Paradise News

by David Lodge

  “Did I?”

  “You mean you don’t remember? Never asked to wash up because you were supposed to have more homework than anyone else, or it was supposed to be more important. Always getting the choicest cut of the Sunday roast.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “It’s true. And if you needed new clothes or shoes, they appeared without your having to ask. Whereas with us … Look at that toe.” She raised her foot in the air and pointed to a deformed big toe joint. “That came from wearing shoes that I’d grown out of, for far too long.”

  “But that’s awful! You make me feel terrible.”

  “It wasn’t your fault, it was Mummy and Daddy. They walked around putting screens between you and the real world.”

  “‘They fuck you up, your mum and dad/They may not mean to, but they do.’”

  “I beg your pardon!” Tess sat up and stared at him.

  “It’s a poem. Philip Larkin.”

  “Nice language for a poet.”

  “‘They fill you with the faults they had/And add some extra, just for you.’”

  Tess sniggered and sighed. “Poor Mummy. Poor Daddy.”

  “Poor Ursula,” Bernard said. “Poor Sean.”

  “Poor Sean?”

  “Yes. We shouldn’t withhold our pity from Sean. Who knows what made him act as he did? Who knows what remorse he felt afterwards?”

  When they returned to the apartment to shower and change, Bernard proposed going out to eat, but Tess, suddenly stricken with jet-lag, demurred. She found in the fridge some eggs and cheese he had bought from the ABC Store at the corner of the block, and ended up cooking for them after all, a cheese omelette, with some coleslaw that Sophie Knoepflmacher had left a couple of days earlier.

  While they were eating, Frank phoned from England. Bernard made a move to leave the room, but Tess gestured him to stay where he was. She answered Frank’s questions briefly and expressionlessly. Yes, she had arrived safely. Yes, she had seen Daddy, who was making a good recovery. Yes, she had seen Ursula, who was not at all well. The weather was hot and sunny. She had been swimming twice already, once in a pool and once in the sea. No, she didn’t know when she would be coming back. He was to give her love to the children. Goodbye, Frank.

  “How is he coping?” Bernard asked, when she put down the phone.

  “He sounds …” Tess searched for a word. “Chastened. No mention of Bryony.”

  Tess retired to bed soon after supper. Bernard called up Yolande and asked her to meet him at the Waikiki Surfrider. She said she had to stay in to make sure Roxy got home by ten-thirty, as she had promised. Bernard glanced at his watch. It was twenty past eight. “Just for an hour,” he pleaded.

  “Just for an hour! What d’you think I am, a call girl?”

  “It’s not for that,” he said. “I want to talk.”

  But it was, in the event, for “that”, too.

  “So, what d’you want to talk about, Bernard?” she said, afterwards.

  “Do you have to call me ‘Bernard’ all the time?”

  “What d’you want me to call you?” she said, startled. “Bernie?”

  He giggled. “No, I’d hate that. But lovers call each other ‘darling’, or ‘sweetheart’ or something like that, don’t they? And there’s an American word …”

  “Honey?”

  “Yes, that’s it. Call me ‘honey’.”

  “I used to call Lewis, ‘honey.’ I’d feel married to you.”

  “That’s why I’d like it. I’d like to be married to you, Yolande.”

  “Oh? How, or rather where, were you thinking of doing that?”

  “That’s what I wanted to talk about. But how do you feel about it in principle?”

  “In principle? In principle I think it’s the craziest idea I ever heard in my life. I’ve known you for less than two weeks. I’m in the middle of a long and complicated divorce proceeding. I have a teenage daughter at school in Hawaii, and a job that, even if it isn’t exactly at the pinnacle of the psychiatric profession, satisfies me. You, as I understand it, have only visitor’s papers and a job in England that you have to get back to, not to mention a convalescent father you have to return to his home.”

  “Obviously we couldn’t get married right away,” he said. “But I could apply for an immigrant’s visa in England, and come back to Hawaii, and try and get a job here. Teaching. Or something in the tourist trade.”

  “Dear God, no,” said Yolande. “The only reason I’d marry you is to get out of Hawaii.”

  “I’m serious, Yolande.”

  “So am I.”

  He levered himself up from the mattress into a semi-recumbent position, the better to see her face in the dimly illuminated room. “You mean you will marry me?”

  “I mean I’m serious about getting out of Hawaii.”

  “Oh,” said Bernard.

  “Don’t look so dejected.” She smiled and reached up to stroke his face. “I really like you, Bernard. I don’t know whether I want to marry you – I don’t know whether I want to marry anyone, again. But I’d like to continue our relationship.”

  “How? Where?”

  “I’ll come and stay with you at Christmas – how’s that for starters? Lewis can have the kids.”

  “Christmas?” Bernard thought with dismay of Rummidge in late December, and St John’s College in the Christmas vac: a skeleton service in the Refectory, homesick African students mooning about the half-lit corridors, his own cramped study-bedroom, with its narrow single bed.

  “Yeah. D’you realize I’ve only spent a few days in England, in London in the summer?”

  “I’m not sure you’ll like the English winter.”

  “Why, what’s it like?”

  “The days are very short. It doesn’t get light till eight o’clock in the morning and it’s dark again by four in the afternoon. There’s a lot of cloud. Sometimes you don’t see the sun for days.”

  “Sounds great,” said Yolande. “I’m sick to death of the frigging sun. We can draw the curtains and pile up the logs on the fire.”

  “I don’t have a log fire, I’m afraid,” said Bernard. “In fact I only have a single room in College, with a one-bar electric fire and a gas-ring. We’d have to go and stay in a hotel somewhere.”

  “That would be great. One of those country hotels where you can have a traditional English Christmas. I’ve seen them advertised.”

  “You’d have to pay for yourself, I’m afraid.”

  “That’s OK. You’ve started saying ‘afraid’ again. Are you sure you want me to come?”

  “Of course I want you to come. It’s just that I don’t want you to be disappointed. The fact is I don’t have enough money to look after you properly. And I never will have, unless …”

  “Unless what?”

  “Well, to be blunt, unless I inherit it from Ursula.”

  “Well, that’s likely to happen, isn’t it? After all, you discovered the IBM money.”

  “She did talk of leaving me something, before that ever happened. But now there’s so much money, it’s become more fraught. I have a feeling that the family is drawing together around Ursula. Old wounds are being healed. We’re talking to each other, honestly, at last. I don’t want that to be jeopardized by ill-feeling about Ursula’s will. You know what families are like. Daddy is the next-of-kin. And now Tess wants me to persuade Ursula to set up a trust fund for Patrick.”

  “Don’t, Bernard,” said Yolande forcefully. “Don’t do it. Don’t make yourself a doormat. Leave it to Ursula to decide what to do with her money. If she wants to give it to Patrick, fine. If she wants to give it to your father, fine. If she wants to give it to cancer research, that’s fine too. But if she wants to give it to you, accept it. It’s her choice. Patrick will be OK. Tess will be OK. She’s a survivor. She told me how she just walked out on her husband, what’s his name, Frank? Frank’s obviously been using that handicapped kid like a ball and chain for years, to keep her trapped in the h
ome. She had to cut loose, and she did. That took guts. I respect her for it. But on the other hand, what about Frank? Why is he having his thing with the little schoolteacher? Perhaps Tess hasn’t given him enough. She’s obsessed with that kid. She’d take on the whole world, to protect his interests. She’ll trample all over you, if you give her the chance. And if you’re thinking to yourself while I’m talking that there’s some resemblance between her marital situation and mine, don’t think it hasn’t occurred to me.”

  The next day, after they had shared an early lunch together, Tess took a cab to St Joseph’s, and Bernard drove out to Makai Manor. The plan was that he would leave his car there and ride in the hired ambulance with Ursula, to and from the hospital, while Tess kept their father company. It wasn’t a fully equipped ambulance like the one in which Bernard had accompanied his father to St Joseph’s on the day of the accident, but a high-sided vehicle used for transporting patients in wheelchairs, with an electrically operated lift at the rear end. Ursula was excited and nervous. Her hair had been washed and waved that morning; her withered, yellow face was heavily powdered and her lips outlined with lipstick: the effect was well-intentioned but somewhat gruesome. She wore a silky blue and green muu-muu, and a fresh sling for her arm. A rosary of amber beads on a silver chain was wound around her wasted fingers.

  “This was my mother’s,” she said. “She gave it to me when I left home to marry Rick. I think she thought of it as a kind of leash that would bring me back into the fold one day. She had a great devotion to Our Lady, like your own mother, Bernard. I thought Jack might like to have it.”

  Bernard asked if she didn’t want to keep the rosary for herself.

  “I want to give Jack something, something to remind him of today, when he goes back to England. I couldn’t think of anything else. Anyway, I won’t be needing it much longer.”

  “Nonsense,” Bernard said with forced cheerfulness. “You’re looking miles better today.”

  “Well, it feels good to be outside Makai Manor for a change, nice as it is. The sea looks so beautiful. I miss the sea.”

  They were running along the cliff-top road near Diamond Head at this point. Bernard asked her if she would like to stop somewhere and look at the view.

  “Maybe on the way back,” said Ursula. “I don’t want to keep Jack waiting.” Her fingers nervously twisted and untwisted the strands of the rosary. “Where are we meeting him? Has he got a private room?”

  “No, he shares it with another man. But there’s a nice sort of terrace outside, where patients can walk up and down, or sit in the shade. I thought we’d go there. It will be more private.”

  When they arrived at St Joseph’s, the driver lowered Ursula, strapped into her wheelchair, to the ground, and pushed her up a ramp into the hospital’s elevator. When they reached the right floor, Bernard asked the man to wait for them below, and took over the wheelchair. He went first to his father’s room, but the bed was empty. Mr Winterspoon looked up from his miniature TV to say that Mr Walsh and his daughter were outside on the terrace. Bernard pushed the wheelchair down a corridor and through a pair of swing doors, out into the open air, round a corner – and there they were, at the end of the terrace. Mr Walsh was also seated in a wheelchair, and Tess was stooping to adjust his dressing-gown round his knees.

  “Jack!” Ursula croaked, much too quietly for him to have heard, but he must have sensed her presence, for he looked round sharply, and said something to Tess. She smiled and waved and began to push the wheelchair towards Bernard and Ursula, so that they all met, almost collided, in the middle of the terrace, in a clamour of laughter and tears and exclamations. Mr Walsh had obviously decided to control the emotion of the situation with a determined jocularity.

  “Whoa!” he exclaimed, as the two wheelchairs converged, “Not so fast! I don’t want another traffic accident.”

  “Jack! Jack! It’s wonderful to see you at last,” Ursula cried, leaning across the interlocked wheels to clutch his arm and kiss his cheek.

  “You too, Ursula. But aren’t we a sight for sore eyes, propped up in these contraptions like a couple of Guy Fawkes dolls?”

  “You look marvellous, Jack. How’s your hip?”

  “It’s mending well, I’m told. I don’t know whether I’ll ever be the same man again, mind you. And how are you, my dear?”

  Ursula shrugged. “You can see for yourself,” she said.

  “Aye, you’re very thin. I’m very sorry about your illness, Ursula. Don’t cry, don’t cry.” He patted her bony hand nervously between his own.

  Bernard and Tess parked the wheelchairs in a quiet, shady corner of the terrace, which was a kind of paved cloister, shaded by flowering vines growing over an open latticed roof. It had for Mr Walsh the attraction that he was allowed to smoke there, and he immediately broke out a packet of Pall Malls and offered them round. “No takers?” he said. “Well, I’ll force myself, to keep the flies off the rest of you.”

  After some animated chatter about Ursula’s ambulance ride, Mr Walsh’s opinion of St Joseph’s hospital, the view from the terrace, and similar trivia, a silence fell.

  “Isn’t it silly,” Ursula sighed. “There’s so much to talk about, you don’t know where to start.”

  “We’ll leave you two alone for a little while,” said Bernard.

  “There’s no need,” said his father. “You and Tess aren’t in the way – are they, Ursula?”

  Ursula murmured something non-committal. Tess supported Bernard’s proposal, however, and they wandered off, leaving the two old people facing each other in their wheelchairs. Mr Walsh looked after them with a faintly cornered expression.

  Bernard and Tess walked to the end of the terrace, and leaned on the balustrade, looking out over the roofs of suburban houses shimmering in the heat, at the freeway with its unceasing currents of traffic, and in the distance the hazy flat industrial landscape around Honolulu harbour. A jumbo jet, small as a child’s toy, rose slowly into the sky and circled over the ocean before heading eastwards.

  “Well,” said Bernard. “We made it. We finally brought them together.”

  “It’s nice of you to say ‘us’, Bernard,” said Tess. “You’re the one who made it happen.”

  “Well, I’m very glad to have you here, anyway.”

  “As you know, my first reaction was that it was a mad idea, bringing Daddy all this way to see Ursula, and when I heard that he’d been knocked down, I thought it was a judgment on me for having changed my mind,” said Tess, with the air of someone who had something she had decided to get off her chest. “But now I’m here, and knowing what I know now about their relationship in the past, I think you were right. It would have been terrible if Ursula had died alone, unreconciled, all these thousands of miles from home.”

  Bernard nodded. “I think it would have preyed on Daddy’s mind, as he gets older. When he faces death himself.”

  “Don’t,” said Tess, clutching her arms, and hunching her shoulders. “I don’t like to think of Daddy dying.”

  “They say,” said Bernard, “that when your second parent dies, you finally accept your own mortality. I wonder if it’s true. To accept death, to be ready for death whenever it happens, without letting that acceptance spoil your appetite for life – that seems to me the hardest trick of all.”

  They were silent for a few moments. Then Tess said: “When Mummy died, I said an unforgivable thing to you, Bernard, at the funeral.”

  “You’re forgiven.”

  “I blamed you for Mummy’s death. I shouldn’t have. It was very wrong of me.”

  “That’s all right,” he said. “You were upset. We were all upset. I shouldn’t have walked out. We should have talked. We should have talked a lot more, on many occasions.”

  Tess turned and gave him a quick kiss on the cheek. “Well, they seem to have found plenty to talk about at last,” she said, nodding over his shoulder in the direction of Jack and Ursula, who were, indeed, deep in conversation.

&nbs
p; They went for a rather aimless walk around the hospital’s grounds, mostly car-park, and then sought out Father Luke. He showed them the chapel, a cool, pleasant room, its white walls and polished hardwood furniture splashed with blotches of colour from the modern stained-glass windows. “I thought, as your aunt is in a wheelchair, we’d administer the sacrament in here,” he said. “Of course, it’s usually done with the patient in bed, but in this case … After the anointing, will you all be taking communion with Mrs Riddell?”

  “Yes,” said Tess.

  “No,” said Bernard.

  “I could give you a blessing, if you like,” said the priest. “I always invite people at mass who can’t communicate for any reason, divorce for instance, to come to the altar for a blessing.”

  Bernard hesitated, then acquiesced. He was beginning to feel better disposed towards Father McPhee, who had put himself out to be helpful.

  When they went back to the terrace, they found Mr Walsh smoking reflectively, gazing out over the balustrade at the sea, and Ursula asleep in her wheelchair.

  “How long has she been asleep?” Bernard exclaimed, afraid that it had been for the duration of their absence.

  “About five minutes ago,” his father said. “She just nodded off in the middle of something I was saying.”

  “She does that occasionally,” said Bernard. “She’s very weak, poor thing.”

  “Did you have a nice talk, before that, Daddy?” Tess asked.

  “Yes,” he said. “There was a lot to talk about.”

  “There sure was,” said Ursula. She seemed to have no awareness that she had been asleep.

  On the way back to Makai Manor, Bernard asked their driver to pull into the clifftop parking place near Diamond Head and lower Ursula’s wheelchair to the ground. Then he pushed her to the parapet, so that she could look out over the blue and emerald sea, and at the dozen or so windsurfers scudding across its surface.

  “What a wonderful day it’s been,” she said. “I feel so at peace. I could die now, quite happily.”

  “Don’t be silly, Ursula,” he said. “You’ve plenty of life in you yet.”

  “No, I mean it. I daresay it won’t last for long, this feeling. I expect the fear and depression will come back tonight, as usual. But just now … I read in a magazine, the other day, that the old Hawaiians believed that when you died, your soul jumped off from a high cliff, into the sea of eternity. They had a special word for it, I can’t remember it now, but it means, ‘jumping-off place.’ D’you think this was one?”