Bells

by Jo Verity

  ‘Anything I can do to help?’ Neil asked.

  ‘Not at the moment, thanks.’ Then, seeing the concern on his face she added, ‘But I’m glad you’re here to keep me company. Waiting is harder than having something to do, don’t you think?’ He nodded but she wasn’t sure he understood what she was getting at.

  They talked about school. It was a long while since he’d left, but he had an excellent memory, asking about various members of staff, many of whom still worked there. He was fascinated to hear the staffroom gossip, tutting like an old woman at any scandalous incidents, and in return updating her on several of his more unforgettable contemporaries.

  ‘You may have disliked school, Neil, but spare a thought for us poor teachers. The whole ghastly cycle starts again on Monday. Oh, God, that’s tomorrow.’

  ‘I loved school, actually.’ The simple statement sounded like a reproach. ‘I would have stayed on but my Dad wanted me to join up. He said if it was good enough for him…’

  Fay, reluctant to probe deeper in case she unearthed something she didn’t want to hear, changed the subject. ‘Did you go somewhere nice this evening?’

  ‘The Kings Arms.’

  ‘With friends? Or a friend?’ She smiled, knowingly. It was possible that Neil had found a girlfriend.

  ‘I’ve got a bar job there. Just to keep me going until I get something better.’ He looked embarrassed. ‘We never discussed rent. Will weekly be okay?’

  Rent. Fay laughed. Neil was a child and children don’t pay rent. ‘Good Lord, we don’t expect you to pay rent.’

  ‘But I can’t impose—’

  ‘And you’re not going to.’ Now it was established that Neil would be living with them, free of charge, she found it easy to lay down the house rules which she and Jack had formulated, and he seemed more than content to go along with everything. ‘Anyway, you’ll have a proper job in no time at all, and you’ll want to find a place of your own.’

  ‘That’s so generous, Fay. I’ll be sure to switch off the bedroom light when I go out. And I won’t use all the hot water. And I can put the bins out for you. Things like that.’ These modest promises painted a painful picture of the months he had spent in dismal flats and dreary bed-sits,

  The phone rang. It was Jack, letting her know that Harry had been admitted and that he and his mother would be home in fifteen minutes. ‘Off to bed you go, Neil. Someone might as well get some sleep. Looks like we’ll have to put our breakfast plans on hold.’

  It was getting light when the car pulled up. She took one last look around the kitchen – her kitchen – before Vi arrived and a new era began.

  23

  The first week of Harry’s hospitalisation dragged as the medics, with no perceptible sense of urgency, plodded through the endless raft of tests. Bloods. X-rays. Monitoring input and output. Harry, stoic and uncomplaining, allowed himself to be prodded and pummelled; was grateful for the food set in front of him; did as he was instructed. He may have been no better, but he was certainly no worse.

  Jack appreciated how hard the new arrangements were for Fay, but could see no immediate solution. When she came home, tired and edgy after a day at school, it wasn’t easy having to share the house with his mother. It was as if Vi were an invalid too, dictating what they should eat – ‘Now you know I don’t like anything…foreign,’ and which television programmes they watched – ‘If there’s one thing I won’t put up with, it’s bad language.’ She issued regular and graphic bulletins of Harry’s bodily functions – usually at mealtimes. ‘They’re flushing a lot of water out of him. He filled three bags in twenty four hours,’ she announced proudly as they ate their chicken casserole.

  She was disorganised – wilfully so – and most evenings, after popping in to the hospital, Jack was despatched up the valley, to collect this or that, see to the mail and water the tomatoes. Vi didn’t go with him because she said that she found the house, without Harry, ‘too upsetting’.

  ‘Mum, couldn’t you make a comprehensive list of what you need for, say, the next week? And why don’t we give Annie Jenkins the key? She could see to the greenhouse and keep an eye on the place.’ It sounded perfectly reasonable to Jack.

  ‘Dad may be home in a couple of days,’ she countered, ‘and that Annie’s a nosey madam. She’ll be all over the house, poking and prying.’

  Jack pictured the house and wondered what Annie Jenkins might find remotely interesting in the damp larder or the mothball-scented wardrobe.

  Fay was more direct. ‘After Jack’s done a day’s work and visited Harry, the last thing he needs is to spend another hour in the car.’ But Vi wasn’t budging. ‘She’s playing you for a fool,’ Fay exploded when she tracked Jack down, in the shed, after yet another unsuccessful attempt to persuade her mother-in-law to be sensible. ‘We all know she’s as tough as old boots.’

  ‘I know, love. I know. But she’s all at sea. If we can just hang in there until we know what’s going on with Dad, we can work something out.’

  Caitlin and Dylan fitted visits to the hospital around busy schedules, both expressing regret that they were unable to do more to support their parents. Then reinforcements came from an unexpected source. Jack was locking the car after one of his evening sorties – this time to collect his mother’s spare, spare pair of spectacles, a pale lemon cardigan and last Saturday’s lottery ticket, which she’d forgotten to check – when Neil came out to join him. He’d been living with them for less than twenty-four hours when all this had blown up and the timing couldn’t have been worse. Now Fay was back at school, he was stuck with Vi every day until she caught the bus to the hospital for afternoon visiting. Jack felt bad about it but there hadn’t been a moment, in the past hectic week, to discuss it.

  ‘Neil. How’s it going? I wanted to catch you. It can’t be much fun for you here—’

  ‘It is, though.’ Neil held up his hands. ‘I don’t mean it’s fun exactly. But it’s fine. It’s what families are all about, isn’t it? The ups and the downs. The laughter and the tears.’

  It was difficult to follow the boy’s reasoning. ‘It’s very kind of you to be so—’

  ‘It isn’t. Not really. To be honest, I’ve never been part of a proper family – a family who care about each other, look out for each other. I spent most of my time at home keeping my head down.’ Neil rambled on, cheerily painting the grim picture of the seventeen years before he left home, only to be rejected by the army. ‘I’ve had some great chats with Vi. I could listen to her all day. She’s got the most amazing stories to tell. I’d love it if she was my gran.’

  Jack thought he could see what the boy was getting at, and wondered if recruiting a grateful stranger, preferably one who had suffered childhood deprivation, might be the solution to the bickering and backbiting that plague most families.

  He slapped Neil on the back, ‘All I can say is that it’s a pleasure having you here.’

  ‘And I just wanted to say, if there’s anything at all I can do, you only have to ask.’

  That’s when the idea crystallised. ‘I think there is something. You’ve got a driving licence?’

  Neil nodded.

  ‘How would it be if we put you on Fay’s car insurance? Just for a month or so. If you could do the occasional bit of running around – giving Mum a lift, picking up a few things from the shops – it would take the pressure off.’ Fay might not be thrilled but Jack was confident that he could sell the proposal to her.

  Jack salvaged every opportunity – alone in the car; in the shower; before he fell asleep or if he woke early – to relive his Llangwm experience, from that first moment when he rounded the bend and saw the village lying before him, like a fairytale hamlet, to his attempt to bail Iolo out and save the Evans’s marriage. He ran through it over and over again, filling in details, real or imaginary, as they came back to him. He longed to get away from the relentless routine of work-hospital-bed and be back in the kitchen of The Welcome Stranger, planning the next party or cooking up a
scheme to make Iolo’s fortune. Occasionally Fay caught the faraway expression in his eyes and patted his arm or kissed him gently. ‘Don’t fret, Jack. He’ll be okay.’ He felt wretched at misleading her but, if he had, it was unintentional. Besides, it was comforting to feel her concern and he took advantage of one such moment to broach the subject of Neil and her car.

  ‘I can see your point,’ she conceded.

  The following Saturday, when Jack and his mother arrived at the hospital, Marion was already at Harry’s bedside. It was the first time she had been to visit and she had compensated for her neglect, heaping the bedside locker with flowers, fruit, magazines and chocolate. ‘I’ve had one of those weeks at work,’ she moaned, when she and Jack went down to the cafeteria to give their parents a few moments on their own. ‘Anyway, I knew that you and Mum would be popping in every day, so he wouldn’t be short of visitors.’

  The cafeteria served both staff and patients. Saturday afternoon was a popular time for sick-visiting and the place was teeming. Families and friends, some visibly distressed, some excited, others bored, consoled themselves with chips or pizza or cream cakes. Here, too, doctors and nurses grabbed ten minutes away from the ward and Jack was appalled to note that their diet was no healthier than the visitors’.

  ‘Don’t they know what fizzy drinks do to tooth enamel?’ he asked, but Marion wasn’t listening.

  ‘So. What’s actually wrong with him, then? What’s the prognosis?’

  ‘I’m not sure.’

  ‘For goodness sake, Jack, haven’t you talked to anyone about it?’

  ‘Yes, of course I have.’

  ‘Who? Who have you talked to? Not some houseman, I hope.’

  Every TV addict knew that housemen were the alarmingly young ones who had no experience, no authority and made critical errors. The only doctor that Jack had managed to speak to was, indeed, a houseman but he wasn’t going to own up to this. ‘When I say I’m not sure, I mean they’re not sure. Yet. They’ll know for certain in a couple of days. But I’m positive that there’s nothing to worry about. It’s probably a matter of tinkering with his medication. Getting the balance right.’ Jack was surprised how unperturbed he sounded. Put like that, Harry’s restoration to health was a foregone conclusion.

  Marion appeared to be satisfied with his woolly explanation – after all, it let her off the bedside-vigil hook – and she switched to telling him a long-winded story about cowboy builders who had made a mess of refitting her second bathroom. He sat opposite her, wondering why she plucked her eyebrows down to thin, wavering lines; why she dyed her hair the colour of Ribena; why he had no idea what music she liked or food she hated; why he had no clue what made his sister tick.

  ‘I’ll have to be getting back,’ she said. He assumed she meant back to the ward, but when she explained that she and Richard were going out for a meal with friends and she needed to get home in time to wash her hair, Jack knew that, regardless of Harry’s condition, they wouldn’t be seeing much of Marion.

  As he was going up in the lift, he felt an urge to talk to his father – to have a conversation about things that mattered, not the small-talk that had punctuated a lifetime of silences. He tried to remember the last time they’d discussed anything in depth. Or, indeed, if they ever had. It horrified him to concede that he knew so little about his sister, but did he know any more about his father? He’d assumed Harry voted Labour, approved of the monarchy and believed in God. But were these the things that mattered? What about fulfilment and – he hardly dared contemplate it – happiness? Perhaps his father had discovered his own Llangwm; met his own Non Evans. But if he had, he’d kept his promise to stick with Vi, ’til death did them part.

  ‘Where’s Marion?’ his mother asked when he got back to the ward.‘

  She had to dash off. Said she’ll be back to see you next weekend, Dad.’ The lie was to protect his father not his sister.

  Harry nodded and fiddled with the flex on his headphones. ‘You two don’t have to hang around here all afternoon on my account. I expect John’s got things to do.’

  ‘Nothing that can’t wait.’ Jack wished he could be honest and say how much he hated these visits to the hospital; how it frightened him to see his father, emasculated and pathetic, in that dreary place. And how fearful he was of what lay ahead for all of them.

  ‘How is he?’ Fay was in the garden when they got home. ‘Did Marion show up?’ They had a few minutes before Vi returned from the bathroom.

  ‘Much the same. Nothing happens in hospitals at the weekend. All those sick people, sitting there, on hold until Monday.’ He accepted the glass of wine she handed him. ‘Yes. Marion was there. Briefly. I think she sees all this as little more than an inconvenience.’

  ‘It is an inconvenience, but that’s all the more reason for her to do her share.’

  Vi appeared, pulling a cardigan around her shoulders although it was a mild evening.

  ‘Drink, Mum? Sherry? White wine?’ Jack asked.

  ‘Oh, no. Just a glass of water for me. It wouldn’t be right to drink alcohol, while your father’s lying there, so sick.’

  Fay snorted, muttering, ‘Give me strength,’ and leaving Jack, once again, the miserable piggy-in-the-middle.

  Fay checked the alarm. ‘I never thought I’d look forward to a Monday morning. The Merchant of Venice with Year Nine is a far more enticing prospect than a day at home with your mother.’ She plumped her pillow. ‘’Night, ’night.’

  Jack switched off the lamp and tried to relax but it was impossible. He envisaged his father, frightened, uncomfortable and alone, sweating on the rubberised mattress. After all those years of struggle, all that effort, was this how it ended? It was unbearably sad. Jack began to cry, at first managing to stifle the soft whimpering but, as the anguish took hold, he could no longer control it.

  Fay woke and turned towards him, pulling his head into the soft, slack flesh between her breasts. ‘Poor, Jack. I shouldn’t take it out on you. You can’t help it if your mother’s…the way she is.’ She tilted his head back and kissed his eyelids, his nose and then his lips.

  Was this spontaneous show of affection because she cared about him or pitied him? Either way, it felt good and he sniffled on longer than he might have done, anxious to keep her arms around him. He’d forgotten how effective physical contact was at banishing melancholy and, in an effort to finish the job, he stretched his leg over her thigh and fondled her back. She kissed him again, this time as a wife, not a mother and he responded, signalling the start of the ritual which they’d been performing, on and off, for thirty years. It’s like riding a bike, he thought, as muscle memory took over, and they were just getting up a decent speed when there was a thud on the landing and his mother’s quavering voice announced, ‘I’ll be all right… nothing broken… ’

  Everything stopped and they rolled apart.

  ‘I knew it. She’s a bloody witch,’ Fay asserted while Jack struggled back into his pyjama trousers and went to see what had happened.

  24

  With the start of the academic year, several new members of staff arrived at the school, amongst them a handsome young biology teacher, whom Fay guessed was about the same age as Cassidy. It occurred to her that her summer infatuation might have something to do with her age. Maybe, from now on, she was doomed to lust after every young man that hove into view. She tested this theory by spending time with the newcomer and didn’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed when, despite his husky voice and sexy bottom, she wasn’t even slightly attracted to him.

  In the staffroom, her behaviour didn’t go unnoticed. By the end of the first week this, combined with her ‘new look’, gave rise to ribald accusations of cradle-snatching and suggestions that she was on the lookout for a toy-boy. All incredibly predictable and juvenile, but what could you expect from schoolteachers?

  ‘Coffee?’ Neil asked as she dumped her brief case and bag of exercise books on the kitchen floor.

  It was only a week
or so since Neil had moved in, but it was as if he’d been there for ever, like the umbrella stand in the hall or the busy-lizzie in the bathroom. ‘Lovely. Thanks.’

  He filled the kettle. ‘Vi’s still at the hospital. I said I’d pop and pick her up at six-ish. If that’s okay.’

  ‘Can’t Jack bring her back?’ Fay slipped her shoes off and sighed.

  ‘That’s the other thing. He can’t get to the hospital this evening. He forgot that he had to go to a …’ he read from a scrap of paper that he’d pinned to the notice board ‘Practitioners’ Committee meeting. And a dinner afterwards. He rang after lunch. Said not to wait up for him.’

  She wished Jack would log his commitments on the Year Planner. It was a simple enough thing to do and essential, considering current logistical complications. And, had she known that he was going out after work, she would have made sure he’d taken a clean shirt to change in to.

  Before leaving to collect Vi, Neil asked, ‘Okay if I cook later? After you and Vi have eaten?’

  Ten days ago, it had been simple to formulate ‘house rules’ for their lodger but it was ridiculous to eat in two sittings, when there were only three of them. ‘I’llmake supper, Neil, and we’ll eat together, as soon as you get back with…Vi.’

  During the first few days of Harry’s hospitalisation, routine had been abandoned. Fay had found herself marking books in the early hours of the morning and ironing at breakfast time. They’d eaten strange meals at even stranger times and snatched sleep when they could. Harry’s condition was stable, but Vi was showing no signs of returning home and Fay presumed that the present setup might continue for months. With that came the prospect of autumn days filled with little else but work, hospital visits and invalid talk. To make it worse, Vi’s refusal to touch ‘foreign food’, intimations that a glass of wine with supper heralded the slippery slide into alcoholism and sideswipes at their extravagant use of hot water were ruining the modest satisfaction she derived from a leisurely meal and a soak in the bath.