The Consequences of Love

by Gavanndra Hodge

  I looked at the proofs of the magazine, pretended to read, my eyes sliding across the letters without registering anything. I ticked my initials and handed the pages to the editor sitting next to me.

  I spent the next two hours researching aortic aneurisms, approaching it professionally, as if this was an act of work rather than heartache, delving deeper, taking notes, discounting websites that looked too home-spun. I left the office with my eyes gristly from staring at my computer. I had not learnt much more than I had in those first few seconds.

  My father’s aortic artery had ballooned in one fatal spot. The walls of this part of the vessel grew thinner with every heartbeat; the faster and more intense the heartbeat, the thicker and more syrupy the blood, the more likely the balloon would burst. There would be no advance warning of this calamitous internal explosion. It could just happen. Any time. Or not. There was no way of knowing. All I knew was that he would have to change the way he’d always lived, the lying on the sofa drinking half a bottle of vodka while he watched films, the eating of all four crème caramels in a pack in one sitting, the duty-free multi-packs of Silk Cut that would be finished in a week (‘Here, have a pack,’ Dad would say to friends), the beer before lunch and the Baileys before bed. Otherwise my father, my happy immortal, would die. And that was unthinkable, impossible.

  The thing I realized, as I walked from High Street Kensington to the King’s Road, my hair whipping in the wind, was that I had to take charge. That was what Dad wanted. That was why he had called. He lived alone now, in an ex-council flat in Battersea – he and Julia had separated not long after I left university – and he knew this task was beyond him. He also knew that I was rigorous enough, bossy enough, and that I loved him enough, to take on the job of saving his life.

  I called Bella on the way to explain. ‘It might be a bit weird. You don’t have to come if you don’t want to.’

  ‘Don’t be silly. Of course I’m coming. I’m nearly there. Poor you. Your poor dad. This is shit. We’ll make it fun for him.’

  They were both already there when I reached the restaurant: Bella’s hair swept behind her shoulders, a floaty white thrift-shop top, unseasonal tan; Dad looking smart in an ironed shirt, with a glass of red wine filled to the brim and a cigarette in his hand.

  I kissed them both and sat down. They looked so relaxed, as though nothing had changed, nothing was scary, their faces warm in the candlelight. I felt I was in a different film, anxious and absorbed, not wanting to take my coat off, gripping my bag on my lap.

  Our friend who owned the restaurant was not working that night, and the place wasn’t busy. A waiter put a plate of pizzette on the table for us, mini pizzas with tomato sauce and olives. I let my hands unclasp, put my bag on the floor, drank some wine.

  ‘Busy day?’ said Dad.

  ‘Sort of,’ I replied. I couldn’t work out why I felt angry with him, so I ate one of the little pizzas, and then another, and one more.

  ‘Crazy news!’ he said, waving his fag in the air as though he was conjuring some sort of magic.

  Bella laughed. ‘Oh, Gav,’ she said and put her hand on his forearm.

  ‘I suppose,’ I said.

  I took off my coat, let it slump on the back of the chair, stiffened my spine for the speech I was about to deliver.

  ‘So, Dad, I did a lot of research today, and—’

  ‘See, I told you,’ he said to Bella.

  I tried to breathe. He’d always found my studiousness inexplicable, always thought it was funny, how a man like him could create a child like me.

  ‘This is not a joke,’ I said.

  He stopped laughing and looked at me, the pouches of skin under his eyes grey and saggy. He had just shaved and his face looked bloated without his stubble. He held his mouth tightly pursed, merriment contained just for the moment. This was his ‘I’m concentrating’ face.

  ‘Dad. This thing, the thing in you, it could kill you at any moment. You have to be really careful from now on. Basically, you have a choice: grandchildren or cocaine. Because if you keep taking coke, you are not going to live long enough to meet your grandchildren.’

  ‘Are you pregnant?’ he said, mischief making his mouth quiver even as he tried to maintain a serious expression.

  ‘For fuck’s sake,’ I said, looking away, making my eyes wide to keep them dry. I reached for his cigarettes. As I brought a fag to my mouth Dad swiped the Zippo from the table and offered me a light.

  ‘I am not pregnant,’ I said, inhaling nicotine calm. ‘I am just saying that maybe in the next few years I might be having kids. I would really like for you to be around for that. And if you keep on the way you have been, you probably won’t be.’

  ‘I know, I’m sorry. Come on, G, give me a hug,’ he said. He shifted his chair around to face me and pulled me to him. It was awkward, I had to hold my hand with the cigarette out to one side, and my glasses were dislodged, pressing against my face painfully as he hugged harder, the feel of his jumper soft against my cheek.

  ‘Always get cashmere, so when someone touches your arm or your back, they’ll just assume you’re rich,’ he once told me.

  I loved his hugs really. They are the thing I remember about him most.

  I pulled free and the young Italian waiter approached. Dad fancied spaghetti carbonara, but I said no, he should have the chicken breast with vegetables, which was healthier, better for his heart.

  ‘We might as well start tonight,’ I said.

  ‘That’s right, darling, this is what I need,’ he said. He was chuckling with his shoulders and belly. The strange thing was that he seemed more delighted than scared. I think he was so happy that I was willing to take on this role, policing his habits, an active and demanding demonstration of my devotion, that it counterbalanced his fear, or whatever it was that he felt when he considered his own death. I began to relax. If he would listen to me, if he would let me take control of this, then we might have a chance.

  ‘I am going to call every day,’ I said. ‘And I want to come with you to the next doctor’s appointment. I have lots of questions.’

  He looked at me with shining, proud eyes. Here I was, his serious daughter. Hermione, he used to call me, and Saffy before that. If anyone could sort him out, I was the one.

  ‘They’re not going to know what’s hit ’em!’

  I had to go to the loo and when I came back the conversation had moved on. Bella was talking about an ex-boyfriend who had moved to Ibiza and was Kate Moss’s driver. Dad was expressing his admiration for Moss’s party stamina, although, he said, she was too skinny for him. ‘I like a handful, if you know what I mean.’ But it was fine, I had said what I needed to say, made my point, really made it stick with the grandchildren thing. Dad loved children. He would definitely want to be a part of his grandchildren’s life, if only to be a bad influence, feed them too many sweets and let them watch too much telly, try to make them love him more than they loved my mother. He wouldn’t want to miss out on that game. I knew I was using low tactics, but the severity of the situation demanded them.

  Our food came and Dad stole a slice of my American Hot pizza, but he didn’t eat much of his chicken, which he said was too dry. We had finished the first bottle of wine quickly and were now nearly at the end of the second. I was drunk, my anxiety dulled by wine and cigarettes, by music and gossip. It was going to be OK; he would listen to me. I would talk to the doctor, find out about the possibilities, operations that could be performed, regimes that needed to be adhered to. Now I knew what needed to be done, now I had formulated a plan, I felt less scared. So it seemed fine, suddenly, for Dad to order three flaming sambucas and a plate of quivering tiramisu. This was his final night of fun – he couldn’t die in front of my eyes. I knew that couldn’t happen to me a second time.

  Could it?

  No. While I was here watching, my father would not die. So he stuck his teaspoon into the dessert and his eyes clouded with pleasure as he ate the creamy pudding and drank the sticky-sw
eet, still-warm liquor. This was the life.

  Dad gave me the cash for a cab home, pulling two twenty-pound notes out of his wallet, even though he wasn’t rich any more. But he liked the gesture, pretending to be wealthy made him believe that he was.

  In the cab back home to Brixton, where I was now living in an ex-council flat with Mike, I got a call from Bella.

  ‘That was nice,’ I said, feeling just drunk enough and enjoying the view out of the cab window, the shimmering shop fronts, the pre-Christmas glitter that made even South London showy.

  ‘I have to tell you something,’ she said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘When you were in the loo your dad asked me if I wanted a line of coke. That’s what he was doing all those times he went to the loo. He said, “Don’t tell her, whatever you do, don’t get me into trouble.”’

  Oh, I could imagine it. He would lean forward, press his forefinger to his nose, wink. He loved a secret, loved a tiny betrayal. Do you want a line?

  I sat back in the seat. He would never change. At least I could trust him on that.

  We went to the hospital together a month later. I made sure that we got there early. I knew that this just meant that we would have to spend longer in the waiting room, with its plastic moulded chairs and strip lighting, sick people slumped all around, breathing out germs and decay. But I didn’t want to be flustered. I had to be calm, so I could ask all the questions on my list in a measured, unhurried fashion.

  ‘Slow down for your old man,’ said Dad as we walked the short distance from the bus stop to the hospital. He was using a walking stick, a slender and pliant dark wood cane, the bone handle attached with a strip of leather and carved with a delicate pomegranate. This was the first time I’d seen him use a stick. He said it was the old injury. The metal pins he’d had put in his leg after he got run over in Marbella now ached constantly, rather than just before it was about to rain.

  I didn’t know where he’d got the walking stick. It looked fancy. I assumed he’d nicked it from one of his rich friends.

  I slowed down.

  ‘You’re always in such a hurry. It’ll still be there, you know, if we get there five minutes later.’

  ‘I know. Sorry, Dad.’

  ‘Look around a bit more, enjoy life.’

  I checked us in at reception and we found some seats near a television screen. There was no sound, but Dad still wanted to be able to watch it. He stretched his legs out in front of him and sighed.

  ‘I hate hospitals. You know that, don’t you, G? Just put a cushion over my face before it comes to this, promise me.’

  I looked at him. His skin was damp and grey, there were liver spots on his hands and his teeth were stained brown at the gums. His eyelashes were short and his eyebrows were sparse. I finally understood that it was unlikely to come to this.

  At night, by candlelight, his face came alive.

  He hadn’t done anything I’d asked him to do. He hadn’t stopped drinking or smoking; he hadn’t stopped eating ice-cream from the tub or snorting cocaine. In fact, he was behaving worse than ever. At dinner he would choose the fattiest, most calorific dishes, licking grease off his fingers like a later Roman emperor, gargling expensive red wine, using a dessertspoon to eat a whole chocolate mousse in three mouthfuls. He had taken to adding whisky to his coffee and smoking cigars after dinner, reclining in decadent splendour, holding his belly as it split his denim shirt.

  He found the knowledge that he could die at any moment a fantastic liberation. Could it be this slick of foie gras, this cigarette, this gulp of brandy Alexander, this huge line of very pure, perfectly white cocaine? And how much more delicious all these deadly indulgences were with the knowledge that this might be the last toot, the last sip, the last taste. He wasn’t scared. In fact, I had never seen him happier. He relished the delicious wickedness of his new roulette game. And I gave up trying to stop him killing himself. I joined in. I didn’t want to regret not having fun with him until the very end. We’d planned to go to a new bar in Battersea Square for strawberry daiquiris after his hospital appointment. Neil was going to meet us.

  ‘Mr Hodge,’ called a man who looked about the same age as me. Dark hair, white coat, fairly handsome.

  We followed him into a small office. There were clear plastic trays on the shelves and a big, old-fashioned computer on the desk. The consultant pressed a key on his keyboard and the thing whirred into life. He read what was on the screen.

  ‘So, Mr Hodge, you came in for some tests a few weeks ago?’

  I hated the way they were never prepared. The doctor hadn’t even read Dad’s history before we’d come in.

  ‘Yes, that’s right, and my father was diagnosed with an aortic aneurism. What we really want to talk about is next steps. I have been researching stents and although this is serious surgery I think it would be the best option, considering the severity of my father’s condition. I have to say I am a little surprised that we’ve had to wait so long for this follow-up appointment, under the circumstances.’

  I stopped talking and took a cool and imperious breath. I could feel the pleasure glowing from my father. I didn’t even have to look at him to know how much he had enjoyed my speech.

  The consultant looked a little flustered, as well he might. He stared again at his computer and did something with his mouse, scrolling up and down.

  ‘Um …’ he said.

  ‘What we would both really like is a time-frame,’ I said, interrupting his hesitation. ‘I am sure you can understand that this has all been very upsetting.’ I took my notepad from my bag and put it on the desk, flipped it open and held my biro poised in a way that I hoped would be really quite intimidating.

  ‘Come on, darling, give the doc a break, they’re really busy here,’ said Dad. He winked at the consultant, as if to say: Women! Unbelievable!

  It annoyed me that he always had to be the fun guy.

  ‘Well, yes, but …’ The consultant was still looking at his screen as he spoke. ‘I really can’t find any reference here to an aneurism. What the notes are suggesting is that there was an anomaly with the test results. So what we actually need to do is to find a time for Mr Hodge to do some more tests. I’m really sorry about that; I realize it is an inconvenience. But there really is nothing here to cause concern. Everything else seems very straightforward, as far as I can see.’

  The consultant looked up at me and smiled in a way that I imagine he thought was charming.

  I looked down at my notes and set my mouth in a hard, straight line.

  An anomaly.

  I knew my father was dyslexic, but this really was taking the piss.

  An anomaly.

  Dad laughed. ‘You’re kidding! That’s brilliant. Isn’t that brilliant, G?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  My father seemed tired when we left the hospital. He said he didn’t fancy strawberry daiquiris after all. He said he just wanted to go home. So we went back and lay on his sofas and watched television in companionable silence. Him on his sofa, me on mine.

  31

  2016, London

  ‘But you remember the time we took Candida and two of her friends to the Windmill Theatre for her birthday? You were so brilliant in the car, you entertained them the whole way there, telling them stories.’

  My mother repeats this anecdote every time we see each other. She is trying to help, I know that, trying to trigger my memories of Candy. But more than anything she is worrying me: the diabetes seems to be clouding her mind. Sometimes she is just as sharp as ever, but more often than not she repeats herself, gets confused, mixes things up.

  ‘No, I don’t remember that, I’m sorry, Mum,’ I say.

  I don’t say what I am thinking, which is: ‘You told me that last week, and the week before, and the week before that.’ I don’t say, ‘Is that the only memory of Candy you have left?’

  I don’t say this because I hate to see my mother upset. I hate to see anyone upset, but particularly my mot
her, not just because she is my mother, but because it reminds me too much of the time after Candy died and because she hurts so easily.

  When I told Mum that I was starting to see a therapist, she cried.

  ‘I am worried that you will talk about me and what it was like after Candy. I know I pulled away from you, but you have to understand, it hurt so much, and I couldn’t bear to hurt like that again. It was all I could do.’

  Mum stopped drinking when Dad went into rehab in 1984. She joined Alcoholics Anonymous and completed the twelve-step programme, learning the serenity prayer by heart and making me learn it too. She was very active in AA (before and) after Candy died. She became a sponsor, looking after young women in the early days of sobriety. They would call at all hours of the day and night. I would hear Mum murmuring softly to them, comforting them, guiding them. It made me furious. I hated their weakness. I wanted to pick up the phone and shout, ‘Have a fucking drink if you want one that badly.’

  Maybe I was so angry because it felt as if all her care was being given to them, not me. My mother’s fear of the darkness in our home, the drugs in the sitting room when I was a little girl and again when I was a teenager, the chaos, the wrongness of everything, made her unable to see what was happening.

  But when she did finally see, when she held the evidence in her hands, she threw Dad out without hesitation. If Mum had not done that, nothing would have changed. She was the one who spoke to my headmistress about why I had done badly in my GCSEs and why we needed help financially (Dad had declared himself bankrupt and was unable to pay his half of my school fees). She was the one who persuaded the school to let me take the A-levels I wanted and to give me a bursary. She was the one who made our home a safe, clean place while I studied for my A-levels, knocking on the door every morning with a cup of tea to wake me up in time to get ready for school, for my exams, for my Saturday job.

  She had been the one who pushed for me to go to a ‘good’ secondary school in the first place, taking me to the open days, arranging a tutor. She had been a bright little girl, just like me, passing her eleven-plus and going to grammar school, but her father hadn’t encouraged her. He refused to help her with maths, even though he was an accountant and helped her elder brother. My mother always felt unloved (she was an unwanted third child, an unsuccessful abortion). She would hide in a cupboard when it was time to go to school, but only because she wanted to be found. Her parents never looked for her, never even noticed she was missing, and when she was fourteen she was asked to leave school because of non-attendance. She became a model and always got the bridal slot at the end of the fashion show because she looked so pure, white-blonde hair and violet eyes. She hated being looked at and drank too much, the wine softening her painful edges.