Dearest Rose

by Rowan Coleman

  ‘Hello, Tilda’s Things?’ Tilda answered the phone breezily, happily unaware of the words she was about to hear.

  ‘It’s Dad,’ Rose said, her voice breaking into sobs at last. ‘I’ve called an ambulance. Tilda, it doesn’t look good. I think … I think he’s dying.’

  ‘I’m coming,’ Tilda said, hanging up the phone.

  Tilda’s car swept into the yard, stopping on its far side, as Rose watched her father, his face now obscured by an oxygen mask, being loaded into the helicopter, its blades making a tremendous noise as they swooped round.

  ‘We can’t take you with us,’ a young woman paramedic told Rose, shouting to make herself heard over the din. ‘We’re taking him to Furness General. They’ve got all the right care there to see what the trouble is. We’ll be there in minutes, so you don’t need to worry, OK?’

  ‘OK,’ Rose said, dumbfounded, as Tilda, her arms covering her head against the whirlwind the blades created, jogged as best as she could to her side.

  ‘He’s got cancer,’ she told the paramedic, out of breath, in such a hurry to deliver the vital information that she had clearly forgotten it was the first time that Rose was hearing the news about her father’s condition. ‘Liver, bowels, pancreas. He’s had treatment – chemo- and radiotherapy, and a bowel reconstruction.’

  ‘Right,’ the paramedic said, her eyes widening as she took the information in. ‘Thank you. When you arrive, ask at the main desk. They’ll tell you where to go.’

  She ran back to the helicopter, and Maddie clung to Rose’s legs, cowering, as the aircraft lifted into the air, buffeting them with powerful winds. Rose did not move from the spot she was standing in until she could no longer see it. Then she turned to Tilda.

  ‘Will you drive?’ she asked her. ‘I’m not sure I could concentrate.’

  Tilda nodded. ‘Rose, listen –’ Tilda began to attempt to explain, her face ashen with worry.

  ‘No.’ Rose shook her head, indicating Maddie, who was listening intently to every word with wide, scared eyes. ‘Don’t say anything now.’

  Rose smiled at her daughter, hoping to look reassuring. ‘Maddie, I’m taking you back to Jenny’s, because I don’t know how long I’m going to be with Granddad, so I think it would be best if you stayed there tonight.’

  ‘But Jenny doesn’t like us any more,’ Maddie protested anxiously. ‘I don’t mind waiting. I’ll be fine. I’ll bring my sketchpad.’

  ‘Jenny is cross with me,’ Rose said, gently firm, ‘not you. Come on now, Maddie. We don’t have time to argue. Please do as I ask.’

  Reluctantly, Maddie nodded, climbing into the back of the car as Rose picked up her bag of things.

  ‘Do you have a key?’ she asked Tilda, realising she had no way of locking the cottage.

  Tilda shook her head. ‘No, John never locks it. I’m not sure he even knows where the key is.’

  ‘Well, then,’ Rose said, looking at the rough, shabby door, ‘we’ll leave it just exactly as it always is for when he comes home.’

  It had been an awkward moment, the persistent ringing of the doorbell, and having to put her foot between the door and the frame to stop Jenny from slamming it in her face.

  ‘Jenny,’ Rose had said urgently, all too aware that Maddie was watching her intently from the car, ‘please, just listen. Dad’s collapsed and an air ambulance came. He’s got cancer. I’ve only just found out. Please, please take Maddie. I don’t know when I’ll be back and I’ve got no one else to ask. Please. None of this is Maddie’s fault. Don’t make her suffer because I’ve been an idiot.’

  Jenny had opened the door at once, her features taut, but not completely unkind.

  ‘Of course I’ll take her,’ she said. Rose beckoned for Maddie to come out of the car, which Maddie did reluctantly, eyeing Jenny with a good deal of mistrust.

  ‘Are you going to be unkind to me?’ she asked Jenny.

  ‘No, dear, of course not,’ Jenny said, upset by Maddie’s wariness.

  ‘Thank you,’ Rose said, hugging Maddie briefly to her chest as she looked at Jenny. ‘I’ll pay for another night of board, of course.’

  ‘No need to do that,’ Jenny said stiffly. ‘You’re a local now.’

  ‘Jenny, you were so good to me,’ Rose said sincerely, ‘when I had no one else. I never did anything to deliberately hurt you or your family, I promise you.’

  Jenny nodded, sucking in her bottom lip. ‘Well, I dare say you didn’t,’ she said. ‘But Ted is my boy, and I know him. I know he feels things more deeply than he’ll ever let on. I expect things will calm down. Go and be with your dad, and, Rose, I hope it’s not too bad, lass.’

  Grateful for that one word of affection, Rose gave Maddie another kiss goodbye and ran back to the car, pulling on her seat belt as Tilda drove away.

  ‘Now, you can talk,’ Rose said to Tilda as soon as they were out. ‘Tell me everything.’

  ‘He was ill for a long time, of course,’ Tilda began slowly, telling a story that she wished she didn’t know off by heart. ‘Not that he would ever admit to it, or even go to a doctor. Not until the pain got so bad he couldn’t stand it. Frasier took him the first time. Marched him into the surgery like a naughty schoolboy, he was so furious.’ Tilda smiled faintly at the memory, her eyes on the ever-twisting road as Rose watched. ‘Frasier was the only one that could make him go, though. Thank God he did.’

  ‘And they diagnosed it straight away?’ Rose asked, feeling strangely detached from the devastating news, aware that news like that, news that cannot be easily recovered from, takes a very long time to filter through the body’s defences and hit home. It had been the same when they told her they’d found her mum’s body. It had been days – days of people being kind to her, speaking in hushed tones and bringing her hot meals in oven-warmed dishes – before any of it sunk in. Experienced in loss, Rose knew that she had to use the period of numbness to learn what she could, to try to understand why her father had never mentioned to her that he was dying.

  ‘Well, I think the doctor knew, yes. But there were tests. Lots of tests, biopsies. I went with him. Frasier and I both did when the consultant gave him the news. Bowel cancer, serious, and it had spread to the liver and beyond. They said that whatever they did now it was about prolonging his life, not curing him. I half expected John to say don’t bother, it’s fine, I’ll just die, but he didn’t.’

  Tilda didn’t take her eyes off the road, but Rose could tell by the tension in her throat and the thickness in her voice that she was fighting off tears.

  ‘Why not?’ Rose asked her. ‘For you?’

  ‘For you,’ Tilda said simply. ‘John had long since given up any hope of seeing you again. In fact, after the cancer he told me it was the last thing he wanted: to see you, to find you again, only to lose you so soon. But for the last few years all the work he’s been doing, it’s been for you. All the money, almost all of it, has gone into a trust fund for you. He knew money didn’t make up for the father that he failed to be, but he said it made him feel a little better, knowing that after he’d gone, you’d realise that he had thought about you, had missed you. Even if you never touched the money or gave it away, he didn’t care. Just as long as you knew. So when they told him that he only had a couple of years at best, with surgery, radiotherapy, chemo, drugs, he took it. He wanted to make as much money as he could for you.’

  ‘Christ,’ Rose said quietly, ‘it’s so unfair, so unfair. Why now? Why now, after everything I’ve been through, when I’ve only just found him?’

  ‘At least you have found him,’ Tilda said. ‘Even if it’s for a short time, it’s better than no time at all. Keep thinking that. And, well, I’ll bet you any money you like he’s sitting up in bed complaining when we get there.’

  But after a frustrating hour of driving, and several minutes of trying to find somewhere to park, not to mention tracking down exactly where John was, Tilda was proved wrong. John had been given a private side room, and his face was still covered
with an oxygen mask. A nurse took them to his side, telling them he hadn’t been conscious since they arrived, but that a doctor would be with them as soon as possible to let them know what was going on.

  Rose sat down on the odd pink plastic chair by his bedside, and looked at him. He looked so frail, so weak. As if the force of nature that made him who he was had all but evaporated, leaving just a shell behind.

  ‘I’ll get us some tea,’ Tilda said, putting a hand on Rose’s shoulder. ‘Try not to worry, Rose. Your dad’s been down before. And almost out, too, but if I know him at all I know he won’t give up fighting for every second more that he can squeeze out of life, and he’ll do that for you and Maddie. I promise you.’

  Rose nodded. ‘Thank you,’ she said quietly, adding with just as much calm measure, ‘I’m glad you’re here.’

  ‘Oh, Rose, dear,’ Tilda said, patting her once again on the shoulder and then rubbing it briefly, ‘I’m glad that you are here.’

  They were standing in the corridor outside John’s room.

  ‘His main problem right now,’ said the doctor, who looked to Rose like he should still be at school, and not managing the life and death of someone that she loved, ‘is that he’s dehydrated and malnourished. I think he’s probably been in pain for a long while, not eating properly. From our initial examination we suspect an obstruction in the bowel, but I’m reluctant to investigate further until we’ve got his stats back up. We’ll know more tomorrow, but for now you should probably go home, rest.’

  ‘If it’s a bowel obstruction,’ Rose asked him, her face drawn and pale, ‘what then, another op?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ the doctor admitted reluctantly. ‘We need his notes from Leeds. We need to see what has already been done, if surgery is the way to go or … if a more palliative approach is required.’

  ‘Oh God,’ Rose sobbed, burying her head in her hands, making the young doctor shift awkwardly from one foot to the other and look longingly for an escape.

  ‘How am I going to explain this to Maddie?’ she asked Tilda, turning to gaze at her father through the slats of the blind at the window of his room, where he was lying silent and still, oblivious to everything that was going on around him.

  Wake up, Dad, she pleaded silently. Please, please, wake up. Don’t give up now.

  * * *

  For the first few seconds after waking, it took Rose a little while to work out where she was. There was dim grey light filtering in through the thin hospital curtains, and the rhythmic beat of the heart monitor, but still it took a while for the realisation to dawn on her that she had spent the night in hospital. When it did, the worry that had had a continuous grip on her heart since yesterday squeezed hard again.

  Forcing her stiff neck into an upright position, she winced as pain shot down into her shoulder. She remembered that she’d decided to stay the night by John’s bedside, waiting for him to come round. It had been John squeezing her fingers that had roused her.

  ‘Bloody hospital,’ John said, his mouth dry. ‘Why am I here?’

  ‘Here.’ Rose tried to hide her relief as she picked up a beaker of water from the bedside table and held it to his lips. ‘I imagine you’re here because you’ve been doing your level best to ignore that terminal cancer you’ve got.’

  John directed his gaze upwards, his dark sunken eyes studying the ceiling tiles for some moments, Rose sitting paralysed at his side, finding it impossible to express all the emotion that had built up in her, suspecting that a crying, wailing daughter would be the last thing he would want.

  ‘I don’t want to be here,’ John said eventually. ‘Want to go home. I have work to do.’

  ‘Dad,’ Rose leant on the bed, resting her forehead on his hand for a moment, ‘why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘No time,’ John rasped. ‘You’ve only just got here. I suppose this is my just deserts. To lose you now.’

  ‘You’re not going to die,’ Rose told him emphatically, even though she didn’t know it was true. ‘Well, not yet, anyway. Not for a very long time. The doctor seemed to think you’ve been ignoring symptoms. I bet they’ll patch you up and we can still do what we planned. Live together at Storm Cottage, be a family.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ John said wearily, ‘perhaps.’

  ‘Don’t leave me, Dad,’ Rose begged him desperately, her determination to contain her emotions crumbling away. ‘Please, not again.’

  ‘I’ll try my best,’ John said. ‘Rose … you know how sorry I am, don’t you?’

  ‘You don’t have to say it again.’ Rose shook her head, turning her face away from him.

  ‘I do, not for you, for me. I need to say I am sorry over and over again as many times as I can. Please allow that. Allow me to ease my conscience just a little.’

  ‘Morning!’ A large and altogether too cheerful male nurse bustled into the room, trampling over the moment before Rose could say anything in reply.

  ‘Look who’s up and about then?’ he said brightly to John. ‘You’re nil by mouth till the doctor’s seen you, but I can bring you a cuppa if you like, love?’ he said, looking at Rose, who nodded gratefully.

  ‘I will be leaving shortly,’ John told the nurse, waving his hand at the door. ‘If you could bring me the form …’

  ‘Dad!’ Rose shook her head. ‘No, you will not. You will not leave. You will see what you can do to stay with me for as long as possible.’

  ‘She’s right, you know,’ the nurse said, still sounding breezy. ‘These last few weeks you’ll have with your loved ones are the ones that will mean the most. Don’t be in a hurry to give up whatever time you can get.’

  John sighed, leaning his head back against the pillow. ‘Very well.’

  ‘Now stay there, I’m going to phone Maddie, tell her how you are,’ Rose said.

  ‘Don’t tell her about …’ John said anxiously.

  ‘I won’t, not yet,’ Rose replied, wondering how she was going to explain any of this to her daughter. ‘Not until we know more. But Maddie isn’t like most children. The more she knows the less she worries. So when we know something, then I’ll talk to her. Now stay put.’

  ‘It’s not like I’m about to abseil out of the window,’ John said.

  ‘How is he?’ Frasier’s voice stopped Rose dead in her tracks as she walked down the hospital corridor. Slowly she turned round to set eyes on him, standing a few feet away from her, his face etched with concern. Forcing herself to stay put, and not run to him and beg him to put his arms around her, which is what she wanted most in all the world, Rose drew her shoulders back, and lifted her chin just a little.

  You are not that woman any more, Rose reminded herself in her father’s voice. You don’t need a man to look after you, not even Frasier. You can and you will stand alone.

  ‘They don’t really know yet,’ she said aloud, the exhaustion sounding in her voice. ‘I’ve only just found out about the cancer. I’m not sure – no one seems to be – what this latest collapse means …’ She stopped talking as her voice came dangerously close to breaking.

  ‘Rose,’ Frasier kept his distance, running his fingers through his fair hair, ‘I’m sorry that I knew and didn’t tell you. Your father really didn’t want you to know. He didn’t want to feel that you had to stay, had to forgive him.’

  ‘I know.’ Rose nodded wearily, too exhausted to be angry. ‘I understand that. I can’t say I wouldn’t rather have known. But I understand why you did what you did.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Frasier said, carefully mannered, distant again. More of a stranger to her in that moment than he had been all those years ago on the first morning they had met.

  ‘Rose?’ The nurse who had offered her tea called her name. ‘The doctor’s ready to talk to you and your dad now.’

  It was a long and silent drive back to Storm Cottage, and Rose would rather have done it with Tilda, but she had had to leave at some point late in the night, to make arrangements for her shop today. So it was Frasier who volunteered to take her
back home, so she’d have a night to prepare for John’s return.

  ‘So he’s coming home,’ Frasier said, as he opened the front door of the cottage for Rose, switching on all the lights. ‘That’s good news.’

  ‘He’s coming home to die,’ Rose said bleakly as she walked into the small still room, which seemed so empty without him in it. ‘Inoperable, that’s what they said. Untreatable now. All they can do is give him pain relief and the best quality of life possible. I’m losing him all over again.’

  She leant against the kitchen table, trying desperately to stop her shoulders from shaking, longing to be touched, comforted. But the only other person there stayed exactly where he was.

  ‘I know it must seem that way,’ Frasier said, clearly struggling to know what to say now that their relationship had been re-established once again, ‘but try to think of it as time, precious time to –’

  ‘Frasier,’ Rose cut across him, exhausted, mustering only the will to turn and face him. ‘Please, don’t try to tell me to think of this time we have together as a gift. It isn’t a gift, it’s a punishment, it’s a cruel trick, but it’s not a gift. I was foolish enough to think I’d found a new start in life, a place to be happy, people to be happy with, but I was wrong, wasn’t I?’

  ‘No,’ Frasier insisted. ‘Rose, I … got swept up in the moment, between you and me. I suppose I wanted to believe the fairy tale as much as you did. And that was wrong. I shouldn’t have done that to you, and I shouldn’t have blamed you for what happened with Ted –’

  ‘Nothing happened with me and Ted!’ Rose exclaimed, a brief burst of anger propelling her forward a few steps.

  ‘It doesn’t matter anyway,’ Frasier said, backing away. ‘It’s none of my business. I was stupid to let myself get carried away, to get involved with you when I knew in my heart that you weren’t ready. You’ve been through so much, you have so much yet to face.’

  ‘Isn’t it up to me to decide what I can cope with?’ Rose asked him tightly. ‘This isn’t about me, Frasier, it’s about you, changing your mind in the cold light of day.’

  Frasier did not contradict her. ‘I think it was the painting, and seeing you again, and, oh, I don’t know. I’m just an old romantic,’ he said, remorse on his face. ‘I’m sorry if I hurt you. But I want you to know that I am here for you and John. I will be your friend as long as you will have me.’