by Imogen Clark
Mrs P straightens an invisible crease in his covers. ‘That’s up to you, Cara, but I don’t think they will do anything that I’m not doing here and it’s far less stressful to leave him be than move him. I think we just need to keep him comfortable and see how he is when it gets light. We can always call an ambulance if he takes a turn for the worse.’
Suddenly I feel like a child. I need someone to tell me what to do for the best so that I don’t have to make any decisions myself.
‘Do you think . . . this might be it?’ I ask her. I feel unprepared. Of course, I knew he would die but it hadn’t occurred to me that it would happen so soon. I look at Mrs P, waiting for her professional opinion. I don’t know what I want her to say.
‘Oh, we’re not there yet,’ she says in a tone that reminds me of matrons or Girl Guide leaders. ‘Let’s see how he goes.’
I sit myself down by the bed but then I shoot back up again.
‘My case. I left it in the street.’
‘I’ll go and fetch it,’ she says calmly. ‘And do you think you should ring Michael?’
This hadn’t even crossed my mind.
‘Of course. What time is it?’
‘It’s half past one. Maybe you should wait until morning.’
‘No. I’ll ring now. What shall I say?’
Mrs P looks at me. She doesn’t speak but what she’s saying to me is clear. Why wake your brother now, when there’s no news?
‘No. I’ll ring when it gets light,’ I say. ‘That’ll be best. Dad will probably be a bit better when he wakes up and then there’ll be no need to worry Michael.’
In light of what I’ve learned over the last few days, part of me thinks that Michael won’t even care, but that’s not the point. I can’t unilaterally decide not to tell him but I will wait until morning. Anyway, a middle-of-the-night phone call might wake the twins and this might be hard enough without that on top.
Mrs P leaves me and I hear her tripping lightly down the stairs, opening and closing the front door and putting my bag down in the hall. I lean forward and stroke Dad’s face. His eyes flicker, the eyelids paper-thin. Then they open and he smiles at me, a proper smile like he really knows who I am. This weak and broken man has caused so much hurt to so many people but now, when I touch his hollowed cheek, I find it hard to feel anger. The last few days of revelation cannot displace a lifetime of love because he has loved me, in his own, misguided way. All the lies were told to protect me and no matter how ill-judged his actions were, he believed that he was doing the right thing. Michael has taken one view but I don’t have to share it. I’m not sure I will ever totally forgive or even understand what he did, but that man is gone. The old man lying in this bed is someone else entirely.
He opens his mouth but no words come and even the effort of that small movement seems too much for him.
‘Don’t talk, Dad,’ I say. ‘You need to save your strength. And anyway, I’m quite enjoying the peace and quiet.’ I squeeze his hand and hope that he can’t see the tears brimming in my eyes.
‘Good girl,’ he says, so quietly that I wouldn’t catch his words if I couldn’t see his mouth moving. ‘Good girl.’
‘You get some rest,’ I say, and his eyes close again.
I’m so tired. I lean forward and rest my face on the sheets next to Dad’s fragile hand. I can feel his ratchety breathing and I follow it with my own.
I wake up to Mrs P gently touching my arm. For a moment, I’m confused and then I remember where I am and why.
‘I must have dropped off. What time is it?’
‘It’s almost five,’ she says.
There is the briefest of pauses and then she says, ‘I’m so sorry, Cara, but your father has gone.’
It takes a moment for her words to sink in.
‘It was very peaceful,’ she continues. ‘He just passed away in his sleep.’
I look at Dad. For a moment, in the half-light, he looks just as he did before; but when I look more carefully, he is completely still. His face is already a mask. When I touch his cheek, it is cool.
‘But I only closed my eyes for a moment. He can’t be gone. He was fine. He spoke to me.’
There is so much to say and yet nothing. I wanted to tell Dad everything that I learned from Ursula and Michael, even though I knew he wouldn’t be able to respond or even understand, but I’m too late.
‘But he can’t be gone,’ I say again, though I can see the truth for myself.
Mrs P takes my elbow and begins to lead me away but I resist her. I don’t even know why. It just feels wrong to leave Dad here by himself when he needs me.
‘Come on, Cara,’ she says gently. ‘I need to ring for an ambulance and a doctor to register the death. And you should perhaps call Michael?’
Michael. He knows nothing. I didn’t even warn him that there was a chance Dad might die and now it’s too late. As if she can hear my thoughts, Mrs P adds, ‘He could never have made it all the way from London in time. It was all so very quick.’
‘Yes,’ I say, searching out every crumb of comfort from her words. ‘It was very quick. We had no idea, did we?’
I look to her, desperate for her to confirm my words and assuage this unidentified feeling that I fear is quickly becoming guilt.
‘Of course not,’ she says.
We both know this sentiment is not true but I grasp at it like a drowning man flails at a passing stick. I let her lead me from the room. Downstairs I pick up the phone and call my brother. For some reason that I don’t quite understand, I feel that I should use a landline, as if that will make a real connection between us. I sit on the bottom step and tap in his number. Marianne answers almost at once.
‘Hello?’ she says, her voice made anxious by receiving a call so early in the morning.
‘Marianne. It’s Cara,’ I say and in those three words the deed is done.
‘Oh,’ she says quietly.
‘Is Michael there?’
‘Yes,’ she says. ‘You’ve just caught him. Hang on.’ She puts the receiver down and I hear her go off in search of Michael. I can’t hear what she says to him but when the receiver is lifted up again, it is my brother’s voice that speaks.
‘Cara?’ he says.
‘Dad’s gone,’ I say.
The sentence is so resounding with euphemism that I for a moment I think he might not have fully grasped my meaning and that I’ll have to be more explicit. However, when he speaks, I know that he has understood.
‘When?’
‘Just now. He was asleep and then . . .’
‘What was it?’
‘Pneumonia,’ I say.
‘Are you okay?’
I nod and I know that he has understood even though he can’t see me.
‘Do you need me to do anything?’ he asks.
‘I don’t know. Mrs P is here. She knows what to do.’
‘All right,’ he says gently. ‘Well, we can speak later in the day when you know more about the arrangements. I’ll come up for the funeral. Do you need me there before then?’
Do I need him? Yes, of course I do. I need him to whisper to me that it will all be all right like he used to when we were children. I need him to hold me and tell me jokes until the tears dry up. I need him to reassure me that we are the only two people in the whole world who matter and that we don’t care about anyone else. Except that isn’t true anymore. He has Marianne and the girls. In fact, I am the only person in the whole wide world.
‘No,’ I reply. ‘I’ll be fine. I’ll ring you later. I’m sorry, Michael,’ I add.
‘There’s no need, Ca,’ he says quietly. ‘We’ll speak later.’
Then he puts the receiver down and I am on my own.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
Time must be making its steady progress round the big, white clock in the kitchen but I don’t notice. I make tea and then let it go cold on the kitchen table in front of me. I suppose it must be shock, this numbness, but shock at which part of the story I’m n
ot sure. Mrs P makes some calls, dealing quietly and efficiently with all the practical matters that I should be attending to but can’t face. People come to the house and eventually Dad leaves it. I do nothing. I just sit here, unable to balance the grief I feel for the passing of my only parent with the anger I feel about him depriving me of the other one. It hurts too much to examine which pain is the greater so I lock it all away and just breathe, slowly. In and out.
After what would have been lunch, if such things mattered, the doorbell rings again. I don’t get up but I hear Mrs P go to answer it. There are hushed voices in the hall and a moment later Beth’s tanned face appears around the door.
‘Cara, sweetie,’ she says quietly. ‘I came as fast as I could.’
To begin with, it feels like the most natural thing in the world that Beth has arrived, but then my muddled brain realises that I haven’t told her what’s happened. I haven’t told anyone except Michael.
‘How . . . ?’ I ask.
‘Mrs P,’ she explains. ‘She rang me. I’m so sorry, Ca.’
Beth, who held my ruined hand tight when girls at school were cruel, who was there to examine, in microscopic detail, our first-ever party, who has always stuck by me no matter what happened to put her off, rushes across the room, throws her arms around my neck and holds me. That is all it takes to summon the tears that until this point have been missing. I feel my face crumple and a single sob escapes, like a lookout for an approaching army.
She sits down next to me, puts her arm across my shoulders and I lean into her. She smells clean and fresh, like washing on a line in spring. Her arms tighten around me, mother, sister and best friend all rolled into one person.
‘There, there,’ she says as she rubs my back. ‘You let it all out.’
And I do.
Later, when my chest aches, my eyes are stinging and dry and I have no more tears to release, Beth makes more tea and we take it into the lounge for a change of scene.
‘So, tell me about your honeymoon,’ I say.
Beth half-smiles, a little ashamed at her own pleasure in the face of my pain. ‘It was lovely,’ she says quietly. ‘The hotel was perfect and the beach was beautiful. I could go and live on a tropical beach, I really think I could. Imagine being somewhere where you don’t have to think about the weather, where you can guarantee it’ll be warm and sunny every day.’
‘You’d get bored,’ I say. ‘That endless blue? I bet you’d be longing for a leaden sky before you ran out of knickers. And you’d hate a flat horizon.’
‘I suppose I might miss the moor,’ she says, and we both sit quietly for a moment, imagining how flawed a perfect life really is.
I should tell her about Simeon now but something holds me back. Partly it’s because I don’t have the strength for her excitement, but I’m also still not entirely sure where Simeon and I stand. I haven’t been in touch with him since I got back. There’s barely been time for one thing, given everything that’s happened. That’s not it, though. I’ve held off because, having decided on the plane that I don’t want it to end, I am scared that Simeon might have changed his mind about me. As long as we haven’t spoken, I can pretend to myself that he is still keen. Guiltily, I keep my news to myself.
Then, apropos of nothing, Beth says, ‘I’m not sure that I want to sell the cottage.’
This comes so wide from the left field that I can’t make any connection with the conversation we were having and Simeon slips quietly from my mind. My confusion must be showing on my face.
‘Now that I’m married,’ she clarifies. ‘Greg says I should sell the cottage so that we can invest the money for the future, but I’m not sure I want to.’
‘Well, it’s your cottage,’ I reason. ‘Surely you can do what you like with it?’
‘You’d think so, wouldn’t you?’
Her words are barbed, their spikes poking out clearly enough for me to touch.
‘What’s this?’ I say. ‘Trouble in paradise?’
‘No,’ she says on an out breath so that even the word sounds like an effort to pronounce.
I cock my head to one side and look at her, eyebrows raised.
‘It’s just that . . .’
I wait. There’s no point pushing her. She’ll get there in her own good time.
‘Well,’ she continues. ‘He can be quite controlling, you know?’
Really?! I think, but I keep my mouth firmly shut. For Beth to be criticising Greg is rare enough let alone to be doing it now, when they’ve been married for less than a month. I nod sympathetically.
‘Don’t get me wrong,’ she continues. ‘Sometimes it’s lovely. He can sweep into a room and take control and I don’t have to think about anything at all. Greg just makes things happen around him. It’s quite impressive, actually. It’s like a kind of presence that he has, an aura.’ That’s not what I would call it but I hold my tongue and let her continue to explain. ‘But, well, my cottage is mine. I worked really hard to save for the deposit and cover the mortgage on my own. Well, you know I did.’
‘Of course you did,’ I agree.
‘And I know it’s nothing to him, with his surgeon’s salary and what have you, but it’s a lot to me. I don’t think I’m ready to let it go. Not yet.’
‘And have you told him how you feel?’
She holds her head high, defiant. ‘He says I’m being ridiculous. He says the cottage will soon become a liability because it needs so much work doing on it and that we should sell it to a developer now and liquidise the asset.’
I can hear Greg speaking through her. I can’t believe that the words ‘liquidise the asset’ have ever come from Beth’s lips before. ‘So, what are you going to do?’ I ask.
Beth looks at me and raises an eyebrow. There is a sparkle in her eyes that I’ve missed these last few weeks. I welcome it like an old friend.
‘You’re not going to do what he says, are you?’ I say with a wry smile. I feel like we are co-conspirators in some devilish plot, just like in the old days before Greg, before all of this.
‘No,’ she says decisively. ‘I don’t think I am. It’s my cottage. Just because we got married doesn’t mean I have to agree with everything he says. Hanging on to the cottage is a sound business decision too. It’s an asset with an appreciating value. And I can rent it out, cover the mortgage.’
‘Precisely,’ I say. And you’ll still have somewhere to run to if it all goes pear-shaped, I think, but I don’t say that out loud either.
‘Anyway,’ says Beth, leaning forward and looking straight into my eyes, her head cocked to one side, her brows knitted. ‘Less of me. How are you? I really am sorry about your Dad.’
In the few minutes that have passed since she arrived, I’ve almost forgotten that Dad has gone. Now that she says it out loud, it sounds wrong to me, like something someone might say for dramatic effect. ‘I can’t really take it in,’ I manage.
‘Of course you can’t. It’s not like it was expected, well not yet anyway. It’s bound to have come as a shock. Mrs P said it was pneumonia?’
‘That’s what the doctors said. I should have been here.’ It’s not until I hear myself say it out loud that I know that this is how I’m feeling. I went away and abandoned him while I chased halfway round the planet after something that I might very well have been better leaving well alone, and look what has happened. My world has changed beyond recognition and my father is dead.
Beth is having none of it. ‘You’re being silly,’ she says gently.
I can feel the burning heat of tears welling up in my eyes again.
‘This could have happened at any time. He wasn’t well, Cara. He hadn’t been well for a long time. And he would have caught pneumonia whether you had been here or not. You can’t blame yourself. Apart from anything else, I won’t let you.’
I know she’s right but that doesn’t make the guilt any less sharp.
‘Is he . . . ?’ She inclines her head towards the ceiling. ‘Is he still here?’
/> She looks so serious that it makes me laugh. The sound is wrong in this melancholy house and that makes me laugh again.
‘No. They’ve taken him away. He wouldn’t be very impressed to hear me laughing.’
I mean so soon after his demise but Beth says, ‘No. He never did like us to have too much fun.’ Her hand shoots to her mouth and her eyes grow wide. ‘God, I’m so sorry. He’s not been dead two minutes and here I am speaking ill of him.’
She’s right, though. We did use to have to be quiet while we played for fear of disturbing him and bringing his wrath down on our heads.
‘Do you remember that time he locked us out because he said he couldn’t hear himself think over our shouting?’ I ask.
‘Yes,’ says Beth, nodding enthusiastically. ‘It was freezing and chucking it down. My mum was furious when I got home. I was totally soaked through and blue.’
‘Was she? I didn’t know that.’
‘Yes. It’s always stuck in my memory because she was so angry about it. She said that she didn’t know what went on in this house but that your dad needed to get his priorities sorted. No!’ she adds with a kind of gasp. ‘I’ve done it again. I’m so sorry. What my mum thought twenty years ago is neither here nor there.’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ I say. ‘It was probably true.’
I’m interested in what Beth’s mum said about Dad. I’ve never really had an alternative perspective on his parenting and I don’t have anything to compare it with.
‘What else did she say?’
Beth frowns. It’s obvious that she’s trying to decide what she should tell me and what she should hold back. ‘Well,’ she starts doubtfully. ‘I think she just thought that he was doing his best in difficult circumstances.’ Her gaze leaves my eyes and drops to the table between us. ‘But that sometimes you and Michael were a little bit neglected.’
She looks at back up me earnestly, her teeth pushing into her bottom lip as she waits to see if she has overstepped the mark.
‘I think that’s fair comment,’ I say and I see relief wash over her face. ‘He wasn’t exactly your average, hands-on father. He could be a difficult bugger and he made no allowances for visitors. At least he was consistent. What you saw was what you got.’
