Barefoot in the Dark

by Lynne Barrett-Lee

  ‘You shouldn’t be so hard on yourself, you know. You’ve made a fine job of coping. Bringing up the kids. Supporting Paul…’

  ‘Ah. Yes. I’m very good at that. Getting on. Papering over all the little cracks. Pretending. But that’s all it is, Hope. A pretence. I’m not like you. I wish I could be like you. But I’m not.’

  Hope smiled at her. ‘Me? I’m not much of a role model.’

  ‘Ah, it’s not for you to say.’

  ‘I’m sure you wouldn’t want my life. It’s all cracks with me right now, believe me.’

  Suze lifted her hand again and waved it dismissively. ‘I don’t want your life. God knows, you’ve had such a tough time of it, Hope. That’s exactly it. Don’t you see? I just want your way of living it. Your indomitable spirit. To feel optimistic and jolly and spontaneous and energetic. To get on. To not fuss about things that don’t matter all the time.’

  ‘I’m not sure you’ve quite got me right there, Suze.’

  ‘Oh, but I have, Hope. I have. You just don’t see it at the moment, that’s all.’

  Hope could hear her mother clattering up the stairs with the tea tray. Suze glanced at the open door, then clasped Hope’s hand tightly. ‘You know what I really want, Hope? I just want to be the sort of person who wakes up in the morning and feels happy for no reason. Like you do.’

  It was this, more than anything, that lodged in Hope’s mind when she woke up on Sunday morning. Suze was right. That was her. That was what she was like. She’d just forgotten, that was all. Got sidetracked, and lost sight of who she was, because she’d been stumbling around in the dark for so long. So much so that when the first chink of light had appeared she’d been too fearful to let herself step into it. The dark seemed so much darker when you came in from the light.

  Well, she’d had enough of the dark now. She smiled at herself in her dressing table mirror. Suze was right. She did have an indomitable spirit. She was still here, wasn’t she? She’d made it through worse, hadn’t she? So sod it. She would go out with him. Just for a drink. Once she’d got the kids settled and given them tea, she would get Emma round and go and have a drink with him. Why not? She had nothing to lose that she hadn’t lost already. She needn’t feel scared. Yes. That’s what she would do. And she would take it from there.

  It was in this spirit of emotional courageousness that Hope now pressed the play button on her answer-phone. She’d only been out half an hour or so, to get food in for when the children came home. Which they’d just done. They’d all clattered in together. She’d even shouted a cheery greeting to Iain. Stopped and said hello. Asked him about work.

  But her valour was redundant.

  ‘ that. It’s Jack.’ Yes, she knew‘I’m really sorry to have missed you. Look, about us going out this evening. Something’s come up Er…. look, I’m really sorry, but I don’t know how long I’m going to be, so… well, I’ll try and call you again later, OK?’

  ‘Who’s that man?’ asked Chloe.

  ‘Jack Valentine,’ said Tom.

  ‘Jack who?’

  ‘Jack Valentine. The man off the radio.’

  She sloughed off her backpack. ‘What does he want?’

  ‘I dunno.’

  ‘What’s he want, Mum?’

  Hope stabbed at the delete button. ‘Oh, nothing,’ she said lightly. ‘We’re just sorting something about the fun run, that’s all.’

  ‘Oh. What’s for tea, anyway? I’m starving. Dad made us walk miles. I hate going for walks. Why do we have to go for walks all the time?’

  ‘Because –’

  Tom put on a silly voice. ‘Because that’s what Rhiannon likes to do.’

  ‘Well, she’s stupid,’ Chloe sniffed.

  ‘Don’t we know it. Hey, Mum?’

  Oh, how quickly the gloss had worn off. She wasn’t sure if she was pleased or dismayed. She could see trouble brewing, but she could also go ‘hah!’ Except that she wouldn’t, because she didn’t much feel like it. ‘What?’

  ‘You know next time?’

  ‘Next what?’

  ‘Doh! Next time we go to Dad’s, of course.’

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘Well, do I have to, like, stay the whole weekend?’

  ‘Of course you do.’

  ‘But it’s so boring.’

  ‘You think you’d be any less bored here? Besides, he takes you to football. You love that.’

  ‘I know. But couldn’t you pick me up Sunday morning or something? I never get to see my mates any more.’

  ‘Hardly, Tom,’ Hope said. ‘You get to see them plenty. Besides, you have to. He looks forward to you going.’

  ‘No, he doesn’t! Well, OK, I suppose he does. But he still spends half his time holding hands with her and expecting us to run about finding acorns and stuff, like we’re babies or something. And I got mud all over my trainers.’

  Hope knew this would be a circumstance of some gravity, and felt for him. ‘Well, I don’t know about that,’ she said levelly. ‘But I do know your father does look forward to seeing you. Very much. He –’

  ‘Yeah, yeah. But couldn’t you just ask him if we could come home Sunday lunchtime? Tell him I’ve got homework or something?’

  ‘I don’t know, Tom. I –’

  Chloe put her hands on her hips and pouted. ‘That’s not fair! If Tom doesn’t have to stay all weekend I shouldn’t have to stay all weekend!’

  ‘Yeah, you should. You’re nine.’

  ‘So what?’

  ‘So you have to do as you’re told. Doesn’t she, Mum?’

  ‘But that’s –’

  ‘Enough!’ declared Hope. ‘No more debates. I’ll think about it, Tom, OK? Right. How about the three of us go out for a pizza or something?’

  ‘What about Jack Valentine?’

  ‘What about him?’

  Tom pointed to the phone. ‘Aren’t you supposed to be doing something this evening?’

  ‘No. No, we’re not. And I’m starved as well. Now. Dirty washing in the kitchen please and school bags for the morning. We leave in twenty minutes, OK?’

  It felt so wrong not to be bringing wine gums. Jack felt naked as he stepped into the hallway of the hospice and accepted the pats and the sympathetic looks that everyone gave him. That were all part of the process of preparing for death. He’d done this before, of course but this was so different. He’d done it last time with his father. As a child and parent conjoined in mutual devastation and support.

  They’d called him at four. You might want to come, they’d said. Nothing more. So he’d called Ollie, whose mobile had been switched off, and then Lydia, who explained that he’d gone round to a friend’s house. Jack hated to be told that Ollie had gone to ‘a friend’s house’. He wished she wouldn’t say that. It felt all wrong. He’d wanted to pick him up, but Lydia told him to go on to the hospice. That she’d collect Ollie from the friend’s house and bring him over herself.

  And then he’d called Hope, but she wasn’t at home, and his heart had sunk to his boots.

  Even though it was Sunday tea-time and therefore rush-hour in terms of visitors, the hospice was a place of almost palpable stillness. There were paintings on the walls of nymphs and snowy mountains. There were flowers – he idly wondered who came in and arranged them – low tables, and chairs, the latter naked of cushions, and Jack wondered, seeing them, just exactly who might sit on them. There were no magazines because the waiting to be done here was full-on, one-on-one, not social at all. Everyone holed up in their own private quarters, playing out their own private tragedies.

  His dad, as was usual now, was dozy from the morphine, but stable again, they told him. Jack had come to regard the drugs they gave his father not as medicine but as Valkyries, caressing him while pulling him inexorably further away. His father responded to his touch, squeezed Jack’s hand in his own, and yet the effort of speaking was obviously all too much. Jack wondered if consciousness wasn’t a little like a cork bobbing on quicksand. So often
, it seemed, his father would clamber free of it, make some lucid comment, and then sink into its embrace again.

  Jack talked to him anyway. He didn’t know what else to do. He was reminded of being with his mother when she’d died. How his dad had just sat there, hour upon hour, and talked to her, softly and entirely unselfconsciously, about the weather, the news, sundry anecdotes about Ollie. A ceaseless monologue about all the minutiae of their lives. Jack had only been able to look on, paralysed with embarrassment.

  But there’d been one time, when his father had gone to speak with the doctor, when Jack had been left alone with her. He’d tried to talk. Don’t worry, Mum. We’re here. Don’t worry. But the words, proper words, proper thoughts wouldn’t flow. Then a nurse had come up.

  ‘Why don’t you tidy up her hair for her, lovely?’ She’d handed him a comb and slipped silently away.

  The nurse couldn’t have been more than twenty-one or twenty-two, and Jack, at the time, had so resented the ease with which she dealt with death. But she’d been right. He had combed his mother’s hair, and it had helped.

  He combed his father’s hair now, and wiped his mouth with a tissue. Then took another and cleared the small plug of mucus that was lodged in his nose. It wasn’t difficult now. He was practised at death beds. He could clean and wipe and stroke and pat. There was still an ever-present part of him that wanted to pluck his father from his sheet-shroud and scream ‘I love you! I need you! Dad, you can’t leave me yet!’ but he could suppress it; just as long as he kept doing these little things for him. Just as long as he didn’t give himself enough space to think.

  There were new cards since yesterday. Someone called Brian, from his father’s bowls club, and a short letter from the woman who used to come and do his ironing after Jack’s mother had died. He read these to his father slowly, enunciating carefully, peppering them with anecdotes and comments of his own. Then he pinned them to the cork board that was fixed on the wall for the purpose, knowing even as he did it that these cards, which he himself would take down and take away with him, would soon be consigned to a box somewhere and never seen again. Their purpose was not to be cried over in perpetuity, but simple connection. The paper chain of his father’s roots.

  A nurse came up. Placed a cool hand on his shoulder.

  ‘Trolley’s coming,’ she said. ‘Shall I get you some tea?’

  Jack smiled and nodded. It was something to do, this strange ritual. He’d accept it and get up and walk across to her station and they’d talk in hushed voices about the weather and the telly, and she’d mention some aspect of his show she’d enjoyed. They’d laugh, even. It didn’t feel wrong. It was all right to laugh a little. It would make his Dad smile.

  Ollie was smiling when Jack went out to meet him and Lydia. She, however, was looking pinched and uncomfortable, as if ill-at-ease with her new status. That this was something she no longer had a right to share.

  He watched his son re-configure his expression as he approached, and it saddened him. He’d spent altogether too little time here with Ollie. Insufficient for them to feel easy together with it. But the loss of a grandparent, however painful it might be, was a world away from the loss of a parent. And however much he’d like to have been able to share his grief with Ollie, it wouldn’t have been fair on him.

  He met Ollie’s frown with a wide smile and a hug.

  ‘Three nil!’

  ‘Three nil!’

  Jack raised his hand. ‘Gimme five!’

  Ollie did. The moment was righted again.

  ‘You coming in for a while?’ he asked Lydia. She nodded.

  ‘If I may,’ she said quietly. ‘You know –’ Her voice wobbled. ‘To… well, you know, to say my goodbyes.’

  She had, and it had been gruesome to watch. Lydia had never been the quiet stoical type, but Jack, for some reason, had thought that today she would hold herself together. That was all he asked of her. For Ollie’s sake. For his sake, even, damn it. But she hadn’t. She’d sobbed, spilling enough self-indulgent tears for the three of them. He knew he was being hard on her (well, tough – he wasn’t feeling charitable right now) and he also knew she did care for his father. Did, in some ways, have a right to be here. But he also knew how much of her distress wasn’t actually about that. It was really about guilt and remorse and forgiveness, Jack’s forgiveness more than anything else. She’d clutched at him, before making her grand exit, and whispered, ‘I’m here for you, Jack, you do know that, don’t you?’ and so agitated was she, so desperate for absolution, that he relented and accepted her hugs. He had more than enough guilt to carry through life with him. The least he could do was acknowledge hers.

  By the time Lydia had gone, Oliver was ashen, and, anxious to lighten the load that was etched so clearly on his son’s face, Jack got the paper out and had Ollie read out the football scores for his Grandad. He did the premier league, the first division, the second division and the Scottish premier league too, then Jack had him read out the Times’ sports column from yesterday. That always made his dad laugh.

  Then he told his father all about how Ollie had scored a magnificent goal yesterday morning, and how the Cougars, as a result, were now second in the league.

  ‘We can win it, you know,’ he told Ollie.

  ‘We can,’ agreed Ollie, managing a smile. ‘And we will. Hear that Grandad? We will!’

  A whole two hours had passed somehow, and when the nurse came over to let them know she was going off shift, Jack could feel his joints creaking.

  ‘And I need to get you home, mate,’ he told Ollie. ‘School in the morning.’

  He stood up and stretched. His muscles ached, too. He leaned across and gave his father a kiss on his forehead. Ollie stood, and, following his lead, gave his grandad a kiss also and spoke a whispered goodbye. Jack’s throat tightened. Would this really be the last time?

  The nurse touched his arm.

  ‘Why don’t you get off home as well,’ she said softly. ‘You look dreadful. We can call you if we need to.’ She glanced over at the tissue-filled waste bin and grimaced. ‘And frankly, we can do without your germs.’

  He should go home. Of course he should. Except here was his father and here his only child. His only real home, right now, was where they were.

  Ollie was silent as they made their way through the hospice to the car park, and Jack felt such a powerful need to clasp his son to him that he had to stuff his hands into his pockets to stop himself. It wasn’t that they weren’t still physical with each other, but, out here, with visitors and nurses scurrying around, he knew he mustn’t. He could so keenly recapture the fifteen-year-old him. Ollie’s pride, his composure, would be all.

  ‘A bit grim, eh?’ he said as they climbed into the car.

  Ollie nodded, his face pale. ‘I can’t believe Grandad’s going to die.’

  Jack pushed the key into the ignition but didn’t switch on the engine. He rested the back of his head against the headrest.

  ‘Nor can I, son,’ he said. It was the truth.

  ‘That tube. The one in his wrist. What goes in there, then?’

  ‘Morphine.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘He’s not in pain, Ollie. It’ll be just like going to sleep.’

  ‘Only forever.’

  Jack nodded. ‘I know. But he’s had a good life. And a long one. If he were sitting here now he’d be waggling his finger in our faces and telling us just that.’

  He turned to face his son, and could see him fighting tears. His eyes were brimming and his chin was quivering, and he looked, right then, just as he’d done as a toddler if he got into trouble or grazed his knee. Jack hadn’t seen Ollie cry for years. Not even on the day he and Lydia had told him about the divorce. He’d just sat, nodding minutely, as if being given instructions. Looking old and sagacious and calm.

  For a moment, Jack thought he’d say nothing. Do nothing. Let Ollie get a hold of himself and hang on to his dignity. But there was so much love inside him that he felt
he might burst.

  Ollie sniffed and brushed angrily at his eyes. ‘I don’t want you to die, Dad. I don’t think I could bear it.’

  ‘I’m not going to, Ollie. Not for a long, long time. Don’t think about that.’

  ‘But how can you bear it?’

  Jack twisted in his seat so he could meet his son’s eye. ‘I can’t. But I have to. We all have to one day.’ Ollie’s chin was still trembling. Jack could see he couldn’t speak now.

  ‘It’s all right,’ he said softly. ‘It’s all right to cry, son.’

  He reached over and took him in his arms.

  * * *

  There’d been lots of painful times in Jack’s life. There’d be lots more ahead. But dropping Ollie back at his mother’s that evening the pain hit him suddenly, physically and completely unexpectedly. Watching his son’s hunched form, his teenage swaggering-but-self-conscious gait as he headed up the path, made Jack feel so sad he could almost taste it on his tongue. He waited till Ollie had let himself in, then drove off into the night, fighting tears. He let them flow for a moment, then shook himself mentally. This was not useful.

  One thing, all at once, became blindingly obvious. He could no more take the producer’s job Graham had offered him, than he could contemplate taking a job on the moon. Apart from his Junior league round-up – no more than an hour or two’s writing – he could take no job that interfered with his weekends. He should not and would not. Forget his career. He’d find a new one, a better one. There were plenty out there for someone with his skills. You just had to look. Perhaps go the way of Lydia and train for a different one. Would there ever be a better time to do it? In the meantime, he still had plenty of freelance work. He still had his columns. Still had all sorts of sports one-offs coming up. He could manage. Sure he’d be poorer. He could forget Cardiff Bay. But life would be so very much poorer if he lost his precious time with Ollie every week. That was finite and irreplaceable. The most important gift he could give him.

  Having made the decision, Jack felt better. Mainly, he knew, because it had at last sunk in that what mattered in his life was not, after all, being some cheesy TV star or sports pundit, but being a father. Ollie’s father. That was who he was.