by Neil Rowland
I wander stiffly back to the kitchen, re-reading my correspondence along the way, chewing on a slice of toast daubed with blackcurrant jam, that resembles blood-cells separated from the plasma.
What does any guy with a faulty heart valve want with lengthy litigation? Do they have any awareness of our delicate position? Mistakes can be made in business, I’m ready to concede. Errors occur, in all spheres of life and business, not only in the medical profession. There are accidents, mistakes and blunders, in the nuclear, armaments or food industries; whereby safety checks are not made, workers fail to check on the production process, managers compromise with safety to improve profits and efficiency. Consignments erroneously or illegally transported, whether that be enriched uranium, armoured cars or baby milk. These blunders can have a catastrophic impact on our lives, individual or collective. Call me a bit paranoid, but I know how it all works.
An error of that nature obviously happened with me. And with all those unfortunate cardiacs around this great big onion, whose surgeon hit on the smart idea of fitting Pearly Synthetics’ new artificial heart valves (having read the glossy brochure). I couldn’t help reading those hospital letters over and over again, with their menacing tone of sympathy and warning. I chewed on further slices of crimson toast, pouring yet more cups of breakfast tea, leaving the day’s newspaper for later. I understood very well that the heart attack machine had absorbed me: I had become no more than a single cell in a larger organism, of fear and paranoia, like a gnat squashed between train buffers.
How would I agitate my generation to protest on the streets about this? What was going to be my call? my manifesto? Nobody would likely come, but I still have those feelings of anger and injustice. One reason why we demonstrated at all was to get rid of unbearable ideas, which could torment the mind and conscience. Protest is a matter of personal healthy and sanity. It’s critical to voice and to express such powerful feelings of disgust and outrage. Otherwise you are left feeling dirty.
These Pearly Synthetics guys are guilty of negligence or criminality - agreed. They deserve to be forced to stand up in a courtroom somewhere - or at least sit behind their silk suited barracuda - wherever in the world those broken-hearted coronaries may live. Some form of pay-out, in compensation for damage, sounds attractive and might heal the sutures in my own business. But it could never repair or recompense me for the physical damage it has created. A windfall would have a negative effect on our kids. They’d become richer than their wildest dreams, so then what would happen to their wildest dreams? Liz may or may not have lost her youthful ideas, but she’d never forgive me for that. Call us old-fashioned or moralistic. No, it’s best to leave that Californian law suit hanging.
Decided on this, I scrunch up all that official hospital paper. When I have a moment I’ll shred the whole thing. I slouch back at our kitchen table, taking advantage of the solitary silence. I think about those guys around the globe in the same delicate situation as me. As a saint I wouldn’t wish this condition on anyone. As a flawed human being I can’t help feeling glad I’m not alone. Everybody thinks about death. Premature death’s the most unjust kind, because it catches us out, while we’re busy doing other things. Suddenly you’re not counting years off, you are peering around the next corner. Sometimes it’s a blessing to worry yourself sick over your kids. If this life really is a test, as Lizzie and the Dino would have us believe, and all humanity is just messing about in the waiting room for a final interview with The Big Guy (the consultant in the heavens) then I’m happy to put myself in front of my kids. That’s what you’d expect; that’s regular, so I’m not asking to be canonised (or to be put into the rock ‘n’ roll hall of fame either) or anything like that.
There was a lead article in the Bristol newspaper this week that caught my eye. This concerned a well-known vicar in the city who tragically died of leukaemia. The guy was just into his forties, which isn’t any kind of age. He was known as a hard working priest of liberal views that offended some - although this is an easy-going liberal city on the whole. He worked a lot with reforming prisoners, drug addicts and the homeless. We have plenty of those categories of people here. Built like an ox, a bearded charismatic, thick skinned and compassionate, married with three children.
In this photograph, reproduced by the newspaper, his eyes seem troubled. Evidently this shot was taken before lethal illness kicked in to annihilate red blood cells. What was the cause of his angst? If he didn’t yet know about his illness? Could it have been the difficult individuals he worked with? Or maybe some doubts about his own faith? Or was it the lost faith of the society around him? What’s the point of a priest without a decent congregation? As for a father without a proper family?
It’s an injustice to be stolen away from this world too soon. If you love life and other people it is. So how am I coping with the idea? I know that self-pity is not attractive to others, particularly after they have divorced you. When that deluded fool gunned down John Lennon on a New York street, how can I have self pity? Lennon still had a love of life to go with his love of Yoko and his children.
Lightning strikes.
Yesterday morning, I think it must have been, I was listening to BBC Radio Bristol in bed, when they told the story of how a workman, out cleaning the Clifton Suspension Bridge (just a few streets away from us here) had fallen to his death. What a foolish if tragic step, to entertain the whole city over its breakfast table.
I walked around the gorge this week, as I often do, where I noticed that a temporary platform has been constructed under the bridge. It was from there that the guy went for a tumble. The workers stand on the platform and, as they finish cleaning one section and shuffle around, their wooden ledge is shifted along. Apparently this guy leant too far out with his mop, causing him to slip and to plunge, hundreds of feet down into the stinking mud of the Avon at low tide.
Do you know, the gang was back cleaning the bridge next day. They were all assembled high-up on the platform with mops and sponges, soaping the metal lattices and girders, just as if nothing had happened. You can’t ignore that type of karma. They even went and replaced the light bulbs knocked out on his way down. They couldn’t face the idea of not seeing the historic bridge lit up at night. They couldn’t bear to leave any unsightly dark patches among the fairy lights.
But then again, why hang about? To be honest with you, most of the time, I try not to think about it.
By my reckoning Angie was supposed to be at work by eight. I check off Liz’s pilot’s watch gift again: It’s already gone that. She’s unlikely to reach her percolator on time. While I’m anguishing over my existence in the basement kitchen, she’s upstairs, quietly buried under a duvet a few floors above my head. What should I do? Get hold of the bottom corners and tip her on to the floor? She’ll reach the age of majority next year, whatever that means. Not marriage, I hope. Not to that spiv alternative music promoter. God help us. Seems unlikely. Will the Dino be giving her away one day in my place? The bastard’s taken everything else.
Meanwhile, trying not to stress-out, I complete my application to join the Yoga society. None of the drugs work anymore and, anyway, they leave your head like a limestone quarry after a flash-flood. Satisfied by my efforts to explain my reasons - with no mention of pretty divorcees in leotards (though it’s a legitimate reason) - I lick the seal and address the envelope, trying to feel pleased. I read in the Sunday supplement, health section, last weekend, that you can get an overall view of your health by examining your tongue. That was it; you stick out your tongue, get the end between your thumb and finger, to examine the colour and then, if you’re an expert in tongue tone, you have the low down on any medical condition. That’s great news for tongue solipsists. Most mornings I’m too nervous to even clear away the steam from my bathroom mirror.
I’ll post that Yoga application on the way to work. No more loping about the squash courts now, two steps behind Rachael and her sis
ter (the girl with the elastic elbows). I’ll trust myself to a deep spiritual peace with the help of those chicks in tights. Those experienced ladies know how to move to a slower wisdom.
What if Corrina fails to show at Rupert’s dinner party? How to drink that rich claret of total humiliation and save my face? if she stands me up again? Bob H warned me that she may not attend. She only treats me to private interviews, usually on a Sunday afternoon at her place. Many of our previous dates, as I think back, were accidental meetings, including the very first time we met at Whig Wham. But then so was the birth of the universe. So why bitch?
I think about where Lizzie and I were, when we got the news about John Lennon’s death. That’s right, we were down here in the kitchen, this same spot, in December 1980. The shock and disbelief on her face as she came through and announced the dreadful fact. But he wasn’t a member of our family or a close friend. We couldn’t blow it out of proportion. The posthumous album was released shortly afterwards, like a devil’s marketing ploy. Lennon was singing on that album about watching his son Sean growing up. For a generation that had grown up with Lennon, as with the other Beatles, this was unbearably poignant and sad to follow. Yoko sang about middle-aged contentment, bad times (musical and personal) finally over, the chance to start life anew. A Double Fantasy cruelly ended. It was an empty elevator moment for our generation.
Arguably Lizzie and I have been through a similar annihilation. She decided to use the ultimate weapon against us, as if Khrushev insisted that his ships should get to Cuba or Nixon had got angrier with Ho Chi Mhin.
They say you can’t erase the past. I’m haunted by her presence around the house. I’m rooting around the place, when I hear her voice, telling me something, or asking me to do something. “Did you say something?” I reply. “Did you call me, Liz?” I say. Occasionally I even rush into a room expecting to surprise her, as if she’s playing some kind of game with me. Until I understand that she really isn’t there, she can’t possibly be in the house, even if I do pick up her voice and feel her presence everywhere. I remember that she is gone and the place is empty. When the silence is pressed up into my face, like a steel door in the dark.
There are numerous, particular places in Dylan’s songs, which carry an impression of Liz’s words - her voice and way of expressing herself - fused with Zimmerman’s lyrics and notes. We’ve played those albums so often, that our lives are engraved into them. Sensory and psychic memories contained in that music. I guess that’s more Lizzie’s territory than mine. I can’t help wondering if she’s disturbed by the same. Except that she won’t be listening to Dylan any longer, never mind keeping up with him. If they notice a picture of Zimmerman they stick their index fingers together and back away.
Going upstairs to investigate Angela’s absence, I shout another wake-up call; trying not to strike the tragic note. When I get to the second floor balustrade I notice another sheet of wallpaper slowly peeling down from a corner. It reminds me of a giant tear falling down the wall. Can I safely get up on a ladder these days, or should I pay my brother to do the job? Angela’s muffled groans and complaints tell me which way to go. This brings about more short-term memories of that attitudinal, much older boyfriend. So how am I thinking of straightening her out?
“Angela! Angela! Where are you?”
More ghosts rush into my head; as this time I’m yelling across the immensity of a Pembrokeshire beach, over a decade and more ago.
“Go and look, Noah! Didn’t you notice her running off? Didn’t you see anything?” Lizzie challenges. She’s provoked to this by anxiety. My lovely young wife begins to get changed out of a polka-dot swimming costume, after completing another swim in the ocean. Apparently I’d been dozing amidst the dunes, lost in my own world as usual.
“Sorry, Lizzie, really sorry. I just closed my eyes for a moment, you know. Then she was gone,” I explain.
“No good being sorry if she’s drowned,” Lizzie warns.
“She’s just gone to explore. To buy another ice-cream.”
“I can’t leave you for a minute, Noah!”
“What do you expect me to do?” I object, struggling to my feet.
“We have to go and look!” she insists, shocking me with icy drops from her fingertips.
“Which particular direction would you suggest?”
“Let’s set off... let’s go in different ways to find her!” Lizzie says.
Babe, best you go your way and I’ll go mine? Liz stomped away, holding the rim of a floppy hat with one hand. I set off through the sand dunes with trembling knees and tom-tom heartbeat, scanning that desolate sweep of bay for our errant child.
“Angela! Angela!”
Bathers of all shapes and generations played around the surf’s edge where the waves rolled in, like cruel laughter. As panic rose in me, the shapes were no more than vertical blurs over streaming vision. I felt that Angela was dissolving in these acidy tears. How can a small child get so far away so quickly? There’s no longer any sign of my wife - no polka dots or sun hat - as if we are not a young family of three, but entirely isolated individuals - man, woman, child - going in different directions, away from each other on that windy shore, lost from each other forever.
My drunken return the other evening was regrettable. Then, after Angie’s friends had gone back home in a taxi, I had to put her to bed - as if she was ten years old again. Except it wasn’t quite like that. We threw our arms around each other like a pair of drunken sailors crossing the swing bridge. Who was taking the weight? To make no mention of the fitful heart muscle. She twists that café owner around her little toe, apparently. Why can’t she get to work on time? She’s vending cappuccinos; she isn’t running a public limited company.
Suddenly Luke edges out of his bedroom on to the landing. Unwittingly we are thrown into a conflict situation, when I least expected to see him. His school uniform has been pulled on any old how; half strangling himself with the school tie; a Formula One sports bag slung over his shoulder, containing study materials. I’m the last guy he expected to see through his windshield.
He’s got into the habit of leaving Big Pink early, like he’s a keen scholar. I realise that his weekly routine has been influenced by new mates and fresh interests. His return home times have become just as erratic and extended. We all seem to keep to a different time in this epoch. His behaviour has become alarmingly unpredictable, even allowing for ripping hormones and blitzkrieg growth spurts.
“You can’t leave the house without breakfast,” I warn.
He treats me to edgy eye contact. I step neatly aside to get out of his way.
“I’ll be waiting in the kitchen for you,” I say. Where else?
He colours rapidly and growls at me: a primitive throaty whine, like the angry throttle noises from the pipes of Corrina’s motorbike, as she reluctantly lingers at the lights.
“An empty stomach leads to an empty head,” I argue. I’ve certainly got a few holes in my own thoughts.
Luke cuts off the warning sounds. “I’ll get somefin’ on the way to school wan I!” he protests.
“Double death burger and fries?” I wonder.
“You checkin’ what I eat now?” he says.
Elizabeth’s original red hair - a dangerous electrical copper - is rucked up into alarming punkish spikes. It gives him inches over me and an alarming menace. He has her passionate, uncompromising eyes too.
“Go back to our room and fetch me your dirty clothes.”
“What’s that?”
“I’m not your bloody laundry maid, boy,” I complain.
“Wait here!”
After a period of banging, dragging and dark muttering he returns. He thrusts a spilling bundle of balled clothes towards me. As I try to make sense of the tangle, I notice heavy grease stains on his best denims. “So where did these come from?” I say.
/> “Stop sweating me, Dad!”
“Don’t run away yet, as I need to talk to you about...”
“What now?”
“I’m looking at your best pair of jeans... that you haggled out of your mother and...what are these stains? Can’t you explain?”
“What are you steamin’ over now?”
“These!” I tell him, holding up the offending garment like a crazed floor scrubber in a television advertising campaign.
“How the bloody hell should I know?” he objects.
“Tell me how you got grease on these trousers.”
Luke’s sore unfocused eyes narrow on me. He’s trudged half way down the staircase and is glaring up at me - with those tigerish eyes.
“I told you!”
“You haven’t been mucking about with my car again, have you?” I ask.
“I didn’t touch your old banger,” he replies.
“You need to ask me first, before we do any mechanical work together. All right?”
“I’m not interested in your stupid car.”
“Last time I conked out on the motorway to Cardiff,” I recall. “’Cause you’d loosened the fuel pipe. That’s a vintage motor you know, which has to be treated carefully. Not that you did anything deliberately,” I add.
“If you got me a motorbike, proper,” he argues, “I wouldn’t need to mess around on it, would I.”
“You’re still after that motorbike?” I say.
“What’s the point of doin’ bloody motor mechanics at school, right, if I’ve only got toy cars to practice on?” he tells me.
“You’re not old enough yet. They’re too damn dangerous. Do you want to fall off, like Bob Dylan? D’you want to risk your future career?” I say.
“Your girlfriend’s got one, hasn’t she,” Luke reminds me. “That blonde bit you hang about with.”
