Swan River

by David Reynolds

  ‘I’m sorry. I was on holiday. Ann didn’t know where I was.’ I sat down beside him and pulled the chair round so I could see him properly.

  ‘I’ve got to get out of here. It’s full of lunatics. Look at him.’ He gestured towards the young man playing with his tie. ‘He does that all day long – and I watch him.’

  ‘Isn’t there a television?’

  ‘No. There’s a dormitory, this place… and we eat in there.’ He waved his stick towards a pair of swing doors. ‘Horrible food. I’ve got to get out. It’s killing me.’

  ‘I know Ann’s trying to arrange something. I’ll talk to her. We’ll get you somewhere better as soon as possible.’

  ‘I want to go home.’ He cleared his throat, but his voice remained a loud whisper. ‘I’m all right. I shouldn’t be here. Look at these people.’ He glanced down the row beyond me. ‘The old ones are senile and the young ones are mad.’ He gestured at the other side of the room. I noticed for the first time that on my father’s side of the room there were about eight old men staring into space and on the other side a similar number of younger men, many of whom I could see were handicapped.

  He put his hand in his jacket pocket and took a long time to pull out his tobacco tin. ‘Could you roll as many as you can with that?’ I took it from him. ‘Good chap. I find it difficult at the moment.’ The tin was almost full of tobacco. I started rolling and asked him if he had any books. ‘Ann brought some. They’re in my cupboard. Find it hard to concentrate if I read for very long. She brought a Simenon. I like that.’

  I handed him a cigarette and, with some difficulty and a little swearing, he managed to light it with his Ronson. I told him about my holiday and he seemed interested and told me he had dreamed that he was driving his car in Scotland; he thought he had been on his way to see his friend Robbie Robertson in Montrose. ‘I’d like to be out driving my car… You could call a taxi and we could go home now.’

  ‘Better not. You need looking after for a bit longer. You don’t want all the trouble of cooking and washing up… and all that.’ He shrugged with one hand; the other remained on his stick. I tried hard to think of something to talk about and made a comment about Czechoslovakia – the Russians had driven tanks into Prague two days before – though I didn’t expect him to know about it.

  ‘Disgraceful. I’m quite a fan of Dubçek. I’m losing faith in Russia – again. They’re not proper communists; they’re nearly as bad as Joe Stalin.’

  ‘How did you know about that?’

  ‘The Guardian. I get it every day. Read all of it before lunch… even the horse racing.’ He smiled. ‘Nothing else to do. I read that that awful man Nixon is likely to be the next President of the United States. God help us!… No Guardian today, though.’ He raised his hand from his knee again. ‘Look at that poor devil.’ Across the room a man was screwing up his face and making grunting noises. ‘I’ll show you where I sleep.’

  I helped him to stand up, and he took my arm as we walked slowly out the way I had come in and along a cream-painted corridor. He slept on an iron bedstead, the second in a row of six with six others facing. An old man was lying in the bed opposite looking at us. My father smiled, let go of my arm and raised his hand in a salute. The man’s lips moved; he seemed to be trying to speak but there was no sound. My father turned away and said, ‘Completely senile. Pop off soon, I expect.’ He raised his eyebrows without smiling and pointed at the bed at the end of the row, next to his. It had no bedclothes – just a striped cotton sheet which fell to the floor on both sides. ‘Chap in that bed died last night. Woke me up when they came and took him away… Though they tried to be quiet.’

  I looked at the bed and back at the old man on the other side of the room.

  My father sat down on his bed. ‘Got my children here… some of them anyway.’ He laughed. There was a frame on the cupboard beside his bed, with photographs of Ann, Madeline, my elder half-sister, and me on top of the hill in Somerset. ‘Madeline’s been to see me. She’s marvellous; she knows how to talk to these people.’ Madeline and her brother Bob, whose photograph wasn’t in the frame, were his children from his first marriage. ‘She’ll get me out of here, if Ann doesn’t.’

  I hadn’t seen Madeline for a few years; she was a physiotherapist who worked in a hospital for children with cerebral palsy – my father often described her as a saint.

  ‘It all has to be kept tidy. The nurses are very bossy.’ He opened the cupboard. The previous day’s Guardian was underneath his washbag

  and a small pile of books. On a higher shelf were three one-ounce packets of A1 tobacco, some green Rizla papers, two bananas and a packet of fruit shortcake biscuits.

  We wandered back to what was called the day room and soon afterwards I was politely asked to leave; visiting time was over and the patients had to have their tea. My father grasped both my hands. ‘Come back quickly. There’s a good chap.’

  ‘I will.’ I kissed his cheek.

  ‘Ann’s got Joey, you know.’

  ‘Yes, I know.’

  ‘Bye, old chap.’

  I waved as I left the room. He lifted his arm and smiled.

  I walked around the ground floor of the building, looking for a doctor, and found myself in a kitchen where a man directed me to the sisters’ office. My father’s ward sister was a small, energetic woman who readily agreed that he shouldn’t be on her ward or in her hospital – which was for the mentally disturbed; they were trying to find him a room in an old people’s home, but they were scarce and it could take time. When I asked if she thought he would get back to normal, she said that he had made progress but she wasn’t qualified to say more.

  I walked slowly towards the station with my eyes on the ground and my hands in my pockets. My eyelids felt heavy and I looked forward to closing them on the train – perhaps I would even sleep, though it was only six o’clock. I wanted him to get back his speed and his energy and his sense of fun – the humour he had shown today had been cynical and at times macabre. But then, a week ago he couldn’t speak, and there was nothing funny about that place that wasn’t related to madness or death – so perhaps it would all come back.

  I phoned Ann when I got home. She had no more idea than I did whether he would get better, but didn’t sound very confident. She said that she would keep badgering the county authorities to get him into a normal old people’s home. I asked if she and her husband, Adrian, had any money to pay for him to go to a private one. She laughed drily. ‘We’ve got two sons, David. The only person who might do that is your mother. Anyway, he wouldn’t approve; he’s a socialist.’ She laughed again. I thought of reminding her of something he often used to say – ‘I am not going to suffer from a system I despise’ – but decided not to.

  I didn’t think my mother had any spare money – she was over sixty now and had stopped working – but I phoned to tell her what had happened to my father. She sounded concerned – a little for him, but mostly for me. I told her that I didn’t feel like starting my new job – as editor of a small weekly paper called the Freethinker – the next day. I had been flattered that the managers of the National Secular Society who published it had placed their faith in me, and had been looking forward to it. But now it seemed like a nuisance; it was just something I had to do. She said that she was sure my father was proud of me and my new job – which I knew to be true – and would hate the idea of his illness sapping my energy.

  * * * * *

  A few days later my father was moved to an old people’s home on the edge of Slough, and I went there the next weekend. He had his own room with white walls, a white bedspread and a window overlooking a large garden. He smiled more readily and was actually pleased with some aspects of the place. He liked some of the nurses and beamed with pride as he told me he had become friendly with a fellow patient, a woman who had read some of the books he had written – men and women were allowed to mix. Later, as we walked slowly along a path outside, he pointed to an old lady knitting on a bench; he
put his hand beside his mouth and whispered loudly, ‘My fan.’ He nudged me and grinned.

  We were told that, as well as the effects of his stroke, which made him clumsy and forgetful, he was suffering from hardening of the arteries which slowed all his movements. For a time I kept faith in the possibility of his getting better – back to normal, back to his home and his car, back to me. But soon, even I couldn’t ignore the truth: drugs might keep his arteries open, but the part of his brain that had been destroyed would never grow back.

  He became an amiable old man who took a long time – and often needed help – to do simple things such as eat or undo the zip on his trousers; but, as he always had, he continued to think, albeit very slowly, about the things that he thought mattered and to send me his ideas in letters and on postcards. And he took trouble to read the Freethinker, particularly my editorials, and send comments and messages of praise. He couldn’t work his typewriter and his handwriting became increasingly unclear; lines of words, some of them very faint, meandered up and down the page and crossed over each other. I would examine them under a bright light through a magnifying glass, determined to understand, but frequently frustrated.

  I tried to visit him every other weekend through that autumn, winter and spring, and sometimes Dave drove me down in his minivan and came in for a while to see him. As well as his ‘fan’, he had other friends at the home – he played cribbage with a man who had fought in the Battle of the Somme – and had visits from his friend the chemist, Wing Commander Hayes and Old Bowen. Now and again he would say that he wanted to go home – the rent was still being paid from his pension – and to drive the Cresta – which Ann was looking after – and when we said he wasn’t yet well enough, he would shake his head and quickly seem to forget.

  Early in that summer, of 1969, a doctor recommended that he have minor surgery because he was becoming incontinent. There was a risk in such an operation, but otherwise he would soon have to leave the home for a geriatric ward, where dealing with incontinence was part of the routine – and where he would have a bed instead of a room and encounter, once again, those who were crazy as well as old.

  * * * * *

  On the day after his operation I found him lying between crisp, white sheets in a long, white-painted ward. The room was filled with sunlight, and outside the windows were treetops and a flat blue sky. Two rows of beds, all of them neatly tucked and with the same intense whiteness, stretched towards a vanishing point beyond the furthest wall. Only one bed was occupied, halfway along on the right. His head was on the pillow and his eyes were moving rapidly; his cheeks were sunken and he looked much older and more tired than he had just a week before. He didn’t notice me straight away. I leaned over him. ‘Hello. Dad.’

  He turned his head towards me and frowned. For a second he didn’t seem to recognise me. Then his eyes focused. ‘David?’ His lips were dry, his voice a low croak. He moved his hand under the sheet.

  ‘How are you feeling?’

  He tried to clear his throat but it seemed to be too great an effort. ‘I’ve been driving my car.’ He tried to bring his hand out from under the blankets. I reached over and put my hand on the sheet over his. ‘On the road to Cookham.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Yes.’

  The only other person in the room was a dark-haired male nurse, whose immaculate white coat matched the whiteness of everything else. He had been at the other end of the ward when I arrived. Now he was standing at the end of the bed. ‘Is very weak – your grandfather.’

  ‘My father.’

  ‘Sorry. He will take time to get better, to get strong.’ He spoke with an Italian accent. ‘Will stay here in bed many days. I look after him. His operation and his anaesthetic, they weaken him.’

  ‘How long till he is up and walking about?’

  ‘Is hard to say. A few days. A week. Doctors decide. Is nice for him to see you, but perhaps not stay too long. He is very tired.’

  He smiled and walked quietly away. I turned back to my father. ‘He says you need lots of rest. He seems nice.’

  My father was looking at me. A smile just showed around his eyes. ‘Nice of you to come – a long way.’

  ‘It’s not far. I wanted to see you.’

  He moved his arm under the blankets. ‘Hold my hand… please.’ I pulled down the sheet, lifted his hand and smoothed the sheet back over his chest. His hand was dry and cooler than mine, but not cold. I squeezed it gently. The lines around his eyes deepened and his mouth moved towards a smile. I felt pressure on my hand and looked down. Those who noticed them had always admired his hands; they were large with long tapering fingers and elegant nails. His hand looked as it always had – bony and deep brown with some dark hairs towards his wrist.

  ‘Who’s that?’ His mouth was open and he was looking past me. ‘Tell him to go away.’ I looked round. The nurse was a few beds away. There was no one else. ‘Tell him to stop grinning at me with his monkey face.’ He had stopped smiling and looked frightened.

  ‘Who? The nurse? He’s over there.’

  ‘That man… outside the window.’

  My stomach tightened. There was no one outside the window. We were two floors above the ground.

  ‘He’s often there, making faces.’

  ‘It’s all right. There’s no one there. Not really.’ I hoped my voice didn’t betray my dismay.

  The nurse came over, smiling. ‘There he is. Get him to go away.’

  Still smiling, the nurse walked off up the ward. My father seemed to relax. He squeezed my hand again. ‘You’re a good boy. Look after your old father.’ His eyelids started to close. Then he opened them and looked at me. ‘Thought I was in heaven when I woke up in here. Everything is white.’ He seemed to smile as he shut his eyes again.

  I waited a minute. He seemed to be asleep, so I let go of his hand and kissed him on the forehead. ‘I’ll see you soon.’

  I spoke to the nurse on my way out, and asked why my father was the only patient in such a large ward. He told me that some of the men were watching television and others were outside, walking in the garden; the ward was for men recuperating after surgery – some of them were young and stayed only two or three days.

  ‘My father imagined he saw a man outside the window. Has he done that before?’

  ‘Yes. Then he thinks it is me. I come and I go away again. Then he is all right. Is the anaesthetic. In older person it takes longer to leave his system.’

  I walked down the stairs and out into the sun. I wondered how much the nurse knew, whether my father would really improve once the anaesthetic had worn off. I had a sense that he would die soon, that this was the last stage of the process that had begun nearly a year before, and I thought about why I was not more upset. Presumably the shock had been his stroke, the end of the life I used to enjoy with him – and its repercussions had become apparent only gradually. Since then, the fumbling, nice man that he had become had not really been him. There had been small moments – a remark or a look, or a phrase on a postcard – but that was all.

  I knew Ann had seen him that morning. I rang her from a telephone box and asked whether she thought he would get better.

  She didn’t know. The doctor had said that he hadn’t recovered as they had hoped. She said that perhaps he shouldn’t have had the operation, but then reminded herself, and me, of how he would have hated living in a geriatric ward and being completely incontinent.

  I had a holiday planned, starting the next weekend. I told Ann that I thought he might die in that time, and that I should cancel it.

  She laughed, nervously it seemed to me, and told me not to worry. ‘He’ll last two weeks.’

  Later that week I phoned Ann again. She had been to see him and said he was a little better. I should go away, enjoy my holiday and not worry. She and Madeline would be visiting.

  * * * * *

  Four of us camped on a beach in Corsica, swimming in a turquoise sea, cooking on wood fires and shitting deep among pines. I s
eemed to be falling in love again. I phoned Ann from a glass cubicle in a square in front of a church. ‘Daddy’s a little better. Don’t worry. Enjoy yourself. Phone me when you’re back.’

  I got home very late and was woken by the telephone early the next morning. It was Ann. ‘I’m glad you’re back. He’s not at all well. They’ve moved him to another ward, on the ground floor.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘He’s just a lot weaker. His heart and his arteries… He’s just running down.’

  ‘You mean – he’s going to die soon?’

  ‘I don’t think he’ll last another week. But they haven’t said that. It’s just that he looks so ill.’

  ‘Should I go today?’ It was a Friday, and I had planned my holiday so that I could go back to work on this day. I had things to do; if I didn’t do them, the paper wouldn’t come out.

  ‘No. Go tomorrow. Or Sunday. I’ll phone if he gets worse.’

  * * * * *

  His new ward was busy with patients, nurses and visitors. He was leaning against pillows; the flesh seemed to have left his face and the skin was stretched around his jaw; the yellow tinge that I had noticed two weeks before had deepened. But he smiled and lifted his hand when he saw me.

  ‘Good chap… for coming to see your old father.’ His voice was low and throaty. ‘I’ve missed you.’

  I kissed him, sat down and asked about the new ward.

  ‘I don’t like it. They’re much more bossy than Ricky… and his friends upstairs. They’ve hidden my stick… somewhere… so I can’t get to the television room… and I can’t smoke here in bed.’ His speech came in short bursts as he paused for breath. He looked at me for a moment. ‘If you gave me an arm… we could go to the television room.’ He pointed to some swing doors, five beds away.

  ‘Are you sure that’s all right? Can you walk that far?’

  ‘Easily. Just need you to lean on… like a stick.’

  ‘What about the nurses?’

  ‘They won’t care… and to hell with them if they do. It’ll do me good to stretch my legs. Been lying here for days.’