by Anne Doughty
‘Taxi.’ A woman’s voice. Abrupt. With a strong Belfast accent.
‘I need a taxi to the Royal Victoria, as soon as possible. Can you manage that?’
‘Name and address?’
I had to spell out most of it for her and it seemed to take a long, long time. There were noises in the background. Surely she wouldn’t say they couldn’t do it after taking so long over the details.
‘Ten minits be alrite?’
‘Yes, oh yes. Thank you . . . oh, and could you ask the taxi man not to ring the bell. I’ll be watching for him.’
‘Aye, surely, I’ll tell ’im. Goodnite now.’
‘Goodnight.’
I stood up, took a deep breath and ran silently back upstairs. I dressed in the clothes I’d left out for the morning, put my make-up in my handbag and reached for my briefcase. As I shut the study door quietly behind me, I realised I ought to leave a note. I grabbed a sheet of A4 from my desk and wrote:
Dear Colin,
Daddy is ill and I’ve gone to the Royal. I won’t be back, but you can contact me via Bob Dawson when you want to sort things out. Talk it over with Maisie. I bet she’ll say ‘Good riddance’. Good luck with Derry.
Jenny.
As I came down the stairs I heard the whoosh of tyres. I picked up my handbag, remembered I’d almost no money and cursed myself. Long ago, after being caught in Birmingham without the cash for a ticket home, I’d carefully hidden £25 in an evening bag in my dressing table. But I couldn’t go up and get it now. I’d just have to manage.
I looked around me, as if there were something I might have forgotten, but no, clear in my mind that only one thing mattered at this moment, I went to the door. As I put my hand to the catch, I saw a shadowy figure on the other side and opened it hurriedly, in case he should press the bell.
But I need not have worried. The man who stood there had his hands in his pockets, his eyes firmly on the ground. For a moment I didn’t recognise him. Only when he looked up at me and said, ‘Father?’ with an upward jerk of his pale blue eyes, did I realise it was Ernie Taggart.
‘Afraid so,’ I said.
He reached out his hand for my briefcase. ‘I heard yer call when I was waitin’ at me brother-in-law’s. Soon as I heard ye, I thought, that’s the father.’
He marched me down the drive so quickly I could hardly keep up, put the briefcase in the back seat and me in the front.
‘Is he bad?’
For a moment I couldn’t speak. There was something about his hasty, minimal utterances that carried more real sympathy than yards of Colin’s sympathetic flannel.
‘Not good, Ernie. They say he’s stable. But I’m not so sure.’
No wonder I hadn’t recognised him, I thought, as I looked across at him. His face was so clean it almost shone, his hair was sleeked back, and he was wearing a navy suit, with a bright Fair Isle pullover underneath. But the suit still hung on him, like his overalls, as if he had inherited it from someone much better covered than he was.
‘Don’t let the bad leg worry ye,’ he said, shortly. ‘I’m a gude driver an’ I oney need that’un fer the brake. Will I put me fut down?’
Hours. Was it only hours ago Daddy had asked the same question. And I had said no, because I wanted his company for as long as possible crossing the small, private space between Rathmore Drive and Myrtlefield House.
‘Yes, please, Ernie. The sooner I get there the better,’ I said, as the tears sprang to my eyes and poured unheeded down my cheeks.
The dark clouds that cut off the moonlight as I stood drinking my glass of water in the kitchen at Loughview had built up in the hours that had passed. Now, as we moved swiftly into the city, rain came sheeting down. Gusts of wind caught the car on exposed corners, buffeting it and sending the raindrops streaming across the top of the windscreen out of the reach of the wipers.
There was little traffic about and not a soul in sight as we swished through the empty streets, the gutters streaming. We stopped at traffic lights, the only car at notoriously busy junctions. We drove on over the myriad reflections of shop windows, road signs and pedestrian crossings into yet more dark and deserted streets. Beyond the windscreen, the world was chill and unwelcoming, bereft of all comfort.
‘Will ye stay all nite?’
My tears had dried on my cheeks and Ernie’s eyes were fixed firmly on the road ahead. I swallowed hard and moistened my dry lips.
‘Yes, I’ll stay. If he’s no better in the morning, I’ll ring school and ask for some time off.’
‘Are they dacent about that in yer place?’
‘I don’t know, Ernie. The headmistress seems a very cold person. But she’s very fair. You can’t always tell, can you?’
‘’Deed no. There’s many a one would surprise ye when things is bad, like yer father,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘They’ve rooms now fer close fam’ly. Ye’ll maybe get a wee sleep whin ye’ve seed him and set yer mind at rest.’
I found myself smiling. I liked ‘seed’ as the past tense of ‘see’. It made me think of my job, the work at Queen’s Crescent, the books I carried in my briefcase. Work with words and with the understandings only words can carry. How very strange that such a thought should come to comfort me, speeding through this empty, hostile world.
‘I’ll certainly be better when I get a look at him,’ I replied, grateful to find words again after the tearful silence that had come upon me.
‘Nat far now. Am takin’ ye to the Falls Road entrance. It’s not as far ta walk wonst ye get in. Ye coud walk miles in thon place.’
For all Ernie’s thoughtfulness, it still felt like miles when I did start walking down the familiar corridors, the tap of my heels echoing back from tiled walls, their vibrations speeding ahead of me to collide with the parked trolleys and the closed doors labelled in large letters. The further I walked and the nearer I got to my destination, the more endless they seemed. By the time I arrived, cold sweat was breaking on my brow. I pressed the bell and waited for someone to come and let me in.
It was the sister herself, a small square woman with the kind of chest that would accommodate a row of medals. I looked down at her and identified myself. She nodded abruptly, waved me into her office, sat me down and looked me over. I dropped my eyes, not able to cope yet with what I read in her expression.
‘Your father’s a very sick man, Jennifer. Do you realise that?’
I nodded, relieved, for I had begun to fear I was already too late. ‘I’ve been here before. Two years ago. I know about the spaghetti and the monitors . . .’
‘Good,’ she said firmly, with a hint of a smile at the mention of the ‘spaghetti’. ‘Would you like to sit with him? He’s heavily sedated, as you’d expect. He’s unlikely to come round before morning.’
I stood up, made it clear that I understood, and waited for her to lead the way. She paused, took up her case notes, and put them down again.
‘I’m afraid he is also on a ventilator,’ she said gently. ‘The breathing was erratic, even after sedation. There is also a kidney problem. We shall have to begin dialysis in the morning.’
‘Thank you for telling me, Sister. But I really would like to see him.’
‘This way.’
She turned on her heel and led me down the short, crowded entrance corridor, double-parked with equipment, linen trolleys, and oxygen cylinders, into the very large space that lay beyond. The lights had been dimmed for the night and the whole place glowed with a greenish hue. There were only four beds tonight in all that huge space, but as I ran my eye round, I caught sight of a young woman sitting in one of the glass-fronted alcoves. Our eyes met for a moment and softened in sympathy. In the bed where she kept watch a small blonde child lay asleep, its thumb in its mouth, its tiny body constrained by the mass of tubes and wires, the ‘spaghetti’, which could mean the difference between life and death.
‘I think this side will be easier for you,’ Sister said crisply.
I looked down at my father’
s pale face. A tube hung out of his mouth on the right side, distorting it. The squarish machine beyond looked just like one of the drinks trolleys parked in the corridor outside, except that it made a rhythmic noise, huffing like a blacksmith’s bellows. Most of the usual tubes for hydration and medication were bandaged into his right arm or the right side of his neck. There were wires taped to his bare chest. They criss-crossed like a spider’s web, feeding into the monitors that printed their ragged messages across flickering screens. Beyond them, his left hand lay inert but intact, outside his covering of textured cotton blanket.
I sat down on the moulded plastic chair which had suddenly appeared and took his hand in mine. It was warm and mine were stone cold, so I took them away again and rubbed them together. When they were less cold, I took up his hand again and told him that I had come.
Minutes passed, each one so full of thoughts and memories. I watched his face, taught myself not to see the sad distortion of his mouth. I watched the monitors, well able to translate their messages, a language I had learnt in this same classroom two years ago. Figures that recorded the minute rise and fall of blood pressure, oscillating lines that continually created and then recreated mountains with foothills and unbridgeable oceanic chasms. A pattern, rock steady, despite all its variations. So stable. As my father’s presence had been throughout all of my life.
Time passed. My hands were warmer now than his. Hardly surprising, when the ward sat at seventy degrees and I was still wearing my three-quarter length winter coat. I slid it off, one-handed, so that I didn’t have to break the precious contact that had strengthened between us as the minutes had slowly turned into hours.
I closed my eyes for a moment and saw him smile. ‘Look,’ he said, laughing, and there on the hillside stood a lad, barefoot, the backside out of his trousers, which were short but still too long for him. I waited for the neighbour to appear. Sure enough, there he was. A big boy on an enormous horse, its back as broad as a table. ‘Wee Georgie Erwin,’ he called, looking down, and I felt cross. ‘How dare he?’ I said to my father. But my father just laughed. ‘Sticks and stones can break my bones, but names can never hurt me,’ he chanted, singing out the old rhyme that all we children knew. ‘Don’t worry, Jenny. It’s all right. It’s all right.’
I jerked awake, his words still in my ears. It’s the warmth, I thought to myself, and the purr of the ventilator. Now I’d got used to it, it was rather soothing. Reliable, too, doing its job. Breathing for Daddy so that he could sleep in peace. And tomorrow, surely, he would feel better.
Chapter 20
I heard footsteps, firm but very soft, and saw Sister had come to scan the monitors. She looked down at me, a small smile on her face.
‘I hear you went to school with Maureen Coleman.’
‘Yes, yes I did,’ I responded, surprised by a name I hadn’t heard for four or five years.
‘Maureen was here when your Daddy came in. She’s a ward sister now. Did you know that? She’s having her break now and I think you ought to go and have a cup of tea with her,’ she added firmly. ‘You need a wee break yourself, but I’ll stay here till you come back. I’ll come for you if there’s any change at all,’ she said reassuringly as she saw my flicker of anxiety.
I hesitated, but I knew I could trust her, so I tiptoed down the ward, aware how noisy my heels would be on the tiled floor as I passed the sleeping child. Once in the corridor, I headed for the visitors’ room.
‘Jenny!’
I stopped, confused, as a dark-haired young woman stepped out of the office and took my arm, leading me into the empty staffroom.
‘Jenny, I’m so sorry about your father. Here, sit down and drink a cup of tea.’ She poured it out and handed it to me.
‘I thought you were still in London, Maureen,’ I said awkwardly as I tried to collect my thoughts. ‘I couldn’t even think for a moment who Maureen Coleman was when Sister came and said your name. I am sorry, I’m a bit through myself, as my mother would say.’
‘Never you mind, sure you’ve good cause,’ she said, pressing my arm. ‘I have a message for you from your daddy,’ she went on quietly.
I looked up, startled, as she took my hand.
‘Jenny, dear, he was quite lucid when he came in. I don’t actually think he had an awful lot of pain and he recognised me right away. Sister didn’t want him to talk but he wasn’t going to let that bother him. He said to tell you “It’s all right”. He made me repeat it twice, so I’d get it right. Not “I’m all right” but “It’s all right”. Is that any help to you, Jenny?’
I nodded hard, because the tears had jumped up on me again and were pouring down my face without my permission. I had no hanky in the pocket of my skirt and my bag was down in the ward beside my chair.
‘There, love, it’s hard. It’s very hard,’ she said as she put a ragged slice of kitchen roll into my hand. ‘We’re supposed to have tissues in here, but people borrow them and don’t bring them back,’ she explained. ‘Come on now, drink your tea, like a good girl.’
I laughed in spite of myself and blew my nose. ‘All part of your job, Maureen?’ I said, as I mopped myself up.
‘It is, Jenny, it is. But it’s not often it’s someone I’ve known as long as I’ve known you. D’you know, I remember going round Erwin’s when we were at primary school. Your father let us all take turns sitting up on the high seats of the tractors and the reapers, and he gave a prize for the best drawing of one of them. Valerie Thompson won it. Do you remember?’
Maureen talked on easily as I drank my tea, but I felt myself go quiet and the effort of responding to her warm friendliness grew harder and harder. Suddenly, I just so wanted to be with my father.
‘Maureen, I must go back,’ I said, standing up. ‘I’m so grateful to you for that message. I’ll explain about it later, before you go off duty.’
‘Go ahead, Jenny,’ she nodded. ‘I’ll be down to see you in a while. I’ll be starting up the dialysis before I go,’ she added as I made for the door.
I slipped my shoes off and moved hastily over the polished floor. Sister saw me come and rose to meet me, my coat over her arm.
‘He seems quite steady,’ she said, looking down at the still figure. ‘If you feel like a wee sleep, there’s a room ready for you. Just come when you feel like it,’ she said, as she walked away.
The back of his hand had the brown blotches that come with age, the fingers very slightly stained from his few daily cigarettes. The lines on his palm were strong and deep etched, though the palms themselves were soft and little marked. They seemed a little colder than before.
I shivered and looked again at the sleeping body, the face unfamiliar in its impassivity. I shut my eyes and saw him smile, his face mobile, the lines round his eyes crinkled with mirth. I opened them again and spoke sharply to myself. I must not close my eyes. I must keep watch. Watch and pray.
The words came into my mind unbidden. The Bible. We had read that too, over the years. Once, I had made a collection of his favourite verses and copied them out in italic script as a present for him. The page with ‘Consider the lilies of the field’ I had taken to Val, and I brought it back covered with cornflowers and flag iris, primroses and bluebells. He had smiled then, too.
Watch and pray. Watch and pray.
I found my mind wandering into strange places, backwards and forwards across my life. Trivial incidents suddenly came to me, long forgotten events. And always there were images of my father smiling. When I went to him in distress, he would always say ‘It’s all right.’ ‘It’s all right,’ the very words I had used when Susie’s little face crumpled at her sister’s harsh rebuke. They were his words. I had comforted Susie as he had comforted me. But who could bring comfort to him, with his body failing as it was failing now.
Watch and pray.
The large hand of the ward clock slid silently across another minute. A quarter to four. The small hours were growing larger, the individual minutes seemed fraught with a meaning I s
ensed but could not grasp. Last time, I had prayed. But what was I to pray this time? Please God, let Daddy live? Was that to be my prayer?
My eyes flickered around the ward. Saw the lights and the monitors at the other beds. Saw Maureen pause by a machine, check its function. Tomorrow, a like machine would stand here. Through larger tubes, my father’s blood would pour into the machine, circulate, and be returned to his inert body. A body that could no longer serve the thoughts of his mind or the wishes of his heart.
The words spoke inside my head in the old-fashioned language I had known from Sunday School and church, before I was even aware of having shaped them. ‘Please God, take this good man, thy servant George, into your safekeeping, that no harm may come to him, and he may be free of all ills. Amen.’
It seemed to grow quieter in the ward, though nothing I could observe had changed. Nurses moved silently in the glass-walled side ward where I could just make out the shape of the young woman still watching by the bedside of the sleeping child. A staff nurse had come to sit at a desk in the centre of the big open space near me. She was using a small spotlight to fill in forms and study charts. Light reflected upwards from her papers and cast a warm glow on her fresh and pleasant country girl’s face. The ventilator huffed gently.
I stood at the door, looking into the dark. Behind me, the sunshine spilled down on a straggling village. From a broad, shallow stream beyond the dusty trackway where I stood I could hear the sound of children’s voices. Gradually, my eyes grew accustomed to the darkness. A great coil of creamy smoke rose from a raised hearth. The soft sound was the bellows, huffing air so that the mound of smoking fuel began to glow at the centre. I watched the glow, fascinated, till suddenly the whole place rang with sound. A hammer danced on the anvil, strong, heavy blows interspersed with light caressing taps, rising to a crescendo and then falling away to silence. I saw the glowing heart of the fire pierced with metal.
‘Aye, Georgie lad, I’ll miss ye sore on Munday. Ye’ve been a gran’ worker and grate cump’ney.’