To Be Continued

by James Robertson

  ‘That’s what she says. Drink your coffee, drink your coffee. Like a …’

  With his free hand he makes a flapping motion.

  ‘Parrot?’

  ‘Wee-er.’

  ‘Budgie?’

  ‘Aye, like a fucking budgie.’

  I laugh.

  ‘What?’

  ‘What you said.’

  ‘What did I say?’

  ‘You’d never have said “a fucking budgie” before.’

  ‘Before what?’

  ‘Never mind.’

  ‘Never mind? Poor thing. I dinnae like birds in cages.’ He is starting to get upset, raising his voice.

  ‘Forget it, Dad.’ Forget it, Dad! Jesus! ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  ‘You can say that. You’re no a budgie.’ And suddenly he laughs. So that’s all right, and I can join in. Then we sit in silence for a minute. Outside the window, uncaged birds are tweeting important or trivial messages to one another. Someone in another room is laughing at some other remark that might or might not be funny. Further away, down the corridor, a human is shouting. ‘Leave me alone!’ she shouts. I think it’s a she.

  ‘Drink your coffee, drink your coffee,’ Dad repeats, developing his budgie routine. ‘Do you get that?’

  ‘Not any more. Not at the moment, I should say. With Sonya it’s usually, “Could you not have put that somewhere else?” ’

  ‘What?’

  ‘She’s very tidy.’

  ‘Who is?’

  ‘Sonya.’

  ‘That’s terrible.’

  ‘It’s because they want things to be organised. They’re more organised than we are.’

  ‘Who are?’

  ‘Women.’

  My father groans. ‘Don’t listen to them. What’s your mother saying about it?’

  Before I can remind him that she’s not saying anything about anything any more, he carries on.

  ‘They’re aye plotting something. Don’t let them boss you about. This is what happens.’ He finger-jabs his own chest. ‘It’s all women here, ye ken.’

  ‘They treat you well, Dad,’ I remind him. ‘They look after you. And there are men here. I just saw Jimmy down the hall. You like him.’

  ‘Bastard.’

  ‘I thought you two got on?’

  ‘Bastard.’

  ‘Suit yourself. And there are men on the staff as well. It’s not all women.’

  Dad hunches his shoulders, a form of protest. It’s something I do, the very same movement. I could be looking in a mirror. Did I learn it from him without learning it?

  After a further silence I begin to make the usual stirrings preparatory to departure.

  ‘I’ll need to go, Dad. Got to get on.’

  ‘Get on a bus?’

  ‘No, I’ll walk. Got to get on with things at home.’

  ‘What things?’

  Why not tell him? What is there not to tell? ‘I’m writing a book.’

  ‘You? What about?’

  ‘I don’t really know. It’s a novel. I’m making it up as I go along.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Well, how else would you do it?’

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘Write a novel. I don’t know any other way. Do you?’

  He gives me the look of contemplation, the one that might be full of deeply considered opinions or a complete void.

  I prompt him. ‘No ideas?’

  ‘Shite.’

  ‘Aye, probably. Tell you what, if I ever get it finished I’ll bring it in and read it to you. Then you can tell me what you really think. Is that a deal?’

  He chuckles. ‘Aye, deal. Want my advice?’

  ‘Yes, please.’

  He nods. I wait.

  ‘Only thing is,’ he says.

  ‘What?’

  He leans in conspiratorially. ‘Eh?’

  ‘You were going to say something. “Only thing is,” you said.’

  ‘Only thing is, don’t listen to them.’

  ‘Right. I won’t.’

  ‘I’m older than you. I should know.’

  ‘Aye, Dad.’

  ‘I’m Dad. I’m your dad.’

  ‘Yes, you are,’ I say, staring across heather at my father sitting on a rock.

  EXAMPLE OF A LISTICLE: TEN REASONS WHY HAVING YOUR PHYSICALLY AND MENTALLY INFIRM FATHER LIVING AT HOME WITH YOU BECOMES TOO MUCH TO COPE WITH

  You turn your back for a minute: he falls over.

  You pick him up off the floor, put him in his chair and ask/tell him to stay put while you make him a cup of tea. When you return he is on the floor, having tried to get to his feet again. And fallen over, again.

  He is always looking for something he has mislaid. He has mislaid everything. Everything in the house is therefore in constant turmoil. Even when he finds what he was looking for, it often turns out not to be what he was looking for. He then usually tidies it away where neither he nor you can find it when it is next something he is looking for. In fact he tidies everything away. He tidies things away very untidily. And in no order. He is very fastidious about this. He creates chaos perfectly.

  While your back is turned, and even though you have recently supplied him with one, he decides to make himself a cup of tea. This involves him opening a tin of baked beans and emptying the contents into the electric kettle, then putting the kettle on the hob and turning the gas on. Fortunately the kettle does not catch fire as he fails to ignite the gas. Fortunately, too, you are alerted to what he has done by the smell of gas just before he tries to light a candle in the belief that the smell suggests that there has been a power cut.

  He sometimes mistakes radiators for urinals, even though there are no urinals in the house. Problematic though this is, at least it doesn’t upset the neighbours, unlike his occasional venturing onto the street to micturate against their cars.

  You cannot leave him alone in the house, but taking him out with you is extremely difficult, owing to his newly acquired predilection for using language that some find offensive, and the likelihood of his making loud comments concerning other people’s appearances, which on one occasion led to both of you being ejected from a supermarket by security staff and asked not to return.

  He sometimes wakes in the middle of the night, gets dressed and prepares to go to work at the builders’ merchant where he was employed as a warehouseman for thirty years. When you hear him moving about noisily in the kitchen and go down to dissuade him, he becomes angry, then distressed, then bemused. By the time you get him into bed again you are exhausted and yet unable to go back to sleep yourself.

  He needs to check that everything is safe, secure and in good working order. This may simply be a case of going round the house switching on all the lights or opening all the windows. Sometimes, however, it means lifting carpets to examine the floorboards, attempting to deconstruct furniture, or testing the strength and flexibility of plastic coat hangers. The garden shed has become a locked depository for dangerous tools and equipment, and you are obliged to keep the key on your person at all times and deny him access to it. Ironic, given his previous occupation.

  You find it increasingly difficult to manage his difficulties – keeping track of the days and hours, maintaining regular routines, remembering names, remembering what happened yesterday, remembering what is supposed to happen tomorrow, and so on. In fact his difficulties are becoming more and more like your difficulties. You fear that if this goes on much longer your mind will start to adapt itself to his way of doing and seeing things. You will, in other words, slip almost unknowingly into the place he is in. This terrifies you, not least because you might not recognise that it has happened.

  When you stop to think about all this, you realise that you are as isolated, in some ways, as he is. Caring for your father, if ‘caring’ is the word, has blighted all your other relationships. You resent his domination of your days. You sometimes feel sorrier for yourself than you do for him. You are brought out of this guilt-ridden, self-pitying cond
ition by a crash in another room. He has fallen over again.

  ‘DRAT!’

  ‘A minced oath (early 19th century). Derived from “Od rot ’em!”, “Od” being a reduced form of “God”. Cf. “Od’s bodikins!”, “Gadzooks!”, “Strewth!”, “Uksake!”, etc.’ [Source: Tanner’s Cornucopia of Inconsequence, 3rd, revised (1965), edition.]

  STORIES

  If someone tells you that there are already enough stories in the world, they are missing the point. The point is, the world is stories. Here’s one more.

  CONVERSATIONS WITH A TOAD: CONVERSATION #1

  Left hand clutching a glass, a bottle of red wine tucked under the corresponding oxter, Douglas Findhorn Elder opened the back door of what was half his and half his father’s house – the house in which he had grown up, which he had never really left and which, one day perhaps not too far off, would be wholly his – and stepped into the blue night. Stars and the sodium vapour of many street lamps contested the sky above him, but the garden was dark with October darkness.

  His movement triggered a security light set on the wall of the house, and this illuminated the stone slabs of the patio or – as it had always been known in the family – the sitootery; or – as his father used to observe with dry wit on wet days – the raindaffery.

  Douglas stood on a small bright stage in a sloe-black arena and breathed in a portion of the gentle breeze. Tens of thousands of his adoring fans could be out there but not one of them was visible to him.

  A slight swell of Rioja rolled in his gullet and he belched softly.

  To his surprise an answering rift, suggestive of imitation or even mockery, came from a spot close to his right foot.

  Douglas looked down and smiled. He could not help smiling, for what he saw was pleasing to him. Squatting on one of the slabs was a large, jowly, brownish-backed, creamy-breasted toad, well covered with warts.

  There is something appealing about a toad, especially one that strikes the attitude of a fat monk disturbed while at prayer.

  ‘Good evening,’ Douglas said.

  He did not anticipate that much would follow this opening remark. A few platitudes from him, a blank glance or two from the toad, and they would go their separate ways – he to his bed, and the toad to its, presumably after a night of foraging for snails, worms and other comestibles. Douglas felt that the toad had acquitted itself well merely by belching with such excellent timing. He expected nothing more from it.

  He was therefore astonished when – in a low, dark, yet sonorous and somehow commanding voice – the toad spoke.

  ‘It is a good evening,’ it said. ‘And mild, for the time of year.’

  Douglas bent down.

  ‘Did you just speak?’

  ‘Did you not?’

  ‘Aye, but …’

  ‘Aye, but what?’

  ‘But you are a toad.’ Even to Douglas, this sounded lame and inadequate. For if a toad has spoken, not once but three times in succession, then its toadness is already one of its less interesting features.

  The toad hunched its back. No creature, of any species, can match a toad when it comes to looking disdainful.

  ‘Your point being?’

  Douglas swayed slightly, removed bottle from oxter in order to be able to raise glass to mouth, and took a drink. It occurred to him that he might have had more wine than he thought, and that the toad might not really be there. Or he might not be there. Conceivably, neither of them might be there. However, the Cartesian paradox suggested by this possibility was of such magnitude and complexity that he, for the moment, did not feel mentally adequate to address it.

  A period of silence ensued. When Douglas checked again the toad was still present and still, apparently, waiting for an answer.

  ‘What?’ Douglas said.

  ‘What do you mean, what?’

  ‘You’re looking at me.’

  ‘You’re looking at me. And it is rude to stare.’

  ‘I wasn’t staring.’

  ‘You have changed tenses, from which I infer a sense of guilt. You may not be staring now, but you certainly were, and you know it.’

  ‘You were staring at me!’

  ‘I was not. I was dazzled when you put the light on, that’s all. I simply happened to be facing in your direction.’

  ‘The light comes on by itself.’

  ‘Well, you should have it repaired.’

  ‘That’s what it’s meant to do.’

  ‘Dazzle me? Charming!’

  ‘When anybody or anything above a certain size moves in this area, it comes on. It’s a security device. I’m sorry that it dazzled you.’

  ‘So am I. As a security device it is flawed, since it would appear to offer no protection against the smaller bandit or housebreaker. Still, I accept your apology.’

  ‘Fine. Acceptance accepted.’

  They had reached, Douglas thought, either an impasse or an accommodation. Carefully, so as not to cause further offence, he stepped round the toad and set the wine bottle on the patio’s cast-iron table. He sat on one of the two matching chairs and raised his glass.

  ‘Your health,’ he said. The toad took a few lumbering steps towards the back door, examined a weed or two between slabs, then turned and lumbered back to its original position.

  A thought occurred to Douglas as he watched.

  ‘Did we …? That is, have we … met before?’

  ‘Where might that have been?’

  ‘Over there, in that flowerbed. Yesterday. I was digging out a clump of lilies –’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because it’s autumn, they’re long over, and there are too many of them. They’re taking over the whole garden.’

  ‘There can never be too many lilies,’ the toad said. ‘However, continue with your story.’

  ‘I was digging out the lilies, and something happened. My graip had a close encounter with you, if it was you.’

  ‘Your what?’

  ‘My graip. Garden fork. Or you had a close encounter with it. For a moment I thought I’d impaled you or amputated your leg. But you dived into the undergrowth before I had a chance to make sure.’

  ‘That you’d amputated my leg? Again, charming!’

  ‘No, that I hadn’t! Which, clearly, I haven’t.’

  ‘You seem very certain of that.’

  ‘Well, you have your legs. A complete set. So, unless it wasn’t you …’

  ‘It wasn’t.’

  ‘Oh.’

  Although the toad’s expression hardly altered, a slyness seemed to invade its features.

  ‘You know something about it, though, don’t you?’ Douglas said.

  ‘News gets around. It was a cousin of mine.’

  ‘Is he all right?’

  ‘She is fine, no thanks to you. You missed her’ – holding up two digits almost closed together – ‘by that much. She is still in shock.’

  ‘I am so sorry.’

  ‘So you should be. It scares the daylights out of you, something like that. And when I say “daylights” I don’t mean “daylights”.’

  ‘It wasn’t intentional. I hope she makes a full recovery. Would you give her my apologies?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘We are not on speaking terms. But I’ll make sure she’s told.’

  ‘That’s kind of you.’

  ‘Humff!’ the toad said, and made a small, ungainly hop, landing a foot closer.

  ‘Two chairs, one bottle, one glass,’ it said. ‘Why are you drinking on your own?’

  The security light went out. Douglas said, ‘Do you mind? Close your eyes,’ and waved his arm to bring the light back on again.

  ‘If you are patient your vision will adjust to the night,’ the toad said. ‘You will be able to see me perfectly well – if that’s what you wish to do. Of course you will also have to sit still. Whereas I …’

  It stood on its back feet and stretched itself against one of the table legs, like an athlete warming up.
Then, with the laborious care of an expert rock-climber, it began an ascent of the table.

  ‘Want a hoist?’Douglas asked.

  ‘No. It’s good exercise.’ Left hand, right foot, right hand, left foot, the toad made steady progress and quite evidently needed no assistance. ‘You haven’t answered my question.’

  ‘Why shouldn’t I drink on my own?’

  ‘I’m not judging you. There used to be other people here, that’s all. An old woman and an old man. And you weren’t around so much. Then the old woman disappeared.’

  ‘She died. That was my mother.’

  ‘Then, recently, you’ve been here more. You used not to show up for long spells, but in the last few seasons …’ The toad left the sentence unfinished as it negotiated the overhang of the tabletop with impressive skill. It settled beside the wine bottle, breathing hard.

  ‘I used to come and go a bit. But now I’m back, you’re right. A permanent fixture, you could say.’

  ‘The old man was the permanent one. Your father?’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘I quite liked him. Not that we ever met, or spoke … like this. He seemed content, self-contained. There was no sign of violence in him. But he’s been absent lately. What’s happened? Dead, too?’

  ‘No. He’s in a home.’

  ‘Is this not his home?’

  ‘It is. It was. But he couldn’t stay here. So he’s gone to a home. A Home.’

  ‘Either I am being obtuse or you are being obscure. Please explain.’

  ‘My father is ill. He is suffering from various afflictions. Memory loss, confusion, dizziness. He struggles to articulate his thoughts and feelings. He doesn’t always know who he is or where he is. He gets depressed. He falls over a lot. He no longer has full control of some bodily functions.’

  ‘Like my cousin when you attacked her with your … graip?’

  ‘I didn’t attack her. I didn’t see her till it was too late. She happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.’

  ‘She was in bed! It was mid-afternoon. She was in exactly the right place at exactly the right time.’

  ‘Toad time.’