ‘You were driving.’

  ‘Try to be more helpful,’ Ralph says. ‘You can be very negative at times, Jack.’

  ‘Dad?’ Jack asks.

  ‘I tell you what . . .’

  ‘Speak, Baby Lou,’ Ralph says. ‘I like that look on your face. Speak to us.’

  ‘Well . . . I’m just saying: you remember Malte and Dean, Dad? The Debussy and whatever festival. We could go and see that. Where did they say it was? I looked at it before. It’s on my phone. I don’t think it is miles off track. It’s a food festival, too.’

  ‘I take it all back, Lou,’ Ralph says. ‘Only now am I beginning to understand the subtle complexion of your genius.’

  ‘I need to be in Zurich tomorrow by noon.’

  ‘Dad, stop being ridiculous.’

  Ralph holds up a hand. ‘No no no . . . Jack, listen: if we agree it is Dad’s last night on Earth, then we are truly free to go anywhere and do anything. We can—’

  ‘Here it is,’ I say. ‘Denzlingen. Yep. We just have to cross the Rhine.’

  ‘Beautiful,’ Ralph says. ‘How do we know these people?’

  ‘Me and Dad met them in this car park near the Somme. Changed their tyre.’

  ‘Is that some kind of code?’ Jack asks.

  Ralph nods slowly. ‘You were dogging again, Lou, weren’t you? But . . . that’s OK. No judgement. No judgement here.’ He holds up his hands. ‘We all need to relax from time to time.’

  ‘Let’s just say they owe us.’

  ‘Great,’ Ralph says. ‘Well, then, get us guest-listed for everything. Explain that we’d also like some kind of return-the-favour sexual encounter. Rhine-maidens, wheelchair-friendly dwarves, that kind of thing. Whatever they’ve got.’

  One of the things that Dad blames ‘it’ on is the sudden acceleration of human ‘progress’. Think about it, he used to say, invitingly, calmly: in ancient Mesopotamia 7,000 years ago – rough figures, rough figures – the fastest human communication could move was the speed of a horse, pigeon or sail; in the England of the 1820s, the situation was much the same – horses, pigeons, sails. All right: throw in smoke signals and the odd semaphore station. That’s 6,800 years (or three hundred-odd generations) of the same pace for everything. No change. (Not to mention Homo sapiens’ one hundred and ninety-five thousand pre-civilization years.) And then (here he used to become more animated), in the withering flash of two hundred years, or a mere eight generations, we get . . . we get this. All of it. Modern Life. And then – around 1989 – it really started to speed up. Just around when you were born, Lou. Unbelievable. Staggering. Instant. A billion tentacles. Imagine the rate-of-change graph – imagine where we stand – now – at this moment in human history – how steep it suddenly rises. The technological revolution – in terms of how our computers actually work – is already utterly beyond the comprehension of all but – say – a few thousand people. No wonder our psychology and our belief systems have not had time to adjust. We are editing the genome. No wonder there are side effects. We should not be surprised, Lou. Indeed, it is amazing that everything in the twenty-first century isn’t a side effect. Maybe it is. Maybe that’s the problem. Maybe this is the first generation to be entirely consumed and preoccupied by side effects. Maybe your mother was right. Things have fallen apart. We are distracted from distraction by distraction. We are filled with fancies and empty of meaning. It is all tumid apathy with no concentration. I’m glad it’s not my problem any more. Over to you, Lou. The slouching beast is in downtown Bethlehem.

  Dad calls my brothers ‘The Transitional Generation’. He says he is fine and I am fine but the technological revolution hit my brothers like a tsunami in the 1990s when they were too old and too young. He says it’s left them stranded somewhere between the Old World and the New.

  SHOOTING THE RAPIDS

  The good mood of Dad’s victory plays through the afternoon like a soundtrack we all love. Jack is driving. Ralph is in the passenger seat. Dad and I are seated in the back. Dad has been napping again. He’s eaten another fistful of ibuprofen. We’ve cut loose from the law. So we are driving table-down and I am not even wearing a seat belt. Instead, I’m trying to make salami, artichoke and tomato baguettes on a plastic plate. Dad only ever travels with one prep knife, but it was made by Bronze Age warriors or something, and it’s so sharp that you could slice clean through your finger and not feel the pain until you trod on the severed end. I have a jar of mustard from the kitchen cupboard and these little packets of salt and pepper in my pockets, which I stole someplace back along the line at a service station. We have just turned left, north, on the E35. The signs says Fessenheim, Bad Krozingen, Freiburg. We have crossed the Rhine.

  I made the calls. Malte almost died with unexpected delight. Leave it all to me, he said, everything is going to be perfect; he will talk to the sponsors, pull strings, move mountains; there’s this castle-restaurant we just have to see, he said, overlooking the river where they serve the Feinschmecker Hochgenuss. I asked him if he’d be OK to agent the rest of our lives. He said he would – gladly –
and he’d even drop to ten per cent if we did the maintenance on his van. Meanwhile, here on the autobahn, the traffic is thickening and we seem to have moved on to Ralph. His life. His situation.

  ‘You did what?’ Jack asks.

  ‘I said . . . I said I offered to help edit her novel.’

  Jack is incredulous; this is not the brother he dined in utero with. ‘You offered to read her book?’

  Ralph sighs without irony. ‘Every word, every line – with a pen in my hand for almost three weeks.’

  ‘Big mistake,’ I say. ‘Big mistake.’

  ‘Was it any good?’ Dad asks.

  ‘No – it was terrible.’

  ‘So why did you do it?’ Jack asks.

  ‘Does this lighter still not work?’ Ralph asks.

  ‘Because he wanted to sleep with her,’ I say. ‘Why does Ralph do anything?’

  ‘Wrong. I’d already slept with her.’

  ‘Must be the sadomasochism then,’ I say.

  ‘It’s possible, Lou. Humankind is addicted to agony.’ Ralph presses the broken lighter as if a little patience might be all that is required to coax it back from its long decease. ‘Isn’t that so, Jack?’

  ‘Nope.’ Jack slows gently for the traffic, which is backing up ahead of us, one set of brake lights after another. ‘And anyway – we’re done with me, Ralph. It’s agreed: I’m the embarrassingly defeated husband of bourgeois society. We are on to you. Don’t deflect.’

  ‘That’s all he does,’ I say. ‘His whole life is a massive deflection. You start off trying to guess who he is from the angle of the deflections. Then you realize that if he doesn’t deflect, he won’t exist at all.’

  ‘Thank you, Louis. Can you pass me those matches from the kitchen?’

  The smell of the mustard is making me want to stage an Edwardian picnic. The baguettes are something beautiful. And we’re drinking the kind of champagne that only champagne-makers know to drink.