Getting Over It

by Anna Maxted

  God knows why Bali, I don’t even like hot countries – I get heat rash if I stand too near the toaster – but Luke’s expression makes me want to keep talking.

  He shakes his head. Then he reaches and grasps my upper arm.

  ‘No, Helen,’ he says. ‘Your mum rang. Your dad. Your dad’s dead.’

  Chapter 2

  WHEN I WAS fifteen and never been kissed (I meant what I said about the duffel coat) I fed the hunger on a gluttonous diet of pre-1970s Mills & Boons. The willowy innocence of these paperback heroines was as far removed from my fat chastity as a diamond from a lump of coal, but nonetheless gave me hope that one day I’d swoon at the sight of – ooh, let’s say a gunfight, and a powerful, masterful, aquiline-nosed businessman would spring from his immaculate car, gather up my flaccid form, and spirit me away to a life of love, happiness, and endless passion.

  Sadly, the closest I came to this swooning scenario was when I arose one Sunday feeling doddery, staggered downstairs in my pyjamas, and fainted in the hallway. The loud thud alerted my parents, and my mother grabbed my arms, my father grasped my ankles and together they huffingly hauled their too solid daughter on to the lounge sofa. The most unromantic part of it was that amid the heaving my pyjama bottoms wormed their way downwards and, semiconscious, I was wholly aware that the beginnings of my pubic hair were in full springy view of my dad.

  At least, when Luke informs me of my father’s demise I am, like a Mills & Boon heroine, well dressed. Furthermore, Luke keeps hold of my arm so when the words penetrate my skull and whirl crazily around my head and make me dizzy, I sway slightly but remain on my feet.

  ‘Your dad is dead.’ All that came before this moment hurtles into it. My dad is dead. My father is dead. Daddy is dead. But he isn’t dead! He wasn’t dead. He wasn’t dead yesterday, or the day before that. He’s been alive ever since I’ve known him. A minute ago, he wasn’t dead. And now he’s dead? Both my parents are alive. That’s how it is. How can my father be dead? Dead is old other people like Frank Sinatra. It doesn’t happen to me. Or my parents. Death. Don’t be mad.

  ‘Wha-what? When?’ My mouth is a gob of jelly, it’s wobbling all over the place. Poor old Luke looks terrible. He isn’t a drama queen like Michelle – she of the blind date dwarf incident – who probably has wet dreams of imparting news of such import. Breaking anything to anybody is purgatory for Luke. When he broke it to me that he’d just popped into our landlord’s room to borrow a razor and that Fatboy appeared to have done a large pooh in the middle of Marcus’ white duvet he was – until we both killed ourselves laughing – puce and stuttery with the stress of prior knowledge.

  This is different. The words pour from him in a torrent. ‘He just collapsed massive heart attack your mother rang she keeps ringing about an hour ago your mobile’s off I didn’t know where you were I thought maybe Jasper but I couldn’t find the number looked in your room but it was a tip I didn’t know where to start I thought of going through the phone bill but I don’t know where Marcus keeps everything I don’t know where he is to ask him she keeps ringing she’s at the hospital she’s really upset I mean really upset you’ve got to call her but they keep saying she’s got to turn off her mobile so if—’ Luke is very worked up and a large fleck of spit lands on my cheek. I surreptitiously try to wipe it off without him noticing. My hand is trembling. It’s too late. Too late to decide not to come home just yet and to drive to Tina to moan about Jasper in blissful not-knowing. Too late to drive to Hampstead and buy a pair of shoes I don’t need in Pied à Terre. Too late. Luke has said the words. They can’t be unsaid. Saying it makes it real. Luke insists on driving me to the hospital.

  Both my parents are alive. No, I mean it. My dad is nearly dead. Luke, the berk, got it wrong although – seeing as he spoke to my mother – I can guess how the misunderstanding occurred. Luke swerved into the car park and I ran dippety skippet into Casualty and started babbling at the first uniformed person I saw. She directs me to the relatives’ room next to ‘Resuss’. Resuscitation. Shit. I run down a corridor, past a man stripping sheets off stained mattresses. Then I hear the sound of my mother’s voice and bolt towards it. Oh no, Nana Flo.

  ‘Helen!’ chokes my mother, and bursts into tears. Nana Flo, who thinks extreme emotion is vulgar and would adore Jasper, looks on disapprovingly. My mother clings to me as if snapping me in half will make it all go away.

  Although I am gasping for breath, I manage to wheeze ‘Wa, when did he die?’

  At this, my mother flings me from her like a flamenco dancer. ‘He’s not dead yet!’ she shrieks as I stagger to right myself. ‘Oh Maurice! My poor Maurice!’

  My mistake. My father is, as we speak, being fiddled with by experts after an almighty heart attack during lunch. As his lunch tends to involve four scrambled eggs – when I know, from Lizzy, that the recommended intake is two per week – this doesn’t greatly surprise me. Also, he smokes like industrial Manchester. My mother, who was upstairs re-doing her make-up, found him slumped and groaning into his plate, egg on face. Being my mother, she wiped the egg off his face with Clarins and – I kid you not – cleaned his teeth, before calling the ambulance. I’m not sure if the teeth cleaning pre-empted her panicked attempt at mouth to mouth resuscitation. I say ‘panicked’ because he was still conscious. Thankfully, he’d shaved this morning and was wearing clean underwear and a nice shirt otherwise the ambulance wouldn’t have been called till tomorrow morning.

  There is nothing for us to do, according to some busybody calling herself the A & E sister, until the doctors have finished working on my father. She talks about drips, monitors, oxygen and blood tests, and drops the bombshell that he’s ‘very unwell’. So we sit in the drab peely-walled cafeteria. At least the coffee is filtered. My mother keeps bursting out crying and jumping up to ring everyone she knows. Then she decides she can’t cope with anyone fussing so I have to ring back and dissuade everyone from descending on the hospital.

  I gaze at Nana Flo. Shock has drawn her thin mouth even tighter, like a purse string. Her skin is as washed out as her beige nylon dress and her eyes are saggy like a salamander’s. I feel a twist of pity but know better than to voice it. As ever, she converts all anguish into aggression and today, Luke is on the receiving end of it. Nana assumes he’s my boyfriend and is grilling him. ‘Your hair’s too long, it makes you look like a young girl,’ is one of her kinder observations. Her swollen hands are clasped on her lap but not tightly enough to disguise the tremor. And she doesn’t look at me, not once, and I know it’s because she won’t let me see her pain. Indeed, if you weren’t looking for the signs, you’d never think her only son was breathing his last.

  I allow Luke to flounder and ignore his pleading glances for assistance. I stare unseeing at the peely walls, and my grandmother’s gravelly voice, usually so penetrating, floats disembodied around me, a vague, scraping, far off sound. Everything feels unreal. Actually, everything feels nothing. I feel hollow. What am I doing here, sitting in a hard orange chair. I should be shagging Jasper. My father should be sitting in his study smoking a cigar and reading the Sunday Times. Parents are just there, a constant, in the background. Wallpaper. Peely walls.

  Imminent death – the ultimate in suspense. An excuse to call Jasper and make him feel guilty. For both reasons, my heart is whapping along at 140 beats per minute. At least it is beating. First though, I ask Luke if he’d be sweet enough to go home and feed Fatboy.

  He leaps up and cries happily, ‘I’d love to!’ before glancing fearfully at Nana Flo and adding sombrely, ‘Anything I can do to help.’

  I give him detailed instructions. ‘Whiskas kitten food, if he won’t eat that, then try him on the Hill’s Science Plan. If he’s really stroppy then open a can of tuna and pour the juice into a bowl, not the oil one, he hates that, it has to be springwater. But don’t let him eat the actual tuna or he’ll be sick.’ Fatboy, while greedy, has a delicate stomach. He pukes up ordinary, expensive cat food. Only the really expensive stu
ff which isn’t sold in supermarkets and requires a long detour to Pet World stays the distance.

  Nana Flo sniffs. ‘Cats,’ she says. ‘Vermin.’

  I feel sorry for Nana Flo. That is, I feel sorry for her in general. She finds very little in life to smile about. She’s not at all what you want in a grandmother. No jolly fat legs and a bun, no five pound notes on birthdays, no cooking of mushy pea and poached fish dinners, no letting you plink-plank on her old piano, no talking you through yellow crackly photo albums and buying you sweets behind your parents’ back. She’s the Anti-Grandmother and I suspect she speaks highly of me too. My father – the few times he’s ever spoken about her – rolls his eyes and says she’s had a hard life. Well, excuse me but most old people I know have had a hard life, doesn’t mean they’re all miserable goats. Michelle’s grandmother’s a scream and she worked in a sausage factory for twenty-six years. Think Barbara Cartland but with more make-up. My grandmother just watches television. I leave her to her gloom and run to the payphone.

  My conversation with Jasper is infuriating. He starts off with a wry ‘Oh hi, it’s you,’ and I derive brief satisfaction from telling him the news and jerking him out of his indifference. I can’t really believe it myself, can’t believe I’m saying the alien words aloud. So, maybe not that amazingly, Jasper refuses to believe me! He keeps repeating, like a posh Dalek, ‘I’m sure it will be okay.’

  I say firmly, ‘No Jasper, he is actually seriously ill,’ but to no avail.

  His last offer is ‘Call me tomorrow and tell me how he is.’ After Jasper’s disappointing response I don’t want to speak to anyone else.

  Another hour of wall-staring and we return to the relatives’ room next to Resuss. It’s drab, poky, stinks of smoke and is a dead ringer for my sixth-form classroom. Finally, a red-eyed scruffy adolescent in black jeans and a nasty chequered shirt approaches and informs us that my father has been moved to the coronary care unit, and to follow him. The teenager has a stethoscope hanging round his neck, but even so Nana Flo looks like she wants to belt him. The lift ascends to the eleventh floor at the pace of a retarded snail, stopping at every floor. I start giggling. I can’t stop myself. I’m shaking with laughter. I don’t even stop when my mother screams ‘stop it!’ Then, I have the brilliant idea of biting my lip so hard I taste blood. It works. Minutes later, the house officer as he claims to be, stops in front of a wizened old man flat on a bed and it’s a moment before I recognise him.

  My father, senior partner, who makes Boss Hogg look like a wimp. My father, the quiet but respected king of every golf club soirée. My father who only ever wears tailored suits. My father who deems nudity on a par with Satanism. My father who only last week told me – via my mother of course – that he thought it was time I moved into a flat of my own and would I like him to advise me on location. This shrunken, helpless creature who lies motionless, bare-chested, attached to a spaghetti of wires, smelling faintly sickly sweetly, pale and hollow-cheeked, rasping, unseeing, in an ugly metal bed. This is my father. He looks fucking dreadful.

  While I am mute with shock – although I can’t help thinking this is a week off work at least – my mother is loudly inconsolable. Nana Flo says nothing but she looks at her son, little more than skin stretched tight over a skull, and her hooded eyes glisten. I reluctantly place a hand on her bony shoulder. To my surprise, she pats it. Then I hug my mother, murmur useless words into her ear, and watch her hold my father’s still hand and wail into his sheet. Nana Flo has blinked away the tears and sits silently beside her, like a grouchy angel of death. The adolescent quietly suggests that if we go to the relatives’ room he’ll explain what’s going on, but as my boss Laetitia is always reminding me – demanding direct quotes from the Queen not a Buckingham Palace Press Office clone – you must speak to the organ grinder not the monkey. I run after his retreating back – ‘Excuse me!’ He turns around. ‘I, ah, I don’t mean to be rude,’ I say. ‘But, is it possible to speak to the specialist? To find out what’s going to happen? I mean, how long . . .’

  The adolescent sighs and says he’ll fetch the medical registrar. Five minutes later, he returns with a bloke who I am sure is twenty-two, max. He introduces himself as Simon, and he tells us that ‘Dad’s very sick.’ Surprise! Then he explains, in kindergarten language, what a heart attack is. He tells us they’re doing all they can. Very powerful drugs. But so much heart muscle affected. No blood pressure. Kidneys failing. Fluid collecting on lungs. Hard to make a precise estimation. Doesn’t have a crystal ball. Got to take it an hour at a time. To paraphrase, this heart attack was a vicious one. Judging by the woeful look on Simon’s face, my father hasn’t got long to live.

  Nana, me, and my mother sit helplessly by my father’s bed until the sky turns black and we’re ushered into another dingy relatives’ room. There are no curtains and when I press my face to the window I see all of London twinkling prettily under the dark sky. We spend the night sitting, pacing, staring, sighing. Hilary, a soft-voiced specialist cardiac nurse, keeps popping in to update us. Hilary happens to be a he which is a source of great displeasure to Nana Flo who keeps tutting, ‘It isn’t right.’ Twice, thanks to my mother’s wailing and gnashing, we’re allowed into the unit for a brief vigil. Every time my father rasps I have to restrain her from pressing the red emergency button. During vigil two, Hilary asks her to keep her voice down as other people in the unit are trying to sleep. My mother gives a shriek of rage at his audacity and runs into the corridor. I make an Englishy-apologetic cringe to Hilary and scamper after her. It’s a long night. By 5a.m., I am indecently ravenous so I walk out of the hospital and into the corner shop and buy a pack of Pringles Cheez Ums. I could have bought my favourite, salt & vinegar, but feel it would be inappropriate. My mother ‘can’t eat a thing’. Nana Flo chows down at least half of my Pringles. She makes such a lunge for the tube I’m surprised her arm doesn’t pop out of its socket.

  Shortly after dawn, my mother goes to ‘stretch her legs’ and Nana Flo goes to the Ladies – which happily takes her twenty minutes. Hilary leans round the door and says, ‘Would you like to see him?’ I nod. My heart thuds. A second later I am alone with my father. A rash of dirt-grey stubble covers his chin and the shock hits me like a slap. I gently rest my hand on his. I ought to say something. But it’s embarrassing. The most embarrassing thing, the thing my father would be most embarrassed by, is the large square transparent plastic wee bag which hangs from a tube that thankfully disappears under his bedcover. The other patients’ bags are full of orange urine. My father’s – I am relieved to see – is empty.

  I hate to sound like someone who works for a women’s magazine but you’d think they’d try for a more stylish, more opaque wee bag. I am idly wondering if Prada would agree to an NHS catheter commission or if Louis Vuitton might be a more judicious choice, when my father emits a loud rasp. Shit! Say it, say it, now, now, say it! But I am dumb. I clutch my father’s hand and think, stiffly, I love you, in my head. Dad, I love you. Dad, did I tell you, Dad, I hope you know, Dad, I know we weren’t, we didn’t . . . Just say it. Can’t. The words are glue. Think, ‘you’re sacked’ but a million times stickier.

  The hours pass and I still don’t say it. Instead, I squeeze my father’s hand and bring my forehead to rest on it. This hand, this hand that’s waved for taxis, summoned the bill, signed cheques with a flourish, caressed my mother’s face, and walloped me on the backside, this warm, solid, big paw of a hand will soon be cold and dead, flesh rotting, peeling away deep under the cold hard ground. Jesus Christ. My mother bustles in with a copy of the Daily Mail and marches off to bother Hilary. So, instead of saying ‘I love you, Daddy,’ and crying daughterly tears all over my father’s frail dying body, I read him extracts from the Daily Mail financial section.

  Nana Flo returns and regards me suspiciously. ‘He can’t hear you!’ she barks, before stalking off again. I get up, walk into the corridor, kick the wall and nearly break a toe. I lean against the wall and breathe de
eply. Then I hobble back into the ward – ignoring the wide stares of the ill and wretched – and continue my private lecture. And from nowhere the quiet murmur of the ward becomes chaos, with screams of ‘he’s arresting!’ and ‘put out an arrest call!’, and swarms of people in blue and white run towards me shouting, pulling, clanking the bed, pushing trolleys, yanking curtains, and in the blur as I am dragged away I see the orange reading on the black heart monitor screen is a wild scribble and my father has slumped on his pillow. So I am with my father when he dies, but each of us is alone.

  Twenty minutes later, the medical registrar, flanked by the adolescent, is explaining to my sobbing, shaking mother and my silent, still grandmother. There is brief confusion when he says my father suffered a cardiac arrest and has now ‘gone to another place’ but the hurried addition of ‘I mean, he’s dead,’ clears it. My father is dead. He dies at 7.48 p.m. He dies during the golden hour – when the setting sun cloaks the world in a warm yellow blanket of enchanted light. No more golden hours for Maurice. It is a beautiful day and my father is dead.

  Chapter 3

  CINDERELLA’S GLASS SLIPPERS were made of fur. But when the French interpreted the original text, they translated furlined as verre. My mother’s voice warms as she tells me this and I know she is reassessing Cinderella as a more homely, snuggly girl than the brash madam who click-clacked around the royal ballroom in hard shoes of glass. She loves stuff like this which is why, as an infant school teacher, my mother kicks butt.

  That, and she shouts louder than any person I know. The children adore her, far more than she likes them. Her motto is, ‘You can’t get involved.’ Not even when Ahmed’s mummy rings to ask if Ahmed, five, can stay the night at school because the white people on their estate have been smashing their windows and beating up Ahmed’s father and shoving dog shit through their letter box for three years and Ahmed needs to get some sleep. My mother does not take work home with her.