The Restoration of Otto Laird

by Nigel Packer

  ‘It’s a tumour,’ the doctor told them. ‘She has a tumour on her brain. We’ve sedated her but we don’t have the specialist expertise to operate here. We’re transferring her immediately to the neurological hospital at Queen Square. An ambulance is standing by. Mr Laird, you can go with her…’

  * * *

  On the bench in Queen Square, Otto paused to catch his breath. It had become noticeably laboured in the minutes before. He tried to return to the scene imprinted on his mind but his thoughts were becoming confused. In a corner of the square he saw his young self standing, dressed in a tweed jacket and flannel trousers, waiting for Cynthia to arrive. They were going that evening to a local jazz club. One of her favourite artists from the States was topping the bill.

  As the young Otto glimpsed Cynthia in her beret, her familiar bouncing walk, approaching him from the other side of the square, he stepped eagerly from the pavement to greet her. But as he did so, an ambulance cut across his path, its blue lights flashing, missing him by a matter of inches. The young Otto stared intently after the ambulance, appearing to realise that Cynthia was inside. He was inside, too, his hair now grey, his midriff thicker; holding her hand and whispering softly, trying to keep the panic from his voice. Arriving at the hospital on the opposite side of the square, he jumped out after Cynthia, who had an oxygen mask strapped across her face and was being wheeled into the entranceway on a stretcher. The young Cynthia was no longer walking towards the young Otto, but standing still in the middle of the square. Her head in the beret was turned away from him, looking over at the scene taking place at the entrance to the hospital.

  * * *

  Otto shook his head. The memory that was more than a memory dissolved away, suddenly. It was replaced by another, just as vivid.

  * * *

  In a pub located on another corner of Queen Square, Otto saw himself sitting at a crowded table, his black fringe falling low across his eyes, beaming as he raised a pint of bitter to his lips. His colleagues were toasting him, Cynthia too, on achieving ‘architectonic perfection’. But the broad smile faded as he caught sight of the older man entering the bar – the expression one of ruin, the eyes deep with something unimaginable.

  Time, all times, seemed to converge on this place, merging into one. Otto reached for the cane beside him. He wanted to get up from the bench and go – he wanted to leave the square altogether. But he couldn’t move, the dizziness was too strong, the circling memories wouldn’t allow him to depart. They were fragmentary, but that was inevitable, for life itself had been fragmentary at that time, after Cynthia’s collapse on the Heath. A quick series of jolts, one after another, with no time to adjust to one before another followed hard in its slipstream.

  They had warned him that she would probably not survive the emergency surgery, but somehow she did. The pressure was released, and they removed the majority of the tumour, but it was already too deeply embedded to extract in its entirety. It would be a week until they received the results of the tests, to discover whether it was malignant or benign.

  Cynthia recovered consciousness after a day or so, but was groggy and heavily sedated, only just grasping the information that the surgeons, together with Otto, gently imparted to her. She looked so ill, so pale and fragile as she lay in the bed; and although Otto had been warned to expect it, the huge scar running across her shaven head had caused him, on first seeing it, to stifle a sob.

  After two days of trying, Otto managed to get news to Daniel, who returned home immediately from his travels. They embraced for a long time at the entrance to the hospital, without any of the usual awkwardness, but their conversation afterwards was subdued. Daniel, like Otto, had been stunned into silence, overwhelmed by the suddenness and severity of events.

  In the ward, Otto found it difficult to watch as Cynthia came round and saw her son.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ she said, as she held him by the hand. ‘Don’t worry.’

  Daniel could barely speak. His words were little more than a whisper. She told him she was sorry to have spoiled his holiday.

  For a few hours each day, Otto and Daniel were allowed to sit at her bedside. At night, back at home, they talked a little about Daniel’s travels, but all normal communication was an effort. Silence, when it fell, was a relief. One thing alone occupied father and son. They talked about it, but sparingly, in order to spare themselves. The results of the tests would be through in a couple of days. The wait, meanwhile, was excruciating. Time stretched them out upon its rack.

  Twenty-Eight

  After that endless week came the second terrible jolt. The tumour was malignant, graded at four, the most malignant form of all. Cynthia could undergo chemo and radiotherapy, and perhaps a second operation at some point. But although the specialists could slow the tumour’s advance, they were powerless, ultimately, to prevent it. They estimated that she had eighteen months to live.

  It was Otto who broke the news to her, late one afternoon, when she had recovered sufficiently from the initial trauma to be informed. Entering the dimly lit ward, he approached her pale form, resting on the bed. Her eyes were closed and her face turned upwards. Her breathing was as shallow as the breeze that stirred the curtains. She appeared transfigured; spectral.

  He lowered himself into the chair beside the bed, and after a few seconds her eyes slowly opened. She seemed to have sensed his presence.

  ‘Otto,’ she said, with some difficulty.

  Her voice was barely audible above the sound of the afternoon traffic. Life, through the open window, continued as normal.

  He reached across and took her hand. It felt weak and emaciated: the pulse was barely there. The smile she offered up to him was a needle through his heart.

  ‘Any news?’

  He looked downwards.

  ‘It’s not good, Cyn,’ he managed to say, before he was unable to continue.

  She was very calm and did not seem surprised. It was her own body, after all, which she could no doubt read as well as the experts. He had anticipated comforting her when breaking the news. Instead, the reverse had happened. She stroked his hair like a small child, whispering words of solace as he kneeled weeping with his head lowered to her lap.

  ‘My beautiful Otto … my beautiful boy,’ she said to him over and again.

  The curtain billowed inwards in the afternoon air.

  It was then that Otto’s initial shock transformed into something deeper. He realised that Cynthia was far ahead of him in terms of understanding what was taking place. She had already crossed the threshold – he was just reaching it now. He had been hoping that this was something else – an interlude, of some kind, in their lives. Dreadful – transformative, even – but an interlude, nonetheless. He had convinced himself that the ship would somehow right itself; normality, in some form, return. But he understood now, as he felt her fingers running weakly through his hair, that it was something he had not dared think about until that moment. It was not a one-off incident, a nightmare that would pass. It was the slow and inevitable unfolding of a tragedy; the beginning of the nightmare, not its culmination. She had already grasped this, had already accepted her own body’s betrayal. Otto had not known it until now.

  There was almost no time to adjust to this new situation before the various forms of treatment began. At first radiotherapy, which could take place only in a single phase, because of the doses of radiation involved. This was followed over time by two courses of chemotherapy. Each treatment brought suffering, both physical and psychological, yet Otto and Daniel were astounded at Cynthia’s resilience. There was an eerie serenity about her. She had moved into a different state to the rest of them – a liminal state, perhaps – and exuded an air of quiet calm while emotion raged around her.

  There were times when the chemotherapy rendered her unrecognisable, and on several occasions visiting friends broke down in front of her on seeing its effects. And yet she would smile and try to comfort them as best she could. She appeared to feel almost guilty a
bout her condition – guilty of the mental suffering that others were going through on her behalf. As to her own great suffering, physical and mental, she gave little indication of its depth. It was as though she were trying to shield, as best she could, all those around her from the reality. But Otto knew that the headaches from which she suffered were at best intense, and at worst unbearable, if eased somewhat by the large shots of morphine that formed part of her daily quota of drugs, averting the constant danger that she might bite through her tongue with the pain.

  And then there was the question of time, the new form of time in which Cynthia and her family now found themselves. In a sense there was no time now, at least not in the way that it is usually measured out. This could make things difficult. On occasion, friends would say something without thinking – a reference to some event that was taking place in a few months’ time. And then they would pull up suddenly, embarrassed, because they realised that she might no longer be around to see the event of which they were speaking. At first the family tried to avoid talking about the future, but this proved impossible. In almost every conversation, it would somehow arise. Otto realised, then, just how much we live in the future – talking about our hopes and plans. To avoid embarrassment for others, and perhaps to maintain the strength to continue, the family began to allow themselves to talk about the future. It was no longer taboo.

  ‘A holiday would be nice,’ Cynthia told them, as they sat beside her bed. ‘Not now, of course, or any time soon, but maybe once these treatments are out of the way. When Danny gets a break from his studies.’

  Otto smiled and nodded. Daniel took up the theme with some enthusiasm.

  ‘I think it’s a great idea. It’s been a while now since we went away as a family. Where would you like to go, Mum? Anywhere special in mind?’

  Cynthia’s eyes shone briefly with a memory of bougainvillea.

  ‘Greece would be nice,’ she said. ‘It’s been so many years.’

  She looked at Otto.

  ‘Though I’m not sure I’ll be up to clambering over any ruins this time.’

  ‘That’s okay,’ he said. ‘There are plenty of other things we can do. Sit on the beach … enjoy the views.’

  ‘Exactly,’ she replied. ‘And it’s the light that I most want to experience again.’

  She turned to Daniel.

  ‘You would love the clarity of light there, Danny. Don’t you think so, Otto?’

  Otto nodded, his look distant.

  ‘It’s most unusual,’ Cynthia continued, ‘especially in the early autumn. Intensely bright yet also soft, like a paradox or puzzle.’

  They planned and discussed the future like this whenever Daniel was home from Cambridge: holidays and various projects; redecorating the living room, or undertaking some new architectural research together. And in doing so, they would forget, at times, that the future they were planning was imaginary.

  ‘But then most futures are,’ Cynthia said to Daniel one day. ‘Life rarely works out as we plan it.’

  Otto wondered, sometimes, what time must feel like to her now; what she must think about as she lay on the sofa near the living-room window, from where she could watch the swaying oak tree with the birds flitting in and out of its branches. Cynthia must have entered the time spoken about by mystics and philosophers – one eternal now. Everything was present to her. She didn’t talk about it a great deal – just once or twice she made the allusion; telling Otto there were many things she had come to understand; and reassuring him that, at a deeper level, beneath the constant pain, she had found a kind of peace.

  * * *

  When her headaches were not too severe, she and Otto liked to listen to music together. At her request, several months into her illness, he climbed up into the loft to retrieve an old box of vinyl records. It had lain there gathering dust for nearly twenty years, ever since the move from Bloomsbury. They worked their way through these records as circumstances allowed.

  One evening, they put on an album by the saxophonist Sonny Rollins. Cynthia, who felt well enough to leave her bed that day, was curled beside Otto on the sofa.

  ‘You didn’t tread on my toes, not once,’ she said to him, drowsily.

  ‘What do you mean?’ he asked.

  ‘At the jazz club.’

  Otto’s eyes opened.

  ‘My goodness. I thought I recognised this tune.’

  There was a sadness about the smiles they exchanged.

  ‘That was quite some evening,’ he said to her.

  ‘It was,’ she said. ‘The best of evenings. Strange how suddenly, and how naturally, everything can change.’

  The record played on in the background. No more words were spoken or needed. They were back there now, in the heaving maelstrom of the club – she in a polka-dot blouse and puffball skirt; he in his second-hand tweed jacket and flannel trousers. On stage, through a haze of sweet-smelling smoke, they could see the four-piece band: tenor sax, piano, double bass and drums, playing with dazzling dexterity. On the dance floor, young couples, propelled by the music’s energy, spun and flew with the fearlessness of trapeze artists.

  ‘Do you like it?’ Cynthia had shouted into his ear, her head nodding in time to the music.

  ‘Yes, it’s fascinating.’

  ‘Come and dance.’

  Before Otto knew what was happening, she had drawn him out onto the dance floor. Abandoning her body to the music, throwing her hair to and fro across her face, she invited him with a smile to follow her lead. At first he was restrained in his movements, unnerved by the bodies whirling around him. He backed into a young woman, turning to apologise only to find that she had disappeared in an explosion of taffeta.

  ‘Don’t worry … relax,’ Cynthia called into his ear. ‘Follow me. Feel your way into the music.’

  Otto began to align his movements with hers, adjusting his mind and body to the shifting mass of the dance floor. Spatial awareness had never been his strong point, and here it needed to be especially fine-tuned. And yet, so caught up was he with the sight of Cynthia dancing that soon he forgot all those obstacles around him. Cyn, her face aglow and her eyes sparkling, her mouth a beaming smile, twirled around and against him in a way that was quite intoxicating. His limbs started to loosen in an instinctive response. Soon he was moving around the floor with surprising ease.

  ‘Yes,’ Cyn called again, in between breathless spins. ‘That’s good.’

  Gaining in confidence now, Otto began to dance more freely. He no longer felt constrained by self-consciousness, or a fear of causing injury to others. His arms swung loose and his hips gyrated with an ease he had not known he possessed. Cynthia beamed her approval, matching his movements turn for turn. Together, they cut quite a figure on the dance floor. Other couples turned to watch them, nodding their heads and shouting their encouragement.

  That evening, after walking Cynthia home, Otto did not return to his bedsit in Lambeth. In the half-light of her tiny bedroom, the engines of the passing cars rattling the window in its frame, a night of heady exploration followed. The alien body usually inhabited by Otto seemed to become his own at last. The sound of Cynthia’s voice, even the texture of her skin, became charged with a strange electricity, animating and replenishing his own.

  * * *

  As the record came to a halt, the needle catching in the run-out groove, Otto went to take it from the turntable.

  ‘Beautiful,’ Cynthia said quietly.

  Did she mean the music? Or the memory? Or was such a distinction possible?

  Sliding the record into its sleeve, Otto crouched and placed it in the cardboard box. One of the other fading covers caught his eye. It carried a photo of the soprano Renata Tebaldi – a collection of her favourite Italian arias.

  Otto lifted the album from the box and scanned through the titles.

  ‘I’d completely forgotten we had this,’ he said, holding it up for her to see. ‘Who bought it for us?’

  Cynthia peered over.

  �
�You did, I think.’

  He looked at it again.

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes. Don’t you remember? It was after we saw her at Covent Garden that summer. Tosca, wasn’t it, with Di Stefano and Tito Gobbi? You bought the record from that store on Shaftesbury Avenue.’

  Otto thought a moment.

  ‘Oh yes … so I did.’

  ‘And I’m the one who’s supposed to be losing my mind.’

  He watched as she adjusted her headscarf.

  ‘How is it feeling this evening?’ he asked.

  ‘Moderately painful, but bearable. I dosed up on morphine, earlier on, so the music is sounding rather wonderful!’

  She smiled at him. He smiled, too, but furrows marked his brow.

  ‘Do you want to get some rest now or would you like to hear another?’

  ‘Another, please.’

  ‘Any requests?’

  ‘You choose. Or pick one at random. I really don’t mind what we listen to.’

  Otto removed the Tebaldi album from its sleeve.

  ‘I’m glad we found these,’ Cynthia said, in a sudden outpouring of feeling. ‘I want to hear them before they disappear.’

  He looked confused.

  ‘The records?’

  ‘No, the memories.’

  He paused while lowering the needle onto the vinyl.

  ‘Your memory is in fine condition … as you’ve just proved.’

  The needle touched down, a little heavily.

  ‘For the time being, maybe. But for how much longer, realistically? They said the deterioration could come at any time.’

  An aria began. ‘Vissi d’arte’.

  Otto returned to the sofa and settled down beside Cynthia.

  ‘It’s true, of course,’ he said, softly. ‘I don’t wish to deny the reality. I realise you are only stating the facts. And yet, at this moment in time, we’ve found a place of shelter within the storm. We must try to make the most of it while we can.’

  ‘You’re right,’ she answered. ‘I love these evenings together. Talking, listening to music. It’s such a treat. The hospital feels very distant.’