The Language of Dying

by Sarah Pinborough

  We walk past the garden of remembrance and I see a small wooden sign pointing the way to the children’s garden. It is in bad taste. Why would children want to play here? I stare. My breath catches. I understand. I look at you and see the lines of age and experience on your wasting skin, and I see the sadness in your exhausted expression. You turn away and maybe in that moment I can understand why you are okay with this as you keep telling me. Some things are natural and some things are not. You may be going quicker than either of us want, but you are a long way from the children’s garden.

  The stillness around us makes me want to cry and I’m glad to follow you back to the building. I don’t want to think of the dead children. I can’t think of them. It might make me drift too far. I like to think it wouldn’t, but it might. Doctor drifting. Like before. And I don’t need that right now. Right now is all about you.

  We find the office. It’s locked, but the small waiting room is open, so we take some leaflets advising us on coping with bereavement – just because they’re there – and head out to look at the chapel. The large doors are locked and like naughty children we creep across the perfect lawn to balance between the flowers and peer into the gloom.

  The window is small and modern and I can’t see much apart from a couple of rows of pine pews. I don’t know what I’m looking for so I step back. I don’t want to look too much. It makes me think time is folding again. Here with you, but I’ll soon be here again without you.

  Your face is pressed to the glass, hands wrapped round the edges of your eyes to block out the light, but after a while you push away and nod slightly.

  ‘What do you think?’ I ask, as if we are looking at a venue for a party.

  ‘I suppose it’ll do,’ you say. ‘Seems pleasant enough.’

  We head back to the car and I’m relieved to start the engine and leave the place behind. Halfway home I open the window a touch. I say I’m hot. It’s a lie. That awful rotting smell is erupting from you as you burp and release more liquid into the tub. I think you don’t notice it. Maybe your sense of smell has decayed already. Another part of you breaking down. Irreparable. After a while I shut the window again, but it lingers on. I shallow breathe, ashamed of myself.

  You are quite perky when we get home, happy to have another thing ticked from your list now that the doctor has told you, ‘Two months, no more.’ I smile and laugh as I make the tea and you think I’m fine, but it takes me hours to shake the dark shadow off. I scrub hard in the shower that night, trying to wash away the cold, clinical finality of death that stabs terror into my soul. I don’t have your Zen.

  *

  After Mum left and we rented the house out – moving into the grounds of the special school you were working at – Penny and Paul used to sneak out and spy on the town embalmers. Did you ever know about that? They used to peer through the windows at the cadavers in the back room of the funeral parlour or crematorium or whatever it was. They would come back giggling and exhilarated. I pretended to be interested, but I never went with them. The coldness never fascinated me. Terrified me, perhaps, the stillness of it all, but never fascinated me. I sometimes wonder how true their breathless stories were and if in fact they ever saw a body at all, but I’m glad I never went with them. There is too much of the darkness inside me without adding to the fear. Even as a child I knew that.

  I realise I’m shallow breathing again when I hear Penny release the water and send it fleeing through the pipes. I put the kettle on to make more tea.

  5

  ‘The boys are coming.’ We look at each other and say the words and it feels like we’re speaking in metaphors. We may as well have said a hurricane was coming. It feels that way. A force of nature. A law unto itself. Fascinating and destructive. Burning itself out too soon. I blow hair out of my face. We are certainly making the house safe, in a different way than you would for a storm maybe, but still battening down the hatches.

  Penny holds up a dust-coated bottle of port that usually stands on the kitchen windowsill. ‘How long have you had this?’

  I stare and shrug. ‘Came with some Stilton, I think. Couple of years ago? Maybe three? We’d better hide it anyway.’

  She looks at the label and laughs. ‘Hmmm. Consume within one year of purchase. This one can go straight in the bin.’ She empties it into the sink, the smell very strong for a moment, and then puts the bottle in the recycling bin. The windowsill looks strange without it and for an irrational moment I want to fish it out of the bag and put it back. There has been too much change. I want it to stop. But of course nothing ever does.

  Pulling two bottles of wine out of the fridge, Pen waves them at me. ‘Where can we hide these?’

  ‘Under my bed?’

  She nods, giggling, her eyes bright, her glow bright. ‘Good plan. We can have a liquid midnight feast later.’ She is halfway up the stairs when she comes dashing back and grabs the corkscrew from the drawer. ‘We won’t get far without this!’ I start laughing too and she puts it between her teeth and that nearly sends me over the edge. Penny has been through some stuff in her life. But with all that glow she is forever eighteen, bubbly and full of life. Listening to her thump up the stairs I don’t even feel envious, just in awe.

  More searching finds an untouched bottle of vodka left over from Christmas and half a bottle of whisky under the sink. I have no idea how they got there. We put those under my bed too and then empty the medicine cupboard on to the breakfast bar. There are two large bottles of liquid morphine – you no longer need them now you have the constant pump attached – and four trays of heart pills, sectioned into individual boxes with the names of the days on them. Penny stares at it all before pushing the pills out of sight, out of mind, into a carrier bag. She is in full organisational flow now. ‘I’ll take these down to the chemist while you have a shower. I won’t be long.’

  I ache slightly as she whisks the pills away and out of the house. One route for you is now gone. The fast, self-medicated heart attack is no longer an option. Just the slow road left. I wish I’d hidden some of your tablets where she wouldn’t find them. But I didn’t. I didn’t think. My thinking space was too full of cliché and claptrap.

  I scrub myself hard in the shower.

  *

  The twins arrive within half an hour of each other despite living hundreds of miles apart. This doesn’t surprise either Penny or me. The twins have always been like that, as if they never stopped breathing in the same fluid, taking a little of the womb with them as they grew. Sometimes I think that link has hurt them far more than helped them. They feel each other’s self-destruction and feed it. I don’t know which boy started on that damaged road first, but they took the other with them, that much is for sure.

  It’s Davey who gets here first, even though he was the second-born, the youngest of the five, if only by seven minutes. Penny opens the door with a squeal of delight and I grin behind her. My dread melts away a little. It’s only Davey, after all. His dark hair is too long, but the brown eyes underneath it look soft and scared and warm with no hint of rage or madness. I join in their hug, Penny tiny between us and I squeeze tight. Poor Davey. Always a boy to us.

  ‘You’re looking good, Davey,’ I whisper and he crushes me back, knowing what I mean. He is too thin and his clothes are cheap and tatty and he has wrinkles on his face that shouldn’t be there yet. When he hesitantly smiles I can see the nicotine stains on his teeth and there is a gap where one is missing at the side. But he looks good in the eyes. And that’s where it counts. ‘Do you fancy a bacon sandwich?’ I hide my tears with a grin.

  Unlike Penny, Davey goes straight up to see you without even taking off his jacket. When he comes back down ten minutes later he isn’t crying. He doesn’t say much, smoking a cigarette before eating his sandwich. I think maybe he is stronger than all of us in his own way. Penny is filling him in on all of little James’ antics and he laughs. ‘When I’m sorted, I’ll have to come up and visit you. It’s about time the little lad got to kn
ow his Uncle Davey better.’ Penny nods, and in this minute she truly does want that to happen. We’re in a bubble again, all of us together this time. Not a bubble of time though. This time it’s a bubble of self-deception.

  We want so much to believe that it’s easy for Davey to slip in and out of Penny’s world, but deep down we all know it isn’t. It isn’t Penny’s fault. It’s Davey’s. He thinks his world is normal like everyone else’s, but it’s been so long since he’s been part of the status quo he doesn’t realise how displaced he is. His world is not ours. He doesn’t belong in it as we don’t in his. There comes a time when the two paths no longer cross.

  I wait for a pause in their to and fro of talk so I can ask him how he’s doing. He shrugs. ‘One day at a time, Sis. You know how it is. I’m still in the sheltered accommodation for another three months. Then we’ll see. I’ve got to be strong, haven’t I? Got to keep taking the pills.’ He smiles and that’s good. It’s difficult to equate him with the screaming monster on the phone who claimed he was going to come and shoot me with a sawn-off shotgun a couple of years ago. Not that he ever had such a gun. And not that he remembers it. Or if he does, it isn’t in the way that I do. And I can understand that. I was like that when I was in the dark drift.

  Penny pushes the chocolate biscuits at him. ‘Eat those. If we eat any more of them we’ll burst.’ He takes one diligently from the packet under the watchful gaze of his eldest sister, but he just holds it until I put the mug of tea down on the table. Penny leans forward. ‘And you’re staying away from the drink? And the drugs?’

  Davey nods. ‘Have to, don’t I? If I want to be sane.’

  I watch him put four teaspoons of sugar in his tea before he stirs it. He needs to get a rush from somewhere. As if the mention of drugs is his cue, the doorbell goes and Simon is here. We are nearly all here; only Paul to come.

  Penny squeals with delight all over again and the twins hug. Simon and Davey inhabit the same normality and I think it makes Davey feel more relaxed. Simon has always made Davey feel better about things, even though Simon is further along down the road than his twin. Simon is more at home in their strange lives than Davey is. Sometimes I can see Davey’s longing for the real world, whatever that may be.

  The kitchen is too full and even though I’m not hungry I eat a bacon sandwich. Davey has another one too, ketchup dripping down his denim shirt and giving Penny something to fuss over. She is maternal, I’ll give her that. Simon asks for a sandwich, but it sits untouched on his plate. I think he’s forgotten it’s there. He’s concentrating on his cigarette. He has arrived holding an open can of extra strong lager. Something cheap. It isn’t a brand I’ve ever heard of and for a moment I feel as if we’re in a soap opera and none of this is real. The can makes me think of it. It looks like one of those fake brands they use on the BBC.

  The boys share a smile over something Penny has said and I can almost see their childish faces shimmering under the worn skin they have now. Only just, but the traces are still there. That makes me sadder than if they had been gone forever and I go to the sink and slowly wash up, hiding in the task. They don’t notice, both caught up in Penny’s glow, and I don’t mind. It is as it is.

  ‘Right, I’m going to see the old man.’ Simon stands unsteadily. He leaves the sandwich untouched, but keeps hold of the can. Penny, bless her, makes him leave his cigarette down here. She does these things with a light touch. If I had said the same thing it would have made him feel bad. Penny can do these things with a smile and a whisper and make people feel good about themselves.

  Simon stays up there for longer and I wonder what sense you two are making to each other. Maybe you have become a shrine or a relic or a font of knowledge and giver of absolution now that your time is limited. I wonder if any of them see that you’re just a tired old man waiting to die and I wonder at my arrogance for having that thought.

  Simon is crying when he comes back downstairs, still carrying the can, and Penny tries to make it easy for him with platitudes.

  ‘It’s okay to cry, sweetheart, but Dad wouldn’t want you to be sad,’ she says. ‘He’d want you to remember the good times.’

  Watching her soothing him makes me love her more. She may be no good at taking the hard, but she knows how to spread the easy. Simon calms down, but I can see the desolation in his dazed eyes and I know that the scared boy inside is crying for himself. Who will be on the other end of the phone for his slurred, indecipherable rambles? Who will help him find the rent when he’s spent it on cheap beer and drugs? Who will speak to the council and sort out his benefits? Me? Penny? Davey?

  I don’t see it. Our seams will have come apart.

  These things are in the future though, and for now it is all laughter and tears. I am relieved when a nurse comes. It’s not Barbara and I wish it were, but at least I’m out of the kitchen. I’m tired and the loudness of everything they say hurts my ears. I wait in the hall until she comes down. She is brisk and efficient. She lacks Barbara’s softness. Barbara’s heart. I let her out, enjoying a moment of cold air in my smoke-sore eyes and then I go upstairs to find some peace. I seek solace at your stinking, rotting shrine.

  I sit by the bed and hold your hand. You are awake, the bed professionally tidy and I see the spit jar of mouthwash has been emptied and washed. We look into each other for a moment and silently acknowledge again how well we were coping as just two. I smile, and so do you.

  One shaky hand points at the cup of water, the long fingers exaggerated by the lack of flesh. You aren’t able to grip it. The reality of your fast decline threatens to bring tears, but I lock them down and hold the cup for you, letting small sips drip into your withered mouth.

  ‘I didn’t think you could drink anymore. You haven’t drunk anything for days.’

  You grunt slightly, one eyebrow raising a margin in your yellow forehead. ‘I thought it would make it happen quicker.’ The words are slow and heavy. Not in your voice. ‘Just made me bloody thirsty.’ The sound may not be yours, but the meaning is still you and I laugh, but you don’t smile. You take a few more sips and then sink back into the bed, exhausted. ‘Thanks, darling.’ I don’t say anything and you shut your eyes. The lids are so thin I can almost see through them. I wonder what is going on in there, in your private bubble.

  Within minutes you are sleeping again, thick breaths crawling in and out of you. You look peaceful despite the fight inside. Sometimes it’s easier to talk to people when they’re asleep. They can’t answer back and they take in your words better.

  You made me read a book when I was little where they piped words into children as they slept, forming their place in society. It was a good book. It was a thinking book. I think maybe I should dig it out and read it again someday. I could use a good thinking book.

  I lean forward and send my suggestion in through your ear. ‘The boys aren’t your fault, you know.’ It isn’t much, but you sigh, and I hope that it’s made you sleep easier.

  When I go back to the kitchen I can barely see my brothers through the fog of smoke and I wonder how often I’ve looked at them properly. Simon seems fairly lucid and for a second I see the ghost of the bright boy with the shock of blond hair who was so fit and healthy and into everything. Simon was into life when he was young. That changed somewhere along the way.

  ‘Is Paul coming?’ Simon looks around as if he expects our eldest brother to appear magically in the room. ‘Where is he? Haven’t heard from him in a while.’ He thinks he is speaking clearly, but his voice slurs wildly from one word to the next and his eyes are narrower than they used to be. I’m sure it’s just because he needs to concentrate to focus, but it makes him look mean. Maybe that’s how you have to look to survive in his world.

  His cigarette ash drops to the floor and I know with a moment’s clarity that I will never see him again after this is done. I can feel the family unravelling with your life. We are disconnecting – satellites spinning outwards from a broken spool.

  Davey slips quietl
y out of the back door and I follow him into the garden. It’s cold now and getting dark, but we know our way down the path to the swings, our feet as steady on the broken slabs as they always have been. I don’t worry about treading on the cracks. That fear is too far in the past. Growing up is about realising that the cracks in the pavement are nothing to worry about. It’s the cracks inside that count.

  Davey takes the left swing and I sit on the right. My breath dances with his smoke in the cold air and I grip the chains that feel so much smaller than they used to. The plastic U of the seat digs into the excess flesh of my thighs, reinforcing this. None of it seems to bother Davey as he smokes the cigarette right down to his fingertips while staring at the house and garden. I wonder what ghosts he’s seeing.

  ‘So. You all right, Sis?’

  I’m surprised by the care in his voice and look over. His face is all shadows and flashes of white in the gloom.

  ‘Yes – course I am. Why?’ I say.

  ‘Just wondered. I never understood why you came back here.’ He pauses. ‘No, that’s not true. I understood why someone might need to go home for a while. But I don’t understand why you stayed once you were back on your feet.’ Despite the cold, his fingers deftly roll another cigarette. ‘I thought you’d want to get back out there.’

  I think that maybe that place they keep him in has given Davey too much thinking time. In that moment, part of me wants the maniac back. ‘Just seemed like the sensible thing to do. I like it here.’ Heat rises in my face. I don’t want to talk about me. I don’t want to talk about me and the world out there. And I don’t want to talk about my drifts. I’m not the one with problems. Not really.

  ‘Davey,’ I ask, ‘what happened to Simon? How did he get into that stuff?’ It’s a diversionary tactic, but I do want to know. In my memories Simon goes from sixteen and normal to seventeen and wild and crazy with no gradient in-between. I know that this can’t be real. I guess I just wasn’t paying attention when his cracks began to show.