Fourplay

by Jane Moore

  “Please God, no,” she whispered.

  33

  in a state of great distress, her father was already dead. A massive heart attack, they said. Nothing they could do, sorry. So sudden and all that.

  Jo simply couldn’t comprehend that the man who had rarely suffered any ill health in his life, give or take the odd cold or two, had had this time bomb ticking away inside him undetected.

  “There must have been something you could do,” she said, staring in unblinking shock at the young consultant who informed her that he had tried several times to jumpstart her father’s heart.

  “We tried everything Mrs. Miles,” he said gently. “There are still tests to be done, but I suspect it was the end result of a problem that had been building up for some time. It’s remarkable he didn’t have any symptoms before it happened.”

  He probably did, thought Jo. But knowing Dad he would have ignored them, fought against them as a sign of weakness. He hated to show any trace of vulnerability, but he’d always been very indulgent to his children whenever they did.

  She found her mother sitting in the hospital cafeteria, staring into a cup of cold, untouched tea. Without a trace of makeup, she suddenly looked very old and frail.

  Jo sat down, unfurled one of her mother’s hands from the cup, and held it. Her touch seemed to stir Pam from her trance.

  “Hello dear, good journey?” she said.

  Jo decided to ignore the trivial question and put it down to the denial some people suffer from after the sudden death of a loved one. Keeping her voice soft, she squeezed Pam’s hand. “What happened Mum?”

  Pam pulled her hand away and placed it in her lap out of reach. Theirs had never been a tactile relationship.

  “I don’t really know dear,” she said, picking up a napkin and mopping up a patch of spilt tea. “One minute he was there, the next he was gone.”

  “Talk me through it,” said Jo patiently. She felt curiously calm, strong even. Perhaps because she knew her mother needed her to be. “Start with New Year’s Eve.”

  Pam launched into a laborious description of every cough and spit of their New Year’s Eve. How Aunty Beryl and Uncle Bill had invited them round, how they’d decided not to go, how they’d watched repeats of Only Fools and Horses, then The Best of Morecambe and Wise, no, tell a lie, it was the other way round. Jo sighed and waited patiently for her to get to the point. She knew it was probably important for her mother to run through the day with precision.

  “Your father had a couple of whiskies I think, and he got very snappy when I said he shouldn’t drink so much,” said Pam, her brow furrowing at the memory.

  Unsurprising, thought Jo wearily. Christ, the poor bloke couldn’t even have a New Year drink in his own home without being nagged about it.

  “Then you called New Year’s Day,” her mother continued, “and we just puttered around really. At about four, your father said he was going to his shed to clean his tools. It wasn’t unusual for him to disappear in there for a couple of hours at a time.”

  His blessed hideaway, thought Jo.

  “Go on,” she said.

  “At about six, I kept calling out of the back door to see if he wanted a cup of tea, but he didn’t answer. So I put on my slippers—or was it my gardening shoes?”

  “Mum, hardly relevant.”

  But her mother wasn’t listening. Her eyes hazy with tears, she had tilted her head back and was staring at the ceiling. “He was still sitting on his stool,” she murmured, her voice cracked with emotion. “He had slumped against the workbench and his eyes were half-open. He was still warm . . .”

  “It’s OK, Mum,” said Jo, moving round to sit next to her. She placed a comforting arm around her mother’s shoulders, and this time Pam didn’t pull away.

  “I called the ambulance first, and then I rang you but you weren’t there,” she said, blinking back tears.

  Jo gave her a little squeeze. “I was at the cinema with the children. I got here as soon as I could.”

  “I thought there was still hope when I found him. But now they tell me he had died instantly from a massive heart attack.” Pam stopped, seemingly distracted by a sullen woman clearing tables. “I couldn’t get hold of Tim either and he doesn’t have a machine like you.”

  Jo had taken her rarely used mobile with her on the fraught, torturous journey through road works to Oxford and called Tim’s house at five-minute intervals. She finally got an answer at 10 P.M.

  “Hello?” It was Conor.

  “Hi, it’s Jo.” Her voice was desperate. “Is Tim there?”

  “No, he’s not. What is it?” Conor sounded scared.

  “It’s Dad,” she sobbed, taking care to watch the road ahead. “He’s had a heart attack.”

  “Oh God . . . is he . . . is he . . . ?”

  “That’s the worst thing, I don’t really know. I got home to find a message from Mum saying they were on their way to the hospital. I’m on my way there now.”

  “Listen,” said Conor, taking control of the situation. “You just get there safely and I’ll worry about Tim. He’s in the pub having a pint. I’ll go and get him.”

  Jo had given him the hospital details, then driven the rest of the journey on automatic pilot, unaware that her father was already dead.

  “Come on, Mum,” she said, lifting her listless mother by the arm. “Let’s go back up and find out what happens next.”

  Five minutes after they’d asked to see the consultant again, and settled themselves down in the characterless emergency waiting, Tim barged in through the doors.

  “How is he?” His face was white.

  Feeling sick, Jo calmly took his hand and pulled him onto the rigid plastic seat next to her.

  “He’s gone, love. Mum thought he was still alive when she found him, but it turns out he had died instantly. He didn’t suffer.”

  It was one of those knee-jerk, irrelevant things you say at such times, like “At least he had a good innings,” and it was probably true that he hadn’t suffered. That was reserved for the loved ones left behind.

  Neither Jo nor her mother had yet broken down, both frozen in shock, emotionally numbed by the suddenness of it all.

  But Tim caved in instantly, huge, violent sobs racking his body. Jo stared at him wordlessly for a moment, unable to equate her flippant, carefree brother with the shaking creature that sat before her now.

  Snapping out of her limbo-like state, she reached across and pulled him toward her, wrapping her slim arms around his bulky frame. With her chin resting on his shoulder, she rocked him gently backward and forward, murmuring, “Ssssshhh,” as she would to Thomas or Sophie if they’d hurt themselves.

  After a few minutes, Tim seemed to calm down slightly. He stopped sobbing, but continued to cling to his sister as if his own life depended on it. There were just the three of them in the room. Jo looked up when she heard the door creak open, expecting to see the consultant. It was Conor, concern etched on his face. To Jo, it seemed the most natural thing in the world that he should be there.

  “Any news?” he mouthed at her.

  “He’s dead,” she whispered, feeling the first telltale prick of a tear. She hastily blinked it away, wanting to remain strong for Tim and her mother, who was sitting as still as a statue in the corner of the room.

  “I’m so sorry.” Conor clearly felt uncomfortable to be encroaching on such a private family moment, and gestured he was going to get a cup of tea.

  Half an hour later, Jo found him in the canteen, flicking aimlessly through some abandoned magazine about Country and Western music.

  “How’s Tim?” he asked, his face ghostly pale.

  “I’ve left him and Mum comforting each other,” she said wearily. “Well, they’re holding hands and staring into space anyway. We’ve never been a very demonstrative family.”

  “He was dreading the thought your father might die before we got here,” said Conor, closing the magazine and throwing it onto the seat behind him.
>
  Jo let out a deep sigh. “He died instantly. No one got the chance to say goodbye, not even Mum.” She felt numb, as if she were talking about someone else’s father. “Thanks for driving Tim here, by the way. I doubt he was in any fit state to make the journey alone.”

  Conor wrinkled his forehead in the manner she’d seen him do a thousand times before when he was anxious about something. He’d even done it as a little boy. “It’s the least I could do,” he said. “I was immensely fond of Jim too.”

  A small expression of surprise flickered across Jo’s face. It had never struck her that Conor harbored any feelings for her parents, other than the minor acknowledgment that they had spawned his best friend. But when she thought about it, it made perfect sense because Conor had spent so much time with them through his troubled, formative years after his father had left home.

  “I spent more time with your dad than my own,” he said, as if reading her mind. “He was everything I wanted my father to be but, as you know, he never was.” His eyes looked watery.

  “He was a great dad,” said Jo, nodding and smiling. “I just can’t work out why I haven’t fallen to pieces like Tim. I just feel numb really.”

  Conor reached across the table and placed a hand over hers. “They say that sometimes deep shock can be a very dear friend at times like these,” he said softly.

  His simple, physical gesture of kindness and concern made Jo’s stomach turn over with the sheer stress of pent-up emotion. She didn’t want this conversation to go any further now, or she knew she’d lose it completely, right here in this cold, soulless hospital building full of complete strangers.

  “Come on,” she said, pulling him up and linking her arm through his. “There are two people up there who need us to be strong.”

  34

  when she’d told Jeff about it on the phone later that day, but it had been a very uplifting funeral.

  Despite being January, it was a crisp winter’s day with a Tiffany-blue sky and watery sunshine. Everyone had made the effort to come. Conor, minus Emma, Rosie, Jim, lots of her father’s former work colleagues, and an impressive turn-out of his friends from the local Rotary Club where he’d been a member for the past twenty years. Her mother remained remarkably calm, even throughout the moving speeches; one by Jim’s old boss Reg Green, and another by Conor.

  Tim was supposed to make one but at the last minute he just couldn’t go through with it and had passed the emotional baton to his friend.

  Struggling to keep his composure, Conor had cleared his throat and nervously informed the congregation that, as he’d had no time to prepare, his words were going to be straight from the heart.

  “For various reasons I won’t bore you with, I was never really close to my father as a young adult.” His voice was clear and concise and filled the tiny church without the need for a microphone. “So, at that formative time of my life when I needed a father’s guidance in the ways of the world, it was Jim who gave it to me.” He paused and gave a small smile. “Jo and Tim probably have no idea, but that’s because I never told them. I didn’t want them to feel I was trying to take their father away from them. I wasn’t, of course, and anyway, Jim was such an amazing man he would have had enough kindness to accommodate hundreds of children. He would often take me to one side and say, ‘Everything alright son?’ Sometimes it was, sometimes it wasn’t, and if it was the latter he always took the time to talk through any problems with me . . .” Conor faltered slightly and gave a little cough to clear his throat. “He even called me for a confidential chat when he heard my long-term relationship had broken up.”

  Jo raised her head and looked at him in surprise. She had no idea her father had done that.

  “We all have a chocolate box image of what a dad should be like,” Conor continued, “and Jim was mine. I always felt very envious of Tim and Jo for that reason. He will be a terrible loss to us all, but particularly to his family. But I urge them to look at it from the perspective that they got many fantastic years of happiness with the kind of special man that others never even get to meet in their entire lifetime. Thank you.” He bowed his head and stepped down from the pulpit.

  Jo had to use every ounce of willpower to stop the tight knot of emotion in her chest from enveloping her. Blinking furiously to stop the tears, she stared at the central stained glass window of the church and steered her thoughts to the practicalities of the wake. She looked sideways to see her mother sitting rigid, staring at the floor and wringing a small white handkerchief round and round her shaking hands.

  “Come on, Mum,” she said gently. “It’s time to go home.”

  Back at the house, her mother had put on a “lovely spread,” as she called it. The living room was spotless, every surface gleaming and emanating the unmistakable whiff of Pledge. A photograph of Jim, resplendent in dinner suit at his company’s Christmas party, took pride of place in the center of the highly polished wooden mantelpiece.

  The noise level started off low, but soon became deafening as the room began to fill up with people arriving from the church.

  “There’s that old bat from Dad’s accounts department,” whispered Jo to Tim, who had perked up slightly now the funeral was over. “He always hated her, and now here she is stuffing her fat face with free sandwiches in his house.”

  “That dress is bloody awful. She looks like a Mercedes airbag,” said Tim loudly in her direction. “Fuck, I hate this kind of thing.”

  “Well, I suppose you’d be a little odd if you were actually enjoying your father’s funeral.” Conor had joined them.

  Tim slapped him on the back. “Thanks for the speech mate, it was great. I had no idea you were that close to Dad.”

  “We weren’t close as such. I think he just looked out for me occasionally because he knew I didn’t have a male role model in my life.” He smiled at Jo. “You OK?”

  “Fine.” She let out a long sigh. “I hate these things too. I’m just going for a little wander.”

  She walked through to the kitchen, away from the noise, unlocked the back door and went down the steps leading to her parents’ long and blissfully quiet garden. Halfway down was her father’s shed, its door still padlocked.

  Jo stooped down and ran her fingers under the bottom lip of the door. There, buried in the soft earth where it had always been kept, was the key. Fumbling with nerves, she unlocked the weather-beaten door and stepped inside. The first thing that hit her was the familiar smell that had assailed her senses as a child, a mix of grass, 3-in-1 oil, and old cigarette smoke.

  Everything was as it had always been. Her father’s stool was placed against the wall he used as a backrest, and the tools he so lovingly kept pristine were laid out in lines on the gnarled workbench. It was a scene of such tranquillity that Jo found it hard to imagine her father had actually died there.

  Tucked under the workbench, she spotted a smaller stool, the one her father had always pulled out when she or Tim came in to chat to him. She’d spent hours there, asking him what that tool was for, why did grass stain so badly, why was the sky blue. Endless questions that he had always answered patiently and in meticulous detail. She wondered whether he missed those days when he was sitting alone in his shed in later life. It must have felt odd for them both when she and Tim left home and they were left with only each other for company.

  Some parents breathe a sigh of relief and relish their time alone together, some are left wondering whatever they had in common. Jo reluctantly suspected her parents were in the latter category.

  As she turned to leave, she caught sight of her father’s old cardigan hanging on the back of the shed door and her breath caught in her throat. Reaching out, she took it from the peg, pressed it to her face and inhaled. It smelt overpoweringly of him. Stumbling backward, she crouched on the floor and let out a small, whimpering noise. Within seconds, her body was shaking with violent sobs and she buried her face in the cardigan to muffle the sound. She sat there for at least half an hour, rocking backward a
nd forward and letting out all the pent-up anguish of the past few days. She didn’t hear the door open, but jumped as a shadow fell across the floor.

  “I wondered where you’d got to.” It was Conor.

  “I came down here for a spot of reflection and seem to have got myself into a bit of a state,” she said, standing up and wiping her face with the back of her sleeve.

  “Come here.” Conor held his arms out and took a step toward her.

  Burying her face in his chest, Jo took a deep breath and let it out slowly, feeling safe and secure. She was utterly comfortable, just standing there, being held by the man who was proving to be one of her dearest friends.

  “Life is going to feel so strange without him.” Her chin pressed against the rough wool of Conor’s sweater, her voice sounded muffled.

  “More so for your Mum. You and Tim will have to keep a close eye on her for a while. She’s going to need you.”

  “For the first time ever . . .” She trailed off and straightened her back to face him. “Thanks for the hug. You go back and I’ll follow in a minute. I just need to let my face calm down a bit.”

  “Oh, I don’t know. I’m told the piggy-eyed look is very in this year.” Conor smiled and tweaked the end of her nose. “See you in a minute.”

  When Jo got back to the house, red-eyed but composed, her mother was in whirling dervish mode, running around with trays of canapés and vast pitchers of orange juice.

  She had been baking, marinading, buttering and chopping for two days, and Jo was powerless to stop her, despite trying to help out on a number of occasions. She soon realized that the job in hand—however trivial—was keeping her mother from falling apart. Jo knew it would be the time after the funeral that would be the hardest of all, when there was nothing else for her mother to do other than accept that the man she’d been married to for thirty-seven years had gone forever.

  Many people had told her that there might be some small thing that would trigger the grieving process, and Jo felt she had just experienced her own example of that in her father’s shed. She was determined to be there for her mother whenever her trigger moment happened.