by Jem Lester
‘Apparently, my name is Jonah Jewell. I know this because they repeat the sounds when they’re looking at me and I’m off somewhere investigating. Light fascinates me a lot, especially when it splits into colours and when it reflects off a leaf close to my eye.
‘I don’t really know what time is, but when there is no light for me to investigate, I like to play with the water and bubbles and float in the warmth until he, Dad, tells me it’s time to get out. I don’t always get out when he asks, but he sits and waits for me and when I step into a towel, he cuddles me and dries me and squeezes me tight. He does this, I think, because he knows that I like it and I think he likes it too, and if he doesn’t do it, I feel anxious as if it is light again outside and everything is in the wrong order.
‘When I’m dry, he lets me run into my bedroom and jump on my bed and he puts my music on. I know it’s mine because it’s always the same and it means everything’s all right. Then he puts on my revolving fish-tank light and I lie down on my bed and watch the colours go round, which keeps me calm, and he takes the towel and dries my back. Sometimes – when I’m in the mood – he rubs my back and legs and bottom with his hand and sometimes it tickles and I laugh and then he laughs and I really like that. When I’ve had enough he gets a nappy and I lie on my back and push my bottom in the air so that he can slide it underneath me. Then he gets some cold white cream and smears it all around my willy and balls and the tops of my legs and around my bum which sometimes makes me laugh too. He does this, I know, because I wee and poo during the night and if he doesn’t use the cream I get very sore, but I don’t tell anyone. Then he puts my pyjamas on and I pull the duvet up to my chin and stare at my fish tank as he kisses me four times and turns the light off and I can finally disappear to wherever I want. This is my best time.
‘When I see the light again I wake up and meet him in the room with the water and the bubbles. My nappy is heavy and I want it off and it’s the first thing he does while filling up the water and bubbles again. Sometimes I wee and poo so much during the night that it leaks on to the bed which upsets him; and sometimes I push my hands into my nappy because it feels warm and squidgy and draw pictures on the walls with it and then he sometimes shouts at me. He cleans my bottom with lots and lots of wet tissues and puts me in the bath in the light. Then he dries me and dresses me quickly so I can go downstairs for Marmite toast and if there isn’t any Marmite I throw the plate across the kitchen because I have Marmite toast for breakfast. I jump up and down and pull at his hand because I have Marmite toast for breakfast and then I grab at his face and hair because I have Marmite toast for breakfast and I won’t let go so he opens the back door and forces me outside into the garden where I skip round and round screaming because I have Marmite toast for breakfast. Then the door opens and I run in and there is Marmite toast on the table so I sit and eat it because it’s what I have for breakfast and he sits on the floor with his head in his hands.
‘When I’ve finished my Marmite toast I pull grapes out of the fridge and eat them and roll them on the floor with my toes and squash them because I like the feeling of cold and stickiness and it’s part of my breakfast, I think, because he sits on the floor with his head in his hands. After breakfast, he makes me sit on the toilet while I twiddle with a leaf I found on the floor and then he takes me off and puts another nappy on me and as soon as it’s tight around me I feel it getting wet and warm. Then there is a ringing sound that means I’m going to the other place and he grabs my bag and opens the door and she is there smiling and takes my hand and we walk to the bus where I sit in my seat because it is always where I sit. There are others in other seats, but there are not two on a seat. One of them screams and it hurts my ears so I put my fingers in them.
‘I know how the bus moves and follow its turns all the way, but it turns the wrong way which makes me confused and anxious because that’s not the way the bus goes so I grab the hair of the girl in the seat in front and she cries out and grabs my hand and then he sits next to me and tries to pull my fingers apart but I don’t like being touched and the bus is still going the wrong way, but then it’s going the right way again, I can see the trees that the bus touches and I’m on the way to the other place again so I sit quietly and then get off the bus and go into my room which is my room because I go there during the light and it has a picture of me on the door.
‘I get upset there a lot when someone makes me do something I don’t want to do and then I smack my own head and bite my hand until I can feel it properly and when this happens someone carries me into a room by myself and leaves me there with a twiddly until I calm down. Sometimes they let me go outside, which is when I feel best because I can be by myself and find leaves and feathers and feel the wind on my face and this makes me laugh.
‘If I want something, I can’t just take it, I have to give someone a picture of the thing I want. But if I want it I just want it and I can see it so why can’t I just have it? Sometimes I get the right picture but sometimes I get a picture and I still don’t get what I want and I have to get another picture and I don’t understand why I don’t get what I want because I got a picture and then I bite myself again and if someone gets too close I grab them so they will get me what I want. Sometimes I just grab what I want and run away with it and then someone takes it off me and I pull their hair and dig my nails into them because I’m angry now and don’t know how to stop being angry because I don’t know what anger is or where it comes from and then sometimes water comes out of my eyes and I stop feeling angry and I feel better.
‘When I’m very, very hungry I sit at the table and things are put in front of me and if I don’t want them because they’re the wrong colour or shape, I throw them on the floor and eat what I like but I’m still hungry so take what I like from another plate because it’s what I like and I’m hungry and someone takes it away from me and I throw my plate and everything into the air and try to grab all the other food I like because I’m still hungry and when I’m hungry I want to eat so why can’t I eat when I’m hungry? Eating makes me happy. Someone puts a fork or spoon in my hand before I can eat but I’m very, very hungry then and want to eat and I can do it quicker with my fingers so I drop the fork or spoon and use my fingers because I’m hungry and this time I get to use my fingers which is good because it’s quicker than a fork or spoon and also I like the feel of the food.
‘When I’m only a little bit hungry people take me back to my room and make me do more things I don’t want to do so I smack my head and bite my hand again. Then I put on my coat, which means I’m going back to see him, and I get on the bus again and sit in my seat because it’s where I sit every day and the bus stops and another gets off and I want to get off because I get off when the bus stops because that’s where he is, but another gets off and I bite my hand and smack my head until I can feel it and then my legs are hot and wet, which feels nice, and then the bus stops and I get off because I get off when the bus stops and he is outside the bus and I run past him into the house and open the door where all the food is and take an apple and a slice of bread into the garden. Then he comes into the garden and takes my clothes off and wipes my legs and bottom with wet tissues and puts a nappy on me and warm soft trousers and kisses me on the head and the face and lets me run around the garden which I like best because it’s quiet and I can pick grass and leaves and flowers to twiddle with and I am on my own and I do this until he calls the name “Jonah” and then I know it is food because that’s the way it happens and I run inside and sit at the table and he gives me a plate of food that I like because I eat it all. Sometimes I still want to be in the garden so I grab my food with my hands and run outside with it which is okay because he doesn’t stop me, but when I want to be on the sofa and still want to eat and grab my food in my hands and run to the sofa, he shouts at me, but I’m hungry and want to sit on the sofa so that’s what I do.
‘When I’m not hungry any more I go back out into the garden until the li
ght goes away and then I go inside and he puts the pictures on for me because that’s what he does when the light goes away and I sit on the sofa and eat apples and watch the pictures. When it gets very dark he calls the name “Jonah” again and I go upstairs because when it is very dark and he calls “Jonah” it is time for hot water and bubbles and cuddles and squeezes and music and fish-tank light and bed again and that’s the best time again.’
I’m instantly aware of the silence. The judge breaks the spell.
‘Well then, thank you. I am aware of the lateness of the hour and the necessity for Mr Jewell to attend to his father at this time. Therefore, I will take closing statements in writing from both counsel, if that is acceptable, by three p.m. tomorrow? Good, then I will close this tribunal. Mr and Mrs Jewell, this tribunal will publish its decision within the next three weeks.’
Alien
I have no time to speak to Emma. We just hug, the relief escaping through shaking limbs. The fight is over, the legal fight at least. Out in the fresh air, my thoughts climb out of the Jonah box and take hold of my fading father. Emma says, ‘Georg and I have said our goodbyes, but kiss him for me?’ And I nod. Goodbye – such an inconsequential word. Most of the time it is not a permanent farewell. This is a day that will surely end like any other, I tell myself. It is the only comfort I can find.
The hospice is an oppressive place. Full of the dying and the distraught, where forced conversations with other relatives inevitably turn to the subjects of tumour growth rates, chemotherapy, radiotherapy, experimental drug trials and the relative benefits of cremation and burial.
It is quiet in an irritatingly reverent way that can only remind the residents that they are dying – at least it would if the majority of them weren’t already off their tits on morphine.
Dad’s in a single room – an honour accorded the really nearly dead, and not something you’d wish to feign just for the privacy. So he truly is near the end. Without hair or eyebrows he looks halfway there, like an alien about to be dissected in Roswell. His eyes are closed. I pull up a chair and sit close by his chest, watching for the telltale signs of the rise and fall from the thin sheet covering what’s left of him. The left side of his neck is a strange reddish purple and so swollen that his head resembles a peach stone balanced on an aubergine.
‘It went well?’
The words are barely audible, so little air now makes it through his voice box – the tumour has seen to that – but the morphine seems to allow a few through at a time.
‘The barrister is very optimistic; we should get the judgement in three weeks.’
‘Three weeks? Go back …’
‘Dad …’ But he has dropped off again. I stare at the suspended bag of fluid, the contents of which are doing their best to keep him sleepy, calm and pain free.
Three more words escape before he slips deeply under: ‘Bring me Jonah.’
Maurice has arrived and is haranguing the doctor when Jonah and I get back from playgroup. I pretend not to know him and lead Jonah into the relatives’ lounge where the television is mercifully showing CBeebies. I hand him an apple and he sprawls on a waterproofed turquoise sofa and stares at Mr Tumble.
‘Ben,’ Maurice calls from the doorway. ‘This is no place for the boy.’
‘If you’re referring to Jonah, Dad wants to see him and, as he’s the one who’s dying, I think he should be allowed to see who he wishes, don’t you?’
Maurice holds up his hand in defeat and squeezes his eyes closed in a vain attempt to trap the tears.
I check Jonah, still mesmerised. ‘I’m going to see if he’s awake. Watch Jonah for a couple of minutes, Maurice.’
‘I don’t think …’
But I’ve already left the lounge. I still need a little time alone with my father.
I don’t want to imagine what he has to tell me, don’t want to accept that there are certain things I long to hear him say before he goes. When I enter, he’s lying slightly propped up with a pen in his left hand and a piece of hospice notepaper resting on a book on his lap. I sit next to him. His eyes are barely open and with so much morphine in his system, the concentration and energy required to drag the pen across the paper is monumental. The pen falls from his hand and he dozes off again. The cancer has ruined his handwriting. That sophisticated cursive artwork that I so admired is now the uncertain, scratchy symbols of a four-year-old forced to write on a bouncing Tube train. It is for me, though:
Ben
Do not forget
Don’t forget what? I want to slap his cheeks or throw water on his face to bring him to. I want the rest of the message. I put my hands on the edge of the mattress and my face on my hands and run through all the possible permutations like a Bletchley Park code-breaker, trying to imagine my father mouthing the words to me, examining his strange syntax, running through his lexicon, the things he has so far left unsaid – and the pen begins to scratch again, each letter revealed with unbearable slowness. I turn away, get up and walk to the window. It’s raining in Hampstead, which only seems to add to its aura of classy, creative melancholy.
The pen stops scratching and he’s drifted off again. I go back to the chair and take the paper from his lap and read and read again and laugh, loudly. It is a genuine spontaneous laugh, without bitterness, because it is a glorious, final punch-line.
Ben
do not forget
tax return due end October
I find Jonah still glued to the TV with his face and shirt now covered in pink yoghurt. Maurice sits uncomfortably in a brown leatherette tub chair, reading.
‘Where did he get the yoghurt?’
‘Sorry?’
‘Maurice, where did he get the yoghurt from?’
‘I don’t know. The fridge, I think?’
‘You think? I asked you to watch him.’
‘I did.’
‘Then how come he’s plastered in yoghurt?’
‘I watched him go to the fridge,’ he says, without looking up.
I take wet wipes from Jonah’s bag and clean him up as best I can.
‘How’s Georg?’ Maurice asks.
‘Go and see for yourself.’
‘No, I don’t want my final memory of him to be this.’
‘What? Alive?’
‘Mr Jewell.’
Both Maurice and I turn round as the nurse calls.
‘Your father is conscious again and asking for Jonah.’
‘Be there in a minute,’ I say. ‘Maurice? Are you coming?’ But he doesn’t answer.
Jonah baulks at the antiseptic odour, but an apple and a feather disperses his irritation.
‘Jonah, Papa wants to see you. Come and sit here next to him.’
He skips to the chair at the near side of the bed and drops into it, bouncing three or four times as the springs give beneath him. I stand at the other side, out of the way, leaning against the cooling window. I study my father. Not much of him still looks alive and what little life remains has – it seems – made its way down his left arm into his grey fingers, which are heroically reaching out for his grandson.
Jonah leans forward and places his head on the mattress next to his papa’s hand. The fingers crawl spider-like up Jonah’s head, disappearing into his hair as they climb, and then slowly settle into a barely perceptible caressing motion. I know how it feels to run my fingers through Jonah’s hair and for him not to resist. It is in these moments that I feel most certain that he loves me back, that every word, like Dad said, is a little lie built for a purpose with an agenda and that the physical, sensory world that Jonah inhabits is the purest form of truth there is.
Lying there, he is as still as I’ve ever seen him.
An hour passes and no one moves. My father’s breathing has become low and erratic; Jonah’s eyes have closed and he is snoring softly, his face set in a dreamy grin.
A nurse comes in and smiles at the scene. She checks Dad’s breathing, feels his pulse, looks in his eyes.
‘Any time now,’ she says gently. ‘He’s peaceful. Would you like me to stay?’
‘Yes, please, but could you let Maurice know? He’s in the lounge.’
‘Certainly,’ she says, and leaves, only to return a minute later by herself. ‘For some people, it’s easier,’ she says.
At the very end it happens so quickly, almost with impolite haste. Just a simple ‘he’s gone’ from the nurse, who calls the time of death and leaves us to say our goodbyes. Dad’s fingers are still curled round Jonah’s hair and I gently stroke his face to rouse him and he sits up bleary-eyed.
‘Papa’s gone, Jonah.’
Jonah climbs up on to the bed until his face is directly over his papa’s and stares into his lifeless eyes – it’s enough to burst the dam inside me and I start to blubber and cry. Jonah leaves the bed and bounces up to me, laughing, and I take his hands and bounce with him, also laughing, following him around the room in a crazed dance while my father lies dead on his hospice bed, and I can think of no other ritual that would mark his passing better.
Lightbulb
My father leaves instructions for his cremation, and that – ever the humorist – his ashes be dispersed over Margaret Thatcher.
It’s a small affair – Jonah, Maurice and I, the rest of the card school, a handful of ancient Trotskyites and a solitary woman hanging back in the shadows. Emma? I’m too anchored to this pew to check, too scared to let my mind go orienteering. A rousing recording of ‘The Internationale’ blasts as the plain chipboard coffin is conveyor-belted into the furnace like a forgotten prize from the Generation Game.
I am happy not to provide a eulogy because I only have platitudes, and Jonah … well, Jonah. So it is left to Maurice – or rather Maurice insists. By his standards, he is dressed for the occasion – a shiny charcoal-grey three-piece that’s never seen a dry cleaner – and I close my eyes as he walks down the aisle toward the lectern platform, the trail of sweet pungency that accompanies him turning this redbrick barbecue joint into an Orthodox church, incense swinging.