My Favourite Wife

by Tony Parsons

  ‘Don’t die, Dad,’ Bill said, and the tears came with the words, burning his eyes. ‘Please don’t die.’

  They had a lot of catching up to do.

  The old man woke up in the night, writhing in his bed, and Bill was suddenly awake, rising out of the chair and hitting the button that called for help. There was too much pain, he couldn’t stand it. Bill stood by the bed as a black nurse he had not seen before came and calmly gave the old man a little white pill in a plastic container. The nurse tucked in his sheets, gave Bill a weary smile and then left them. In the next bed a man cried out a woman’s name in his sleep. Bill stroked his father’s hand as the old man lay back, eyes closed, mouth open, and every breath another battle.

  ‘I wish it had been better between us,’ Bill said after a while, very quietly, almost to himself, and the feelings he had held back for so long came tumbling out. ‘You were always my hero. I always admired you. I always thought you were the most decent man I ever knew.’ He patted his father’s hand, so lightly that it seemed as if he hardly touched it. ‘I always wanted whatever it was that you and Mum had.’ Bill was silent for a bit. The ward was very still now, but he could sense all those bodies in the darkness beyond the curtain. He took a breath. ‘And I always loved you, Dad,’ he said. ‘It might not have seemed that way, but I never stopped loving you.’

  His father was sleeping.

  A few hours later the ward was stirring. There were voices, the smell of food, gathering light. A breakfast tray lay untouched in front of the old man.

  ‘How long have you known?’ Bill asked him.

  ‘A while,’ the old man said. ‘Didn’t want to worry you.’ He pushed the breakfast tray a bit further away. ‘Got enough on your plate.’ Bill could hear the breath in the ravaged lungs. ‘Tell me about your life,’ the old man said, closing his eyes. ‘I want to hear about it. Tell me how it’s going out there.’

  ‘Sure.’ Bill pulled his chair closer to the bed. ‘It’s going well, Dad. When you feel better, you’ll come out again. When Becca and Holly are back. I’ll fly you out. I will. First class this time, Dad.’

  He thought of all the times his father had bored him or made him impatient and ashamed and he wanted to make up for all that, he wanted to take it all back, and now it was too late, now it would always be too late.

  ‘We’ll meet you at the airport and it will be great. You’ll stay with us, Dad,’ Bill said, and the tears came again, because he knew he might as well be promising a round trip to the moon. ‘You’ll stay with me, Dad, you’ll stay with us, and it will all be good.’

  And the old man gently touched Bill’s hand, as though his young son was the one in need of comforting.

  During the day they could not talk, not with all the visitors around, not with all the chitchat and sympathy. At night, if the old man was not too distracted by the pain and not too numbed by the drugs they gave him to obliterate the pain, then they could do their catching up.

  ‘And are you all right? You and Becca?’

  Bill wished he had the stomach to lie. But he was sick of it. That’s why he would never make a truly accomplished liar. Because it ate him up. It took something from him that he would never get back.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said.

  The old man looked at him with hooded eyes, and Bill felt some of the old scared feeling that he always felt when he had displeased his father.

  ‘Got somebody else, have you?’ the old man said, guessing it all, and Bill wondered how this one-woman man knew so much about the frailty of modern relationships.

  Bill thought about lying, his last chance to lie, and then nodded. He waited for more questions, but the old man said nothing.

  Bill looked up at him. ‘You and Mum stayed together. If she hadn’t died then you’d be together now. How do you do that? How do you stay with someone for a lifetime?’

  The old man winced with pain. He exhaled once, and seemed to writhe against the pillows. Bill jumped up but his father motioned for him to sit down.

  ‘We weren’t perfect,’ he said. ‘Children always think their parents are made of different stuff to them. But we were no different. We had our moments.’

  Bill tried to place his mum and dad in their moments, and in the modern world, he tried to put them into somewhere like Paradise Mansions, into the mess he had made of his own life. But it was beyond his imagination.

  ‘But you stayed together,’ he said. ‘Whatever happened, you stayed together.’

  The pain was strong now. You could see it written all over the old man’s face. Bill was standing again. The old man held the metal box with the red button, but he didn’t press it, as if unsure if he should call the nurse now or try to wait a while.

  ‘Because you don’t leave your child for a woman,’ the old man told him, and he gave Bill a look as though he knew nothing. ‘Nobody’s that good in bed.’

  The old man liked bragging to the nurses. It was as if he had to impress the last young women he would ever know. Anything would do.

  ‘Look at this,’ he said, fondling his portable DVD player as the Czech nurse looked at his chart. ‘One of the latest gadgets. My dad bought me this.’

  Bill laughed with disbelief. His dad bought him that? He couldn’t let the old man get away with that. It meant he was slipping off the edge of sanity. And it frightened Bill. He touched his father’s arm, covered in black-and-yellow bruises from all the needles for the blood tests and the IV drip and the injections for the pain.

  ‘It was me,’ Bill said, with a smile to ease the way. ‘Remember? I got it for you.’

  Unexpected tears sprang into the old man’s eyes, confused and humiliated at this casual contradiction.

  ‘But my dad was here,’ he said with real anger. ‘I saw him.’

  The Czech nurse glanced at Bill and on her impassive face he saw the message loud and clear. Their minds go, you know. All the chemicals. By this stage they’re in their own little dream world.

  ‘You want shave?’ said the nurse, raising her voice. ‘You want nice I give little shave?’

  ‘I’ll do it,’ Bill said.

  On the seventh day Bill could no longer keep his eyes open. He slumped forward in the chair by the bed, his head lolling, unable to believe that he could be so tired.

  ‘Go home,’ the old man wheezed. ‘Go home and get a good night’s kip.’

  Bill was used to his father’s new voice by now. He had almost forgotten what the old voice sounded like. This was normal – the croaking voice, the lungs with no air, the unbearable pain of inhaling and exhaling. All normal now. Bill could hear every pitiful breath, every one of them as undeniable as a scar. But although Bill was fighting to keep his eyes open, his father seemed more awake than he had been for a long time. The pain had retreated for now, and with it the doses of morphine. The old man almost seemed restored to his former self. Giving his son orders, knowing what was best for him, and not willing to discuss it.

  ‘I mean it,’ the old man commanded. ‘Go get some kip.’

  Bill stood up, stretched his back. ‘I might do that,’ he said. ‘I might get some kip, Dad. Come back in the morning.’

  ‘Good idea.’ His father was sitting up in bed. But then he was always sitting up, even when he was sleeping. The old man nodded encouragement, not so stern now. Just wanting what was best for his son.

  ‘Just for a few hours,’ Bill said, and he looked at his father’s freshly shaven face, smooth as a baby, and he suddenly remembered what he had to tell him. ‘Dad?’

  The old man had sunk back into his pillow. There was no sign of the pain that seemed to suddenly paralyse every muscle in his face. He seemed peaceful. As though he were about to close his eyes and get some kip too. ‘What?’

  It was so simple. And so obvious. And so necessary. ‘I love you, Dad,’ Bill said. And then he laughed with embarrassment.

  The old man opened his eyes and smiled. ‘Yeah. I know you do. And I love you too. You know I do.’

 
Bill hung his head. ‘I’m so sorry, Dad.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘That I never told you before.’

  The old man smiled at his grown-up son. ‘Once is plenty.’

  They called him in the morning to tell him that his father had died.

  He knew what it was before he answered his mobile in the spare room of Sara’s house. He already knew. A world without his father in it.

  It was a one-minute phone call from someone he had never met and who he would never meet. They were as sympathetic as they could possibly be, under the circumstances. Bill sat on the edge of the bed and stared at his phone. It was the most natural thing in the world, and the most momentous. The end of the old man’s life. It felt both ordinary and epic.

  Bill went to the room’s small window, stared out at the suburban street and tried to feel something. But nothing came. He couldn’t even cry. All he could feel was a bleak relief that all that pain was over, and a nagging guilt that he had not been there at the end, and a gratitude that the old man had been his father.

  He went downstairs to where he could hear voices. He didn’t feel like company but Sara was there with Becca in the kitchen. Becca looked at Bill and stood up and she knew, just got it straight away, and he went to her arms and let her hold him before breaking away with an apologetic smile. Sara touched his arm and slipped out of the room.

  Becca pulled him close and he leaned against her, her blonde hair in his face, his mouth against her skin, and he revelled in his wife, he inhaled her, he wanted to get lost in her.

  ‘He was a lovely man,’ she said. ‘I’m so sorry, Bill.’ She looked at his face. ‘You should sleep on for a bit.’

  ‘But there’s so much to do, Bec.’ Feeling giddy with the thought of it.

  He had to collect his father’s things from the hospital. He had to arrange a funeral. He had to tell everyone who knew and loved the old man that he was gone. He had to register the death. All the banal admin of death. He had to do all of that. And he had no idea how to do any of these things.

  ‘It can all wait a while,’ Becca told him, and she stroked his back as he held her. ‘I know,’ she said. ‘I know, Bill. But you’ve still got us.’

  He nodded, turning away from her, hiding his face. In the hallway he bumped into Sara, rounding up her children. To get them out of the house, Bill thought. To give us space. They were girls of six and eight and a boy of ten. And then he was in Sara’s arms and he was touched by her tears, the tears that he couldn’t cry himself.

  Sara was an older, sportier version of Becca, wearing a T-shirt advertising her Pilates class, and her cropped, dyed red hair was the only sign of any other life beyond the one she had now.

  Becca had been right about Sara and Bill had been wrong. Sara had been through her adventures, and her changes, and come out the other side as a real sister to Becca, and a loving aunt to Holly, and a friend to Bill’s family, even though he had not known it until now.

  Sara’s partner came down the stairs. He shook Bill’s hand, offered his condolences and told Sara’s children they were going to the park. He was a tall, quiet man in a track suit, some sort of personal trainer. Bill had been wrong about him too.

  Here was the little family that had looked after Holly when Becca was nursing her own father, and they were clearly all such decent people, and so smitten with Holly, and so sorry to hear of the death of Bill’s dad, that Bill felt a flush of shame. Not only for what he had thought of them, but what he had thought of his wife. How could he have believed that Becca would ever leave Holly somewhere she wasn’t safe and loved? How could he have imagined that? What was wrong with him?

  ‘Thank you,’ Bill said to them. ‘For everything. I’ll go to see Holly.’

  She was watching a Wonder Pets DVD in the living room. He picked her up but she squirmed out of his arms, her eyes not leaving the TV screen.

  ‘I want to watch this,’ she said.

  The room was cool and dark and the only light came from the screen where the Wonder Pets were rescuing some sort of egg.

  ‘But when are they going to have the happy ending?’ Holly asked him.

  He smiled. ‘I’m sure they’ll get there in the end,’ he said, standing up and lifting his daughter with him. Heavy, he thought. Heavier all the time. But always his baby girl. She peeped at the DVD over his shoulder. He wanted to get it out of the way. He wanted to be beyond this moment.

  ‘Darling, your granddad’s in heaven now.’ He didn’t know what to say to her. He didn’t know how to explain death to a four-year-old. He didn’t know where to begin. ‘He loved you so much. Just so much. And he will always be looking down on you, and he will never stop loving you.’

  ‘I know,’ she said, turning her blue eyes from the television to her father. ‘Granddad was here.’

  ‘Yes, Granddad Joe is always here for you, and he loves you too,’ Bill said. ‘I’m not talking about Mummy’s daddy. I’m not talking about Granddad Joe.’

  Holly shook her head impatiently. ‘Me neither. Not Granddad Joe. My other Granddad. The one that died.’ She looked at him now and did not turn away her clear, unwavering gaze. ‘Your daddy. He was here. And he smiled at me.’ Holly nodded once, as if it was all settled. ‘It’s true, you know.’

  He looked at her for a moment and then he held her tighter than he had ever held her before. Winter sunshine was pouring into the room, the windows of the suburban London house turning to blocks of blazing gold, and Bill had to close his eyes against it.

  ‘I know it’s true,’ he whispered to his daughter, and his heart was full of love and grief and an edge of fear that he could not deny.

  The key turned in the lock and Bill had to press hard against the door to move all the junk mail.

  Becca followed him into the darkness and stale air of his father’s house, watching his face as he paused and looked around, as if seeing the place where he had grown up for the first time.

  She found a switch and turned on some lights.

  ‘You okay?’ she said, touching his arm.

  He nodded. ‘You can’t breathe in here,’ he said.

  ‘I’ll open some windows,’ she said.

  She looked around for a key to the back door and found it under the mat that said Our Home in florid, faded letters. She threw open the back door and looked out at the scrubby patch of neglected garden, filling her lungs with air that didn’t taste of tobacco and illness.

  Bill was in the living room, peering at the bookcase. Under one arm he carried a stack of flat-packed cardboard boxes and in the other hand he had a thick black roll of rubbish bags. That was their job today. To decide what went to Oxfam and what was thrown away.

  ‘Remember this?’ he said, and she was glad to see him smile.

  He was looking at a photograph of Holly. She was three years old, holding a thick pink crayon like a miniature javelin and grinning at the tiny black girl standing next to her.

  ‘First day of nursery,’ Becca said. Their eyes scanned the bookcase. It was a bookcase that contained no books, just a few ragged copies of Reader’s Digest and National Geographic, some souvenirs of foreign holidays – Spanish castanets, a Chinese doll – and shelf after shelf of family photographs.

  Bill’s parents on their wedding day. Bill as a baby in the arms of his mother. Bill as a crop-haired toddler with his father down on one knee beside him, the boy standing on his father’s thigh. Bill and Becca on their wedding day. And Holly everywhere, from birth to now. If Becca looked quickly along the shelves, it was like watching her daughter grow up before her eyes. ‘He was lonely,’ Bill said.

  ‘He had a lot of people who loved him,’ she said. ‘You saw that at the funeral.’

  Bill picked up a TV Guide on the coffee table, still open at the day his father had been rushed to hospital. His finger traced the favourite programmes ringed in red ink. Cop shows, hospital dramas, sport.

  ‘Shall we make a start?’ Becca said. ‘Or do you want to do it some other time?�
�� He shook his head.

  After she had filled a few rubbish sacks with the contents of the kitchen cupboards, much of it with a use-by date from the last century, Becca went upstairs. Bill was in the bedroom, sitting on the bed with a green box file on his lap. She sat down next to him. He was holding a photograph clipped from a magazine, a picture of Bill in black tie with Becca in an evening gown by his side. They held champagne flutes and each other, smiling uncertainly.

  ‘Our first Burns night at the firm. We look so young.’

  He nodded but said nothing, and she saw that the box on his lap was full of cuttings from trade papers. Bill made no move to touch them so, very carefully, Becca began to leaf through them, as if afraid they might disintegrate in her hands.

  ‘Look,’ she said, showing Bill a torn and sellotaped certificate with his name on it that said, LEGAL WEEK AWARDS – SECOND RUNNER UP – HIGHLY COMMENDED.

  ‘All the crap he kept,’ Bill said. He shook his head and covered his face with his hands. ‘I just wanted to make him proud of me.’

  Becca put her arm around his shoulders. ‘Look around,’ she said. ‘You did.’

  He kept his hands over his face. ‘Don’t give up on me, Bec,’ he said.

  She laughed at the thought. ‘Why would I do that?’ she said.

  The three of them stood at the foot of the hill, waiting. The only sounds were the distant buzz of the late-afternoon traffic, the voices of small children playing in the park, and the wind whipping through the bare branches of the trees up on Primrose Hill.

  Holly yawned. Bill looked at Becca.

  ‘It’s not going to happen,’ he said. ‘Let’s go.’

  Becca shook her head.

  ‘Wait. Let’s wait just a little bit longer.’

  Holly sighed elaborately. ‘Oh, come on, Mummy,’ she said, her shoulders slumping theatrically to convey her exhaustion. ‘Please.’

  ‘One more minute,’ Becca said, not budging. She felt her husband and her daughter exchange exasperated looks, and ignored them. She had faith.