Only

by Caroline Baum

  No one at the hospital seemed concerned that it took more than an hour to get my father dressed. He raised his arms like an obedient child when told to, but did not participate in the process. Having been so eager, insistent and desperate to leave the ward in the preceding days, he was now apathetic, listless and passive, helpless when it came to putting on socks, shoes, shirt and sweater. My mother became more and more upset by his demeanour but eventually, with one of us supporting him on each side, he shuffled out of the ward to the lift, the foyer and into a taxi. In the taxi his eyes were dull, like those of a cooked fish, and he did not seem to recognise the streets through which we drove. When Felix the doorman welcomed him back, he said thank you without looking at who was addressing him, as if he were on automatic pilot, simply parroting a phrase he had been taught. He just kept shuffling forward, looking neither right nor left. Once inside the flat, he went straight to bed.

  ‘Is he dying?’ asked my mother.

  ‘We all are, Mum,’ I said in a flippant attempt to downplay her anxiety. But I, too, wondered whether this was the beginning of the end.

  He got up for lunch a few hours later, and while he could shuffle to the table without stumbling and seemed steady on his feet, once seated he was strangely disorientated. He did not appear to be able to see the food right in front of him: he would ask for the salt and it would be within his grasp, but invisible to him. He said very little, never looked up or around him, never said that he was pleased to be home, or asked how long I was staying. It was both as if I had always been there or was not there at all.

  My mother sighed a lot and left the table as soon as possible, retreating to her room. Great.

  After lunch I put on some of his favourite music, Mahler’s 3rd Symphony. Within the first few bars, he recognised the recording.

  ‘Abbado,’ he said, ‘and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.’

  My heart lifted; I felt he was returning gradually to the world. I congratulated myself on the inspired idea of playing him music, as if this were a direct conduit back into his consciousness and identity, as if I had instinctively plugged into the basics of music therapy. I persuaded myself that I was going to be good at this ‘caring for a convalescent’ business, that I had the magic touch.

  He sat listening with his eyes closed, occasionally gesturing when the music swelled in a crescendo, but not, as was his habit in the past, conducting. He simply did not have the energy to wave his hands about.

  He slept for the rest of the day, ate a little supper, and said he needed to go to the barber and intended to drive there the next day. He did not remember that the doctor had told him he would be unable to drive for six weeks.

  At two in the morning I was woken by a shuffling sound, as if a large furry animal were snuffling around in the undergrowth. Disorientated, I thought of a ponderous wombat in the bush outside a tent, before I recognised the sound of my father’s tread, then a jingling of keys, the zipping of a bag, the fumbling of chain and bolt, the turning of handle, the soft clunk of the front door closing.

  Where on earth could my father be going at this hour? Having gone to bed naked, suffocated by my parents’ central heating, I rummaged around urgently for a few clothes, found my non-slip socks with rubber soles, a woollen cardigan, and went to wake my mother to tell her my father had gone out. She was too sleepy to react, and just lay in bed moaning in alarm. I called the security guard downstairs and told him my father was on his way out and to stop him at the gates if possible, but the security guard told me my father had already left the building.

  When I got outside it was snowing. The loose feathery kind of flakes that fall messily as if someone in the sky has burst a duvet. I could not see my father anywhere. The car was still parked in its bay, so he was on foot. I started down the road calling out ‘HB, HB,’ into a developing blizzard. Eventually I detected a shape ahead of me, the only person on the street at this hour. Running in my now wet socks, I came upon my father, dressed in his pyjamas, hair windswept, wearing my mother’s dressing gown and his leather slippers, carrying his briefcase and leaning on a walking stick. My first thought: King Lear on the heath.

  ‘HB, where are you going?’ I asked, shivering.

  ‘To the bank.’

  ‘But it’s two o’clock in the morning, HB. The bank is closed. Look at the sky—it’s pitch dark and it’s snowing. It’s not safe to be out walking, you aren’t dressed properly.’

  My father looks up at the sky but does not seem to register the absence of light. Agitated, he is insistent and annoyed.

  ‘I don’t have time to stand here talking, I need to get to the bank.’

  ‘Why don’t we go back inside, get more warmly dressed, have a cup of tea and go in the car? I’ll drive you there when it’s light,’ I say, reaching coaxingly for his arm.

  He brushes me away, raising his cane against me, as if defending himself from an attacker. He has a wild look, like a horse when it shows too much white in its eyes and is about to kick.

  ‘I have to get to the bank, NOW!’ he shouts. ‘I need to see Steve Powell.’

  Steve Powell is his bank manager.

  ‘If you want to see Steve, we can go when it has stopped snowing.’

  My feet are soaking and my toes have gone numb. He does not seem to feel the cold.

  ‘Come on, HB,’ I beg him, taking him by the arm and turning him towards our building. He takes a few steps with me, yielding briefly before turning back to where he was headed before. I realise he still has a fair amount of strength.

  It takes me forty minutes to persuade him to come back inside with me. I am exhausted and chilled to the core. Once inside, my father slumps, defeated, into a chair and asks for a cup of tea. I make tea for both of us and lead him, all forlorn docility, by the hand back to his bed, tuck him in, turn out the light, lock and bolt the front door and hide all the keys. I go back to bed, wondering if this is typical behaviour for someone recovering from an anaesthetic.

  In the morning, it is as if this episode has never happened. My father gets up for breakfast, seems more alert and lucid, scans the newspaper and announces that he will go to the barber. I remind him that he can’t drive himself and that I will take him, and he goes off to get dressed.

  When he is ready to go, he says, ‘I don’t want you to drive, it would be better if I drove.’

  I repeat the explanations with unusual patience. ‘You know what the doctor said, no driving for six weeks. This is not negotiable. I know it’s very frustrating, but you’re not well enough yet and it would put pressure on your scar, which needs more time to heal. You know I’m a good driver, my name is registered for the car, I’m happy to drive.’

  ‘You may be happy to drive, but I’m not happy to be driven.’

  When we reach the car, the argument begins again.

  ‘I can’t let you drive,’ he says and starts walking away.

  Half an hour later, my father agrees to get in the car as a passenger. He gives me precise, clear directions as to how to reach the barber and where to park, and walks with clear intent. His spatial cognition seems much improved and he is in good spirits. He even praises my driving. He does not mention a desire to go to the bank, even when we walk past a branch. Suddenly he ducks into a health-food shop, somewhere he would normally avoid.

  ‘Where are you going?’ I ask, surprised.

  ‘I need the loo,’ he says. With the confidence of someone who has clearly cased the joint before, he crosses the shop floor and heads down a staircase marked ‘staff only’. An angry woman tries to stop him but he brushes past her.

  ‘Excuse me, Sir, you can’t go down there, those are not facilities for customers,’ she calls after him.

  ‘Bugger off,’ replies my father quietly and locks himself in the bathroom.

  Mortified, I apologise and explain that he is unwell but the woman is not mollified. She is more furious than the incident warrants and instructs a male member of staff to knock on the door and tell my father he h
as to leave. I try to find her compassionate side, but she is obdurate and officious. My father ignores the man outside the toilet door, shuffles back up the stairs, says ‘Thank you very much’ briskly to the irate store manager and continues on his way.

  I feel flushed with panic and embarrassment at the prospect of him being caught short further on, but we reach the barber without incident. My father’s sense of direction has not let him down and he seems at home in familiar surroundings. They seat him in the chair and proceed to lather his face.

  I sit behind him, watching in the mirror as the ritual proceeds. The barber, a young Lebanese man in his thirties, treats my father with courtly deference, the way I imagine his culture shows consideration to the elderly. He is respectful without being patronising. The only woman present, I am in an entirely masculine world of grooming. Other wives, sisters, mothers, daughters and girlfriends may be doing the shopping or having a coffee next door. But I don’t feel I can leave my father unattended for a moment, and I quite like the atmosphere of testosterone. Generations come in to be trimmed and clipped, most of them regulars known by name, from little boys of six or seven, to men like my father. He seems to be enjoying the old-fashioned shave with a blade. It must feel clean to have the bristles he grew in hospital disappear, to have hot towels applied, to feel the caress of the shaving brush and the precision of the razor expertly handled. This is an intimate moment I have never shared with a man before. I savour its ritual and the sense of community that comes from the constant bustle and traffic of male comings and goings, greeting each other as familiar, chatting and popping back in with a coffee. When it is over, the barber helps my father on with his coat and is obsequiously grateful for his generous tip.

  ‘Let’s go next door, I want to show you their meringues,’ says my freshly groomed father. The shave has restored his dignity and fastidious care about his appearance. He has new vigour, a sprightly step, a shinier eye. He seems to be able to take in more of his surroundings with every hour that passes, and I can sense that his condition and well-being are improving, like mist lifting from the landscape.

  The meringues are like giant clouds piled high in the window. Their allure is irresistible. ‘Your mother doesn’t like it here.’ He is clearly pleased that he can introduce me to somewhere I don’t know, relishing the fact that we can do so without my mother’s objections.

  ‘Let’s go in,’ I say, playing up to his complicity in this uncharacteristically impromptu foray.

  The place is buzzing with young families out being European in the backstreets of Hammersmith, having strong coffees over the weekend papers. An atmosphere of homely warmth envelops us. I would like to sit down but worry that lingering might tire my father, so we buy some Florentines the size of small pizzas and make our way back to the car.

  The outing has been a success. My mother is so delighted she opens a bottle of champagne and we all toast my father’s recovery, he with a sip, and us with the rest. He eats well at lunch, and for the first time in days my mother laughs. We seem to be on the right road, and the hiccup of the night is negated by the progress of the day. When I put my father to bed for a nap, he has an endearing crooked smile on his face that makes him look like a child.

  But during the night I am woken again. First the soft shuffling steps, then the rattling of the chain on the front door. Instantly alert and filling with dread at how my father will react when he realises the keys are nowhere to be found, I brace myself; my ears become suddenly sharper but also thud with the sound of blood pumping as my adrenalin surges and my heartbeat quickens. I lie still and wait.

  First there is some whispered swearing and cursing, next the sound of pacing up and down, of zipping and unzipping—my father’s briefcase, perhaps as he searches for keys he thinks he has mislaid, then an unfamiliar scratching sound. I creep downstairs to spy on my father from over the banister. He is attempting to open the door with a credit card, the way a thief might in a crime thriller on television. The sight of him standing there in his pyjamas, sawing away futilely, is pathetic but I am not sure whether to leave him be or interrupt him. I am so tired from being disturbed again, and I don’t fancy reasoning with him or making more tea and trying to get him back to bed without waking my mother. I wonder if he will go into the kitchen and try to find a sharper instrument, a knife perhaps, in which case perhaps he is a danger and a threat to our safety. Perhaps I should have thought to hide all the kitchen knives before now. I steal back up to bed and lie there, alert, wondering why this urge to go to the bank comes upon him at night. I doze, but am woken again by louder swearing and cursing, then banging. Looking over the banister again I see my father pounding his fists against the front door, a prisoner in his own home. He has woken my mother, who comes out in her nightie and looks at him, appalled.

  ‘What do you think you’re doing, Harry? It’s three o’clock in the morning,’ she says, as stern as a schoolmistress. I know this tone will only antagonise him and wince inwardly.

  ‘Open the door or leave me alone,’ says my father, peremptory and barely suppressing fury.

  ‘I am not opening the door in the middle of the night. You are not well and need to go back to bed,’ says my mother before turning on her heel and returning to her room.

  My father continues to pound the door. I worry he will wake the neighbours.

  ‘Hello, HB,’ I say as softly and neutrally as I can. ‘Is there anything I can do to help you?’

  ‘You can open this bloody door NOW so I can go to the bank.’

  ‘HB, it’s the weekend and the bank isn’t going to be open now. We’ll go when it is.’

  ‘Okay,’ says my father, just like that, as if he has snapped out of a trance. He sounds just like Dustin Hoffman in Rainman. I take him by the hand and lead him into the living room and put the kettle on. It is another hour before I can persuade him to go back to bed.

  In the morning, it is snowing. The sky is heavy with flakes that fall like kapok, swirling in gusts of wind, dancing but not settling. The view is a white-out and seals the city in a cloak of soft silence. I look out at it and feel a mixture of wonder and despair. It’s impossible to go out for a walk, to escape the feeling of being trapped with a stranger and his unpredictable behaviour. It feels like I’m in a Bergman or Tarkovsky movie: nothing much happens but people look out at weather and landscape, their silence pregnant with meaning.

  My father appears by my side.

  ‘It’s the first time I’ve seen snow in London for twenty years,’ I say with forced jollity as if this were a special treat or an occasion for celebration.

  His eyes are dull again, with that cooked egg look that seems to veil them. ‘Can you show me?’ he asks, and my heart aches at the humility and innocence of the question. I point to the flakes the size of goose down tumbling and melting on our balcony, but he does not appear to register them.

  ‘What can you see?’ I ask, as neutrally as possible.

  ‘A train,’ he says dully, correctly identifying one travelling on the opposite side of the river.

  ‘Anything else?’ I hate myself for sounding so patronising.

  ‘No,’ he says. Does that mean he cannot see the Thames flowing directly in front of us? I ask him where he is and he replies with his formal address, like a child repeating important information he has learned by heart. ‘Peterborough Road.’

  ‘And where is that?’

  ‘London SW6,’ he says, again using that mechanical flat Rainman tone that imparts facts without emotion. He does not say, ‘Home,’ or, ‘For God’s sake, stop treating me like an idiot.’

  He starts to rummage around, looking for his briefcase. When he finds it, he unzips every pocket, searching for documents. He gets out his bus pass, his passport, chequebook and some bank notes, counts them, and then puts everything back in the case.

  He rubs at his leg and says matter-of-factly, ‘My left foot is falling off.’

  My mother and I stare at each other, equally baffled and bewilder
ed and trying not to laugh. ‘Show me,’ I say, but he doesn’t.

  ‘I am surrounded by dirt,’ he says, curling his mouth into a twisted expression of disgust.

  What is this? I ask myself. Paranoia? Is he hallucinating? I call the hospital but none of the team that cared for my father are on duty. Several have gone on holiday over the Easter break. The voice at the end of the phone tells me that I will have to wait until Tuesday or else call an after-hours doctor. She gives me a number and they promise to send someone round within twelve hours.

  In the meantime, I decide to pursue my music therapy method and put on some Mozart. This is no time for the brooding darkness of Mahler. I choose a jaunty, sparkling sonata but within a few bars my father says, ‘What is that noise?’

  ‘What do you mean, HB?’ I assume he is joking. ‘That’s not noise, that’s Mozart.’

  ‘I don’t care what it is. Turn it off.’

  ‘But you love this music!’

  ‘Turn it off. It’s hurting my brain,’ he says, rising to leave the room.

  ‘Would you prefer to listen to something else?’

  ‘No, I just want SILENCE!’ he bellows.

  More than any other moment now or later, this is when I realise I have lost my father. Whether the loss is permanent or temporary at this stage I don’t know, but the shock is profound, devastating and goes to the core of who my father is and what he represents to me. Mozart was hardwired into his brain from the earliest days of his Viennese childhood, so that even if at some stage he failed to recognise me, I was sure he would always recognise the music with which he grew up, the holy trinity completed by Bach and Beethoven. My mother, witnessing the scene, is speechless. Music has been the one constant in my father’s life, the one love he has remained faithful to no matter what, the consolation for all the disappointment he has experienced, the escape route that has offered everything from solace to pleasure. I know now that we are in serious trouble. If my father has lost the ability to enjoy music, he has lost the will to live.