Silas’s operation is scheduled for the following week. We are told that if it is left any longer, there is a risk of his condition deteriorating so much that he will be unfit to undergo surgery at all. In the meantime, he has further tests, and is given drugs to “stabilise his condition”. He looks terribly ill, but remains in good spirits, enjoying all the attention and making notes on everything pertaining to his illness and its treatment. As for the rest of us, we have been warned that Silas is a very sick man, and that while his chances are good, we must take into consideration that he is no longer young. While I think we have all managed to work this out for ourselves, it is not comforting to have it spelt out by someone in the know. Sometimes I wish that the medical profession would keep their more disappointing thoughts to themselves.
Poor Eric is beside himself with worry, and is unable to concentrate on anything, and Mum isn’t much better. I also feel very sorry for Kent, who having only recently discovered that he has two fathers, is now having to come to terms with the fact that he may end up with just one (and a broken one at that, for who can imagine Eric without Silas?). Dad, on the other hand, is coming into his own, and while his offers of leading us all in prayer are politely declined, his support is very welcome. He makes telephone calls, does shopping, and drives people to the hospital to visit Silas. He even feeds the chickens. While I’m sure he does all this with the best of intentions, I also feel it must help to take his mind off recalcitrant insurers and unreliable plumbers, for work on the house is only just getting started, and my father is not a patient man.
The day of Silas’s operation is one of those extraordinary January days when spring decides to put in a fleeting, tantalising appearance; a brief reminder that winter isn’t here to stay, and that whatever else is happening, there’s light at the end of the seasonal tunnel. There are snowdrops in the garden, and the first hints of birdsong, the sky is a pale, washed blue, and the air is fresh and fragrant. As we drive to the hospital for our vigil (for it’s unthinkable that we should not be in the building while Silas has his operation), I think we’re probably all feeling the poignancy of the contrast between our own emotions and the beauty of the world outside.
I have always thought that waiting is one of the hardest things we have to do in life. Whether it’s waiting for exam results, or for the longed-for phone call from a lover, or even for something relatively unimportant like the arrival of a visitor, it seems to have a paralysing effect. I can never get down to anything when I’m waiting. It’s as though life is put on hold, and nothing can move forward until the thing which is awaited has happened and I am released once more into activity, whatever form that may take.
It’s like this today. Eric requested that Mum, Kent and I should accompany him to the hospital, and here we all are in the Relatives’ Room, which is bland and perhaps purposely characterless, with its pale walls and its fawn-upholstered chairs and its jug of plastic roses. Waiting. I can almost hear the time ticking by, although the clock on the wall makes no sound, and while there is plenty we could be saying, we all seem lost for words. There are magazines on the table, but none of us has touched them, and I have brought a book, but couldn’t think of reading it. I am praying to the God I don’t really believe in, Mum is almost certainly doing the same, Kent is standing by the window studying the distant view of the car park, and Eric is sitting on the edge of a chair, as though at any moment he may be required to leap up and do something. I have paid two visits to the coffee machine outside to purchase plastic cups of something warm and murky, and a nurse has popped in a couple of times to see if we’re okay. Otherwise, the silence ticks by virtually uninterrupted. I don’t think I have ever known time pass so slowly.
After two hours and fifty-five minutes (yes, I’ve been counting. I’m sure everyone’s been counting), a doctor arrives in blue theatre scrubs. I think we all immediately know that something is wrong.
‘Yes?’ Eric jumps to his feet. ‘How is he? What’s happened?’
Very carefully, the doctor closes the door behind him and turns to face us.
‘I’m afraid there’s been — a complication,’ he tells us.
‘A complication? What complication? How is he? What’s happened?’ Eric lets rip with a barrage of questions.
‘I’m afraid —’
‘Yes? Yes? Come on! Out with it! What has happened to Silas?’ Eric grabs hold of his sleeve. ‘Tell us. You have to tell us!’
‘I’m trying to tell you.’ Gently, the doctor disengages himself from Eric’s grip. ‘The operation itself went well, and the new valve is functioning nicely. But unfortunately your brother — he is your brother isn’t he? — suffered a haemorrhage during surgery. He lost a lot of blood very quickly, and while we replaced it as fast as we could, his blood pressure fell dangerously low. There is the possibility of —’
‘What? The possibility of what? What’s going to happen to him?’
‘The possibility — just the possibility — of brain damage.’
Time stops ticking. For a few moments, life itself seems to stand still. In these few moments I know that whatever happens, I shall never forget this day, this moment, this horrid little room, which seems suddenly redolent of all the grief, all the tragedies, all the bad news which has been released within its walls. I shall remember Eric’s mismatched socks, just visible beneath his trousers; the stain — coffee? — on the carpet, shaped rather like a map of Italy; the hideous roses, with their faded plastic petals; the single leafless sapling outside the window; the tiny vapour trail of a distant aeroplane across the ice-blue sky.
And the sound. The first sound which breaks the silence. The soft, heartbreaking sound of Eric weeping.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
The next few days are an agony of waiting, punctuated by the mundane tasks needed to keep ourselves (not to mention the animals) alive and give some semblance of normality. Ordinary everyday jobs like cleaning my teeth or washing up the dishes take on a strange irrelevance; I keep stopping to ask myself what I’m doing them for. What does it matter if dirty plates stack up on the draining board, or my toothbrush goes unused for a couple of days? Who cares? I suppose I have been fortunate. Up until now, I have never had any kind of brush with tragedy. I recall with equanimity the long-ago death of my grandfather; he was old, and I scarcely knew him. When I was about twelve, the family cat was run over, and I did shed tears over him. But this is so much bigger, its potential for grief so much greater. I have grown to love my uncles dearly, and my sadness is compounded many times over by that of Eric, who is quite distraught. Silas is being kept sedated to “give his body a rest”, and the extent of any damage won’t be known until they withdraw the drugs and let him wake up. Eric spends his days sitting by Silas’s bed in the Intensive Care Unit, among the forest of tubes and drips and the beeps and sighs of the machinery upon which Silas now depends, and his nights pacing up and down in his room, which is next to mine, sometimes weeping, sometimes listening to the BBC world service on the radio. I hear him going downstairs at two and three in the morning to make cups of tea, his footsteps slow and apologetic and infinitely weary.
‘Are you all right, Eric?’ I join him in the kitchen, unable to bear the idea that he is down here suffering on his own while everyone else is asleep.
Eric looks up. He seems mildly surprised.
‘Oh, Ruth. What are you doing down here?’
‘I came to see you.’
‘Ah.’ He pauses, kettle in hand. ‘Cup of tea?’
‘Please.’ I sit down at the table. ‘Eric what can I do to help?’
He sits beside me, nursing his mug between his hands. ‘Nothing. There’s nothing anyone can do. That’s the trouble.’ He manages a pale smile. ‘You see, we’ve never been apart before.’
‘What, not ever?’
‘Not ever. Well, maybe a night or two here and there, but never longer than that. As children we did everything together, and we’ve lived together ever since. There’s been no need
to be apart.’
‘Oh, Eric. I’m so, so sorry.’ I’m unable to think of anything else to say, because of course there’s nothing anyone can say. All I know is that Eric’s heart is breaking, and however much we may want to help him, he is beyond our reach, in a world of his own.
‘I can’t think of anything else, do anything else. I can’t even be anything else. All I am is Silas’s brother. Waiting.’
Waiting. That word again. Eric is suspended between the chance of hope and the expectation of grief, and for the time being at least, has come down on the side of grief, and in his state of suspense (which when I think about it now, takes on a whole extra meaning) is totally disabled.
I take his hand and rub it gently between my own. It feels terribly cold, but I doubt whether Eric is aware of it. He’s probably been pacing about for ages in his unheated bedroom. He hasn’t even bothered to put on a dressing gown. I get up to fetch a coat from the hall, and put it round his shoulders.
‘You’ll catch your death,’ I tell him, ‘And then what use will you be to Silas if — when he needs you?’
‘I suppose we always assumed we’d die together,’ he says, and I know that he hasn’t heard a word I’ve been saying. ‘Silly, isn’t it? But we were conceived together, born together, went to school together. We even started shaving on the same day. There wasn’t much to shave, but we shaved it off anyway with our dad’s old razor. And we felt so proud. Real men, we told each other. Not boys any more. Men.’
‘I’ve often wondered what it must be like to be a twin.’ I stir sugar into my tea, which is much too strong.
‘And I’ve often wondered what it must be like not to be one. To be an individual, unique, entirely different from everyone else. As children, we were always being compared with each other. Our school reports, exams, team games.’ He sighs. ‘We both hated games. We were the ones to be picked last for team games, but it was still a competition to see which of us would be picked the very last. Usually no-one knew which of us they were picking anyway, as they could never tell us apart.’
I know that not all twins — even identical ones — are as similar as this; some in fact contrive to be quite different. There were identical twins in my class at school who went to considerable lengths to make themselves as individual as possible, even to the extent of wearing their school uniforms in different ways. Few needed (or indeed, dared) to confuse them. But it seems that Eric and Silas have always delighted in their similarity and the confusion it causes, and don’t appear to need to establish their individuality, although it’s certainly there for anyone who takes the trouble to get to know them.
‘He’s still alive, you know,’ I say, after a moment. ‘They say there’s a chance he’ll make a full recovery. You told me so yourself.’
‘Yes. But when I see him lying there, he looks so — so not Silas, somehow. Almost as though he’s already gone.’
‘I don’t think anyone looks their best when they’re unconscious,’ I tell him gently.
‘No. You’re right.’ He pulls the jacket more closely around him. ‘I suppose I was always the pessimist. I left the optimism to Silas. I mean, look at the way he approached this operation. Anyone would think he was going on holiday.’
‘Yes. He’d have been so interested in all this, wouldn’t he? It seems such a waste that he’s not awake to — I don’t know — to enjoy it.’
‘Yes. He would have loved it, wouldn’t he? All the attention; all those drugs and machines and things. I’ve been keeping notes, you know.’
‘What notes?’
‘A kind of diary. What happened when; which doctors came to see him and what they did and said. That kind of thing. In case … well, for when he gets better.’
‘That’s such a nice idea, Eric. He’ll love it.’
Eric smiles, as though for a brief moment he’s actually forgotten the seriousness of Silas’s condition, then I watch his expression change as reality kicks in again.
‘Oh Ruth. What would I do without him? Or if he’s damaged; if he’s unable to speak or understand. How will I bear it?’
I give Eric a hug. ‘I think you have to do the “one day at a time” thing,’ I say. ‘I’ve always hated that expression, but there’s no other choice, is there? We have to — oh, I don’t know — keep the home fires burning for Silas. For when he comes home. Whatever condition he’s in. There’s not a lot we can do for him at the moment, but we can do that.’
‘You’re right, Ruth. Of course you are. And I found this amazing hare on my way back from the hospital this afternoon. He’s never done a hare before. You don’t often see them near the road, do you? But this one’s enormous, and absolutely perfect, although it must have been knocked down.’
‘It sounds wonderful. What — what have you done with it?’
‘I put it in the freezer. Double wrapped. Right at the bottom. Underneath Dorothy.’ (Dorothy was a daughter of Sarah’s, who having proved to be barren has recently been despatched and butchered into neat little packages). ‘She’ll never find it there.’
We exchange complicit smiles. Mum accepts most of the things which go on at Applegarth, but draws a line at Silas putting his specimens in the freezer where we keep the food. I don’t suppose even she would object under the present circumstances, but Eric’s right. It’s better that she shouldn’t find out.
There is the sound of footsteps coming down the stairs, and Mum joins us in the kitchen. I notice for the first time that she seems to have aged since Silas’s illness.
‘What are you two doing?’ she asks, surprised.
‘Tea and sympathy,’ Eric tells her. ‘Like some?’
‘What, tea or sympathy?’
‘Either.’
‘A bit of both, I think.’ Mum puts her arms around Eric and for the first time I notice how alike they are. I suppose that because of the twin thing, I’ve never considered that my mother might resemble her brothers, but now I see that she shares their eye colour, and her expression — one of sadness and concern — is very like Eric’s.
We sit round the table together talking softly, trying to reassure each other that “everything will be all right”. While I join in, I still wonder why it is that people always say this to each other in times of crisis, as though defying fate to deal the blow they fear, while as often as not it’s perfectly obvious that things are very far from all right, and moreover, are unlikely to become so.
There’s a knock at the back door, and I unlock it to find Kent, wearing a coat over his pyjamas.
‘I saw the kitchen light on. Is everything okay?’
‘Well, nothing’s new, if that’s what you mean.’ I fetch another mug from the cupboard.
‘I’m not — intruding?’ He takes off his boots and places them side by side on the doormat.
‘Of course you’re not. Come and join the party.’
Poor Kent. One of the family, and yet not one of the family, this must be so hard for him. Mum still doesn’t know his full story, although I think she may have her suspicions, and Dad certainly knows nothing. And while I’m sure he must have told Kaz about it, his real position, whatever that might be, is as yet unknown and unacknowledged. He must be in an emotional no man’s land at the moment, but is too sensitive and thoughtful a person to draw any kind of attention to himself.
‘Can I do anything?’ he asks now.
‘No. No-one can do anything. That’s the trouble,’ Eric says. ‘The not doing anything.’
‘Who’s not doing anything?’ Kaz wanders into the kitchen, ruffled and bleary-eyed, her skimpy nightie ill-concealed beneath a kind of giant cardigan. She and Kent exchange one of their glances, but I no longer mind. Now is not the time for petty jealousy.
‘All of us,’ I tell her. ‘For Silas.’
‘Well, we can cheer up for a start. Silas would hate all this.’ She stifles a yawn, and treats us to one of her infectious smiles. ‘While there’s life, and all that. What you all need is a drop of this in your tea.’ She fet
ches a bottle of brandy left over from Christmas, and pours a generous measure into everyone’s mug (except mine). ‘Warm you up,’ she explains. ‘It’s freezing in here.’
Only Kaz could get away with such inappropriate jollity, and I could hug her for it. Her good humour (fuelled, I suspect, by the effects of love) infects us all, and soon everyone’s mood improves. Eric even manages a laugh, and Mr. Darcy, who has been sleeping by the Aga, wakes up and thumps his tail on the stone floor.
‘That’s better,’ says Kaz with satisfaction. ‘Tomorrow’s another day.’
‘Tomorrow’s already here,’ I tell her. ‘You ought to get back to bed, Eric. You need to get some sleep, or you’ll be in no fit state to go and see Silas.’
But as the clock in the hall strikes the hour, the telephone rings. For a few seconds we sit staring at one another, frozen into immobility. Time seems to stand still. I hear my heart thumping in my ears, and am aware of everyone holding their breath, as though waiting for something to happen.
Then Eric clears his throat.
‘Answer that, could you, Ruth?’ he says, and I notice that his hands are shaking. ‘I don’t think — I don’t think I can bear to.’
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Pneumonia. Such a pretty word, I’ve always thought; a girl’s name, perhaps, or some kind of flowering shrub.
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