by David Lodge
“Build higher, get more money out of the plot. This building is just four storeys. It’s nearly twenty-five years old. Almost an ancient monument in Waikiki.”
Bernard looked down onto a paved patio, with a bright blue oblong of water embedded in it. “Who does the swimming-pool belong to?”
“The apartment building. It’s for the residents.”
“Can I swim there?”
“Sure. Any time you like. Shall I show you the kitchen?”
Bernard left the balcony reluctantly. “This breeze is very pleasant.”
“The trade winds. It’s what keeps the islands cool. Nature’s ceiling fan,” said Mrs Knoepflmacher with a hoarse chuckle. “We really need the trades in the summer. You’ve come at the hottest time of the year.”
Mrs Knoepflmacher demonstrated how the cooker worked, and the garbage disposal unit in the sink. “I put a few things in the icebox for you: milk, bread, butter, juice, just enough for your breakfast tomorrow. It came to three dollars fifty-five cents, but you can pay me any time. There’s an ABC store at the corner of the next block, but you’ll do better to stock up with basics at the Ala Moana shopping center, it’s a lot cheaper. Here are the keys to the apartment, and here’s the phone number of Ursula’s nursing home. And this is her doctor at the hospital, if you want to call him. If there’s anything else you need, I’m just down the hall, number thirty-seven.”
“Thank you very much,” said Bernard. “You’ve been most kind.”
“You’re welcome,” said Mrs Knoepflmacher. Her eyes travelled round the living-room as if in search of something. Then she found it. “Those Dresden figurines are so cute, aren’t they?” she said, going up to one of the glass-fronted cabinets. “If anything should happen to Ursula, and you have to dispose of her effects, I’d be glad to have first refusal.”
Bernard was surprised, almost shocked by this remark, and it took him a few seconds before he could stammer out a vague reply. But after all, why should he be shocked, he reflected, as he showed her to the door. She was only being realistic. He returned to the living-room where his father was sitting, with his shoes and socks off, staring at his feet. They looked like beached crustaceans, horny and calloused and inflamed; a toe twitched occasionally as if of its own accord.
“Me feet were killin’ me,” he said.
He declined to take a bath or shower, so Bernard brought a bowl of lukewarm water from the kitchen for him to soak his feet in. The old man closed his eyes and sighed as he lowered them into the water.
“Is there any chance of a cup of tea?” he said. “I haven’t tasted a decent drop of tea since we left England.”
“Won’t that mean you’ll have to get up in the night?”
“Sure I’ll have to get up anyway,” said Mr Walsh. “It’s only a matter of how soon and how often.”
Bernard found some teabags – Lipton’s English Breakfast – in the kitchen, and made a pot of tea. Mr Walsh sucked the brew down thirstily and sighed and wriggled his toes in the water. Bernard knelt to dab the feet dry with a towel. It reminded him of the Maundy Thursday mass of the Last Supper, especially at the parish church in Saddle, where he had often encountered battered, work-coarsened feet like these among the members of the congregation who volunteered to have their feet washed by the celebrant. At the seminary, the young men’s feet were white and smooth, carefully pre-washed and pedicured for the occasion. He had an intuition, from his father’s grave, thoughtful countenance, that the same association had occurred to him, but neither of them alluded to it.
There was only one bedroom, and one bed – big enough for both of them, but Bernard opted for the studio couch in the living-room, which opened out to make a comfortable spare bed. When his father had retired, he took a shower, left his soiled and sweaty clothing in a heap on the floor, and, not having brought a dressing-gown with him, slipped on a silky robe of Ursula’s he found hanging on a hook behind the bathroom door. He thought he would sleep naked – the winceyette pyjamas he had packed would obviously be too warm – but he had an inhibition about walking around the apartment in the nude, even though he could hear his father breathing deeply in sleep. He himself felt strangely untired, perhaps stimulated by the tea, or the novelty of the environment.
He went out on to the balcony and leaned on the rail. There was now no perceptible difference between the air inside and outside the apartment. Although the trade winds were blowing quite strongly, whisking the palm trees to and fro, the air beat warmly against his face. Smudges of cloud raced across the sky, momentarily obscuring the stars, though you could easily imagine that there were no clouds, and that the stars themselves were moving, wheeling across the sky like a speeded-up version of the Ptolemaic spheres. He was filled with wonder at the mere fact of being here, on this tropical island, when only yesterday he had been in Rummidge, with its factories and workshops and arid streets of huddled terraced houses, everything worn and grimy under a low ceiling of grey cloud. He looked down at the swimming-pool, glamorous and seductive in the warm night. Tomorrow he would swim there.
As he levelled his gaze he became aware of two figures, a man and a woman, on the illuminated balcony of a neighbouring building. The man was wearing only boxer shorts, and held a tall glass in his hand; the woman was dressed in a Japanese-style kimono. They seemed to be amused by Bernard’s appearance, giggling and pointing. It occurred to him that perhaps the floral patterned housecoat, with its padded shoulders and full skirt, was rather incongruous attire, especially with his beard. But their reaction seemed excessive. Perhaps they were drunk. He didn’t know how to respond – whether to wave good-humouredly, or stare stonily. As he hesitated, the woman undid the belt of her robe and, with a theatrical gesture, flung it open. She was quite naked underneath. He could see the crescent shadows under her breasts and the dark triangle of her pubic hair. Then, with a final burst of laughter, they turned and went back into their room, drawing a curtain across the window. The light on the balcony went out.
Bernard remained at his station for some moments, leaning on the railing, as if to demonstrate his indifference to the couple’s antics. But inwardly he was baffled and disturbed. What did the woman’s gesture signify? Mockery? Insult? Invitation? It was almost as if she had had some telepathic knowledge of the sad scene in the Henfield Cross bedsit – Daphne, divested of her blouse and brassière, turning expectantly to face him – and was reminding him of the baggage of guilt and failure he had brought with him to Hawaii.
He returned to the living-room, shed Ursula’s robe, and lay down on the sofa-bed, naked under a single sheet. In the distance he heard the whoop-whoop-whoop of a police siren. He pushed the image of the couple on the balcony from his mind by rehearsing what he would do next morning: first thing, after breakfast, he would phone Ursula and make arrangements to visit her. But before he got any further, he fell asleep.
5
AFTER THE ACCIDENT Bernard spent many hours trying to reconstruct, in his head, how it had happened. They were crossing the road, he and his father, having just left the apartment – crossing at the wrong place, as the woman and the policemen and the ambulancemen all told him. Apparently you were supposed to cross the street only at intersections. But it was a quiet street, there hadn’t been much traffic about, and they hadn’t noticed that people weren’t crossing the road wherever they pleased, as one did in England. It was their first morning in Honolulu – they were still jet-lagged, woozy from their long sleep. All the more reason why he should have been careful, of course. Ninety per cent of visitors’ accidents, Sonia Mee told him in the emergency ward, happened in the first forty-eight hours after arrival.
He could only have taken his eyes off his father for a second, as they stood together on the kerb. He had looked left, and observed a small white car approaching, not very fast. His father must have looked right, as he was accustomed to do at home, seen an empty roadway, and stepped out in front of the car. As it passed Bernard heard a thud and a screech of tyres. He
turned and looked incredulously at his father sprawled limp and motionless on the sidewalk, like a stricken scarecrow. Bernard knelt quickly beside him. “Daddy, are you all right?” he heard himself saying. The question sounded foolish, but what it meant was, Daddy are you alive? His father groaned and whispered, “Didn’t see it.”
“Is he badly hurt?” A woman in a loose red dress stooped over them. Bernard connected her with the white car parked a few yards further up the street. “Are you with him?” she said.
“He’s my father.”
“What was the idea, trying to cross here?” she said. “I didn’t have a chance, he just stepped right out in front of me.”
“I know,” said Bernard. “It wasn’t your fault.”
“Did you hear that?” said the woman to a man in running shorts and singlet, who had stopped to stare. “He said it wasn’t my fault. You’re a witness.”
“I didn’t see anything,” said the man.
“Could I have your name and address anyway, sir?” said the woman.
“I don’t want to get involved,” said the man, backing away.
“Well, at least go call an ambulance!” said the woman.
“How?” said the man.
“Just find a phone and call 911,” said the woman. “Jesus!”
“Can you turn over, Daddy?” Bernard said. Mr Walsh was lying face down with his cheek against the paving stone, and his eyes closed. He looked strangely like a man who was trying to get to sleep and didn’t want to be disturbed, but Bernard felt a need to lift the face from its stony pillow. When Bernard tried to help him turn over on his back, however, he winced and groaned.
“Don’t move him,” said a woman with a tartan shopping trolley, from the small arc of spectators that had now formed around the scene of the accident. “Whatever you do, don’t move him.” Bernard obediently left his father in his prone position.
“Are you in pain, Daddy?”
“Bit of pain,” the old man whispered.
“Where?”
“Down there.”
“Where’s that?”
There was no answer. Bernard looked up at the woman in the red dress. “Have you got something to put under his head?” he said. If he had been wearing a jacket himself, he could have folded it up to make a cushion, but he had come out in just a short-sleeved shirt.
“Sure.” She disappeared, and returned quickly with a cardigan and an old rug with fine grains of sand sparkling in the weave. Bernard put the rolled-up cardigan under his father’s head, and covered him with the rug, in spite of the heat, because he had a vague idea that that was what you did to people who had been knocked down. He tried not to think of the potentially awful consequences of what had happened, or the reproaches he would receive, and the guilt he would suffer, for having allowed it to happen. There would be time enough for hand-wringing later.
“You’ll be all right, Daddy,” he said, trying to sound cheerfully confident. “The ambulance is on its way.”
“Don’t want to go to hospital,” Mr Walsh murmured. He had always had a dread of hospitals.
“You need a doctor to have a look at you,” said Bernard. “Just to be on the safe side.”
A police car cruising past on the other side of the street did a U-turn and drew up, its lights flashing. The spectators respectfully made way for two uniformed officers. Bernard was aware of their heavy, holstered revolvers at the level of his eyes. He looked up at two plump, brown, impassive faces.
“What happened?”
“My father’s been knocked down.”
One of the policemen knelt and felt Mr Walsh’s pulse. “How ya doin’, sir?”
“Want to go home,” said Mr Walsh, without opening his eyes.
“Well, he’s conscious,” said the policeman. “That’s something. Where’s home?”
“England,” said Bernard.
“That’s a long way, sir,” said the policeman to Mr Walsh. “Better take you to the hospital first.” He turned to Bernard. “Somebody call an ambulance?”
“I believe so,” said Bernard.
“I wouldn’t count on it,” said the woman in the red dress. “That wimp in the running shorts never came back.”
“I did, too,” said a voice from the back of the crowd. “The ambulance is coming.”
“Who’s the owner of the car?” said the second policeman.
“I am,” said the woman in the red dress. “The old guy stepped right out in front of me. I didn’t have a prayer.”
The expression seemed to trigger a reaction in Mr Walsh, who began to mutter the Act of Contrition under his breath. “Oh my God, I am heartily sorry for all my sins …” Kneeling beside him, Bernard felt his hand rising by conditioned reflex to perform the gesture of absolution, and, embarrassed, converted it into a soothing stroke of the old man’s brow. “No need for that, Daddy,” he said. “You’re going to be all right.” He turned to the policeman: “He looked the wrong way, I’m afraid. We drive on the left, you see, in England.”
A man in a neat lightweight suit stepped forward and said to Bernard, “Take my advice – make no admissions.” He took a card from his wallet and offered it to Bernard. “I’m a lawyer. Be glad to act for you on a contingency basis. No fee unless the suit is successful.”
“Keep your nose out of this, mister,” said the woman in the red dress, snatching the card and tearing it in half. “You people make me sick, you’re like vultures.”
“That’s actionable,” said the lawyer calmly.
“Take it easy, lady,” said the policeman.
“Listen, I’m driving along the road, minding my own business, and suddenly this old man throws himself under my wheels, out of nowhere. Now I’m being threatened with a lawsuit. And you tell me to take it easy. Jesus!”
“Jesus mercy, Mary help,” Mr Walsh muttered.
“Tell them,” the woman appealed to Bernard. “You said it wasn’t my fault, right?”
“Yes,” said Bernard.
“My client is in shock,” said the lawyer. “He doesn’t know what he is saying.”
“He’s not your client, asshole,” said the woman in the red dress.
“Where’s this ambulance?” said Bernard. His voice sounded plaintive to his own ears. He envied the woman her anger and her expletives.
His sense of his own inadequacy did not diminish when the ambulance finally arrived. The paramedics (as he heard someone describe the ambulancemen) seemed admirably professional. They questioned Bernard briefly about the nature of the accident, and coaxed from Mr Walsh an admission that his pain was in the hip region. When the senior man asked Bernard which hospital he wanted his father to be taken to, Bernard suggested the Geyser, where Ursula had been treated, because it was the only one in Honolulu he knew of. The paramedic asked him if his father was covered by a Geyser plan.
“What’s that?”
“Health plan.”
“No, we’re visitors. From England.”
“Got medical insurance?”
“I think so.” He had certainly paid for some kind of holiday insurance when he collected their tickets, on the advice of the young man in the Rummidge travel agency, but had been too rushed to examine the small print. The documents were in Ursula’s apartment, and he could hardly leave his father lying in the gutter while he went to check. A new injection of anxiety and dread coursed through his veins and arteries. One had heard frightening stories about the mercenariness of American medicine, of patients being compelled to sign blank cheques even as they were wheeled to the operating theatre, and uninsured people being ruined by the cost of treatment, or denied treatment altogether because of their inability to pay. Perhaps he would have to pay for the ambulance on the spot, and he had very little cash on him.
Bernard and his father had in fact been on their way to the bank when the accident happened. He had telephoned Ursula as soon as they had breakfasted, and she told him that there were two-and-a-half thousand dollars waiting for him at her bank, to cove
r the cost of their fares (paid for out of Mr Walsh’s savings) and their immediate living expenses. She had suggested that he used some of the money to rent a car – “This place is out in the boondocks, Bernard, you’ll never get here by bus.” He had set out to do this business, rather looking forward to getting behind the wheel of a car again, taking his father with him because the old man seemed unwilling to be left alone, and they had hardly walked a hundred yards, marvelling at the heat, but in their lightest clothes, feeling considerably more comfortable than the night before, when disaster struck.
“The Geyser’s a long way out of town,” said the senior paramedic, “if you don’t have to go there. We could take you to the county hospital, downtown. Or there’s St Joseph’s, the Catholic hospital.”
“Yes,” said Mr Walsh in an audible whisper.
“Take him to St Joseph’s,” said Bernard. “We’re Catholics.” He used the the plural pronoun instinctively: it was no time to go into the niceties of religious belief and affiliation. If it would make his father feel any better to be treated in a Catholic hospital, he was ready to recite the Creed in public if necessary.
He heard the crackle of a radio telephone as one of the paramedics called up the hospital. “Yeah, we got an emergency here, old man been knocked down, he’s in trauma but conscious. Can you take him? Hard to say, could be pelvis, ruptured spleen … No, they’re visitors … the old guy’s son is with him, he thinks they have insurance … requested a Catholic hospital … Right … No, no visible bleeding … OK … ’Bout fifteen minutes.” The man turned to his colleague. “OK, we’re in business. The doc said to give him an IV just in case there’s internal bleeding. Let’s get him onto the gurney.”
With gentle, practised skill, they eased Mr Walsh onto a wheeled, collapsible stretcher, which they then slid into the back of the ambulance. An intravenous saline drip was attached to his arm from a bottle clipped to the inside wall of the vehicle. One of the men got out and looked enquiringly at Bernard. “You wanna ride with him?” Bernard jumped in and crouched beside the other paramedic. The woman in the red dress, who was being questioned by one of the policemen, broke away from him and came to the rear of the ambulance, just as the driver was about to close the doors. She was olive-skinned, black-haired, aged, he thought, about forty.
