by Tony Parsons
Enough, I thought, as I left Pat with him one night and went home to my empty house. Hasn’t he suffered enough?
But when I went back in the morning, Ken was sitting up in bed, his eyes shining with life, his face covered in shaving cream. In his striped pyjamas he looked like Father Christmas having a bit of a lie-in, and I laughed in that place for the first time. He had rallied. And I knew that could happen too.
‘I want to get spruced up,’ Ken said.
He talked the language of my father. Getting spruced up. Meaning – to make oneself smart, to become presentable to the world, to have a shave even though there is something growing inside me that will kill me very soon. Getting spruced up. When did getting spruced up go out of fashion?
There was a silver dish full of steaming water by his bed. Pat was holding a cut-throat razor. He approached the bed, the blade glinting in the hospital lights. The old man raised a hand.
‘Do you shave yet, son?’ Ken asked him, pressing back against the pillow.
‘Every Sunday,’ Pat said. ‘Well, more like every other Sunday.’
‘Then better let your dad do it,’ the old man said. They both looked at me.
‘If you don’t mind,’ Ken said, and I quickly shook my head. ‘Try not to cut me bleeding throat,’ he suggested.
‘You don’t stop moaning, do you?’ I said, taking the razor. ‘You really are a grumpy old man.’
‘I’ve got a lot to be grumpy about,’ he said, and the shaving foam on his face split in a big grin.
I dipped the razor in the water and began to scrape the stubble from his face. It was surprisingly tough, like the stumps of crops left in a field after harvest, but the skin beneath was smooth. He cleared his throat and lifted his chest as he released a wheezing breath. I could hear the blocked lungs struggling for another breath.
‘Keep still,’ I said quietly, wondering if that was even possible, but he did not move again. Then I felt the curtain around his bed pull back and when I looked up my wife was standing there.
‘Please,’ she said. ‘Carry on.’
She was holding a covered tray of food. I could smell sausages and batter. Ken opened his eyes, smiled and closed them again.
‘Hello, love,’ he said, and he sort of sighed with contentment. I think it was all of it. Feeling the stubble scraped from his face, the sight of a woman bringing the gift of food. And he liked getting spruced up.
And my wife watched me shave the old man.
She stood there, one hand holding the tray of food, the other resting on Pat’s shoulder, and she watched me and the old man with those wide-set brown eyes. I looked up at her once. She half-smiled, and nodded, so I carried on. I did not look at her again, but I could feel her watching me. And it sounds stupid after ten years and marriage and children and all the rest of it. But as she watched me shaving the old man, I sort of felt that she was starting to really like me.
And when I had finished shaving Ken, and the silver bowl was full of foamy water and his face was clean and pink and smooth, and his throat had not been cut from ear to ear, then Cyd unwrapped the small tray of food, and it was really special.
These little Yorkshire puddings with half a pork sausage inside each one and a curly smear of English mustard on the top.
‘Toad-in-the-hole,’ Ken said. ‘Little ones. Never seen that before. Lovely.’
And we all admired the food that she had made, even though we all knew that he would never eat it.
She did not stay very long. And when it was time for her to go, she hugged the old man and kissed him on his freshly shaved cheek.
‘Smooth as a baby’s bottom,’ Ken chuckled, and I looked away because I knew that the pair of them would never see each other again.
When I looked back she was hugging Pat.
She had this special way of hugging him, and it had not changed in ten years. A short, fierce hug and then suddenly letting him go. They nodded at each other, and something seemed to pass unspoken between them.
Then she looked at me with half a smile and slipped out of the curtain. I followed her. She banged through the ward’s swing doors, wanting to get out of there, but I caught up with her in the corridor.
‘Hey,’ I said, lightly touching her arm, and she turned round and placed her mouth on mine.
I staggered backwards, still kissing her, and knocked against a double-parked IV drip.
She kept on kissing me and so I kissed her back. And even as I heard the amused laughter from the nurses’ station down the corridor, my head reeled with dumbfounded wonder at the way our mouths fit so perfectly. A mouth that is a perfect fit for your mouth. That’s not such an easy thing to find, if you ask me.
‘It’s the proximity of death,’ I gasped, coming up for air. ‘It makes us want to cling to life. It always – ’
‘Don’t talk,’ she said. ‘Don’t try to say anything smart, Harry. Not right now, okay?’
‘Okay.’
‘And don’t do your Barry White voice.’
‘I wasn’t even going to do my Barry White voice,’ I said, a bit offended.
And she kissed me some more, but saner kissing now, less feverish, less desperate, and when a nurse walked past and said, laughing, ‘Oh, get a room, you two,’ Cyd took a step away from me.
I stood there looking at her.
‘Are you coming home?’ I said, touching her arm. She let me do that. ‘Are you? Come home. Come home, okay?’
She looked at the ground. ‘I’ll see you, okay?’ she said.
‘Is Joni all right?’ I said. ‘She’s not worried about an asteroid hitting Earth?’
‘She hasn’t mentioned the asteroid,’ she said. ‘I think she’s more concerned about global warming. Climate change, that’s the big fear now. And the Weeping Angels from Doctor Who.’
‘Those bastards,’ I said, with feeling.
‘The asteroid – she’s over the asteroid.’ Cyd took a breath. ‘But she misses you.’
‘And I miss her,’ I said. ‘And I miss you. And whatever problems there are, we can work them out. Because I’m lost without you.’ I shook my head. ‘And I will always be lost without you.’
It was true. It would always be true. So I reached for her. I thought maybe one more go at the kissing could win her round.
But she backed off, arms folding protectively.
‘I’m going now,’ she said.
I nodded. I could read the signs. With her arms folded, I could see there was no more kissing to be done right now.
And nothing else to say.
‘All right,’ I said, and then I felt the panic as she turned away. She was really leaving. But this time I did not follow her.
‘See you then,’ I said, just for something to say, but she did not turn around. She just raised her left hand in farewell, and the way she held it there for a moment longer than strictly necessary made it seem as though the gesture meant something more. I hear you, I love you, but I am going now. That is what I saw in her gesture, although I could have been kidding myself.
But I noticed that on the third finger of her left hand, Cyd still wore her wedding band.
And that had to mean something, didn’t it?
The way she walked away, the way she waved goodbye without turning round – it was straight from the end of Cabaret, one of my wife’s favourite films, when Sally Bowles leaves the man she has loved and goes back to her life. Except that old Sally Bowles wasn’t wearing a wedding ring when she walked away.
And in my experience, a ring makes all the difference when you are trying to walk away.
The ring, and the children.
Twenty-five
I wandered the empty house.
There were traces of the family we had been, archaeological clues to a previous lifetime. A pink scooter in the hall that Joni had grown out of. A paperback called Love Sucks that Peggy had finished with on the garden table, a sensitive vampire boy looking mean, moody and undead on the front cover. And, everywhere, the tra
ces of my wife.
Her winter clothes. Her CDs by Enya and Macy Gray, original cast versions of Oklahoma! and West Side Story and Singin’ in the Rain. Old copies of Grazia and Red. The books of films she had loved. Chocolat and The English Patient and The Unbearable Lightness of Being. And especially in the kitchen – her workplace, her domain – things that she had bought because she needed them, or because she thought they were nice. All these jolting moments that brought the reality of her home to me in a way that I had never felt when she was still here.
I found a T-shirt in the bottom of the laundry basket and I buried my face in it. It said Juicy on the front and it was threadbare and comfortable. And I could smell her on it and it made me reel with the longing for her. I missed my wife. I missed my daughter. I wanted my family back.
And the old question from years ago gnawed at me now, as I wondered if Pat and I were still a family. Did we qualify? If there was just the two of us, then could we still call ourselves a family? Or was that just a bit too grand for our two-man band?
I wanted to believe that we were still a family. But I don’t think you are a family if there are just the two of you left.
I think that you want to be, you really do.
But if I am honest, I think you are just trying.
Pat was sleeping when I got to the hospital.
It was the middle of the day, and the ward was full of the clanking of the lunch trolley, and the smell of inedible food, but Pat lay slumped in his chair with his head lolling forward, totally exhausted.
I looked at Ken. I could hear his breathing snagging deep inside his chest, but he looked better. Perhaps it was the shave, but he looked more like himself.
Pat stirred and opened his eyes.
‘Come home for a bit,’ I told him. ‘Get your head down in your own bed. Have a kip.’
Have a kip. That was another one. The language of my father’s generation. Soon it would be gone forever. Pat stood up and stretched, looking at Ken.
‘Just a smoke,’ he said, and so we left the cancer ward because my boy was gasping for a cigarette. Outside the glass doors, Pat blinked in the first sunlight he had seen for a while.
‘He had a good night,’ Pat said, lighting up. ‘I only had to use the mask once. One of the nurses told me that it sometimes gets better before the end.’ He squinted at me through a haze of smoke. ‘Do you think that’s true?’
I shrugged. ‘I don’t know. It goes up and down, I guess. He might be better than he was a while ago. But it’s always getting worse.’
‘He said his wife was there,’ Pat said. ‘Dot?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Dot.’
‘That freaked me out. He was so certain she was there. What’s all that about? Is that some kind of hallucination because of the drugs? Or is it something else?’
I thought about it.
‘I would like to think it’s something else,’ I said.
We said nothing for a while, thinking about the dreams of the dead, and when Pat had finished his cigarette, we went back inside.
There was a middle-aged man sitting in the chair that Pat had occupied for days, watching Ken’s sleeping face. He stood up when we came into the room, and he wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. Short, muscular, tanned. I knew who he was before he opened his mouth.
‘Mick Grimwood,’ he said, and he shook our hands, and from his accent you would never have guessed that he had grown up in this city, and in this country.
‘From Melbourne,’ I said. ‘Your dad talked about you a lot.’
We all looked at the old man.
The weight had fallen off him. I saw that now. Mick’s face was a mirror image of Ken as a younger man, and with him at the bedside I saw how much weight his father had lost.
‘Does he have a passport?’ Mick said.
I was stunned. ‘A passport?’
I thought of when I had looked through the drawers of his home, and when I had seen the ransacked contents of those drawers strewn across the floor of the tiny flat.
Had I seen a passport among the remains of a lifetime?
I could not remember.
‘I don’t know, Mick,’ I said. Pat and I exchanged a look. The guy was clearly out of his mind with jet lag and grief. I wanted to be gentle with him. ‘But he’s really sick,’ I said. ‘Your dad is really sick.’
He lifted his chin with impatience, and suddenly he was every inch his father’s son.
‘I know how sick he is,’ he said, ‘and that’s why I want to know if he’s got a passport.’ Ken stirred in his sleep and his son’s hands clenched and unclenched with frustration. ‘I told him to always keep his passport up to date. I bloody told him, I did.’
‘He’s better,’ Pat blurted, and I tried to silence him with something in my eyes, the way I always used to. It didn’t work any more. ‘But he is though,’ my boy insisted. ‘A little bit better. You said so yourself.’
I wanted to stop this madness.
‘Mick,’ I said. ‘You really think he’s up to making a trip?’
‘This would be one way,’ Mick said.
And then I finally got it.
Ken going to Australia at last.
Not to live.
But to die.
The police were raiding the flats.
Blue lights swirled on the four sides of Nelson Mansions and gave the proceedings a jolly, festive air. Children rode their bikes up and down their walkways, shouting with delight at being up way past their bedtime. Residents came out to watch officers in Kevlar stab-proof vests streaming up the stairs. Some were already on the top floor, shouting orders to open up. They were directly above Ken’s flat. They had come for the Old Lads.
In the courtyard there were three cop cars and one van, all with their disco lights twirling, all parked where they felt like parking. I got out of the car and Tyson came up to me, thoughtfully sniffing my leg, as if remembering the good times. His thick leather lead with silver spikes was trailing on the ground. I patted him on the head and looked up at the flats where the cops had started to swing a battering ram.
‘Let’s look for it and go,’ I told Pat.
He followed me up to Ken’s flat, with Tyson trailing behind. More people were coming out of their homes. I had never seen such a feeling of community at Nelson Mansions. Perhaps it was always like this for police raids. Above us we could hear a door caving in. Screams, shouts, curses. And a ripple of polite applause from the spectators on their walkways. And cheering, as though justice was being done at last. I slipped the unfamiliar key in the lock.
I searched the living room. Pat and Tyson took the bedroom. It was not a big flat but it felt like Ken had never thrown away a piece of paper in his life. My fingers tore through offers of home delivery sushi, double-glazing solutions, pizzas he would never eat, cleaners he would never employ, limousine services he would never need. Bills for gas, water, electricity. A stack of postcards from Australia, curling with age, from a time when people still sent postcards. And then a photo of Dot. And then a tattered envelope – a strange colour somewhere between blue and green – the colour of the sea.
CERTIFICATE OF SERVICE if said on the front and his name, and rank, and number. And inside it was stuffed with yellowing paper. The actual Certificate of Service. My eyes ran over it, catching on details. Where born – village – Deptford. Where born – county – Kent. Trade brought up to – Metal machinist. Period volunteered for – for the period of the present emergency. Marks, wounds and scars – scars on knees. Wife – Dorothy Maud Lillian GRIMWOOD.
A square piece of blue paper fell to the floor and I picked it up. Buckingham Palace, it said. Admit one to witness Investiture. Signed by the Lord Chamberlain. Dot’s ticket to see Ken meet the King.
Pat appeared in the bedroom doorway. ‘Got it,’ he said, waving a passport. Tyson bobbed excitedly at his feet, sensing the mood. Blue lights danced across the walls. The sounds of violence seemed to be directly above our heads.
‘Le
t’s get out of here,’ I said, and the dog bounded ahead of us.
They were taking the Old Lads down. We stopped at the end of the walkway and watched them go. Those giant hard-boiled-egg heads lowered with defeat and loathing. Hands behind their backs, the fight knocked out of them. The cops in their Kevlar vests keen to be on their way.
‘You go,’ I told Pat. ‘Get in the car and lock all the doors. I’ll only be a minute.’
He looked at me for a moment and then started down, the dog panting at his feet. In the courtyard the back doors of the van were open. One of the Old Lads banged his enormous shaven head hard against the roof as he was stuffed inside. The spectators laughed appreciatively.
I ran up one flight. The walkway was empty. A ribbon of blue police tape fluttered across the smashed door. DO NOT CROSS, it said, and I slipped under it and went inside.
Flat screen TVs lined the hall. Consoles for video games. Rubbish sacks full of handbags and gladrags with designer labels. Fancy phones and poncy palm-held devices. I opened a door and it was the bathroom. The tub was full of more shiny black rubbish bags. I opened one of them. It was full of credit cards. The place was a treasure trove of stolen goods, an Aladdin’s cave of bent gear.
I looked over my shoulder. Through the open door I could see the blue lights had gone. Doors were being closed. Voices were fading. The children were being packed off to bed.
I went deeper into the flat.
It became more jumbled back here. Treasure shaded into junk, or at least items that were not easily disposed of. A wallet that contained nothing but the photo of a smiling child. A big gold Rolex watch where the second hand moved at a stuttering gait, marking it as a fake. And on top of a dustbin overflowing with plastic handbags and watches with rubber straps and an outmoded video player the size of a suitcase, I saw the box I was looking for.
Claret, edged with gold.
Small enough to hold in one hand.
I picked it up. I pressed the clasp and it opened. On the top half of the box there was ancient white silk and in small black letters it said, By Appointment, above the lion and the unicorn. Below that there was a name and address: J.R. Gaunt & Son, Ltd, 60 Conduit Street, London.
