"I'am going in,' he said, and this time got up, instinctively careful of his head: he was tall in this low-ceilinged room.
'Go in without knocking,' said Ellen.
'Yes,' Cedric confirmed.
Jack stooped under the door-frame. An inappropriate picture had come into his mind. It was of his sister in a scarlet pinafore and bright blue checked sleeves tugging a wooden horse which was held by a pale plump boy. Jack had been scared that when Ellen got the horse a real fight would start. But Cedric held on, lips tight, being jerked by Ellen's tugs as a dog is tugged by the other dog who has fastened his teeth into the bit of meat or the stick. This scene had taken place in the old garden, for it had been enclosed by pink hydrangeas, while gravel had crunched underfoot. They must all have been very young, because Ellen had still been the classic golden-haired beauty: later she became large and ordinary.
What he was really seeing was his father sitting up against high pillows. A young woman in white sat with her hands folded, watching the dying man. But he looked asleep. It was only when he saw the healthy young woman that Jack understood that his father had become a small old man: he had definitely shrunk. The room was dark, and it was not until Jack stood immediately above his father that he saw the mouth was open. But what was unexpected was that the eyelids had swelled and were blue, as if decomposition had set in there already. Those bruised lids affected Jack like something in bad taste, like a fart at a formal meal, or when making love of a romantic sort. He looked in appeal at the nurse, who said in a natural voice which she did not lower at all: 'He did stir a moment ago, but he didn't really come to himself.'
Jack nodded, not wanting to break the hush of time that surrounded the bed, and bent lower, trying not to see the dying lids, but remembering what he could of his father's cool, shrewd, judging look. It seemed to him as if the bruised puffs of flesh were trembling, might lift. But this stare did not have the power to rouse his father, and soon Jack straightened himself — cautiously. Where did the Church put its tall old people, he wondered, and backed out of the room, keeping his eyes on the small old man in his striped pyjamas which showed very clean under a dark grey cardigan that was fastened under the collar with a gold tie-pin, giving him a formal, dressed-up look.
'How does he seem?' asked Ellen. She had resumed her knitting.
Asleep.'
'Unconscious,' said Cedric.
Jack asserted himself — quite easily, he saw with relief. 'He doesn't look unconscious to me. On the contrary, I thought he nearly woke up.'
They knew the evening was wearing on: their watches told them so. It remained light; an interminable summer evening filled the sky above the church tower. A young woman came through the room, a coat over her white uniform, and in a moment the other nurse came past them, on her way out.
'I think we might as well have dinner,' said Ellen, already folding her knitting.
'Should one of us stay perhaps?' corrected Cedric. He stayed, and Jack had hotel dinner and a bottle of wine with his sister; he didn't dislike being with her as much as he had expected. He was even remembering times when he had been fond of Ellen.
They returned to keep watch, while Cedric took his turn for dinner. At about eleven the doctor came in, disappeared for five minutes into the bedroom, and came out saying that he had given Mr Orkney an injection. By the time they had thought to ask what the injection was, he had said that his advice was that they should all get a good night's sleep, and had gone. Each hesitated before saying that they intended to take the doctor's advice: this situation, traditionally productive of guilt, was doing its work well.
Before they had reached the bottom of the stairs, the nurse came after them: 'Mr Orkney, Mr Orkney...' Both men turned, but she said 'Jack? He was asking for Jack.'
Jack ran up the stairs, through one room, into the other. But it seemed as if the old man had not moved since he had last seen him. The nurse had drawn the curtains, shutting out the sky so full of light, of summer, and had arranged the lamp so that it made a bright space in the dark room. In this was a wooden chair with a green cushion on it, and on the cushion a magazine. The lit space was like the detail of a picture much magnified. The nurse said: 'Really, with that injection, he ought not to wake now.' She took her place again with the magazine on her lap, inside the circle of light.
Yet he had woken, he had asked for himself, Jack, and for nobody else. Jack was alert, vibrating with his nearness to what his father might say. But he stood helpless, trying to make out the bruises above the eyes, which the shadows were hiding. 'I'll stay here the night,' he declared, all energy, and strode out, only just remembering to lower his head in time, to tell his sister and his brother, who had come back up the stairs.
'The nurse thinks he is unlikely to wake, but I am sure it would be what he would wish if one of us were to stay.'
That he had used another of the obligatory phrases struck Jack with more than amusement: now the fact that the prescribed phrases made their appearance one after the other was like a guarantee that he was behaving appropriately, that everything would go smoothly and without embarrassment, and that he could expect his father's eyes to appear from behind the corrupted lids — that he would speak the words Jack needed to hear. Cedric and Ellen quite understood, but demanded to be called at once if... They went off together across the bright grass towards the hotel.
Jack sat up all night; but there was no night, midsummer swallowed the dark; at midnight the church was still glimmering and people strolled talking softly over the lawns. He had skimmed through Trollope's The Small House at Allington, and had dipped into a book of his own called With the Guerrillas in Guatemala. The name on the spine was Jack Henge, and now he wondered if he had ever told his father that this was one of his noms de plume, and he thought that if so, it showed a touching interest on his fathers part, but if not, that there must have been some special hidden sympathy shown in the choice or chance that led to its sitting here on the old man's shelves side by side with the Complete Works of Trollope and George Eliot and Walter Scott. But, of course, it was unlikely now that he would ever know... his father had not woken, had not stirred, all night. Once he had tiptoed in and the nurse had lifted her head and smiled; clearly, though the old man had gone past the divisions of day and night, the living must still adhere to them, for the day nurse had spoken aloud, but now it was night, the nurse whispered: 'The injection is working well. You try to rest, Mr Orkney.' Her solicitude for him, beaming out from the bright cave hollowed from the dark of the room, enclosed them together in the night's vigil, and when the day nurse came, and the night nurse went yawning, looking pale, and tucking dark strands of hair as if tidying up after a night's sleep, her smile at Jack was that of a comrade after a shared ordeal.
Almost at once the day nurse came back into the living-room and said: 'Is there someone called Ann?'
'Yes, a granddaughter, he was asking for her?' 'Yes. Now, he was awake for a moment.'
Jack suppressed: 'He didn't ask for me?' — and ran back into the bedroom which was now filled with a stuffy light that presented the bruised lids to the nurse and to Jack.
'I'll tell my brother that Ann has been asked for'
Jack walked through fresh morning air that had already brought a few people on to the grass around the church, to the hotel, where he found Cedric and Ellen at breakfast.
He said that no, he had not been wanted, but that Ann was wanted now. Ellen and Cedric conferred and agreed that Ann 'could reasonably be expected' never to forgive them if she was not called. Jack saw that these words soothed them both; they were comforting himself. He was now suddenly tired. He drank coffee, refused breakfast, and decided on an hour's sleep. Ellen went to telephone greetings and the news that nothing had changed to her family; Cedric to summon Ann, while Jack wondered if he should telephone Rosemary. But there was nothing to say.
He fell on his bed and dreamed, woke, dreamed again, woke, forced himself back to sleep but was driven up out of it to stand in
the middle of his hotel room, full of horror. His dreams had been landscapes of dark menacing shapes that were of man's making — metallic, like machines, steeped in a cold grey light, and scattered about on a plain where cold water lay spilled about, gleaming. This water reflected, he knew, death, or news, or information about death, but he stood too for away on the plain to see what pictures lay on its surfaces.
Now Jack was one of those who do not dream. He prided himself on never dreaming. Of course he had read the 'new' information that everyone dreamed every night, but he distrusted this information. For one thing he shared in the general distrust of science, of its emphatic pronouncements; for another, travelling around the world as he had, he had long ago come to terms with the fact that certain cultures were close to aspects of life which he, Jack, had quite simply forbidden. He had locked a door on them. He knew that some people claimed to see ghosts, feared their dead ancestors, consulted witch-doctors, dreamed dreams. How could he not know? He had lived with them. But he, Jack, did not consult the bones or allow himself to be afraid of the dark. Or dream. He did not dream.
He felt groggy, more than tired: the cold of the dream was undermining him, making him shiver. He got back into bed, for he had slept only an hour, and continued with the same dream. Now he and Walter Kenting were interlopers on that death-filled plain, and they were to be shot, one bullet each, on account of nonspecified crimes. He woke again: it was ten minutes later. He decided to stay awake. He bathed, changed his shirt and his socks, washed the shirt and socks he had taken off, and hung them over the bath to drip. Restored by these small ritual acts which he had performed in so many hotel rooms and in so many countries, he ordered fresh coffee, drank it in the spirit of one drinking a tonic or prescribed medicine, and walked back across sunlit grass to the old people's house.
He entered on the scene he had left. Ellen and Cedric sat with their feet almost touching, one knitting and one reading the Daily Telegraph. Ellen said: 'You haven't slept long.' Cedric said: 'He has asked for you again.'
'What! While he had slept, his energies draining into that debilitating dream, he might have heard, at last, what his father wanted to say. 'I think I'll sit with him a little.'
'That might not be a bad idea.' said his sister. She was annoyed that she had not been ‘asked for'? If so, she showed no signs of it.
The little sitting-room was full of light; sunshine lav on the old wood sills. But the bedroom was dark, warm, and smelled of many drugs.
The nurse had the only chair — today just a piece of furniture among many. He made her keep it, and sat down slowly on the bed, as if this slow subsidence could make his weight less.
He kept his eyes on his fathers face. Since yesterday the bruises had spread beyond the lids: the flesh all around the eyes and as far down as the cheek-bones was stained.
'He has been restless,' said the nurse, 'but the doctor should be here soon.' She spoke as if the doctor could answer any question that could possibly ever be asked; and Jack, directed by her as he had been by his sister and his brother, now listened for the doctor's coming. The morning went past. His sister came to ask if he would go with her to luncheon. She was hungry, but Cedric was not. Jack said he would stay, and while she was gone the doctor came.
He sat on the bed — Jack had risen from it, retreating to the window. The doctor took the old man's wrist in his and seemed to commune with the darkened eyelids. 'I rather think that perhaps...' He took out a plastic box from his case, that held the ingredients of miracle-making: syringe, capsules, methylated spirits.
Jack asked: 'What effect does that have?' He wanted to ask: Are you keeping him alive when he should be dead?
The doctor said: 'Sedative and plain — killer.'
‘A heart stimulant?'
Now the doctor said: 'I have known your father for thirty years.' He was saying: I have more right than you have to say what he would have wanted.
Jack had to agree; he had no idea if his father would want to be allowed to die, as nature directed, or whether he would like to be kept alive as long as possible.
The doctor administered an injection, as light and as swift as the strike of a snake, rubbed the puncture with one gentle finger, and said: ;'Your father looked after himself. He has plenty of life in him yet.'
He went out. Jack looked in protest at the nurse: what on earth had been meant? Was his father dying? The nurse smiled, timidly, and from that smile Jack gathered that the words had been spoken for his father's sake, in case he was able to hear them, understand them, and be fortified by them.
He saw the nurse's face change: she bent over the old man, and Jack took a long step and was beside her. In the bruised flesh the eyes were open and stared straight up. This was not the human gaze he had been wanting to meet, but a dull glare from chinks in damaged flesh.
‘Ann,’ said the old man. ‘Is Ann here?’
From the owner of those sullen eyes Jack might expect nothing; as an excuse to leave the room, he said to the nurse, ‘I'll tell Ann's father.’
In the living-room sunlight had left the sills. Cedric was not there. 'It's Ann he wants,' Jack said. 'He has asked again.'
'She is coming. She has to come from Edinburgh. She is with Maureen.'
Ellen said this as if he was bound to know who Maureen was. She was probably one of Cedric's ghastly wife's ghastly relations. Thinking of the awfulness of Cedric's wife made him feel kindly towards Ellen. Ellen wasn't really so bad. There she sat, knitting, tired and sad but not showing it. When you came down to it she didn't look all that different from Rosemary — unbelievably also a middle-aged woman. But at this thought Jack’s loyalty to the past rebelled. Rosemary, though a large fresh-faced, greying woman, would never wear a suit which looked as if its edges might cut, or have her hair set in a helmet of ridges and frills. She wore soft pretty clothes, and her hair was combed straight and long, as she had always worn it: he had begged her to keep it like that. But if you came to think of if, probably the lives the two women led were similar. Probably they were all more alike than any one of them would care to admit. Including Cedric’s awful wife.
He looked at Ellen's lids, lowered while she counted stitches. They were her father's eyes and lids. When she lay dying probably her lids would bruise and puff.
Cedric came in. He was very like the old man — more like than any of them. He, Jack, was more like their mother, but when he was dying perhaps his own lids... Ellen looked up, smiled at Cedric, then at Jack, they were all smiling at each other. Ellen laid down her knitting, and lit herself a cigarette. The brothers could see that this was the point when she might cry. But Mrs Markham came in, followed by a well-brushed man all white cuffs and collar and pink fresh skin.
'The Dean,' she breathed, with the smile of a girl.
The Dean said: 'No, don't get up. I dropped in. I am an old friend of your father's, you know. Many and many a game of chess have we played in this room...' and he had followed Mrs Markham into the bedroom.
'He Had Extreme Unction yesterday,' said Ellen.
'Oh,' said Jack. 'I didn't realize that Extreme Unction was part of his...' He stopped, not wanting to hurt feelings. He believed both Ellen and Cedric to be religious.
'He got very High in the end,' said Cedric.
Ellen giggled. Jack and Cedric looked inquiry. 'It sounded funny,' she said. 'You know, the young ones talk about getting high.'
Cedric's smile was wry; and Jack remembered there had been talk about his elder son, who had threatened to become addicted. What to? Jack could not remember: he would have to ask the girls.
'I suppose he wants a church service and to be buried?' asked Jack.
'Oh yes,' said Cedric. 'I have got his will.'
'Of course, you would have.'
'Well, we'll just have to get through it all,' said Ellen. It occurred to Jack that this was what she probably said, or thought, about her own life. Well, I've just got to get through it. The thought surprised him: Ellen was pleasantly surprising him.
Now he heard her say: Well, I suppose some people have to have religion.'
And now Jack looked at her in disbelief.
'Yes,' said Cedric, equally improbably, 'it must be a comfort for them, one can see that.' He laid small strong hands around his crossed knees and made the knuckles crack.
'Oh Cedric,' complained Ellen, as she had as a girl: this knuckle-cracking had been Cedric's way of expressing tension since he had been a small boy.
'Sorry,' said Cedric. He went on, letting his hands fall to his sides, and swing there, in a conscious effort towards relaxing himself. 'From time to time I take my pulse — as it were. Now that I am getting on for sixty one can expect the symptoms. Am I getting God? Am I still myself? Yes, no, doubtful? But so far, I can report an even keel, I am happy to say.'
'Oh, one can understand it,' said Ellen. 'God knows, one can understand it only too well. But I really would be ashamed...'
Both Ellen and Cedric were looking at him, to add his agreement — of which they were sure, of course. But he could not speak. He had made precisely the same joke a month ago, in a group of 'the Old Guard', about taking his pulse to find out if he had caught religion. And everyone had confessed to the same practice. To get God, after a lifetime of enlightened rationalism, would be the most shameful of capitulations.
Now his feelings were the same as those of members of a particularly exclusive Club on being forced to admit the lower classes; or the same as that Victorian bishop's who, travelling to some cannibal-land to baptize the converted, had been heard to say that he could wish that his Church admitted degrees of excellence in its material: he could not believe that this lifetime of impeccable service would weight the same as that of these so recently benighted ones.
The Temptation of Jack Orkney Page 2