Chasing the Sun with Henry

by Gary Brockwell

  Gus was already at the hospital when I arrived, sitting the opposite side of the bed to Mary. Mary was there all day, every day and only left Clifford’s side when he needed to be examined or in the still of the night, when she knew he was in a deep slumber. The hospital had been flexible about the times she was there to display her devotion to this colossus of a man.

  Mary looked tired, worn out; the strain of her self-imposed vigil was smudged in the dark rings under her eyes and the stale smell of her clothes, captured by the hospital ward heat and multiple wears.

  Clifford greeted me in the manner I had become accustomed to: he raised one of his huge paws and grabbed my forearm and shook it gently, smiling beneath his mask. He looked like he was still full of fight in his stationary, horizontal position.

  Mary had asked me to bring up some fruit juice ice lollies for Clifford to suck on. He found the cold and the sweetness soothing and a welcome change to the lukewarm tap water the hospital provided in a plastic jug – strawberry was his favourite flavour, she added.

  Mary was already holding a pink lolly to his lips. In her exhausted state, she had inadvertently requested that Gus bring some as well. I sensed that in the heat of the ward, mine would be little more than a sticky liquid by the end of visiting time.

  ‘How are you doing today?’ I asked Clifford, same as I always did.

  He nodded an okay, as was the norm, and I took a seat.

  ‘Mary, I need to tell you while I remember,’ I began quietly, trying to not draw Clifford’s attention as he listened to Gus. ‘I bumped into Ted on the way here and he needs you to sign some papers for red diesel. He said you know what Finleys are like about paperwork – they won’t deliver again until the “t”s are crossed and the “i”s are dotted – or something of that nature, I am sure you can guess what he really said!’

  Ted Slone owned the neighbouring farm and since Clifford’s admission had voluntarily taken the role of organising the local farmers to keep Clifford’s place ticking over. It was hard to do, what with their commitments and the fact they were severely stretched, but they all agreed Clifford would do the same for any one of them.

  ‘Thanks, Eddie, I will go up and see him,’ said Mary over her shoulder, but I wasn’t sure when she would, or even if she would remember. I made a mental note to go up to Ted’s place tonight, collect the papers and bring them up to Mary tomorrow in the hospital.

  ‘I don’t know what we are going to do long term,’ she whispered.

  ‘Don’t worry about that now.’

  ‘The boys have been great, but can’t keep this up,’ she said. ‘Perhaps you could take it on!’ Mary joked.

  At least I think she was joking, and let it pass.

  ‘The consultant wants to see me later,’ she stated flatly out of the side of her mouth.

  ‘That would be good, check the progress, right?’ I said.

  ‘You away this weekend, Gus?’ asked Mary, changing the subject.

  ‘Siena,’ he replied.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Tuscany, Italy.’

  ‘No, I know where it is, silly! I meant whereabouts in Siena.’

  ‘Oh, I am staying with a friend,’ Gus said vaguely, ‘in the Civetta Contrade. So I have no choice but to support their mount in the Palio!’

  ‘The horse race?’ asked Mary.

  Gus nodded in agreement.

  ‘Well, I think it is cruel, Gus,’ admitted Mary.

  ‘Not as bad as the baby seals of Canada, though?’ teased Gus.

  ‘Don’t get me started on that again!’ she laughed.

  ‘I understand what you say, but there is a lot more than just the race. There is the pageantry, the tradition, the whole sense of occasion,’ argued Gus.

  ‘He’s right,’ stated Clifford through his mask. ‘I was there once, when I was in the RAF,’ he said, removing his mask to enable us to hear him more clearly.

  ‘Really?’ I asked.

  ‘Group of us headed down on leave from Germany,’ he added.

  ‘I never knew you were in the Air Force, Clifford. How come you have never said?’ Gus asked.

  But he had slipped his mask back on. The consumption of the fruit lolly and contributing one sentence had taken their toll.

  ‘Oh yes, national service. Posted in Germany, well, West Germany in those days,’ said Mary, taking over from Clifford. ‘You had a choice: Army, Air Force or Navy, but you couldn’t get out of doing it, served for eighteen months. That right, isn’t it?’ she said, looking at Clifford for confirmation.

  Clifford nodded in agreement.

  ‘You actually were exempt if you worked the land,’ she added. ‘Vital service, food production, but in those days, Clifford was training to be a vet, so had to do his time in the forces. It was only when his father died that he was pressured to take over the farm by his mother – he only had a year left to qualify too.’

  We didn’t reply, unsure of what to say. Both Gus and I presumed Clifford had always wanted to work the land.

  ‘You youngsters don’t know you are born!’ Mary said with a laugh. ‘That’s when I met him. Do you remember?’ she asked, stroking Clifford’s cheek.

  Clifford smiled and nodded in recognition.

  ‘I should have known what I was getting into – imagine it, riding on a bus with no money!’

  ‘Sorry?’ Gus and I replied simultaneously.

  Mary chuckled to herself, looked at Clifford and then continued to speak.

  ‘I was on a bus going home, filthy night, dark, windy. How high was the rain bouncing off the pavement?’ she asked Clifford for reassurance.

  Clifford lifted a tired arm to an exaggerated level, before dropping it down heavily with a smile across his lips.

  ‘Anyway, I am sitting there minding my own business, worked all day in a cafe, tired, heading back to my parents’ home, when a commotion developed at the front of the bus. He,’ she said, pointing her thumb toward Clifford, ‘was short of his fare, not by much, but enough for the conductor to demand he got off at the next stop. I was cross and just wanted to get home, but the driver pulled over and stopped the bus, as the conductor and Clifford continued to argue. He said he was staying at a friend’s home and didn’t know the price of the fare. The conductor said no matter, the price of the fare was the price of the fare and you couldn’t ride without it.

  ‘Clifford then pleaded that he had travelled all day down from West Kirby. I didn’t know the significance of this at the time, and nor, it seems, did the conductor, as he lifted him by the arm out of his seat to move him down the bus to the doors. He fell silent as he was marched through the bus, resigned to the shame of eviction as everyone at the front of the bus ignored him. I felt sorry for him, and before I knew what I had done I was rooting inside my bag for change and calling down to the conductor to ask by how much the fare was short.

  ‘He gave me a look that told me he had seen all this before and I was being conned, but he still allowed me to pay the difference. He said there was paperwork that needed to be completed and a report to be filed.

  ‘I replied, “Let’s all just get home.” He muttered it was regulation, not his doing, but with that, he pressed the button to sound the bell and the driver pulled off to resume the journey. Clifford took a seat at the front and sheepishly thanked me, but said no more for a while. As I passed him to get off at my stop he thanked me again, smiling this time, and asked me my name and where the stop was. I told him and jumped off the bus and hurried toward my parents’ house, bent into the horizontal rain, and thought nothing more of it, apart from his lovely smile.’

  ‘You must have been a looker, Clifford!’ teased Gus, to which Clifford nodded his head in acknowledgement.

  ‘Three weeks later, we were having tea in the kitchen, when the doorbell sounded; my brother Richard
went to answer it and came back telling me there was an airman at the door asking for me. I told him to stop being an annoying little brother. But he repeated it.

  ‘Dad got up from his tea and went out to the hallway. He was never happy having his tea interrupted, but he came back with a grin on his face and confirmed what Richard had said, and added it was best I get rid of him. I didn’t know any airmen, didn’t know any men, the truth be told! So I went out into the hallway in a state of confusion. Sure enough, there on the doorstep was a man dressed in the light blue uniform of the RAF. I stared at this stranger and asked if I could help him, and then he smiled and I recognised him as the bus fraudster!’

  ‘Did you invite him in?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh no, I wanted to show him off! He looked extremely handsome in his uniform! So I told my parents I was going out, took him on my arm and proceeded to walk to the bus stop to go into town, to all the places I could think of where my friends might be. I introduced him to everyone I could find, in shops, cafes and the bus station! But I keep a tight hold of him, to ensure there was no competition. Besides, I had to take him away from the house, or my father would have grilled him to such a degree that it’s doubtful I would have seen him again anyway!’

  We all laughed, and in doing so, Clifford misted up his plastic mask, breaking the sombre mood of the ward.

  ‘But how did he find you?’ asked Gus.

  ‘Well, he told me he had spent the best part of two hours knocking on every door in the area, asking if Mary was at home – he had remembered my name and the bus stop. There was some confusion at one place, when a Mary was summoned to the door by her suspicious mother, only for this peculiar stranger to reject her as the wrong Mary and then scurry away, apologising all the way down the path to the front gate!’

  We laughed again, maybe a little too loudly, as the sound attracted attention from the visitors around the other beds.

  Mary stopped laughing and looked at her husband. ‘And here we are now,’ she said, not attempting to hide the two tears suddenly forming in the corners of her eyes.

  Clifford caught her hand and squeezed it gently and then reached up to wipe the tears from her eyes. He managed to displace one, but the effort was too much for him to remove the second from her other eye. His hand slumped back to his side on the bed and he stared straight ahead, his involvement in comforting his wife now confined to eye movements and a shallow heaving of his chest. This combined action seemingly sparked a signal for Mary to unwillingly shed a silent, steady flow of tears that trickled down her face.

  ‘What time is your flight tomorrow?’ I asked Gus, trying to move the situation back to something near normality. But how could this be normal? Clifford had always taken care of Mary, always protected her, always been her rock. And now in this sterile environment, the man who had worked sixteen hours a day in all weathers, had lifted and carried countless loads on his massive shoulders and frame, was slipping away to a whisper and Mary’s tears were an acknowledgement that for the first time, she had given up hope.

  ‘Mid-morning,’ replied Gus, upbeat.

  ‘Give you a lift?’ I offered.

  ‘That would be good. Thanks!’

  Normality exhausted, we looked on in silence as Clifford attempted to lift his mask off his face.

  ‘Let me help you,’ we said in unison, standing up.

  ‘No, Clifford, you’ve done enough,’ pleaded Mary.

  But the old farmer ignored our requests and cleverly pushed the mask up so that it still covered his nostrils, but allowed him movement to speak.

  ‘How come you never settled down, Gus?’ he asked.

  It was the question out of nowhere, but one we all had wanted to ask for years, though we knew would never get an answer from him. Clifford had used his prerogative as a dying man to broach the subject for all of us, guessing that Gus could not deny him an answer at this point. Silently, I thanked him for it, and for moving us into a new area of normality that no one else could have revealed.

  Gus kept his composure and rubbed his chin thoughtfully; if he felt cornered, he certainly didn’t show it.

  ‘It wasn’t for a lack of trying, just never seemed to happen,’ he put forward by way of an explanation.

  We all sat in silence, watching, waiting for him to expand on this, and felt sure this wasn’t enough, not this time, possibly the last time Clifford would get to know the answer.

  ‘There was someone, a very special person. But it didn’t work out.’

  Again, we sat in silence, expecting more.

  ‘Two sentences isn’t enough of an explanation,’ challenged Clifford, before placing his mask back over his mouth.

  I was left wondering whether this action was intended to show his disappointment at still not knowing the truth and thus terminate the conversation he began, or to guilt Gus into revealing more. Gus evidently took it as the latter and raised his hands in submission, but I had no idea, in that hospital ward, what details this unassuming man was preparing to reveal.

  ‘I met her in Kenya,’ he began. ‘My parents had friends over there; they didn’t leave after independence, but stayed on. I don’t really know the whole story, but they owned an estate in the highlands and farmed coffee. My parents spoke of them occasionally, and then after I graduated from university, it was suggested I stay out there for one season and work on the land; my father thought it would be good for me apparently, before I took a job in the city with a jobber firm he had arranged. But I would have the opportunity to explore the country too.

  ‘In fact, after a couple of weeks it became obvious I wasn’t ever going to really add anything to the workings of the estate; I was, in fact, more of a hindrance than a help, although no one ever said it! I never got the hang of laying out the cherries to dry, I couldn’t master the turning of them, when to do it and when not to. Sounds simple, I know, but get it wrong and you get uneven ripeness and fermentation, which impacts the coffee’s flavour. I continued to try, but I didn’t improve. I was given less and less to do and found my trips of exploration took up the majority of my time.

  ‘After a month, I started to attended the weekly coffee auction in Nairobi with the estate manager, and understood, during my first visit, the real reason for my father sending me here: to prepare me, to prime me for the world of finance I would be submerged in when I returned home. We would play out the buying and selling of the coffee before us in the auction house and the manager had an uncanny knack of striking exactly when the final bidwould be obtained. I, in contrast, was quite hopeless at it and concluded that this didn’t bode well for my future career.’

  Gus stopped speaking; he seemed to be remembering details, details that he was preparing to share.

  ‘Go on,’ encouraged Mary gently.

  ‘This weekly jaunt,’ he continued, ‘formed, over time, into the only piece of “work” I undertook. One week, after the auction, the estate manager advised me that he had other business to attend to in the centre of Nairobi – he wasn’t forthcoming and I didn’t ask; he was that kind of person. He pushed me in the direction of the City Park and said he would meet me there around 4pm. He explained the park was famed for its nature trails and they really were worth exploring. We always packed a picnic to share, normally consumed on the long drive back to the estate, but today only I had supplies; he would catch some food after his meeting, he said. He also told me to watch out for the vervet monkeys in the park – they would steal any food they could, even rip it out of your hands, given the opportunity. The Sykes’ monkeys, on the other hand, were extremely gentle in their requests for food and preferred to beg, palms outstretched, gazing with sad eyes.

  ‘The park was indeed lovely. I spent a couple of hours walking the trails and then prepared to sit and take some food and snooze the afternoon away. As I sat down with my bag on the grass under the shade of a tree, a group of childr
en emerged from the trail I had walked. I had heard their excitable voices behind me on a few occasions, but I didn’t see them on account of the winding paths and lush vegetation, and now with their trail over, they proceeded to race to a clearing in front of me and play football with a tatty ball that one of them had been carrying.

  ‘Walking, bringing up the rear, was a woman – their teacher, I presumed – who, once in the clearing, joined in the free-for-all with an equal level of enthusiasm as did her pupils. The ball came toward me a few times as I unpacked my food and I kicked it back to them, much to their delight. Hearing them laughing and shouting stirred something inside of me, and after eating a single piece of fresh fruit, I spontaneously jumped up and rushed over to them. I took the ball off a large boy and played tricks, performing pullbacks and step-overs to keep the others away from the ball. They pushed me and tackled me, attempting to get the ball away, but I managed to dance around them, and all the time the air was full of laughter and noise. I eventually gave the ball to the smallest child there. She attempted to kick it but missed and allowed an older girl to take over and run, run, run; the pack in hot pursuit of her.

  ‘I stood still, the action moving steadily away from me, exhausted in the hot afternoon sun, but content when the teacher stood beside me and spoke. “You are a good footballer!” she said, with a beautiful smile.

  ‘“Not really,” I replied. “They made me look better than I am,” I added, laughing. I suggested to her that they could organise into teams; that way they would get even more out of it, instead of hurtling around in confusion. She said she had tried but couldn’t make it work and wondered, while I was here, if perhaps I would have a go. It was extremely forward of her, but I felt compelled to agree, to which she immediately cupped her mouth and called them all back to her. They turned as one entity and stampeded toward us.

  ‘But long before they had reached us, her attention was directed toward the trees. She let out an ear-piercing shriek that made me wince, before clapping her hands. Standing, crouching and squabbling amongst my food were a multitude of monkeys. Judging by the different-coloured chests on display, it appeared that the Vervet’s and Sykes’ had teamed up for this raid, the latter’s reputation for gentility completely dismissed as a myth. She rushed over, with me on her tail, and together we banished them with arm-waving and shouting. But it was irrelevant; they had eaten most of the food already and carried off the remainder during their noisy and frantic escape.