The Life Situation

by Rosemary Friedman

  “He wants a drink,” the nurse said. She put one hand behind his head, tenderly as if he was a baby, and held a feeding cup to his lips. He did not take any. She wiped his mouth with a tissue.

  He closed his eyes. The nurse indicated the armchair.

  “Would you like to sit here, Mr John?”

  “No. Thank you. I’m fine. Actually I’m going to have a cup of tea and change my shirt. I’ve been driving all night.”

  “Does he…?” He nodded towards the bed thinking, talking across him, about him as if he were already… “a cup of tea or anything?”

  The nurse shook her head. “Not since yesterday.”

  He released the weightless hand.

  “I’ll be back in a little while,” he told his father.

  There was no response.

  The nurse smiled reassuringly.

  Downstairs his mother had regained her usual composure. Dark circles beneath her eyes, a slackness of skin told of strain and sleepless nights. She’d put ginger cake, his favourite, and chocolate vienna biscuits on a tray in the sitting-room with his tea.

  “I’ve got a goulash in the oven,” she said. “The way you like it, with dumplings, although there wasn’t any parsley…”

  He was appalled. Goulash, dumplings, did she really think the lack of parsley important? Where were her feelings?

  “I’ll go up while you eat. I don’t like to leave him. I haven’t, not for more than half an hour, since yesterday. Sorry about your holiday but he kept saying ‘Oscar’, ‘Oscar’, nothing but ‘Oscar’. I couldn’t let him go without…”

  Without his muffler or his overshoes. As if the weather was bad and he was off to visit a patient.

  He was surprised at his own ability to fill himself with vienna biscuits and ginger cake. When he’d finished he lay back on the sofa and fell asleep.

  He slept until dinner time. Would have slept more if his mother hadn’t woken him. He went upstairs. The nurse was sitting in the same place. His father seemed restless, agitated, moving his head from side to side as if trying to say something.

  The nurse put her ear close. It sounded like “Anne. Anne.”

  She looked questioningly at him.

  He shook his head. They knew no Annes.

  “Bedpan!” the nurse said. “I’m afraid you’ll have to help me.”

  She brought it from the bathroom covered with a white towel which his mother always described as ‘huckaback’.

  She laid the bedpan on the chair while she pulled back the covers.

  His father was wearing the top half of his pyjama only. There was no ‘cage’ taking the weight of the bedclothes. Just two stick-thin legs and a grotesquely swollen belly over which the skin seemed tightly stretched. It was as if he was nine months pregnant. He though immediately of Marie-Céleste. He had never seen anything so horrible, obscene…

  “If you can put one hand here, and one here, like so,” the nurse was saying, “and help me raise him, I’ll slip the pan underneath.”

  Oscar’s instinct was to call his mother. He did not think he could touch what confronted him. He asked himself if he was a man or a mouse and did as he was asked.

  They waited. He tried not to stare at the limp genitals. Thou shalt not uncover thy father’s nakedness. He prayed he would never come to this.

  “He won’t manage anything,” the nurse said.

  She took the bedpan away and set the bed to rights.

  “His stomach?” Oscar said.

  “Acute obstruction. Can’t go on much longer after that.”

  He wondered if his father could hear.

  His mother came up to relieve him and tell him the goulash was dished up. She would have hers when he had finished. He wasn’t to rush. He was glad to eat alone.

  Again his appetite surprised him. He felt as if he should not eat. His guilt did not prevent him from a large second helping from the casserole his mother had left on the hot-plate.

  When he had finished he met the nurse in the hall. She had changed into a denim suit and released her hair. She was very young. He looked at her with admiration. How could she do the things she had to do, then pop off dancing or wherever it was she was going?

  “Goodnight, Mr John. I’ll see you in the morning. I do hope the doctor has a good night.” She sounded as if she cared.

  He held the door open for her, smelling the ‘keen air’ like which there was no other smell in the world.

  In the bedroom a bronzed Australian with clear blue eyes and an accent you could cut with a knife was wiping his father’s face tenderly.

  “…beck home,” she was saying to his mother, “we wouldn’t call that a beach! All those rocks. I nearly died. We have mile upon mile of sand. Bitter then London though. Earls Court! Three months was enough for me. I brought my bathers but I shan’t be putting my toes in thet ocean…”

  She must have been well over six feet tall. She looked down at Oscar.

  “Hi! I’m Merralin. Your father’s told me all about you. You’re the one that writes the books, aren’t you? I’ve been reading them at night. Dith in Bilgrade! Thire great. You’ll have to come to Australia. Dith in Sydney. How about thet?”

  “If all the girls are like you,” he said.

  “Bitter!”

  He suddenly had to get away from the sick room and its unseemly banter.

  “I’ll be back in half an hour,” he told his mother. Outside, the air filling his lungs, the sun drooping like a red tomato into the sea, he struck out for Black Rock.

  Seventeen

  The big Australian called him in the night.

  “I think you should come, Mr John. I’ve sent for Dr Patterson. Would you like a cuppa tea then?”

  He declined the tea. Put his feet into wrong slippers. Got his arm caught in the sleeve of his dressing-gown.

  The bedroom with its dimmed light, was no longer quiet but filled with the noise of stertorous breathing. He thought it impossible that what remained of his father could produce such a horrible sound.

  His mother sat by the bed holding his father’s hand. Her eyes did not leave his face. The breaths came every two or three seconds. In between they waited. The nurse had put a chair for herself next to the bed. Oscar sat in the armchair, on the arm of which was Death in Amsterdam which Marilyn was reading. He wondered if it was right to watch somebody die. A theatre for which the tickets were free. He did not know how his mother in her wrap-round, quilted dressing-gown from her ring-side seat could watch while the emaciated body racked by its own breath struggled to leave the life they had shared.

  His thoughts were broken into by the sight of his father suddenly sitting bolt upright, eyes staring wide open, gasping. Oscar sat horrified, paralysed. Never had he witnessed anything so grotesque.

  Marilyn was up like a shot, both arms round him.

  “That’s all right, Dr John. Everything’s all right. Jest try to relex.”

  In a moment it was over. He slumped back on the pillows. He must be dead, Oscar thought. But in a moment came another, rasping breath.

  “A convulsive attack,” Marilyn said. “Inadequate circulation in the brain. Not to worry.”

  It happened three more times. On each occasion Oscar was more scared. His father was fighting now for every breath which came at increasingly lengthy intervals. There seemed to be bubbles in his chest.

  Dr Patterson had one scarlet pyjama leg showing beneath his trousers. He was a tall, balding man, a contemporary of his father’s. He briefly acknowledged Oscar and his mother.

  “How much has he had?” he asked Marilyn who stood up when he came into the room.

  “Twenty-five milligrams, doctor,” she said.

  The struggle for breath was becoming indecent.

  “Can’t breathe, Tom,” his father said quite clearly. “Help me!”

  He went back to the struggle. Dr Patterson held his hand for a moment. “Take it easy, old chap, take it easy.”

  “Can’t you do something?” Oscar said.
>
  Tom Patterson looked at him. “Yes.”

  “Then please…”

  Patterson looked at his mother. “Muriel?”

  “Please Tom,” she whispered. “Please.”

  “Double the dose please nurse,” he said to Marilyn, “intravenously.”

  “It’s all here,” Marilyn indicated the trolley near the window. “While you’re giving it, doctor, I’ll fetch some warm milk for Mrs John.” She left the room.

  “What was all that about?” Oscar said.

  Dr Patterson was unwrapping a disposable syringe. “Ethics, I presume. It’s rather a large dose. Nurses are funny.”

  “Is it all right then, Tom?” his mother said.

  He attached a needle to the syringe and plunged it into a vial.

  “I’d expect someone to do the same for me.”

  His father was thrashing around in the bed.

  “Take it easy,” Tom said. “Muriel’s here and Oscar.”

  He moved to the bed and sitting on it pushed the pyjama sleeve up the bony arm. Oscar looked away. Heard the clunk of the syringe in the wastepaper basket. His father was still agitated.

  “How long does it take to work?”

  “Not long.”

  “Thank you, Tom,” his mother said.

  “As I said… Shall I stay? Would you rather be alone, the three of you? Whatever you like.”

  “Is there anything else to do?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Go back to bed, Tom. You have a busy day tomorrow.”

  By the time Marilyn came back with the milk his father had stopped thrashing, the breathing become less of a struggle.

  “All right now, nurse?”

  “Thank you, doctor.” She sounded only faintly disapproving.

  Dr Patterson kissed his mother on the head, held his mother’s hand for a brief moment.

  “Bye, Muriel. You know where to find me. Oscar.” He looked at the shrunken head on the pillow. Held the fleshless fingers for a moment. “Bye friend!” He paused for a moment, then braced his shoulders. “I’ll see myself out.”

  “They were very close,” his mother said.

  In ten minutes his father was quiet. The breaths came less painfully at what seemed to be ever-increasing intervals.

  Once he opened his eyes and said to Oscar, who was still sitting on the bed:

  “Oh Oscar! What shall I do?”

  Die.

  “Just relax, Dad.” Even dying had its jargon. He was picking it up. “We’re both here.”

  It seemed five minutes now between each breath. The three of them waited in suspense. How did you now when he’d finished breathing? Done with life.

  “His hand’s very cold,” Oscar said.

  Marilyn felt it and the tip of his nose.

  “The peripheral circulation always fails first.”

  He wanted to ask how much longer but was afraid of seeming callous. He smiled at his mother. His father was still. Only the chest moved. Heave. Blow out. Clock ticking; waiting. Nothing. He looked at Marilyn watching from the armchair. Why didn’t she get up? Tell them it was all over. He watched his father’s face carefully. He wanted to catch the actual moment. The passing from one world to the next. He, Oscar John, would see death giving up its secret. Another one. Dear God, how much longer? Total stillness. He wished he’d put on his watch. He knew time seemed longer than it actually was but he could swear ten minutes passed. His father was still. The hand like a stone. It was over. Heave. This time bubbles from the lips. Marilyn stood up and took a Kleenex. Relieved, Oscar yielded his place. She wiped away the bubbles. Put two fingers on his pulse. He looked at her questioningly but her face was impassive. Who was it who had been an unconscionable long time dying? Mind you, it didn’t seem difficult. No more breaths, he willed. No more, please. He realized with horror that he was urging his father to die. There were no more. Stillness. He wondered should he go and put his arms round his mother. Heave. My God, it wasn’t possible. Bubbles. Silence. They waited. Five minutes; ten. He concentrated on the things in the room. The heavy, old fashioned furniture. The twin wardrobes. People didn’t have wardrobes any more. The photographs on the mantelpiece. They didn’t have photographs either. Marilyn let the wrist go and stood up, a veritable Amazon; a Boadicea.

  To his amazement he saw there were tears running down her face.

  His mother didn’t cry. He went outside with Marilyn to leave them alone.

  “He was a great man,” Marilyn said. “Kin I git you something?”

  “No thanks.” He was surprised at her concern. What had his father been to her? A patient among hundreds. A case among cases. Tomorrow night there would be someone else.

  “I think I’ll put your mother to bid with a teblet. She’s not slept in nights. If you like to pop in to your father thin and efter I can clean up.”

  Your father. He hadn’t got a father. What else could she say?

  Alone in the room he didn’t know what to do. Thoughts came kaleidoscoping into his head. Walking. Black Rock. Raffles. Trying to keep up. Patients. In and out of his car. Cricket on the lawn in Wimbledon. LBW Oscar! Got you? Rosy and Daisy on his knee, pleading for ‘stories, Grandfather’. Sitting on his father’s shoulders at football matches. Is the doctor in? Is the doctor in? The telephone on the dining-table. The patience with the patients. Always time. Always time.

  He approached the bed. Perhaps there would be another breath. Marilyn had made a mistake. He thought he should cry but there were no tears. He bent and kissed the cold, still forehead. He could not remember when last he had kissed his father.

  Afterwards he wondered why the burial was worse than the death. In a few days between there had been the bureaucracy of dying. A visa for Moscow could not have been more tightly bound with red tape. Death certificate, registrar, funeral director, vicar; and then of course the relatives. Most of them Oscar had forgotten he had. Like bees round a honeypot. They clasped his mother to their bosoms, shed tears, bemoaned a man some of them had paid little attention to in life. He realized that they enjoyed a nice funeral. It was an occasion for a family get-together like christenings and weddings. They meant no harm. It was the patients who cared; really cared. All day they came and went; old and young, their eyes red with weeping, their voices sad. They had lost a friend. What would they do? Dr John understood, Dr John cared; he was irreplaceable. What could they do now but join a ‘group’ practice where they saw a different face each time; where their medical histories were recorded on a card, if they were lucky, but no one remembered the time little Jenny, now married with children of her own, had fallen from the tree and shattered her leg, no familiar face would come to ease the pain in the small hours of the night. It was the end of an era. They wept for themselves.

  The cemetery was not very far away. He did not think it had seen such a crowd on a Tuesday afternoon. Women with flowers, children with tiny posies, paying their last respects to the man who had brought them into the world and whom they had hoped would see them out.

  His mother was practical, controlled. He saw that she would never be short of friends. The sun beat down on the open grave. He hadn’t listened to what the vicar had said in his funeral voice. It had to do with the healing art, comfort to so many, good upon earth, unstinting sacrifice of self, this world and the next. He hadn’t realized the hole would be so deep. There was a surge forward as the box was lowered. No, he cried, my father is inside. Mentally he removed the lid of the coffin, saw his father lying there as if in bed. He watched the vicar scattering the symbolic handful of dust. No, no; he remembered a holiday in Britanny and burying each other in the sand. In a moment his father would get up, brush himself down, smile: “That’s enough of that now, who’s coming for a dip?”

  “Aren’t you coming, Oscar?” His mother’s arm was through his.

  Not without Father.

  “The car is waiting. We’re supposed to go first.”

  We can’t leave him here. I don’t want to leave him here by him
self. He doesn’t know anybody. He looked at the gravestones on either side. George Longman aged ninety-eight. Elizabeth Perry, thirteen, may her dear soul rest in peace. Perhaps he would make friends. It wasn’t so bad in the summer but what about the winter when it was covered with snow? So cold for him. He thought they should take him home again to the sunny bedroom overlooking the sea, the warm bed…

  “Oscar!”

  By the car people waited to pump her hand, kiss him, mutter consoling phrases.

  He saw his mother into the house which filled with mourners eager for their tea. He ran over the road to the seafront, down the steps, past the Penny Wonderland, over the shingle. He stopped behind one of the fishing boats and was sick. He stumbled further to the breakwater and lying on his stomach so that no one could see, not that they would really think he was sunbathing in his dark suit, his black tie, he wept. He watched his tears slide over the stones, the tears of a baby, a small boy, an adolescent, a grown man. He wanted to go back. He blamed his mother for leaving him there alone. He dried his eyes and sat up. A small child with a bucket and spade was staring at him curiously. It’s my turn next to die, he thought suddenly; I don’t want it to be my turn next.

  The telephone box was empty. There was graffiti on the walls.

  Pips, then a voice recited the number.

  “Dr Adler? This is Oscar John.”

  “Yes?”

  “My father died. He’s dead.”

  “I’m sorry. Do you want to see me?”

  “No. Just thought you’d like to know.”

  “Thank you.”

  He put the phone down and dialled Marie-Céleste’s number. There was no reply. Strange, she had taken to resting in the afternoons. Hadn’t said she was going anywhere; not seeing Boyd until next week. He let it ring. There was a tap on the door.

  “Can’t spend all bloody day in there! There’s other people…”

  He opened the door.

  “Bloody selfish some people…”

  They had dinner alone.

  “We could eat in the kitchen,” Oscar suggested, “easier.”

  “Your father wouldn’t have liked it.”

  The dining-room was too big. Between courses Oscar went upstairs to the sitting-room to phone. He didn’t care if Ernest answered. There was no reply. He got the operator to check the number.