Thomas and Mary

by Tim Parks

  ‘What exactly is my sister’s situation? There must be something you can do.’

  ‘We’re still waiting for results of the scans.’

  ‘But a scan is instant,’ Harry protested. ‘A scan shows what it shows what it shows.’

  ‘A magnetic scan requires expert interpretation,’ the doctor explained.

  ‘But when will she be mobile again?’

  ‘Much depends on what the scan tells us.’

  Harry felt he was being stonewalled, but he did not have the authority he once had to force people to come clean. Folding his arms, he hugged his chest tightly. The doctor watched him sympathetically.

  Returning to his sister’s room, Harry found her pale, her nightie crumpled.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘The toilet routine is excruciating.’

  ‘Don’t say sorry,’ he told her.

  She didn’t reply. He asked her if she would like to watch some television.

  She didn’t move.

  Harry sat a while watching her. She had closed her eyes. Her lips were puckered and moved very slightly. Her grey hair was uncombed.

  ‘Are you asleep, love?’

  She sighed. ‘No.’

  He waited. But he couldn’t be still. He felt agitated.

  ‘Are you in pain? Is there anything I can do?’

  She didn’t speak. One hand was slowly opening and closing as if to test something. Harry felt he would go mad.

  ‘I’m all right,’ she said at last.

  Harry stood up to look for the TV remote. ‘I thought there might be something on the box. A comedy or something. I brought the listings.’

  Her mouth was moving very slightly, but she didn’t answer.

  ‘There’s that American thing about modern alternative families.’

  She breathed deeply. He waited, fingering the remote.

  ‘I have to concentrate,’ she said at last. ‘It takes all my energy.’

  Harry didn’t understand.

  ‘The pain. It takes concentration.’

  Three days later, coming in, Harry met his niece going out. He drew her aside.

  ‘How did you find her?’

  In her early sixties, the dying woman’s daughter was pleasantly solid and practical. ‘She seems comfortable,’ she said. ‘I mean, for someone with cancer in her spine.’

  ‘The cancer’s in the spine now!’

  ‘That’s what the scan showed.’

  Harry looked at her. ‘But why didn’t they tell me? I asked them and they wouldn’t tell me.’

  His niece smiled. ‘They didn’t tell me either. They told Mum. She told me.’

  ‘But why didn’t she tell me?’

  His niece didn’t know what to say. ‘Maybe it didn’t come up.’

  As she was going, Harry called back to her and invited her to dinner; with her husband, of course. ‘If you can.’ But she had to drive back to Swanage.

  Harry went to see the doctor on duty, who this time was a man.

  ‘I hear the cancer has got into her spine,’ he said. ‘I’m surprised I wasn’t told.’

  The doctor consulted a computer on the desk. ‘You’re not registered as the next of kin, Mr Marshall,’ he said. ‘We have the daughter’s name. But I believe on this occasion the patient was given the results of the scan herself. In such cases we would not necessarily refer to relatives. Is there anything particular at this point that you would like to know?’

  The doctor looked up squarely and frankly at Harry. He was a quiet but alert-seeming man in his early forties. Harry felt his age. Obviously there was only one real question, but he could not ask it. His knees were trembling. His hand found the handle of the door and held it.

  The doctor watched. Harry couldn’t speak but couldn’t leave either. Then he said: ‘My wife died six months ago, doctor. It was completely unexpected, there was no warning.’

  The doctor thought for a moment.

  ‘That will not be the case with your sister,’ he said.

  In her room, Harry found her quietly awake, her hair combed and bedclothes smooth. She was smiling.

  ‘It’s good of Elaine to come,’ she said. ‘With all she has on her plate.’ There was a half-eaten bar of mint chocolate on the bedside table.

  Harry sat on the chair. He felt shackled, as if the chair were stopping him from doing anything – anything but being there. Perhaps he should stand up.

  ‘She always combs my hair. She has such a gentle touch.’

  He leaned forward and picked up the TV remote, but knew she didn’t want the TV on. She never did. Eventually, looking out of the window, he said: ‘It’s October.’

  ‘My poor garden,’ Martha said.

  ‘Just a month to your birthday.’

  They were silent a while.

  He tried to sound bright. ‘What do you want me to get you for a present, love? You know I never know what to get. We should celebrate.’

  After a few moments’ silence she said: ‘A month is a long time, Harry.’

  ‘But time flies,’ he said.

  She had closed her eyes. They could hear the evening food trolley moving down the corridor.

  ‘What could I possibly want?’ she asked at last. ‘I have everything here.’ There was a hint of a smile. ‘I don’t even have to cook.’

  ‘There must be something, love.’ Again he added, ‘We should celebrate. A birthday is a birthday.’

  Martha was to be ninety-one. He stood stiffly and went to the window, then turned and looked at her, but her eyes were closed. He went and sat down again, and stood again, and sat again. He sat watching her for a long time, turning the remote over in his hands, listening to the food trolley drawing nearer down the corridor. The minutes passed, not flying but inching forward, on a Zimmer frame.

  ‘Dinner!’ a voice said cheerfully.

  Martha opened her eyes, turned her head to the door and shook it very slightly to indicate she wasn’t hungry. She would wait for her medicine, then sleep.

  ‘Not even a bite?’

  She wasn’t hungry. ‘Sorry.’

  More agitated than ever, Harry got up to go. He couldn’t bear it.

  ‘I’m off then, love,’ he said.

  But now his sister smiled. ‘Actually, I was thinking,’ she said softly.

  ‘Yes?’

  She buzzed up the bed a little and struggled on to her elbows. ‘For my birthday.’

  ‘Ah?’ he turned hopefully.

  ‘My present.’

  ‘Yes?’

  The two ageing siblings looked at each other. It was clear she was in pain, but perhaps still able to pull his leg.

  ‘A little bit of peace.’

  He didn’t understand.

  She smiled and lay back. ‘You can give me a bit of peace, Harry. Just a nice day, sitting quietly together.’

  DENIAL

  She called the movie dumb, and him with it, for inviting her. They were twenty-two years old. This is over before it started, he thought. So he was surprised when she phoned and asked him to share a bottle of champagne. The lovemaking was fun. She took the initiative. There was perfume. Later, he told her it would be over if she went off as planned with an older man who had invited her to London for the weekend. She said that relationship was not about sex. ‘For me it’s over,’ he insisted. When they lived on Church Street she pampered him, she was good with cocktail snacks, but said a relationship where one person did all the domestic work had no future. He told her it irritated him when she spoke affectionately of past lovers. It wasn’t her fault he hadn’t got up to much, she laughed. Two attempts were made to play tennis together. Jogging was easier. Walking even more so. Wherever they lived, they walked the place inside out: parks, canals, shopping streets, even slums. Out of town along the river, up into the hills, through fields and farmyards. They walked side by side, not quite touching, she perhaps half a pace ahead. They were in love and they walked like this for more than twenty years. They fell into a rhythm. Particularly towards t
he end of a long walk, say three hours, it would seem to Thomas that they had settled into silent synchrony. The faster they walked, the more in synchrony they were, as if escaping, as if going somewhere. Sometimes it seemed Mary used that half-pace ahead to step into his path a little. He felt slightly blocked. He moved further right. He almost always walked to her right. She almost always walked slightly ahead, slightly blocking, or so he thought. He wanted to stop for beers, meals. She liked to keep going. She didn’t drink beer. ‘Wait till we get home,’ she said. ‘I’ll prepare you something nice.’ When he had to leave for the job in Manchester, she said it would only make sense for her to follow if they married. On their wedding night she was tired, she turned away from him to sleep. The day had exhausted her, she said. The hotel was not what she’d hoped. A discotheque kept them awake. Next morning they walked for miles along the dunes. Man and wife. In Manchester she fell out with his old friends. He fell out with her family when they visited. They were kind of mad, he felt. She fell out with his family. She made fun of them. They were kind of dumb, she thought. ‘We’re a conspiracy against the world,’ he told her. They had fallen out with everybody. ‘We’re a team,’ she said. Now she was pregnant. They fell out with each other when he couldn’t see the need to drive her twenty miles for her second scan. Why had she got herself a driving licence if she wasn’t planning to drive herself? ‘I’ll never forget this,’ she told him. He was making serious money now. She didn’t go with him when he travelled for work. She had the baby. He went to London and New York. It was many years since they had spent time apart. For ten years they had never spent a single evening apart. Because they were in love. Nothing was said about the change. All the talk these days was directed at the first child, then the second: they had to learn how to speak, how to talk. They had to be got through school and driven to extracurricular activities and taken on holidays, and more generally for treats. Usually, it was Thomas who took them for treats, treating himself to beer. Mary said it was good for them to spend time with their father. She went through a knitting phase, an embroidery phase, an aerobic phase, a vegetarian phase, and a yoga phase, then a dog phase. Also a swimming-pool phase. She found a lovely thoroughbred cocker spaniel which would feel alone if it did not sleep in their bedroom. She did not question his need to travel. She did not phone or pester him. She was loyal. He was concerned she would see he was in love with someone else. He didn’t have time for phases. Then he was concerned that she did not see he was in love with someone else. How? Was it the dog? Was it the yoga? He was amazed one partner could fall in love, out of love, and the other not be aware. The other just went on. He was heartbroken now. It had been a long affair. Now it was he who just went on. Life was dry, willed, forced, false. Nothing moves, he thought. He was heartbroken and still taking the kids out for treats. He treated himself to whisky. Eventually the younger child spoke to Mummy about what he had seen on Daddy’s phone. The boy had learned how to talk. In the garden, Thomas told Mary he hated her. She told him he had behaved despicably but this kind of crisis was inevitable in a long marriage. ‘We’ll get over it, Goat,’ she said. The children would get over it. Despite his despicable behaviour. And she was right: soon they were back to normal. Soon they were taking long walks again. Maybe they still loved each other. Accompanied by her faithful dog. Your trophy dog, he called it. However much you talked to it, the dog would never learn to talk. The dog was not interested in Thomas’s phone messages. Soon Thomas had another girlfriend. He was elated. The second girlfriend would leave him when he didn’t leave his wife. And the third. Why does nobody intervene? he thought. Why does nobody help us? Why are we incapable of helping ourselves? Some years later twenty-five red roses were tossed into the bin, still fresh.

  LIST

  Susan would not step on grates. One day, one would give. Walking Manchester’s streets he learned to move this way and that so she would always have solid ground under her feet. She was not afraid of smoking, though. Or drinking, quite a lot. Or unprotected sex, so long as he pulled out in time. She would not be seen without her make-up, however great the hurry. She would not wear skirts with the calves she had, though they looked fine to him. She could never ask an employer for more money or better conditions. Her clothes were always jeans and jacket. Both black. A simple sweater. The bra must hide the nipples. She never wore a hat. But she must never get her hair wet. Umbrellas were important. He steered her round the grates and covered her with his blue umbrella. She would not eat any sauce with a tomato base; she did not like minced beef. But she was at home with whisky. And tapas. And she liked to chew gum. Her mouth was always round and red and pursed. When she was anxious, her periods came early. In form, her humour was acid. Mostly directed against herself, with a wry lift of well-defined left eyebrow. When finally it all became too much she told her mother, and her mother told her to bail out, and bail out she did. He was distraught. I was a grate she shouldn’t have stepped on, he thought. I couldn’t be her solid ground.

  Cathy played drums. In a band. On the table. In the pub. On his buttocks. On her own buttocks. A small girl with dirty fingernails, she made life difficult but took the pill. Her mouth was full, but twitched nervously. It was hard for her to eat with someone, she said, or sleep the night together, but sexually she had no inhibitions. She had a boyfriend whom she kept throughout and even wanted him to meet. ‘Graham really loves me,’ she said. ‘Graham would do anything for me.’ He demurred. She liked a ragged bohemian look, a black T-shirt that exposed sharp shoulders, a feathery green scarf around the neck or a man’s cravat falling loosely tied between her breasts, baggy jeans, or loose old cardigan. In her pocket perhaps a flask of whisky. On her tousled hair a black fedora at a cocky angle; with a white ribbon, maybe. She smoked roll-ups and texted constantly, teasingly, passionately. She loved him to distraction, she texted. Another man loved her to distraction, she texted. A man had tried to molest her on the Underground, she texted. He didn’t know how to respond. He felt like a heavy old stone some crazy tourist was trying to roll from its place. With love. With violence. Her movements were swift and nervous and furtive. Repressed, then released. Timid, then bold. Mouth and hands were never still, even when nothing was said, nothing done. Eating, she was wired up, rabbity, alert for predators. Her bright eyes darted here and there, as if on the lookout. In the mood, she loved to flash. She lifted her T-shirt in a restaurant in Newcastle. A split second. She boasted breasts that didn’t need a bra. And she did boast. Nipples hard as coins. They sprang out. He adored her. He was overwhelmed. At the pool she dropped bikini bottoms. Fleeting black fur. Once she fucked him in the cinema. And in the lavatory of the pub. And on the damp shale of Brighton beach. ‘I won’t wait long,’ she whispered. In bed she turned her back on his desire. ‘I won’t wait long for my old stone to budge.’ He didn’t and she didn’t. When the texting stopped he was distraught. I couldn’t be the music for her beat, he thought. Cathy’s wild beat.

  Patricia wrote. Taught journalism. Had money, had style, had experience, had husband. Patricia was also beautiful. Very. Handsome cheekbones. She was haughty and girlish. For a mature woman. She was sassy. She gave good advice, made good conversation. She had a life, a track record, a following. People were impressed. People were polite. She was contained and judicious too. She would never, for example, allow him to put an arm round her waist on the street. Even when they drove down to London. Her shoes had high heels, her skirts were boldly coloured but below the knee, her underwear expensively feminine, her blonde hair held with bright clips, ivory clips, jewelled clips. She was sophisticated and sure of herself. But lost it completely at a touch. The merest physical touch, the slightest brushed caress, of downed forearms, or bright cheeks, and Patricia lost it. Her body melted and trembled, melted and trembled. In his office she wanted him to come in her with no protection. Then her mobile rang. She would never turn off her mobile. What would her husband think? She bought a second secret mobile to call him, to text him. Her husband called almost
hourly. Her husband checked her phone, she said, and had the password to check her phone account online. Patricia was oppressed, she was flattered. He touched her and she melted. Even while speaking to her husband, on one occasion. In an empty compartment on the train, she let his hand up her skirt. She was reckless, animal. Afterwards she laughed like a child. At the station she had a BMW. He couldn’t understand the gap between her normal self and the woman who responded to his touch. He felt it couldn’t really be his fingers she was responding to. Once they spent an afternoon in a hotel but only after he figured out how not to check her in. Then she was a tempest. He felt he could not have been responsible for this meteorological event. When she showered she took the phone into the bathroom. She was worried her husband hadn’t called. After she fell pregnant she told him she would have to stop. He was distraught. But this time he couldn’t feel that all this emotion depended on losing her. Nor could he feel he had let her down. She hadn’t allowed him to be in a position to. In his unhappiness now he wrote out the list. Liz who was terrified of dogs. Ann who could never decide. Marsha who pretended indifference. Isabel who regretted betrayal. Elaine who had been abused. Rachel, obsessed with hygiene. Judy who spoke of her children. Claire who broke off to smoke. Claudia who phoned him at home. Ruth who tried to kill him. Sophie who almost killed herself. There were others, less memorable. There was a general disturbance of names and perfumes and smiles and tears. If I was looking for something, he thought, I haven’t found it.

  MRS P

  From being someone with time on her hands, happy to get company when she could, Mrs P has become rather difficult to get hold of, a person you need to make an appointment with. She has even turned down a number of meetings, refusing to see people who came explicitly to speak to her. I myself had been wondering for some days when would be the right time for me to make the journey to see Mrs P, if only because it appeared that the time when she would not be seeing people at all might not be so far off. I made frequent attempts to phone her, but she was well defended by administrative staff. On two occasions I was told I could speak to Mrs P if I were willing to accept responsibility for waking her up, but, given her increasing reluctance to respond favourably to the demands made on her, I decided this might be unwise.