In the Falling Snow

by Caryl Phillips

  V

  THE SHARP, ACRID smell of the hospital ward alarms him. The noise of the machines that beep with metronomic precision, and the sight of people laid out in various states of helplessness is unsettling, but it is the high stench of cleanliness that truly disturbs him. Suddenly he is desperate for fresh air, but it is too late now. He walks slowly towards the far end of the ward where he can see his father lying prostrate in the cot under the window with his eyes closed, an intravenous drip needled and taped into the underside of his forearm, and his heartbeat, a neon green parabola, blipping away on a small screen. His father is asleep, but his brow remains furrowed, which suggests that this is not a painless slumber. He looks down at the surprisingly wizened face that is lined like a walnut, and he can see that his father seems to have aged a whole decade in the space of a few days. Near the end of the bed there is a plain metal fold-out chair which is set at a watchful angle, and so he sets his bag down to the side of the chair and then sits heavily and stares at the sleeping man. Were his father to open his eyes he is not sure what he might say to him, so he is grateful for this moment of silent contemplation.

  The train had once again picked up speed and was flashing through the countryside of the midlands when his mobile rang. His diary was open before him as he was planning a time to see Laurie, but he soon realised that the diary was unnecessary as he was unemployed and pretty much available any time. Flanking his diary on all sides were a whole mass of print-outs which detailed the specifications of various one- and two-bedroom flats. There was nobody seated next to him, or in the two seats opposite, and so he was able to scatter his documents across the tabletop without inconveniencing anybody. He panicked for a moment, for he knew that the phone was somewhere underneath these papers, and then he found it and quickly flipped it open. Baron was characteristically blunt and to the point. ‘Your father is in the hospital with a heart attack. I call the ambulance this morning when I notice he can’t catch his breath, but they have him stabilised and everything. They say no danger as we get him there in time, but it don’t make no sense for you to go by his place. You better come straight to St Joseph’s and you’ll find him there.’ For a moment he didn’t know what to say to Baron, but then he caught a reflection of himself in the window of the train, with the phone in one hand and his mouth hanging open and foolish. ‘Keith, you still there?’ He tried to adopt a casual tone as he let Baron know that he would take a taxi from the train station straight to the hospital. But he couldn’t help checking. ‘But you say he’s all right?’ Baron laughed the low rumbling laugh that he remembered from his childhood. ‘They just keeping an eye on him, or whatever it is they does call it. Monitoring him.’

  Once he hung up on Baron, he busied himself for a few minutes tidying up the print-outs. He folded them in half, and then he tucked everything into his diary which he then pushed into the holdall on the seat next to him. The train began to amble and so he stared out of the window as the countryside was replaced by the outskirts of yet another grim industrial town that was too insignificant for the train to stop at. He snapped out of his daydreaming, then picked up the phone and dialled Annabelle. He could tell from the background noise that she was driving and not fully concentrating on what he was saying. She asked him to speak louder. ‘I said, I’m going straight to the hospital. He’s had a heart attack, but apparently it’s not serious.’ Annabelle said nothing in reply so he couldn’t be sure if she had heard him. And then she spoke with a clarity that took him by surprise. ‘Hold on, I’m just pulling over.’ Again he turned his attention to the window, as the train began now to pick up speed and leave the red-bricked town behind. Returning to the countryside was a welcome relief, but these fields differed from the previous ones for they were decorated with cows and sheep. He had never really understood how this worked. Who owned the animals, and how did you prevent them from running away or getting mixed up with other people’s cows and sheep? ‘Is he all right?’ He reassured Annabelle that everything seemed to be under control and that Baron didn’t seem too worried. ‘Should I tell Laurie?’ On this he was adamant. ‘No, don’t tell him. I’ll call him myself. He should hear it from me, but there’s probably not much to tell him.’ Even as the words came out of his mouth he found himself wondering why, if this were the case, he had called Annabelle. In the silence, he could hear her car engine idling, and then what sounded like a lorry roared past. He had no idea what else to say to her.

  The harried-looking nurse asks him how his father’s health has been of late. He shrugs his shoulders and tells her that he lives in London, but he saw his father just recently and he seemed fine.

  ‘He lives on his own, does he, love?’ He nods and watches as she writes on the clipboard file that she cradles in the crook of her left elbow. ‘The other feller wasn’t that much help. He did say that your father was retired, can you confirm that?’ He nods, but not wanting to be thought of as unhelpful he continues.

  ‘Yes, he’s been retired for a few years now. He worked at the university, as a janitor. And yes, he lives by himself.’

  ‘Well,’ says the nurse, without looking up, ‘that never helps, to be honest with you, but at least we can rule out any possibility of elder abuse.’

  ‘Of what?’

  ‘There’s more of it than you’d believe.’ She finishes writing and looks across at the monitor. ‘Anyhow, I don’t think you’ve got anything to worry about, he’s stable. You can come back in a few hours. Maybe between six and seven when we’ll wake him up for something to eat.’

  He wants to ask her if Baron is due back, but her no-nonsense manner suggests that she will have little sympathy for his question. Only now does the nurse actually deign to look in his direction. She is a reasonably attractive woman, but some make-up would help. Or would it? She looks like she has recently tightened her grip on the world of clipboard authority, having arrived at the age where a single woman becomes a spinster.

  ‘You’re welcome to stay, if you like. You can sit here, or we’ve more comfy chairs out there in the reception area.’ She points towards the far end of the ward. ‘And there’s a cafeteria downstairs if you want tea or coffee. It’s up to you, but I’ll warrant your father will not be opening his eyes for a good few hours yet.’

  There is nobody on the door to the Mandela Centre. He walks into the lobby area and stares at the noticeboard, which boasts an airline poster of a beach in Barbados and a monthly schedule of events. In among the coffee mornings, and the bingo sessions and the occasional fish and chip supper, he can see that this afternoon the residents are being offered chair-based exercises, which he assumes take place in the dayroom at the end of the hallway. The walls of the corridor are decorated with drawings that are evidently the result of some therapeutic course. Prominent among the infantile stick figures, and the crayoned sunsets, is a large sheet of white cardboard that is framed with thin bamboo strips and upon which are stencilled the words, ‘Have a Positive Encounter With Yourself.’ He hears the country music before he enters the dayroom, but as he opens the glass-panelled door none of the half-dozen or so residents look up from their chairs. Before them sits a matronly woman who turns and eyeballs him, but she continues to flex her elbows and ankles to the jaunty rhythms of Tammy Wynette.

  ‘I can help you with something, dear?’

  ‘Sorry to interrupt, but I’m looking for Baron. I thought he might be here.’

  ‘Well, you don’t see him here, so I suggest you pass upstairs and see if you find him in his flatlet. You know where to take the lift?’ She points. ‘Just down so at the end of the corridor. You related to him?’ He shakes his head. ‘No, you don’t favour him. Your face too sweet.’

  Baron answers the door dressed in an overstretched red tracksuit that hangs loosely around his stout frame. On his head he wears a baseball cap that is set at a comically rakish angle, and his bare feet are unslippered.

  ‘So you finally reach.’ He swivels away from his guest and speaks now with his back turned.
‘You better come in.’

  The flat is stiflingly hot and cramped, but Baron picks up a pile of old tabloid newspapers from the sofa and drops them on to the carpeted floor, thereby making space for him to sit.

  ‘Me, I don’t stand on no ceremonies here, so you better just squat down and make yourself at home.’

  He sits and looks at the photograph of a smiling Lady Di above the mantelpiece, and then at the wooden walking stick that is leaning up in the corner beneath a crucifix that has been clumsily nailed to the wall. For some reason the crucifix has a washcloth hanging from it. The oddly shaped, almost circular, television set is the centrepiece of the room, and an afternoon game show holds Baron’s attention. Balanced precariously on top of the television is a vase that is stuffed with an outlandish array of exotic plastic flowers.

  ‘I can get you something? Tea or coffee? I eat downstairs with the others, but my kitchenette always have the basics.’

  He shakes his head. ‘No thanks. Maybe later.’

  Baron’s rumbling laughter begins slowly, then starts to rock his whole body. ‘Later? How long you planning on staying? You don’t think I have things to do?’

  He can feel the powerful surge of heat coming from the radiators, but he assumes that the residents’ bills are either partly or wholly subsidised. Baron sits in a battered armchair, and above his head a leash hangs from the ceiling. He knows, from having made site visits to similar facilities, that this is the emergency pull in case of any problems. Again he notices Baron’s feet, which are calloused and chalky, and he watches as Baron vigorously rubs them together as though trying to flake off an outer layer of skin.

  ‘I take it you never been in one of the flatlets before?’ He shakes his head. ‘Well, I’m a man who likes to keep myself to myself. I don’t go knocking on doors asking to borrow teabags or anything, but if I have something I will share it. People around here is generally friendly, but you bound to get a few of the types who just go to church so they can change clothes and shoes and show off and look at women, and then you get the crazy ones who wander the centre at night looking for their children, the same children who get a council assessment against them and force them into this place. The Mandela is what they call supported accommodation, but you know this already. And it’s here that you must make your father come when they let him out of the hospital.’

  He looks at Baron and shakes his head. ‘I don’t think I can make him do anything that he doesn’t want to do. You know how it is with him.’

  ‘Your father’s situation is better than most people. Look at me. I am a twin, which means there’s two of me. One of me is back in Jamaica living good, and me is here on medication and so no point in going home for I can’t afford the medicine back there to keep me alive. My pension just about work here, but back there the pension can’t pay for my pills. I don’t have no choice but to be here and I know I never going see my twin again. I’m understanding that. We don’t even correspond. But your father is lucky for he just get a scare. However, if he go back to trying to cope with everything by himself, then who knows what happen the next time?’ Baron pauses and looks at his television game show. Then, as though suddenly remembering that he has a guest, he turns back towards him. ‘He need to be among people. His own people. I live next door to English people for forty years, but I had enough. They don’t want me, then I don’t want them. However, a man must have some kind of people, but your father’s head is hard. Ever since Brenda call the police to drag him away and get him locked up the second time, your father don’t like to be too close to nobody. But remember, he come to take you from Brenda when he get out. The man’s head is hurting bad from two times in hospital, but at least he make the effort for you. Then after you gone off to college he just get more stubborn and he don’t want to get involved in no palaver with women or anything that can hurt him again and so he choose to remain free, but life don’t come free. Look at me. Look at all of us.’ Baron laughs. ‘Freedom don’t look so clever now. I used to tell your father that marriage is just possession and obligation, and the real thing is wild, but because most men want both the possession and the wild they end up running two women, but your father ain’t suited to either style.’ Again he laughs. ‘But like I say, freedom don’t look so clever now.’

  He hears his mobile begin to ring in his trouser pocket and for a moment he thinks about ignoring it. Then he realises that it might be Laurie so he arches his body and takes it out. He can see from the screen that it’s Lesley, so he quickly pushes the phone back into his pocket and returns his attention to Baron, who once again seems fixated on the game show.

  ‘Sorry about that.’

  Baron turns from the television screen and grins toothlessly at him. ‘No reason for you to be sorry. I know you is a busy man.’

  ‘Well, thanks for taking the trouble to stay with him and get him to the hospital.’ He pauses and looks again at the washcloth that is dangling from the crucifix.

  ‘Keith, listen to me. Your father is a proud man, but he has a lot of pressure on his soul. A normal man would have seek out some kind of church guidance, but your father is not a normal kind of man, so church ain’t going to help.’

  He looks at Baron, and then at his bag, which sits on the floor next to the pile of old newspapers. The game show is over and the theme music is bellowing out, and the light from the television flickers and illuminates the sombre room. A part of him wants to thank Baron and then take a taxi to the station and catch a train back to London and simply forget this whole mess. He should let his father just live out his life in whatever fashion he wishes, but he knows that if he goes back to London now he will, in all likelihood, never return. Baron leans forward slightly and reaches into his trouser pocket and then holds out his hand.

  ‘Here, you going need the keys to your father’s house.’

  He takes the keys from Baron and folds them into the palm of his hand. Baron continues to stare at him.

  ‘You love your father?’

  He looks closely at Baron, but he is unsure how to answer this question.

  ‘Keith, whether you love the man or not, the fact is you’re doing this for him, not for you. At this stage of his life who else can he talk to?’

  On the way back to the hospital he sits on the lower deck of the bus close to the front door. The bus has been parked for ten minutes now, and the driver is still arguing with two youths who want to bring their KFC on board. The driver is insistent. ‘You can poison yourself all you like with that crap, but I’m not having smelly food on my bus.’ One lad defiantly eats a piece of chicken in front of the driver, while his friend seems to be increasingly aware of the fact that they are holding up a bus full of people eager to get home after a day of work. ‘Come on, guy. You’re being a mentalist now.’ He looks away from the turmoil and out through the window of the bus, and then he takes out his mobile phone and dials the access number to his voicemail. Lesley sounds matter-of-fact, but she is letting him know that she did as promised and spoke with Yvette, who has agreed not to go before a tribunal. Apparently, Yvette has fired her lawyer and decided to take the settlement package that Clive Wilson has offered her. ‘I think she was seeing the lawyer. Not that it means anything, but I suspect that her relationship with the lawyer was the hold-up.’ She pauses. ‘She didn’t mention you, in case you were wondering, it was all about the lawyer. But she sounded good. Well, you know, relieved.’ Again Lesley pauses. ‘Look, I won’t be calling you again so no worries, okay? Well, that should be the end of it.’ The awkwardness of the phone message seems to be intensifying and then she laughs. ‘Bye, Keith.’ He continues to hold the phone to his ear. It is the commotion of the police car pulling up, and the two youngsters swiftly jumping from the bus and bolting away in the direction of the concrete and glass shopping centre, that suddenly jars him back to life.