The Frances Garrood Collection

by Frances Garrood

  As I rearrange my pillows and turn onto my back, I conclude that my problem is that I’m now surrounded by couples. Eric and Silas have each other, as do Mum and Dad. Even Sarah has what might be called a gentleman visitor, who is delivered from time to time from the back of a very dirty truck and stays just long enough to guarantee another litter of piglets. I have only met him once, and he is if possible even more ill-tempered than she is, but none the less, he is her mate (although no doubt the mate of many others, besides), and he seems to do the business to the satisfaction of both parties. I’m the only one who’s alone.

  Mikey has heard from his contact in Barbados, who has made a few enquiries but come up with nothing in the way of news of bearded trombone players, or indeed any trombone players at all. It seems that Barbados is bigger than I had imagined, and any search for Amos would be of the needle and haystack variety. Amos may even have already tired of it and left. As I drift off to sleep, I dream of Amos and me running towards each other across a palm-fringed beach, like a Caribbean Cathy and Heathcliffe.

  ‘Ruth! Ruth!’ Amos calls, but his voice and image become fainter and fainter until I find myself alone, and when I awake again, my pillow is damp with my tears.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  It’s becoming increasingly apparent that Silas is unwell again. He is breathless and pale, tires easily and complains of swollen ankles and palpitations.

  ‘I think it’s come back,’ he tells us, leafing through his health bible. It is a new one, which Eric gave him for Christmas since the old one was falling to pieces. It was not something Eric wanted to buy, since he had had more than enough of the last one, but he had to agree that Silas would only fret without what he sees as an essential aid to living. The new book is big and shiny and up-to-date, illustrated with the kinds of photographs that most people would do a great deal to avoid, and Silas loves it.

  ‘Look.’ Silas jabs a finger at a diagram of a heart valve. ‘That’s what it’s supposed to look like. I think mine must be shot to pieces.’

  ‘But you don’t know what your heart looks like,’ I object. ‘How can you possibly tell?’

  ‘I can feel it.’ Silas places a hand on his chest. ‘It’s fibrillating again. The valve just isn’t working properly. Look, Ruth.’ He shows me a picture of a non-functioning valve. ‘That’s what’s happened to it. I think I’m in mild heart failure.’

  He goes on the explain about “mitral regurgitation” and “oedema” and says that this almost certainly means he should have an operation.

  ‘Anyone would think you wanted an operation,’ I object. ‘No-one wants operations.’

  ‘Well, of course I don’t actually want one,’ Silas says, just a little too cheerfully. ‘But if I have to have one, then so be it.’

  ‘You should see the doctor anyway,’ Eric says. ‘You need a thorough check-up.’

  ‘All in good time, all in good time,’ Silas says, opening his book again. ‘I want to make quite sure I know all the facts before I start seeing doctors again.’

  ‘But the doctor will know all the facts. You don’t have to,’ I object.

  Silas regards me gravely over the top of his spectacles.

  ‘You can’t be too sure,’ he says. ‘And it’s my body. I think I should be the one to decide what to do with it.’

  Since none of us can argue with that, we have to leave Silas to get on with it, but I know that poor Eric is terribly worried, and I feel for him. In matters of his own health, Silas, usually the most thoughtful of men, can be very inconsiderate, for surely he, more than any of us, should understand how Eric is feeling.

  ‘You must be awfully worried,’ I say to Eric, when we are alone together.

  ‘Of course I am. But what can I do?’ He is currently preoccupied with the subject of koala bears and eucalyptus, and for once I’m grateful for Eric’s Ark, because at least it’s something to help keep his mind off his brother. ‘He’s so stubborn. It would be easier if he didn’t enjoy all this so much. He’s having a wonderful time with that bloody book of his. I wish I’d never given it to him. It only encourages him.’

  ‘He would have bought it for himself anyway,’ I remind him. ‘You know what Silas is like.’

  ‘True.’ Eric puts down his pen. ‘Did you know that the koala bear is a marsupial? Isn’t that interesting?’

  The following day, Silas collapses at the lunch table. As we once again await the arrival of the ambulance, Eric curses himself for not doing something sooner. It should never have come to this, he says wretchedly. We should have bundled him into the car and shipped him off to the doctor with or without his permission. If anything happens to Silas, he tells us, he will never forgive himself. Mum, too, feels responsible; even I feel responsible. In fact, it seems to me that everyone feels responsible except the patient, who is lying serenely on the kitchen floor issuing instructions through lips the colour of damsons.

  ‘Don’t talk, Silas,’ Eric tells him, ‘You’re just tiring yourself out.’

  ‘Take — my — pulse,’ whispers Silas.

  I take his pulse. I can barely feel anything, and what I can feel is thin and thready and very irregular.

  ‘What — is — it?’

  ‘Difficult to tell. A bit irregular.’

  Silas nods. ‘As — I — thought.’ He smiles, and I find myself actually feeling angry with him. How could he? How could he be so cheerful when everyone else is so worried? Doesn’t he spare a thought for Eric? For Mum? Apparently not. Silas is doing what he does best; he is Being Ill. And don’t we all enjoy doing what we do best?

  In hospital, Silas has all the tests he had last time, and is fully vindicated. His mitral valve has become virtually useless, and he needs a new one.

  ‘There,’ he says, sitting up in bed and talking through a plastic oxygen mask. ‘I was right all along.’

  ‘So you were,’ says Eric, who is by now paler than Silas.

  ‘They say they’re going to operate as soon as possible,’ Silas tells us. ‘I’m not sure what kind of valve they’re giving me. Apparently the organic ones are very good, but the metal ones last longer.’ I notice that his bible has managed to get into the hospital with him, and sits proudly on his bedside locker beside a bowl of fruit and the stuffed frog, which Silas considers to be his finest work. The nurses do not like the frog, and the words “bacteria” and “cross-infection” have been mentioned, but no-one has had the heart to remove it. ‘They can sometimes repair valves, but mine has gone too far.’ He pauses for breath. ‘I — told — you — so,’ he adds, ‘only the other day. Didn’t I tell you,’ he pauses again, panting through the steady hiss of oxygen, ‘it was shot to pieces?’

  Silas’s operation is scheduled for the following week. We are told that if it is left any longer, there is a risk of his condition deteriorating so much that he will be unfit to undergo surgery at all. In the meantime, he has further tests, and is given drugs to “stabilise his condition”. He looks terribly ill, but remains in good spirits, enjoying all the attention and making notes on everything pertaining to his illness and its treatment. As for the rest of us, we have been warned that Silas is a very sick man, and that while his chances are good, we must take into consideration that he is no longer young. While I think we have all managed to work this out for ourselves, it is not comforting to have it spelt out by someone in the know. Sometimes I wish that the medical profession would keep their more disappointing thoughts to themselves.

  Poor Eric is beside himself with worry, and is unable to concentrate on anything, and Mum isn’t much better. I also feel very sorry for Kent, who having only recently discovered that he has two fathers, is now having to come to terms with the fact that he may end up with just one (and a broken one at that, for who can imagine Eric without Silas?). Dad, on the other hand, is coming into his own, and while his offers of leading us all in prayer are politely declined, his support is very welcome. He makes telephone calls, does shopping, and drives people to the hospital to visit
Silas. He even feeds the chickens. While I’m sure he does all this with the best of intentions, I also feel it must help to take his mind off recalcitrant insurers and unreliable plumbers, for work on the house is only just getting started, and my father is not a patient man.

  The day of Silas’s operation is one of those extraordinary January days when spring decides to put in a fleeting, tantalising appearance; a brief reminder that winter isn’t here to stay, and that whatever else is happening, there’s light at the end of the seasonal tunnel. There are snowdrops in the garden, and the first hints of birdsong, the sky is a pale, washed blue, and the air is fresh and fragrant. As we drive to the hospital for our vigil (for it’s unthinkable that we should not be in the building while Silas has his operation), I think we’re probably all feeling the poignancy of the contrast between our own emotions and the beauty of the world outside.

  I have always thought that waiting is one of the hardest things we have to do in life. Whether it’s waiting for exam results, or for the longed-for phone call from a lover, or even for something relatively unimportant like the arrival of a visitor, it seems to have a paralysing effect. I can never get down to anything when I’m waiting. It’s as though life is put on hold, and nothing can move forward until the thing which is awaited has happened and I am released once more into activity, whatever form that may take.

  It’s like this today. Eric requested that Mum, Kent and I should accompany him to the hospital, and here we all are in the Relatives’ Room, which is bland and perhaps purposely characterless, with its pale walls and its fawn-upholstered chairs and its jug of plastic roses. Waiting. I can almost hear the time ticking by, although the clock on the wall makes no sound, and while there is plenty we could be saying, we all seem lost for words. There are magazines on the table, but none of us has touched them, and I have brought a book, but couldn’t think of reading it. I am praying to the God I don’t really believe in, Mum is almost certainly doing the same, Kent is standing by the window studying the distant view of the car park, and Eric is sitting on the edge of a chair, as though at any moment he may be required to leap up and do something. I have paid two visits to the coffee machine outside to purchase plastic cups of something warm and murky, and a nurse has popped in a couple of times to see if we’re okay. Otherwise, the silence ticks by virtually uninterrupted. I don’t think I have ever known time pass so slowly.

  After two hours and fifty-five minutes (yes, I’ve been counting. I’m sure everyone’s been counting), a doctor arrives in blue theatre scrubs. I think we all immediately know that something is wrong.

  ‘Yes?’ Eric jumps to his feet. ‘How is he? What’s happened?’

  Very carefully, the doctor closes the door behind him and turns to face us.

  ‘I’m afraid there’s been — a complication,’ he tells us.

  ‘A complication? What complication? How is he? What’s happened?’ Eric lets rip with a barrage of questions.

  ‘I’m afraid —’

  ‘Yes? Yes? Come on! Out with it! What has happened to Silas?’ Eric grabs hold of his sleeve. ‘Tell us. You have to tell us!’

  ‘I’m trying to tell you.’ Gently, the doctor disengages himself from Eric’s grip. ‘The operation itself went well, and the new valve is functioning nicely. But unfortunately your brother — he is your brother isn’t he? — suffered a haemorrhage during surgery. He lost a lot of blood very quickly, and while we replaced it as fast as we could, his blood pressure fell dangerously low. There is the possibility of —’

  ‘What? The possibility of what? What’s going to happen to him?’

  ‘The possibility — just the possibility — of brain damage.’

  Time stops ticking. For a few moments, life itself seems to stand still. In these few moments I know that whatever happens, I shall never forget this day, this moment, this horrid little room, which seems suddenly redolent of all the grief, all the tragedies, all the bad news which has been released within its walls. I shall remember Eric’s mismatched socks, just visible beneath his trousers; the stain — coffee? — on the carpet, shaped rather like a map of Italy; the hideous roses, with their faded plastic petals; the single leafless sapling outside the window; the tiny vapour trail of a distant aeroplane across the ice-blue sky.

  And the sound. The first sound which breaks the silence. The soft, heartbreaking sound of Eric weeping.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  The next few days are an agony of waiting, punctuated by the mundane tasks needed to keep ourselves (not to mention the animals) alive and give some semblance of normality. Ordinary everyday jobs like cleaning my teeth or washing up the dishes take on a strange irrelevance; I keep stopping to ask myself what I’m doing them for. What does it matter if dirty plates stack up on the draining board, or my toothbrush goes unused for a couple of days? Who cares? I suppose I have been fortunate. Up until now, I have never had any kind of brush with tragedy. I recall with equanimity the long-ago death of my grandfather; he was old, and I scarcely knew him. When I was about twelve, the family cat was run over, and I did shed tears over him. But this is so much bigger, its potential for grief so much greater. I have grown to love my uncles dearly, and my sadness is compounded many times over by that of Eric, who is quite distraught. Silas is being kept sedated to “give his body a rest”, and the extent of any damage won’t be known until they withdraw the drugs and let him wake up. Eric spends his days sitting by Silas’s bed in the Intensive Care Unit, among the forest of tubes and drips and the beeps and sighs of the machinery upon which Silas now depends, and his nights pacing up and down in his room, which is next to mine, sometimes weeping, sometimes listening to the BBC world service on the radio. I hear him going downstairs at two and three in the morning to make cups of tea, his footsteps slow and apologetic and infinitely weary.

  ‘Are you all right, Eric?’ I join him in the kitchen, unable to bear the idea that he is down here suffering on his own while everyone else is asleep.

  Eric looks up. He seems mildly surprised.

  ‘Oh, Ruth. What are you doing down here?’

  ‘I came to see you.’

  ‘Ah.’ He pauses, kettle in hand. ‘Cup of tea?’

  ‘Please.’ I sit down at the table. ‘Eric what can I do to help?’

  He sits beside me, nursing his mug between his hands. ‘Nothing. There’s nothing anyone can do. That’s the trouble.’ He manages a pale smile. ‘You see, we’ve never been apart before.’

  ‘What, not ever?’

  ‘Not ever. Well, maybe a night or two here and there, but never longer than that. As children we did everything together, and we’ve lived together ever since. There’s been no need to be apart.’

  ‘Oh, Eric. I’m so, so sorry.’ I’m unable to think of anything else to say, because of course there’s nothing anyone can say. All I know is that Eric’s heart is breaking, and however much we may want to help him, he is beyond our reach, in a world of his own.

  ‘I can’t think of anything else, do anything else. I can’t even be anything else. All I am is Silas’s brother. Waiting.’

  Waiting. That word again. Eric is suspended between the chance of hope and the expectation of grief, and for the time being at least, has come down on the side of grief, and in his state of suspense (which when I think about it now, takes on a whole extra meaning) is totally disabled.

  I take his hand and rub it gently between my own. It feels terribly cold, but I doubt whether Eric is aware of it. He’s probably been pacing about for ages in his unheated bedroom. He hasn’t even bothered to put on a dressing gown. I get up to fetch a coat from the hall, and put it round his shoulders.

  ‘You’ll catch your death,’ I tell him, ‘And then what use will you be to Silas if — when he needs you?’

  ‘I suppose we always assumed we’d die together,’ he says, and I know that he hasn’t heard a word I’ve been saying. ‘Silly, isn’t it? But we were conceived together, born together, went to school together. We even started shavin
g on the same day. There wasn’t much to shave, but we shaved it off anyway with our dad’s old razor. And we felt so proud. Real men, we told each other. Not boys any more. Men.’

  ‘I’ve often wondered what it must be like to be a twin.’ I stir sugar into my tea, which is much too strong.

  ‘And I’ve often wondered what it must be like not to be one. To be an individual, unique, entirely different from everyone else. As children, we were always being compared with each other. Our school reports, exams, team games.’ He sighs. ‘We both hated games. We were the ones to be picked last for team games, but it was still a competition to see which of us would be picked the very last. Usually no-one knew which of us they were picking anyway, as they could never tell us apart.’

  I know that not all twins — even identical ones — are as similar as this; some in fact contrive to be quite different. There were identical twins in my class at school who went to considerable lengths to make themselves as individual as possible, even to the extent of wearing their school uniforms in different ways. Few needed (or indeed, dared) to confuse them. But it seems that Eric and Silas have always delighted in their similarity and the confusion it causes, and don’t appear to need to establish their individuality, although it’s certainly there for anyone who takes the trouble to get to know them.

  ‘He’s still alive, you know,’ I say, after a moment. ‘They say there’s a chance he’ll make a full recovery. You told me so yourself.’

  ‘Yes. But when I see him lying there, he looks so — so not Silas, somehow. Almost as though he’s already gone.’

  ‘I don’t think anyone looks their best when they’re unconscious,’ I tell him gently.

  ‘No. You’re right.’ He pulls the jacket more closely around him. ‘I suppose I was always the pessimist. I left the optimism to Silas. I mean, look at the way he approached this operation. Anyone would think he was going on holiday.’