Estuary

by Graham Hurley

  On one level it’s simple exhaustion. Neither Lin nor I have been sleeping too well, and I suppose that’s to be expected, but the tiredness has been compounded by a succession of images, scenes, smells and half-conversations that have ganged up on my comfortable assumptions about life, and pretty much overwhelmed them. I feel physically battered. I feel as though I’ve been through a war for which I never volunteered and the slow realisation that the war is far from over is the smallest of comforts. What on earth happens now? Will they keep him in hospital? Look after him forever? Or do we await the phone call that - already - I dread? He’s on his way home. Lay in more bleach. Prepare for the worst.

  I sit back in the van, staring out at the flat sodden fields. All day, heavy purple rain squalls have been marching across the big Cotswold skies and over to the west I can see another one approaching. I wait for the first fat drops of rain to splatter against the windscreen, light-headed with exhaustion. At the bottom of my heart there’s a feeling that I could go on driving like this forever, the same livid shafts of sunlight, the same blue ridge of distant hills, an endless deferment of whatever happens next. It’s a wonderful thought, deeply attractive, and for once in my life I don’t even bother to fight it. Then I see the soiled nappy on the bedroom floor, and I sense the young para-medic, turning from her cardiac print-outs, horrified at my mother’s bewildered regret at my father’s survival. We’re stuck in this strange hiatus between life and death, in this twilight world with it’s drip-drip-drip of grotesque surprises. It can’t go on. It shouldn’t go on. But it will.

  I get out of the van. Dandelions nod wetly beside the bridge. I pick the biggest and hang over the parapet before letting it fall. The river is swollen and turbid with the recent rain. The dandelion bobs this way and that, tugged by the eddies, and I watch until it disappears around the bend. Where will it end its days? Maidenhead? Reading? Windsor? Westminster? Or will it reach the Thames estuary? Southend, maybe? Or even Clacton-on-Sea?

  It takes nearly three hours to drive back to Southsea and it’s nearly ten before I make it home. My mother is perched on one of our kitchen stools, nursing a glass of Martini. To my relief she seems relaxed, even cheerful. She and Lin have been to see my father.

  “How is he?”

  “OK. In fact he looks much better.”

  “How much better?”

  “In his face, almost normal.”

  “And what do the staff say? The doctors?”

  “They’re doing more tests. He’ll be there for a while.”

  My mother has been listening to this conversation. She’s rocking to and fro on the stool.

  “He completely ignored me” she says at last, “I might as well not have been there.”

  Lin says it’s true. After the first exchange of politenesses, my father and mother had nothing to say. After a while, thinking they’d be better alone, Lin had retreated to a sunny lounge at the end of the ward but when she rejoined them, nearly an hour later, absolutely nothing had changed. My father was looking one way, my mother the other. Nothing between them. Except the old, old silence.

  Afterwards, in the cab home, my mother had been upset. Now, she’s simply philosophical.

  “Maybe it’s better I don’t go at all” she says, “I know he doesn’t want to see me.”

  Both Lin and I do our best to assure her that this cold indifference is simply a side-effect, a by-product of the turmoil he’s been going through, and that time will restore a little affection, but neither of us believe it and nor does my mother. Already, we’ll be making plans for tomorrow’s visit. I’ll be typing at home for most of the day. As soon as I’ve finished - late afternoon - we’ll drive up to see him.

  My mother nods.

  “OK” she says, rather wanly.

  Ten

  Next morning I wake with a feeling of dread. I work on yesterday’s notes all day. By half past three, I’ve written the entire scene - a couple of thousand words - and I’m pleased with the results. I fire up the van and we drive to the hospital. My mother is like a little girl. She’s found her lipstick. She can’t wait to see Stanley.

  When we finally make it up to the ward, my father is sitting in an armchair beside the bed. The pinkness from the oxygen has gone and his face looks, if anything, a little yellow. He seems infinitely more rational than I’ve seen him for weeks.

  He says hallo to me and then stares at my mother.

  “I’ve been thinking about you this afternoon” he announces sternly.

  She bends to greet him but he tries to ward her off. When she finally manages to plant a kiss on the top of his head, his expression suggests alarm.

  I, like Lin yesterday, leave them to it. I have to catch the evening post and check on everything at the office. I’ll be back in an hour or so. My mother looks up.

  “Don’t worry, dear” she says. “We’ll be fine.”

  There’s more to do at the office than I’d expected. By the time I’m back at the hospital, it’s half past six. The moment I walk onto the ward I can see exactly what Lin meant. My mother is sitting across from my father. They’re both looking down the row of beds towards me. They must have been this way for the last half hour. They can’t wait for me to turn up.

  I stay for a cup of tea. We make the usual bedside attempts at conversation. When I ask my father about the food he says it’s marvellous. When I ask him about today’s menu, he hasn’t a clue. When I inquire whether he’s eaten or not, he says no. By this time, I’ve realised that he’s wearing a catheter. He keeps plucking at the brown pyjama bottoms he’s wearing and the tube to the collecting bottle at his feet is plainly visible. Before we go, supper appears. I take the tray from the serving trolly and arrange the courses on his little wheeled table. Tonight it’s soup, followed by peas and mash and some kind of stew. I coax a knife into my father’s hand but he doesn’t seem to have much interest in eating.

  “This is for Peg” he says, “It’s her supper.” He pokes half-heartedly at the soup with his knife then glares up at her. “Do you want to go to the toilet?”

  “What?” My mother’s looking startled.

  “The toilet? Don’t you need the toilet?”

  “No, thank you.”

  “You do.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Oh, well” He sniffs. “What day did you say it was?”

  We leave shortly afterwards. I’ve never seen my mother so upset. She’s a strong woman, fiercely independent, very self-contained, but on the way home she’s glassy-eyed with bewilderment, staring at her hands, totally oblivious of everything.

  “He didn’t even bother to look at me” she says at last, “He was more interested in the man in the next bed than me.”

  I sympathise as best I can but we’re way past making excuses. At the end of the motorway, slowing for the roundabout, she finally looks up.

  “I hate to say it but I think an hour in that hospital is too long. Isn’t that terrible?”

  I nod. Hilary, my father’s favourite carer, has been on the phone. She wants to go and see him tomorrow. I’ve suggested mid-afternoon. Maybe that would give my mum a break.

  “What do you mean?” she asks.

  “Give tomorrow a miss.”

  “You mean not go at all?”

  “Yes.”

  She nods, saying nothing. Just before we turn into our road, she shakes her head.

  “You know something, Graham?” she says, “That was the saddest day of my life.”

  Eleven

  Over the next week or so, we commute daily to the hospital. My father’s condition varies from visit to visit, slipping in and out of lucidity, conversational one minute, vague and despairing the next.

  For my mother, these trips up to the ward are a daily trial. When we arrive, she hobbles out of the first floor lift, her spirits high, her lipstick on, her little-girl expectations readied for a treat. Then, turning in from the corridor, comes the first glimpse of my father, slumped in the plastic-covered armchair be
side his bed, staring into nowhere. He’s never pleased to see her. He rarely responds to her tentative kiss with anything but a perfunctory hand fumbling for hers. When she attempts conversation, raiding her tiny stock of memories, he doesn’t appear to be listening. And when, minutes later, she falls into silence, he’s still looking beyond her, at the man in the next bed, at the nurses gossiping around the dispensary, at the tall figure of the consultant with his attendant medical student, moving slowly from curtained cubicle to curtained cubicle.

  The consultant’s name is Dr Logan. When he pauses by the bed and greets his new patient by his Christian name, my father perks up. He lifts a hand and gestures towards me.

  “This is my son” he says. The hand moves uncertainly towards my mother. “And this is his wife.”

  The consultant nods. He’s a quiet, pale northerner with a warm smile and kind eyes. When I ask him what - exactly - has happened to my father, he confirms that he’s had a stroke. He’s also got a urinary infection and there’s some concern about the medication he’s been taking. One drug - Solatol - may have done too good a job on lowering his blood pressure. The task now is to review the medication, sort out the infection with anti-biotics, and see what kind of improvement in motor skills can be achieved. The message is resolute and up-beat. These are early days. The battle is by no means lost.

  He looks down at my father and gives his arm a pat..

  “OK, Stanley? Soon have you back on your feet, eh?”

  I don’t think my father has understood a word of what the consultant has said but he reciprocates with a little speech about his life’s work. He’s been a very important person in the Town Hall. He’s proud of what he’s done. He wants us to know that. He breaks off, moist-eyed, confused. He’s lost the thread again. He doesn’t know what he’s done with his life. He’s mislaid it somewhere.

  Minutes later, I’m talking to the consultant again. Through the glass walls of the sister’s little office, I can see my mother and father down the ward, back in the cage of their own making, silent, blank-faced, with absolutely nothing to say.

  Dr Logan is telling me what may happen next. Contrary to his cheerful bedside pep-talk, the prognosis isn’t good. There are two kinds of dementia, Alzheimer’s and arthero-sclerotic. My father’s got the latter. It’s a slow, steady decline, occasioned by hardening of the arteries and punctuated by the kinds of episodes we’ve witnessed. He’s already been treading this path since January ‘95. Median survival is 5/6 years. That means he might hang on for another couple of years - with the likelihood of more strokes and further deterioration - or he might go much sooner. The biochemistry of dementia is not well understood but there are ways of making this long farewell slightly less horrible and I’m to rest assured that he’ll be bidding to do just that.

  I nod. The outlook sounds pretty bleak and I’m exhausted enough to say so. Dr Logan says he understands.

  “It’s bloody awful” he adds, “And I’m really sorry.”

  A million years ago, on a whim, Lin and I booked a week’s holiday in Northern Spain. We planned to walk across the Picos de Europa, a mountain range west of Santander. The holiday is due to start in ten days time. What should I do?

  Dr Logan smiles.

  “Go” he says, “Don’t give it a second thought.”

  I’m looking at my father again. Lunch has arrived and I can see my mother with his plate in her lap, sawing furiously through the meat, chopping it up into small pieces for him to eat. He, meanwhile, is chasing imaginary bits of food across his empty tray, transferring them into his mouth and then closing his eyes while he has a good chew. This little tableau speaks of madness, the real thing. Is there really no way back?

  Dr Logan shakes his head.

  “We’re talking probability” he says gently, “And the probabilty, I’m afraid, is not.”

  They put dad onto new drugs. They include a powerful anti-depressant. These pills, thank God, induce a hint of peace and the visits become slightly less harrowing, not least because my father seems to have discovered a certain mad humour.

  On the evenings when my mother and I visit at supper time, I take to feeding him by hand but whatever I say he continues to corner the invisible morsels of food he imagines on his tray. My spoon is loaded and ready to go but he’s far more interested in whatever he’s just found behind the salt cellar. He plucks at it, captures it, tastes, rolls it around his mouth, then fixes me with a huge manic grin.

  “Lovely” he says, “Much better.”

  “Better than what?”

  “I don’t know.”

  This latter thought appears to amuse him no end. He bares his big yellow teeth and rolls his eyes, chuckling to himself at the absurdity of it all. This is certainly an improvement on the torment of recent days, but my mother - I know - is close to despair. The man she married, the husband with whom she’s shared the last 56 years, has quite disappeared and every night, when we drive away from the hospital, she’s close to tears. This grief of hers is compounded by the fact that she can never remember last night’s visit, or the night before’s. My father has been demented for a week now but to her, half past seven in the evening, every evening, is the moment when she mourns the passing of the man she loved. He used to be so fit, so clever, so strong. What’s happened?

  Twelve

  My mother is living with us now. She’s absolutely no problem and it’s good to know that company and nightly doses of sweet Martini can take the edge off her grief but given the giddy prospect of a week in the Spanish mountains, both Lin and I know that somehow we must coax her back across the road. Quite how to do this defeats us both and I’m a day away from cancelling the holiday when she appears for breakfast with an armful of clothes and her washbag.

  “I was talking to my old mum in the middle of the night” she announces, “And she says it’s time for me to sort myself out.”

  Lin and I exchange glances. My maternal grandmother has been dead for thirty years. My mother’s still beaming.

  “You’ve both been so kind.” she says, “I know I’d have sunk without trace without you but now I’m off back home.”

  It sounds like the answer to a prayer and after we’ve talked it through, I nip across the road to prepare the flat for her return. Over the past week or so, Lin has given the place a thorough clean but now is the time to make sure that as little as possible remains of the chaos of the last couple of months. My mother has lots of memories of her life with dad. They needn’t include his Zimmer frame, and his commode, and the little plastic tub she was forever using to drain his ever-weakening bladder.

  The flat has a lounge, a bedroom, a kitchen, a bathroom, and a biggish room at the front that has become a kind of office. This is where I plan to store the stuff we’ll no longer need and I’ve nearly finished clearing a space when I come across a big green box, lodged under the shoerack at the bottom of the wardrobe.

  The box once held a pair of Clarks leather boots. Now, it’s falling apart, the lid split at the corners, the bottom sagging under the weight of whatever’s inside. I haul it out and open it. It’s full of photographs. The ones on the top I’ve seen before, dozens and dozens of snaps recording the various stages of my first marriage. The focus is generally on the kids, Tom and Jack, and while the sight of my 25 year old giant lying in a washing up bowl full of soap suds brings a smile to my face, I know it’s not what I’m really interested in. I took these photographs. There’s lots of love and lots of laughter but little mystery. What I’d really like to lay hands on are images from another time and another place. My father is dying. I want to know where he came from. What he looked like. Who he was.

  Lin has taken mum to the supermarket to lay in supplies. I have a bit of time before they come back and so I delve down through the years, spreading the photos around me, and as the tide of faces laps towards the door, the first of the black and white snaps begin to appear. There are literally hundreds of photographs in this tatty old box and sorting through them has th
e feel of an archeological dig. We lay our history down, generation after generation. My mother happens to have done it with photographs but these little squares of curling paper could equally have been sediments, stratified, layered, living matter transformed by age and pressure into solid rock.

  Rock? I’m looking at a photograph of a young man in an RAF uniform. It’s a studio shot, nicely lit, with the half-tones shading into black at the bottom of the frame. I know it’s my father because it says so on the back but the clues are there in the shape of the face, and the set of the jaw, and the faint smudge of moustache on his upper lip. It’s a nice face, the kind of chap any girl would be proud to take home to her mum and dad. The RAF blouse is neatly buttoned. The tie is perfectly knotted. But the eyes that gaze at the camera have a wistfulness, a hint of bewilderment, that softens the stern military pose.

  My mum has been entering pleas of mitigation for my father since I can remember. On the many occasions when I moaned about his inflexibility, or his short temper, or his almost fanatical suspicion of any kind of risk, she’d take me aside and list the burdens he’d been obliged to shoulder since God knows when. How he’d been the eldest of five. How his father had been a successful businessman with factories in the Midlands. How the family had been wealthy, and close, and secure, and how this whole fairy tale had been blown away at some indeterminate point in the 1920s, a victim of the Great Depression.

  The business had gone bust. My father’s father had thrown himself under a train. And within seven short years, my grandmother - my dad’s mum - was also dead, a victim of pneumonia. At the tender age of 18, against any reasonable expectation, my father had therefore become an orphan, with responsibility for his four younger siblings. Instead of the big, warm, comfortable family home in a leafy seaside suburb, he and one of his brothers found themselves in digs. Instead of the three years at some Oxford college, my father went to work as a clerk in Clacton Town Hall.