by Paul Kelly
Chapter Eighteen
Gerard and I had to remain in hospital for six weeks but his improvement was rapid and he was soon able to return to Paris and continue the work that he so very sadly had to abandon. Assim remained In Glasgow for another year and then he returned to France.
I was able to go back to work at the office and Freddie was pleased. I used an excuse for being off work to all the others saying that I had fallen down and hurt my back, but none of the family were told of my ‘indiscretion’ and life for all of us went on without any serious events of any kind, but sadly Emily’s father died and the funeral was attended by all the family from all parts of the country, except Adrian and his wife Stella, however, although we all missed Dad very much, I think he rewarded us in his own special little way when Emily told me that she was pregnant again and that was when Alfie was four. I was thirty-nine and Emily was forty-two, I thought it strange that Adrian should come to see us AFTER the funeral and that he apologised for not being able to help Gerard in his illness, but I gathered there was more to the re-union than I had imagined as when Emily asked him about his wife, he seemed to sneer as though she was of no importance but as they had no family their relationship had no importance any more, Adrian left us very hurriedly without saying Goodbye and both Emily and I felt there was something seriously wrong in that union but we knew we would find out ll there was to know in the course of time but meanwhile Freddie came to see us and suggested that it would be nice for us to have a conservatory attached to the back of the house where the children (as there was soon to be two) could play with their toys and even the rain could not affect them. Emily thought that would be a good idea and looked to me to see if I could afford this new idea, but before I could reply, Freddie suggested that it would be his treat as he loved little Alfie and he was so looking forward to the little boy or girl that was soon to join us.
Three of Freddie’s builders came to erect the conservatory and Alfie got to know each of their names and what they liked to drink. Eric and Joe liked tea without sugar and only milk whereas Bob liked coffee with no sugar or milk so Emily got her orders early on in the building, but she was delighted to obey her ‘lord and master’ who surveyed the work as it went on and we felt that Alfie may well make a builder himself when he grew up as he watched every detail of what was happening with great interest. The conservatory was beginning to look lovely and we knew it would be a great advantage when the other little one came along. One little boy outside playing in a conservatory could be quite interesting to watch, but for two children to be out there... it could be nothing short of magic and we were greatly indebted to Freddie for his gift as it would have cost me a small fortune to have it built as we saw it going up.
Later that evening, just as Emily had bathed Alfie and got him into his pyjamas to go to bed, we heard a knock on the front door and when I opened it, I could see Assim standing in the doorway.
“Why Assim. What a nice surprise,” I shouted and immediately Alfie jumped down from Emily’s arms and threw himself against Assim, screaming with pure delight and I am sure Assim must have felt a great deal of joy at that welcome.
“Would you like to stay the night Assim, We have another small bedroom being converted into another nursery for the little one we are expecting soon,” added Emily but Assim looked sad when she said that and shook his head.
“Nothing would give me greater pleasure Emily,” he said, “but I have to stay in the doctor’s dormitory at the hospital because I am so regularly ‘on call’ and have to be available at all times except when I am off duty which is every eight weeks. When is the baby due?”
“In July and we think about the fourteenth, but then we were very much premature in weeks when Alfie was born so we just have to bide our time. Would you like something to eat... or drink perhaps,” added Emily and I gave her a funny look that told her that Muslims did not drink anything but water and she closed her eyes for a moment, but before to my surprise, Assim said he would appreciate a small glass of brandy if we had it and I was away like a flash to get him what he asked for from the kitchen.
“I take this to steady my nerves a little when I am very busy in the theatre,” he said. “I did my last operation at four this afternoon and I hoped I would have been able to have a little rest after that, as I was on call and could have been out in the theatre again at any time this afternoon, but... ”
We waited to hear what was to come after the but... but Assim only lowered his head and told us he would have to leave and Emily insisted that he could stay the night and we would accept any call for him to go back on duty, but he declined and made his way to the front door, but after a few moments he stopped again and I thought he had changed his mind.
“Emily... Felix, can I just say how much I appreciated and actually loved your father because of the way he could accept Gerard to be what he is. You see my mother could not accept my sexuality and she disowned me because of it. I took Gerard to see her once and she told him very politely to leave the room as if he had some sort of disease”
At that moment, Assim staggered a little and I asked him to sit down and have another drink, but he waved his hand in the air and tottered towards our settee before he started to stutter his words again.
“As I have told you Emily, my mother could not accept my sexuality and she had every reason to be that way. You see my grandfather, that was my mother’s father was murdered in a German concentration camp along with his wife who was my grandmother.” I wanted to ask Assim to tell us more and then I could see Emily giving me one of her ‘old fashioned’ looks again which told me to shut up and mind my own business, but Assim did go on speaking.
“My grandparents I believe were very rich people but of course I never ever met them. He was an actor and she was an opera singer and I understand were very popular with the people, but... my grandfather was taken out to a field near this camp and he and his wife were stripped naked before he... and not she was raped and then they were dismembered and cut up into pieces and left for the vultures to devour their flesh. This is the reason why my mother cannot stand any sexual activity between men and I can understand why and how she feels like that. I have been aware of my sexuality from the ages of twelve or thirteen but it was only when I went to University in Paris when my parents moved there that I met Gerard and strangely when we talked together, we felt exactly the same as each other and that is why we became such very close and very great friends, but we are not immoral. I love Gerard and I swear that love before Allah. We send each other air mails and we feel very strongly that our friendship and love will last”
I felt very sorry for Assim when he spoke in that way and yet I could not help but feel a certain sense of admiration as well and I asked him again if it was not possible for him to stay overnight with us as I felt he was very deeply upset and needed some kind of support and comfort, but again he waved his and started to cry.
Emily sat beside him on the settee and put her arms around him hoping that the warmth of her love and feelings would help him, but he dried his eyes and took a deep breath before he went on.
“This afternoon when I had finished my operations, I hoped to retire to my little compartment and lie down for an hour or so, but when I got there, I found a lady doctor lying in my bed.”
I could not believe what Assim had said and then he went on to explain.
“This has been a problem for me for some time now. I have never ever been attracted to ladies, doctors or any other type of woman, but this doctor has been in the hospital for two years now. Her name is Barrows and she is in the dentistry department and I know she thinks I am a handsome man and she believes that I am in love with her. She had been a pest in my life for some time now and tells me that my sexuality is wasted on men. This has been a problem in my life now for a long time and I don’t know how I can stop her. She appears in the strangest places to meet me wherever I am going, except in
the theatre. I never see her there. I have gone to the gent’s toilet and she is there. In the men’s shower rooms she is there. She is everywhere and I am totally exhausted trying to avoid her.
It was Emily who spoke next and I felt proud of her for what she said.
“Felix and I... and little Alfie too, really love you and Gerard, Assim. Please regard us as your family and if we can do anything at all to help you in this problem, please let us know. Incidentally how do the hospital authorities contact you when they need you for theatre work?”
“They use my mobile phone. I have my number on that and all they have to do is ring me and within minutes I can be available for anything they want.”
Emily touched Assim’s shoulder as she told him to get ready for bed and he looked at her in surprise.
“You have your mobile phone with you now, haven’t you?” she asked and he nodded.
“Well we are less than three minutes from the hospital and I have the spare room ready. Have a good night’s sleep and don’t worry, you can be on duty in a jiffy if required. Goodnight.”
As soon as Assim left us to go upstairs, I turned to Emily.
“That’s O.K. for now, darling, but don’t you think that lady doctor is going to leave Assim alone, simply because you have told him to go to bed? What will happen tomorrow and the day after and the day after that?”
I watched Emily smile as she hummed a little tune and went into the kitchen.
“A woman’s work is never done,” was all she said to me but I saw again that ‘old fashioned’ look which in the past had resolved everything and I toddled off to bed knowing that the evil bitch in the hospital had better watch out.
“Will Assim be with us in the morning, Mummy, I hope he will stay with us for a long time.” cried Alfie and I told him to get back to sleep or the Bogey Man would come for him if he was a bad boy... It would have been Santa Claus if he was a good boy.
Chapter Nineteen
The conservatory was built and beautifully fitted just four days before our lovely little baby girl was born on July twelth and Emily said that this birth was nothing in comparison to that of Alfie which had given her great discomfort. As usual everyone was delighted, but strangely enough we noticed that Adrian was the only one who did not come to the gathering for the baptism. Everyone else was there including Assim and we wondered how his problems were getting along when the answer came through Celine. She and Steven announced that the planned to marry in August and in the course of general conversation, Emily asked Celine how Doctor Barrows was getting on in her dentistry work and Celine looked confused for a few moments as if she didn’t know who Doctor Barrows was and then her face lit up as she remembered that Barrows had gone off to Spain to be married to a doctor out there and a new doctor Snelling had taken her place in the dentistry department. I looked across the room to see if I could watch the reaction, if there was any, in Assim’s face, but he was smiling with someone and I guessed that perhaps he knew... and even if he didn’t, I had a sure guess that his problem had been solved.
Alfie was delighted with his new sister and wanted to know what to call her but we had to wait to make sure that the new name would be suitable to all but she looked lovely with beautiful fair skin however I would have liked it better if she had opened her eyes and I hoped she would be O.K. thinking she could well be a blind child, but until Emily saw her as I did, I didn’t want to say anything.
Emily was Allowed home from the hospital after having been in there only four days and she was allowed to bring the little girl home with her, but she too could see that the child had some eye defect and when we queried the doctor he told us that it would be a little while before she would be able to see properly but sometimes it happened that new born children took a little while to open their eyes properly and we settled down happily to wait as the little girl was indeed a beautiful child. We called her Sylvia, abbreviated to Sylvie and Alfie was overjoyed. The conservatory was finished and Freddie had very generously furnished it was little chairs and a table, together with what looked like slides Although they were very small and we knew there would be no danger if the children used them. At the bottom of the slide on the floor there was a large cushion affair which when we looked closely we could see the names of each child embroidered in pink and blue. A colour for each baby it seemed and we knew that Freddie had done everything for us in EXCESS. but sadly, even if we had such extravagance in everything we could wish for, Sylvie could not open her little eyes and Emily and I had to take her back to the hospital where she was examined thoroughly by TWO doctors to ensure that everything was alright and that time only would tell if she would be able to open her eyes and see like any other child.
The doctors studied Sylvie’s eyes for what seemed ages, but in fact it was all done within the hour and the diagnosis of each doctor was the same, It was optic atrophy which they told us was a light sensitive layer of tissue at the back of the eye and that it was known to rectify itself within four to six weeks. Sylvie would not be able to see for that time, but we were happy to think that she would not be permanently blind and we said nothing to Alfie as it was becoming more obvious by the moment that he had fallen in love with his little sister.
Meanwhile, we had another visit from Adrian who looked miserable and we suspected that he must have had another row with Stella, but he said nothing one way or another. He simply sighed and told everyone that life was full of difficulties as if we didn’t already know that. Emily tried to comfort him and offered him a brandy, but I was sorry that she had done that as when I looked at the bandy decanter, it was empty and it had been three quarters full before Adrian came on the scene.
Little Sylvie’s eyes did improve, but there was always a deficiency in her sight which didn’t match up at all to that of Alfie, nevertheless she was able to see and we were grateful for that and life went on happily with two screaming children in a conservatory where we had many complaints from our next door neighbours about the noise.
Assim came to see us fairly often as he loved the children and brought them gifts of fire engines and baby dolls, but we knew from his attitude to life that he was happier than he had been previously an the new doctor in the dentistry department appreciated him as a friend and just that, but there was a difference... as he had received a letter, not just an air-mail from his mother to say that she had met Gerard and realized how much of an error she had made in judging him as she had done, and that she had invited him to her home where he had dinner with all the family ( which Assim assumed was his brother Umar and his sister Farida) and life seemed to have improved in Paris for everyone.
Assim told us that his sister Farida must have been a great disappointment to his mother at one time and he hoped everything had ‘righted’ itself by now, as Farida had taken to wearing the fashions of Paris with jewels and clothes that were certainly not Muslim and she had become a fashion model and went out with any man she could find, whether he was Catholic, Protestant or Jew. It didn’t matter, but Assim thought that his mother had realized how she would have to settle in to the life that everyone lived in France as she was getting to be an old lady. Her husband was dead and he had been born in Germany, where she had been born and raised in France and there was no sense in looking back. Life had to go on. Umar had a business in horses and kept a stable with several stallions and when he told us about that Alfie started to scream that he always wanted to ride a horse and that was his dream, but Sylvie grinned and just farted.
Emily took Alfie to school each day and she arranged to teach Sylvie at home as long as that was possible, but Alfie sometimes caused a commotion in his classroom as we knew he was a bossy child and liked to have his own way, but we loved him and made all sorts of excuses for his schoolroom behaviour, even if we pitied his teacher. Sylvie seemed to be a different type of character to Alfie and as he was four years older than she, we just hoped that she would continue to be th
e little girl we loved and who seemed to be such a lovely gentle child, whom we imagined to be more of the nature of her lovely mother. Alfie was the little bugger who took after me.
Adrian surprised us All when he came to see us unexpectedly and told us that he was fed up with marriage and that Stella was a demanding, selfish bossy woman who should never have got married, as there was no man on this earth who could satisfy her demands and yet he said he would never get married again, Although he had shacked up with a divorcee who had two children. When I asked him how he would cope with this new woman who must certainly have been demanding if she had children to look after and any man in her life would have to take second place to them, but Adrian insisted that she was DIFFERENT, and that she wanted a life of her own.
I wondered how long this ‘union’ would last, but I said nothing to Adrian as there is no fool like an old fool and Adrian wasn’t what you would call a ‘young’un’.
On the other hand Steven who vowed he would never marry but would live with Celine as a partner, telephoned us to say that he was very busy and didn’t have much time to visit us, but that he was marrying Celine in Kirkcaldy on the following Saturday. It was going to be a quick affair, but he and Celine would come and see us very soon and he hoped Emily and I, together with the children, were well. What a contradiction to what Steven had originally thought... and we wished them every happiness and joy.
