by Pat Barker
‘No, I don’t think I could face beer.’
They sit and chat. Unselfconsciously, Helen holds Geordie’s hand, his skin against hers speckled with the fall-out of old age, moles, brown spots, tags of flesh, a raised rough patch of something he needn’t worry about now. Her skin’s lighter, smoother, though even her hand, Nick notices, no longer has the unmarked firmness of youth. She must be nearer forty than thirty, and a woman’s hands age faster than the rest of her body. Around her wrists are lines where even a few years ago no lines would have been. ‘The bracelets of Venus.’ Nick dredges the phrase up rather proudly. Since he apparently goes round smelling like a French whore he may as well think like one as well. ‘Would you like a drink?’ he asks. ‘Wine? Or is it too early?’
‘Wine would be lovely,’ Helen says.
They’re chatting together easily and yet intently, still holding hands, and suddenly Nick realizes something that’s probably been staring him in the face for years. Geordie’s in love with Helen, in love with a woman sixty years younger than himself, hopelessly, helplessly and no doubt at times humiliatingly in love, and has been ever since he met her. This is why he’s achieved this minor resurrection from the dead. This is why it matters so much that he should be shaved and dressed, and that the house should not smell of his decaying body.
It seems only right, having had this perception, to leave them alone as long as possible. Nick opens and pours the wine, then withdraws to the kitchen and busies himself tidying up. He doesn’t want to think about what he’s discovered, doesn’t want to drag it through the rag and bone mill of his mind, he’s humbled by it and he knows that this is the right feeling.
Meanwhile the flow of conversation from the next room goes on, too low for him to distinguish individual words. When he finally rejoins them Helen’s leaning over Geordie giving him a kiss.
Hours, they’d spent together, taping his recollections of the war and the years that followed. Geordie was puzzled at first by the direction of her questions. He was so used to telling people about the trenches – that’s what they always wanted to hear – that it took him a while to understand that Helen was interested in the ways in which, over the years, he’s learned to manage his memories. Once he understood, he was interested in her theories, though he always denied that his memories had changed to accommodate changes in public attitudes to the war. ‘I wish they did change,’ he said, trying to get her to see the perpetual present in which his worst memories existed. Reading the transcripts, Nick had seen it clearly. The wordless, hallucinatory filmic quality of his memories. A flare goes up, illuminating bleached sandbags and tangled wire, but the trembling light never falls. A scream begins and never ends. For Helen, memories are infinitely malleable, but not for Geordie. Geordie’s past isn’t over. It isn’t even the past.
Grandad sips his tea. ‘Tastes of iron,’ he says to Helen, not complaining, merely making an observation. ‘It’s the pills.’ Then to Nick: ‘Can’t I have a drop of something stronger?’
Nick gives him a glass of brandy, pours more wine for himself and Helen. Geordie never could get a taste for white wine even at the best of times. ‘Virgin’s piss,’ he called it.
The wind blows rain against the window pane, a spattering of drops that makes Geordie jump. It grows rapidly dark, a storm closing in, the first signs of autumn. A leaf whirls down, and clings for a moment to the glass. Geordie grows more exhausted by the minute, though he’s reluctant to give in and let Helen go for what he must know will be the last time. Nick, seeing her now through Geordie’s eyes, thinks she would be easy to love.
At last Grandad’s had enough. Immediately Helen drains her glass. Nick realizes she doesn’t want Geordie to have to reveal his weakness by getting up while she’s still there and hobbling towards the stairs. Another kiss, this time on the mouth, and then she’s ready to go.
Outside, blinking in the rain, flushed from the wine though she’s only had two glasses, she says, ‘How long do you think he’s got?’
‘Not long.’
‘He doesn’t seem too bad. He’s better than I thought he would be.’
‘He was holding himself together for you.’
She kisses him and gets into her car. ‘Ring me.’
Going back inside, Nick finds, as he’d expected, that Geordie suddenly looks dreadful. The change from a few moments ago with Helen in the room is almost unbelievable. His cheeks are sunken, he won’t see Helen again, ever, and the knowledge is written all over him, in the defeated sag of his shoulders, in the way he allows himself to be half supported, half carried to the sofa, where he sinks back against the cushions, refusing even to think about the trek up the stairs. Bereavement’s nothing, Nick thinks suddenly, in comparison with the total loss, the absolute bereavement, experienced by the dying. He’ll go tonight, he thinks, then immediately disowns the thought. He’s said that the last three nights and Geordie’s still here.
After a while Geordie drifts off to sleep. Nick finishes the rest of the bottle and then, for good measure, has a brandy. He feels desperate, restless, phones Fran, has a word with Miranda, hears Jasper gurgling away in the background, feels they’re a million miles away. A good day in York, and Gareth didn’t cry when Fran left. ‘Did you?’ he asks. Long pause. ‘A bit.’
Geordie’s stretched out, looking more ill than ever, his mouth slightly open. Nick watches for the rise and fall of the thin chest beneath the shirt, and it’s a long time coming. He realizes he’s been holding his own breath and forces himself to breathe normally.
The wind howls down the chimney, hurls rain against the ‘window, chases drops diagonally across the pane. He remembers some childhood illness, fever, a sore throat, pain, and Grandad sitting on the bed beside him, watching individual trickles of rain race each other down the glass.
Another childhood memory of bad weather. Grandad saying, ‘Pity poor Mary on the wild moor on a night like this.’ The words are as evocative as those lakes of orange tea ruffled by his breath.
‘Do you want to go upstairs now?’
‘Not yet. Why don’t we have a proper fire?’
Because, Nick thinks, the rooks probably nested in the chimney last spring and we’ll set the whole bloody row on fire. He brings in newspapers, coal and sticks, rakes out a whole summer’s worth of fag ends, ash and bits of paper, then, criss-crossing sticks with nuggets of coal on a bed of scrunched-up paper, begins to build the fire. Geordie watches, taking pleasure in the exercise of a simple skill. Nick applies a match to the fans of paper, but the coal’s wet, the fire spits sullenly and burns dead. He holds a sheet of newspaper across the fireplace, feeling it sucked in at once by the fierce draught. Rapidly the paper grows yellow, hot and thin. A picture of ruined Sarajevo blackens and begins to burn. Only just in time Nick whips away the page in a gust of sparks and acrid smoke.
When he looks back into the room, Grandad’s awake. The firelight, seeking out the hollows of the eye sockets, seems to strip flesh from bone. He’s looking at a skull.
‘Do you want a pain-killer?’
‘Aye, go on, I think I’d better.’
Nick watches the swallowing of water, the cautious placing of the pills on the back of the tongue. It takes three swallows each to get them down, the back of his throat’s so dry. ‘Do you want some artificial spit?’ He sprays artificial spit, as they both call it, round Grandad’s mouth. The stuff smells awful and tastes worse, but there’s no doubt it adds to Grandad’s comfort. He settles back against the sofa cushions and stares into the fire. Nick thinks he might read for a while, though in fact he stares at the newspaper without even trying to read it, since he knows from experience he’ll retain nothing. Extreme tiredness seems to demolish concentration, almost like shock or grief or the after-effects of anaesthesia. He can’t even locate himself in the week, has to look at the top of the paper to find out what day it is. At last he lets it slip, sighing, to the floor.
Geordie’s eyelids are drooping, the pain-killers beginning to wor
k. ‘Come on,’ Nick says, tossing his cigarette on to the fire. ‘Let’s get you up to bed.’
He carries Geordie upstairs, and undresses him. Stone cold, Nick thinks, feeling his legs, though the fire downstairs was blazing hot. ‘Do you want a bottle?’
No answer. His eyes are closed. Nick fetches his pyjamas, puts them on and slides in beside Geordie. If he can offer nothing else he can offer the warmth of his body. He lies tensely aware of Geordie beside him, reluctant to turn and look at him, willing him to go to sleep. After a few minutes Geordie’s breathing becomes deeper, and Nick risks a sideways glance.
At first sight he seems to be asleep; his eyes are slivers of white and his mouth’s open, but then, as Nick watches, the tip of the tongue comes out and works its way round his lips to moisten them, and the eyes flicker. He says, and the words cling to his dry mouth, ‘I am in hell.’
Nick turns on to his back, and stares into the darkness for what seems to him a long time, until sheer exhaustion presses his face down into smothering folds of sleep.
Waking early the following morning, stiff and cramped, Nick finds Geordie not merely asleep, but probably, he thinks, unconscious. His breathing’s laboured, his skin looks flushed, but feels clammy, and even a shake of the arm fails to rouse him.
Nick runs downstairs, phones Frieda and Fran, tries again and again to reach the doctor. When he finally gets through and books a visit he wonders why he’s bothering, what he expects the doctor to do that hasn’t already been done. Frieda arrives, panting for breath, goes upstairs by herself and comes down again, red-eyed. They stand in the kitchen together, drinking tea, talking about funeral arrangements, half ashamed, wondering whether there isn’t something indecent about doing this while Geordie’s still alive. St John’s, they decide on. Frieda’s mother’s buried there, and there’s room in the grave, though Frieda can’t for the life of her remember where she’s put the deeds.
The day drags past from breath to breath, each seeming for one shuddering moment to be the last. When Nick takes Geordie’s hand there’s an unexpectedly strong answering grip. Geordie seems to be trying to pull himself into an upright position. He says, Pull, pull, but it hardly seems fair hauling him into an upright position, when there’s nothing to be gained. But ignoring the plea’s horrible. Geordie’s totally helpless now and yet Nick’s not doing the one thing he’s asked to do.
From time to time Frieda puts a feeding beaker to his lips, and he drinks eagerly, his mouth puckering round the spout like a baby’s on the nipple. When he’s finished there’s a smear of milk on his chin that Nick wipes away. Then for hours – nothing. Asleep, drugged, unconscious, it’s hard to tell – his breath hardly raises the counterpane, and his eyes are closed.
The doctor comes, hooks up the eyelids between thumb and forefinger, shines a torch. A stroke, he says, and for one insane – no, not insane, entirely sane – moment Nick wants to laugh. Bayonet wound, cancer, doesn’t matter now. Geordie’s sidestepped them both. After the doctor’s gone, Nick, remembering something he’s heard or read, puts his fingers to Geordie’s pulse, and there it is: beat, echo, beat, echo. His breathing’s changed too, though Nick would find it difficult to describe the change.
They sit with him, one on either side of the bed, not saying much. At last, just after ten o’clock, Geordie draws a particularly raucous breath, holds it, lets it out slowly. Nick and Frieda look at each other, she leans forward, half in the expectation of relief. Then another breath, and she sits back. They glance at each other and then quickly away, each dreading to see the other’s disappointment. Another breath, another pause. They wait. A shudder passes through Geordie’s thin chest, a lifting of the ribs. A clock ticks in the silence. No breath and still no breath. Tick. Tick. No breath. ‘He’s gone,’ Frieda says, and, though they’ve expected this moment for weeks, the words are amazing.
NINETEEN
Downstairs, Nick makes a cup of tea, pours a slug of brandy into Frieda’s, and persuades her to drink it.
‘I can’t believe he’s gone,’ she says, cradling the cup in her hands. ‘It’s like the side of the house going.’
‘What do we have to do?’ Nick asks.
‘Nothing, I don’t think. Nothing we can do now till morning.’
‘I’d like to tidy him up a bit.’
‘I can do that.’
‘No, let’s do it together.’
They get a bowl of water, towels and soap, and go upstairs.
‘He was shaved yesterday. I don’t think we need to do that,’ Nick says.
‘No, the undertaker’ll do that. Just straighten him out.’
Nick pulls the sheets down, and Frieda looks away while he does what has to be done.
‘You’d better put a towel,’ she says. ‘Sometimes, they… You know.’
Nick pushes a clean white towel between Geordie’s legs. He feels self-conscious, handling the penis and scrotum as he cleans him up, wondering why he’s bothering since Geordie can’t be aware of, or care, who does these essential last jobs. But it’s right they should be done by somebody who knew and loved him. Right too that they should be difficult to do. Even in death the genitals are a source of power. Frieda’s averted face and his own shyness have a truth to them that trivialized the easy acceptance of nudity. He dries the still warm skin, fastens the pyjama jacket, and draws the sheet up to his chin. The eyes have opened slightly, and he presses them closed. ‘Do we put his teeth in, do you think?’
‘We’d better,’ Frieda says. ‘He’ll have stiffened by morning.’
They force the teeth into his mouth and then Frieda works on it, producing a more natural expression than the faintly sardonic sneer left by the stroke.
‘Doesn’t he look peaceful?’ Frieda says, standing back to inspect her handiwork.
Nick opens his mouth to agree, but at that moment Geordie’s voice says in his ear, so loud it’s like taking a punch: ‘I am in hell.’
His last words, Nick thinks, hoping it’s not true, straining to remember something else he’d said afterwards, but he said nothing else, except ‘Pull, pull’, which hardly seems to count.
‘Should we sit up with him?’ He’s treating her as the expert in death, though her experience, like his, is limited. The expert’s lying in the bed between them.
‘No,’ Frieda says. ‘I think you should try to get a good night’s sleep. There’ll be a lot to do in the morning. I’ll stop here.’
It’s now nearly midnight. He’s been dead two hours. His forehead’s cold and damp, the clammy feel of mushrooms before they’re washed.
‘Will you be all right?’
‘’Course I’ll be all right,’ she says.
‘You won’t be frightened?’
‘What of?’ A scornful sniff. ‘The dead can’t hurt you.’
Fran’s asleep. On a sudden impulse Nick walks along the corridor to Miranda’s room. She’s reading. ‘Miranda,’ he says.
She looks relieved to see him. ‘Dad. I’m sorry about Gramps.’
‘Yes, I’m sorry too. Shouldn’t you be asleep?’
‘I was just going to put the light out.’
‘It’s late, you know.’
‘All right, I’ll stop now.’
He leaves her reaching out a hand to the switch.
Gareth next. Only the bed’s empty, and for a moment he’s surprised, then he remembers that Gareth’s staying with Fran’s mother.
Jasper. Breathing snuffily, smelling of pee and milk, a warm, animal smell that makes Nick want to rest his face against the tiny chest. Instead he tucks the sheet more snugly round him.
Fran’s deeply asleep, but stirs, moving slightly to accommodate him as he slides in beside her.
Nick wakes to find her side of the bed empty, goes downstairs and finds her in the kitchen feeding Jasper soft-boiled egg. They embrace over his noisy gesticulating form. ‘I thought I’d leave you to sleep,’ she says, a little shy with him, not knowing quite how she’s supposed to react. ‘Yeah, thanks,�
�� he says, and bends down to Jasper, who knows nothing and is therefore easier. Jasper’s holding a soldier dipped in yolk up to him. ‘Is that for me?’ Nick says, pretending to eat. ‘Yum yum yum.’
‘Did Frieda stay there?’
‘Yes.’
‘You should have brought her back here.’
‘No, she wanted to stay. I’d better get back there,’ he says, looking at his watch. ‘We’ll need the doctor out, I suppose, and the undertaker.’
‘He’s going into the chapel of rest?’
‘I should think so, but she’ll want him home before the funeral. Apparently he wants – wanted – to be buried in St John’s. My grandmother’s buried there. So I thought we might have the tea here, but you know we –’
‘Of course we’ll have it here.’
‘I mean she’ll want him back home before the funeral, but she’ll sleep there, I expect. I don’t suppose he can be left in the house on his own. Though I don’t know why not, give the burglars a shock.’
‘Nick.’
‘No, he’d like that.’
Nick nibbles two slices of toast, standing with his back to the sink, wanting to be gone. At the back of his mind there’s some absurd idea that Grandad’s expecting him to walk through the door.
Instead, when at last he opens the front door, a breath of cold air greets him. Of course the windows will have had to be kept open all night. The house sounds emptier and smells different. Frieda’s winding up the cord on the vacuum cleaner, having cleaned the living room. She doesn’t look as if she’s slept much, he thinks, with a stab of compunction, as he bends to kiss her. ‘How was it?’
‘Quiet,’ she says with a roguish twinkle, and they giggle together like a couple of naughty children. ‘Will you go up and see him?’ she says.
‘Yes, all right.’ Straightening his face, he goes up, feeling the cold of Geordie’s bedroom meet him halfway up the stairs. Geordie’s still lying with the sheet pulled up to his chin. Well, of course he is, Nick tells himself impatiently; it’d be a remarkable state of affairs if he’d moved. But then he has moved, infinitesimally. The muscles of his face, stiffening, have changed his expression from stern to quizzical, and the eyes have opened slightly so that a line of white’s just visible. Nick reaches out to close them again, and the skin feels icy cold, and somehow thicker, which must be a sign of rigor mortis.
