by Carmen Reid
It felt unbearable. Lying there in the dark, she couldn't push away her worst fear: that one of her children would die before her. She had four. She had quadrupled the odds! Usually she managed to keep this thought reined in, under control, but tonight it was rearing up to scare the wits out of her. But, she suspected, on some level, life has to be lived like this, in the knowledge that death is around. Can't be staved off with a nice house, or smart car or sense of style ...
'Oh my God, I'm in the middle of a conversion to Buddhism.' She was staring up at the ceiling half expecting to see some sort of apparition in the lotus position. Maybe she'd read one too many yoga manuals, but she really did want to be at one with the universe, in good karma, looking forward to reincarnation and all that stuff.
Maybe there was a class she could do? Maybe Jen would come? Her next thought was, which night would be suitable? And who would babysit?
'This is why I will never be able to meditate, let alone sleep,' she told herself off. Time to get up and boil the kettle for camomile tea. Oh .. . But she was at her father's house ... nothing but full strength English Breakfast. That wasn't going to help.
In the morning, it was obvious that Janie had also spent most of the night awake. She was pale with tired circles under her eyes.
'Are you OK?' Eve asked her as they made toast and scrambled eggs in the kitchen together.
'Ah...' slight trace of tears brimming, 'I'm all right. I think...' but then she added in a whisper, 'I'm so frightened for him.'
'I know...' Eve wrapped an arm round her, 'I know.'
The day wore on until finally it was time to go and visit him after the operation. He was worse than they had expected – barely conscious, propped up in a starkly white bed in a small side room, both arms hooked up to drips and a pain relief pump, another tube snaking out from under the covers which it took Eve a moment to realize was a catheter.
To her, he looked for the first time like a man who could die. She felt tears spring to her eyes at the sight of him and had to feel her way to one of the chairs beside the bed. Janie put a hand on her shoulder and managed some soothing, bedside small talk, while Eve took in the backdrop: the click-clunk, click-clunk of the morphine pump and rattle, pause, rattle, pause of her father's breathing. She moved her chair closer to the bed and took her father's hand in her own. It felt lukewarm and papery dry. As she stroked it, she thought about how she'd not done this for decades. Hadn't held his hand since she was a small girl.
'How are you doing?' she heard herself ask and her throat squeezed up with the effort of it.
All the stuff she would have liked to say about how they had loved each other in their own way and how she was sorry it hadn't been more straightforward between them . . . none of it would come out.
'You're all right, Dad,' was all she managed.
There was no news about the operation, the relevant doctor was off duty, so they were told by the busy night staff to ask again in the morning.
After they had eaten quietly together at the kitchen table, Janie went up to her bath then bed early. Eve thought she could hear her crying in her bedroom and wondered if maybe she should go in and comfort her, but the echoes of their childhood were too powerful.
They had lost a parent before and they knew what was to come. The bereftness, the clothes and possessions packed away in boxes, the suddenly precious photographs which no longer seemed to capture any sort of reality, the vague unease and embarrassment of friends and relatives at the funeral and afterwards . . . Surely it couldn't be so raw this time round? Their mother had died one January morning at the age of 40 in a mundane and ordinary car crash. Black ice on an ungritted B road, no other car involved. A district nurse making the mile-long drive between one patient and another, she'd left her seat belt undone and been killed instantly when her car veered off the road and hit a tree.
Nothing so bewildering would or could ever happen to Eve and Janie or their father, ever again.
It had taken weeks – months – for the new reality to sink in. On the first day, they had played house and dolls and giggled and felt strangely excited by it all. No school! People kept turning up at the house with sweets and presents. It was like Christmas. Only much later did they start to ache for Mummy and begin to understand that she wasn't coming back. They would hide in her side of the cupboard and bury their faces into her fur coat and soft jumpers, breathing in the faint snatches of her perfume that were still there and cry for her to come home.
Eve tried to settle now into the kind of evening routine she would have had at home. She finished the house chores, spoke to all four of her children on the phone, which took almost an hour, took Hardy for a walk, then went out into the garden where she deadheaded roses in the last light of the day, then clipped the edge of the lawn, although it was only a few millimetres overgrown.
Back in the house, still feeling restless and untired, she sat cross-legged in the middle of the uninspired beige sitting room carpet and quite automatically began to work through a short routine of poses until she felt calmer.
She moved through the energetic salutation to the sun, up, down, grazing her chin on the carpet and centre with her hands pushed palms together in front of her. She did the whole sequence several times until she felt warm and limber.
Then the cat: she stretched through her spine pushing her breath out. 'All we have is the present,' she could hear Pete the Geek's intonation in her head. Now she was in the downward facing dog and felt the weight of her body pushed up by her arms. She widened her pelvis, back, ribcage, shoulder blades and breathed, new breath in, old breath out.
'Let go... lose the tension, lose the anger, lose the worry. Let go of it. There is nothing in life we can hold onto, it's moving and changing all the time—' Pete's karmic world view again.
But she felt the truth of it tonight. Nothing was for ever... her mother, Dennis, Joseph... gone. Her father going... the children, growing away from her every day. Oh God, she curled up into child pose and cradled her head between her knees. This was very bleak.
But now, she wondered, what would she miss about her father? Unsatisfactory conversations, with neither of them expressing themselves very well? Weekend trips to this stultifying house where everything was so neat and precious that her children could never relax for fear of breaking or spoiling something?
She felt sorry for him. He'd never seemed very happy, he'd never found a new love, or any real closeness with his children and his grandchildren. She felt full of regret for him that he had lived such a careful, controlled life. Kept it all at arm's length. But what would she miss? She didn't know yet. Her past? Her childhood?
She unwound and lay on her back for a few moments before standing up and moving into the stiff, steady warrior pose. She was strong. She was together. Arms wide and straight, one knee bent, ready for action, the other leg rooted to the spot, she was disconcerted to see Janie's face appear round the door.
'What are you doing?' Janie asked.
'My poses ... I can't sleep. It helps a bit.'
'Do you meditate as well?' Janie came into the room now and sat down on the sofa.
'Sometimes. But I'm not very good at it . . . always find myself wondering if I've put the washing on... or what to have for supper... you know ... mental whirr.'
'Yeah,' Janie agreed, 'mental whirr. I know all about that.'
There was a pause between them before Janie added with a half-sob: 'I'm scared that Dad is going to die.'
'I know .. . me too.' Eve sat down beside her on the sofa.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Eve walked into her father's kitchen as Janie was taking the call.
'What? ... What!' Janie repeated.
'Are you sure?' she asked now with a smile breaking out and spreading across her face.
'Are they sure? Well... That's amazing! That's just fantastic! I don't know what else to say. Yes ... Yes ... By Friday ... OK.'
Eve went to stand right beside her, craning to hear the voice on the other end
of the phone, trying to work out what this was, certain it had to be good news. Finally, Janie put the phone down and turned to face her.
'That was Dad.'
'Yes?'
"They've removed a tumour the size of a grapefruit from his bowel – and it was benign. He's going to be OK,' Janie was retelling the words, still obviously not quite believing them.
'The size of a grapefruit?' Eve repeated. No wonder he hadn't been feeling too perky.
'And do you know what he said?' Janie looked slightly dazed. She was leaning on the counter-top for support. 'He told me: "I'm 72 my number's going to come up any day now... but not today, Janie, not today." And then he laughed – he really laughed. It was a bit strange ... not like him at all.'
'Good grief,' Eve said. 'How amazing ... a benign grapefruit.' It was difficult to take in after the frenzy of worrying the two of them had done.
'So he's already feeling better?' Eve asked.
'Yeah ... Phoning, chatty. Not out of bed yet, but yesterday I thought I'd never speak to him again.'
For a moment they were both silent. The day would come. But as he'd reminded them ... not today.
'Shall we go and celebrate?' Eve asked.
'I don't know . .. don't know if I could. I feel really strange.' Janie was wiping her eyes.
'Come on, let's go buy him a present,' Eve rallied her. 'Then when visiting time is over, we'll have a late lunch with far too much wine and probably feel a lot better.'
Their father was delighted with the gift: a CD Discman with headphones and a selection of jazz and big band CDs to listen to in bed.
He was still in his pyjamas looking white and drained but, even so, there was a sparkiness, a twinkle to him neither of them recognized.
'What has happened to him?' Janie asked Eve when they were installed in a cosy pub for their lunch.
'I have no idea what the medical term is, but a lot more than a grapefruit got removed from his arse, I can tell you that much.'
Janie gave an outraged 'Lynnie!' but laughed anyway.
'But you saw him!' Eve said, attacking her food with an enthusiasm she hadn't been able to summon for days. 'This could be a whole new lease of life for him. He might get ten more years and do something interesting with them. This could be the best reminder he'll ever get to seize the day.'
'Maybe.'
Was it Eve's imagination or was Janie looking wistful at that? She'd thought all Janie's upset and anxiety had been provoked by their father, but now she wondered if other things weren't amiss in her sister's life. But she knew better than to ask directly; with Janie it was always better to wait, let the story unfold.
'Why don't you stay at home next weekend? I'll come up with the kids and look after Dad,' Eve offered.
'No, no. Don't be silly. He'll need lots of help.'
But in fact he was surprisingly well by the time he was allowed out of hospital. He needed help to move around the house, but he could sit up, talk, eat fairly normally. And Eve was right, something had changed for their father. He was more positive, more alert . . . more interested than she ever remembered him being before.
Nothing demonstrated this better than the crime Robbie committed which, pre-op, her father would never, ever have forgiven.
After breakfast on Sunday, Eve and Janie were summoned to the spare bedroom in their father's house by the sound of Anna wailing.
'Robbie! Robbie! No!' she was screaming.
Eve rushed up, taking the stairs two, three at a time.
'Mum! I thought he was with you!' Anna shouted accusingly as soon as Eve reached the door.
Then Janie was there, just a moment behind her: 'Oh dear God – don't let Dad see this. Oh God.'
Eve wasn't sure which looked worse, the shocked white face of her sister or the disaster her little boy had created along with the dog.
Robbie had found the chest of drawers stuffed full of their mother's belongings. He and Hardy must have been up here, quietly occupied for some time, because Robbie had emptied the two bottom drawers of all their contents and with Hardy's help, had utterly devastated them. Diaries and photos had been torn into little shredded heaps. A gooey old bottle of ink had been trailed all over the carpet, messy piles of papers, a silk scarf. Something quite unrecognizable now must have been thoroughly chewed over, because Robbie's cheeks were smeared in gluey grey and Hardy's drool looked greyish too. There were bits of all sorts of things scattered in a circle right around the pair.
Both Robbie and the dog were looking up at them very guiltily, fully aware that this amount of forbidden fun could only come at a price.
'Jesus, Eve,' Janie was panicky and angry. 'We've got to clean up straight away, see what can be salvaged.'
'What on earth is all the fuss about?' It was their father. He had managed to hobble out of his room to see what was going on.
Everyone was lost for words and Eve instinctively moved to pick up her son. He was only three, he had no idea what a treasure chest he'd been playing with.
'This is all my fault, Dad,' she said quickly, 'I'm so sorry. I'm sure some things can be rescued.'
Her father was heading for the pile on the floor. Janie moved to take his arm and help him as he walked.
He leaned over to look carefully through everything.
'Anna, why don't you fetch the brush and dustpan?' he said finally. 'This is just a lot of old rubbish. Probably your mother's shopping lists and bus timetables and a few bad photos she didn't even like.'
Janie was standing open-mouthed at this.
'I have absolutely no idea why I've kept it all so long.'
He opened the top drawer of the chest now and they saw yellowed hairbrushes, a stack of embroidered hankies and facecloths, and a toiletries bag.
'Oh, I really need to clear this out,'he said as he made a cursory rummage into the things. 'Elsie would laugh at me, she'd kill herself. She really would. The more I think about it, the more I realize I've done all the things she would never have wanted me to do. I mean, look at this place—' He sat down on the horrible pink stool beside the drawers and glanced about the room. 'The house hasn't been redecorated for years and years, I'm still at work – with my pension fund! – I've never remarried. It was terrible when she died. Terrible. But if I'd been the one to go first—' he shook his head a little – 'Eventually ... she'd have lived it up, girls, holidayed in the Caribbean, put in a new bathroom with a whirlpool, had a boyfriend, maybe several! I've really let her down.'
Eve caught Janie's eye and they exchanged expressions of disbelief. Was this really their father talking? He'd just called them girls, he'd just mentioned their mother and the word 'boyfriend' in the same sentence ... and he was about to brush up her old junk and put it in the bin.
This was all good, Eve told Janie as they said their goodbyes later the same day . . . but that didn't make it any less shocking.
'I'm so proud of you both,' her father told them as she kissed him at the door, ready to make the drive home to London: 'Your mother would have been too.'
So proud of you both????! What had happened to 'of course if you'd got into law school, Eve' and all the other million little digs and disapprovals he usually made?
More than a grapefruit had been removed, that was for sure.
'And when is the wedding?' he wanted to know, hoping it hadn't all been put back just because of him.
'August the 17th, Dad,' Eve told him. 'They've postponed it a month, but it's no big problem.'
'August. . . Great. . . I'll be fit as a fiddle by then ... dancing on the tables.'