I heard footsteps, firm but very soft, and saw Sister had come to scan the monitors. She looked down at me, a small smile on her face.
‘I hear you went to school with Maureen Coleman.’
‘Yes, yes I did,’ I responded, surprised by a name I hadn’t heard for four or five years.
‘Maureen was here when your Daddy came in. She’s a ward sister now. Did you know that? She’s having her break now and I think you ought to go and have a cup of tea with her,’ she added firmly. ‘You need a wee break yourself, but I’ll stay here till you come back. I’ll come for you if there’s any change at all,’ she said reassuringly as she saw my flicker of anxiety.
I hesitated, but I knew I could trust her, so I tiptoed down the ward, aware how noisy my heels would be on the tiled floor as I passed the sleeping child. Once in the corridor, I headed for the visitors’ room.
‘Jenny!’
I stopped, confused, as a dark-haired young woman stepped out of the office and took my arm, leading me into the empty staffroom.
‘Jenny, I’m so sorry about your father. Here, sit down and drink a cup of tea.’ She poured it out and handed it to me.
‘I thought you were still in London, Maureen,’ I said awkwardly as I tried to collect my thoughts. ‘I couldn’t even think for a moment who Maureen Coleman was when Sister came and said your name. I am sorry, I’m a bit through myself, as my mother would say.’
‘Never you mind, sure you’ve good cause,’ she said, pressing my arm. ‘I have a message for you from your daddy,’ she went on quietly.
I looked up, startled, as she took my hand.
‘Jenny, dear, he was quite lucid when he came in. I don’t actually think he had an awful lot of pain and he recognised me right away. Sister didn’t want him to talk but he wasn’t going to let that bother him. He said to tell you “It’s all right”. He made me repeat it twice, so I’d get it right. Not “I’m all right” but “It’s all right”. Is that any help to you, Jenny?’
I nodded hard, because the tears had jumped up on me again and were pouring down my face without my permission. I had no hanky in the pocket of my skirt and my bag was down in the ward beside my chair.
‘There, love, it’s hard. It’s very hard,’ she said as she put a ragged slice of kitchen roll into my hand. ‘We’re supposed to have tissues in here, but people borrow them and don’t bring them back,’ she explained. ‘Come on now, drink your tea, like a good girl.’
I laughed in spite of myself and blew my nose. ‘All part of your job, Maureen?’ I said, as I mopped myself up.
‘It is, Jenny, it is. But it’s not often it’s someone I’ve known as long as I’ve known you. D’you know, I remember going round Erwin’s when we were at primary school. Your father let us all take turns sitting up on the high seats of the tractors and the reapers, and he gave a prize for the best drawing of one of them. Valerie Thompson won it. Do you remember?’
Maureen talked on easily as I drank my tea, but I felt myself go quiet and the effort of responding to her warm friendliness grew harder and harder. Suddenly, I just so wanted to be with my father.
‘Maureen, I must go back,’ I said, standing up. ‘I’m so grateful to you for that message. I’ll explain about it later, before you go off duty.’
‘Go ahead, Jenny,’ she nodded. ‘I’ll be down to see you in a while. I’ll be starting up the dialysis before I go,’ she added as I made for the door.
I slipped my shoes off and moved hastily over the polished floor. Sister saw me come and rose to meet me, my coat over her arm.
‘He seems quite steady,’ she said, looking down at the still figure. ‘If you feel like a wee sleep, there’s a room ready for you. Just come when you feel like it,’ she said, as she walked away.
The back of his hand had the brown blotches that come with age, the fingers very slightly stained from his few daily cigarettes. The lines on his palm were strong and deep etched, though the palms themselves were soft and little marked. They seemed a little colder than before.
I shivered and looked again at the sleeping body, the face unfamiliar in its impassivity. I shut my eyes and saw him smile, his face mobile, the lines round his eyes crinkled with mirth. I opened them again and spoke sharply to myself. I must not close my eyes. I must keep watch. Watch and pray.
The words came into my mind unbidden. The Bible. We had read that too, over the years. Once, I had made a collection of his favourite verses and copied them out in italic script as a present for him. The page with ‘Consider the lilies of the field’ I had taken to Val, and I brought it back covered with cornflowers and flag iris, primroses and bluebells. He had smiled then, too.
Watch and pray. Watch and pray.
I found my mind wandering into strange places, backwards and forwards across my life. Trivial incidents suddenly came to me, long forgotten events. And always there were images of my father smiling. When I went to him in distress, he would always say ‘It’s all right.’ ‘It’s all right,’ the very words I had used when Susie’s little face crumpled at her sister’s harsh rebuke. They were his words. I had comforted Susie as he had comforted me. But who could bring comfort to him, with his body failing as it was failing now.
Watch and pray.
The large hand of the ward clock slid silently across another minute. A quarter to four. The small hours were growing larger, the individual minutes seemed fraught with a meaning I sensed but could not grasp. Last time, I had prayed. But what was I to pray this time? Please God, let Daddy live? Was that to be my prayer?
My eyes flickered around the ward. Saw the lights and the monitors at the other beds. Saw Maureen pause by a machine, check its function. Tomorrow, a like machine would stand here. Through larger tubes, my father’s blood would pour into the machine, circulate, and be returned to his inert body. A body that could no longer serve the thoughts of his mind or the wishes of his heart.
The words spoke inside my head in the old-fashioned language I had known from Sunday School and church, before I was even aware of having shaped them. ‘Please God, take this good man, thy servant George, into your safekeeping, that no harm may come to him, and he may be free of all ills. Amen.’
It seemed to grow quieter in the ward, though nothing I could observe had changed. Nurses moved silently in the glass-walled side ward where I could just make out the shape of the young woman still watching by the bedside of the sleeping child. A staff nurse had come to sit at a desk in the centre of the big open space near me. She was using a small spotlight to fill in forms and study charts. Light reflected upwards from her papers and cast a warm glow on her fresh and pleasant country girl’s face. The ventilator huffed gently.
I stood at the door, looking into the dark. Behind me, the sunshine spilled down on a straggling village. From a broad, shallow stream beyond the dusty trackway where I stood I could hear the sound of children’s voices. Gradually, my eyes grew accustomed to the darkness. A great coil of creamy smoke rose from a raised hearth. The soft sound was the bellows, huffing air so that the mound of smoking fuel began to glow at the centre. I watched the glow, fascinated, till suddenly the whole place rang with sound. A hammer danced on the anvil, strong, heavy blows interspersed with light caressing taps, rising to a crescendo and then falling away to silence. I saw the glowing heart of the fire pierced with metal.
‘Aye, Georgie lad, I’ll miss ye sore on Munday. Ye’ve been a gran’ worker and grate cump’ney.’
I drew my eyes from the fire and saw the young man who leaned so lightly on the bellows. His face was brown from wind and sun, his forehead streaked with soot. His eyes sparkled with pleasure at the older man’s words.
‘An’ ye’ve been a grate fren’ te me, Robert, an’ te ma mather whin she was poorly. I’m sad ta gae,’ he said warmly.
‘Aye, but ye mun. This is nae place for a lad the likes o’ ye. Ye’ll make yer way. But yer a mite braver than ye wer whin yer come. That’ll stan’t’ ye.’
The smith drew the metal from the fire with heavy iron tongs and held it, vibrant with colour, on the anvil. At the first blow, the sparks arced and flew around me, but before I could draw back they had dissolved harmlessly in the warm air. The forge rang again with the rhythmic music of the hammer.
Once more the metal went into the fire. The gentle huff raised the orange glow to gold. The young man leaned effortlessly on the bellows and looked across at the smith, a tall, broad-shouldered man wearing a battered leather apron, its strings tied at the front.
‘D’ye mine my first day, Robert?’ he asked.
‘Aye, I do lad,’ the older man replied, laughing. ‘I thocht I’d kilt you, yer wer tha’ tired. Yer were so willin’, I wasnae watchin’ ye half well enow. But I caut mesel’ on. I tawt ye a trick or two forby.’
‘Ah, moren a few. I’ll be iver in yer debt,’ the young man replied. His cheerful grin disappeared and he became thoughtful. He had grey eyes and a shock of black hair. ‘Do ye mine, Robert, sayin’ to me, “Georgie, pace yersel’. No use goin’ at it like a bull at a gate. Give it the time it needs. Don’t rush it.”?’
‘Aye, Ah do. An’ I mine me father sayin’ the same words to me, the first day I stood here. The auld pepil had ther own wisdom, Georgie. It’s a foolish man fergets it whin times change. But ye’ll nae ferget, I’m thinkin’. There’s more to ye, Georgie Erwin, thin a pare o’ hans.’
I blinked sharply. I was sure I had not taken my eyes away from the still figure whose hand I held in mine. But I had been in the forge. I had seen the young man who had set out from the glen to take the job in Ballymena that would launch him towards having his own business. The forge was long gone, my memories and the name of a modern bungalow built on the site its only trace.
I looked down at the dear familiar face, so pale, so peaceful, and then, to my surprise, I found myself addressing an audience of shadowy figures who seemed to have joined us. They were all people he knew, like Robert, my grandfather, of whom he was so fond, and Ellen, his mother. And aunts and cousins, and people he’d worked with, and farmers he’d shaken hands with and passed the time of day with. Many of them I knew, many more were just names I had heard and remembered for his sake.
‘My father is a countryman,’ I began, silently. ‘One of his greatest joys in life is to walk in the sunshine on a fine spring morning,’ I continued, as I saw a path rise before me. ‘Up a green slope, with the birds singing in the hedgerows and the light glancing off the dewdrops hanging from the hawthorn hedge. Up and up to the brow of the hill, a hill with an outlook.’
I glanced up myself, prompted by my own words, and saw a small mountain on the monitor screen had become a jagged peak. In absolute silence, it fell to the ocean depths and rose again, yet higher. I looked across to the desk, and for what seemed an eternity of time could not remember the word I needed.
‘Nurse,’ I said urgently as I stood up and pulled my chair away from the bed.
She was the first to reach him. I saw her take the tube from his mouth and lean across him. But by then the place was full of people. I stood mesmerised as I saw a trolley race down the ward, propelled by four young people. How could they know to come, and move so fast, when I had taken so long to speak one word?
‘Jennifer, I’m Helen, would you come with me, please? We mustn’t get in the way.’
I protested feebly, knowing well enough what the rules were. ‘Please, don’t worry about me. I know my way. You may be needed here.’
She smiled and put an arm gently round my shoulders. ‘The full team’s here, they don’t need me. I’ll keep you company. Would you like a cup of tea?’
‘No, thank you, but that’s very kind. I think this may be the last one.’
She nodded gently. ‘You might be right.’
We sat in the visitors’ waiting room and talked about her summer holiday and her boyfriend. I inquired about the little blonde girl and heard that she was going to be all right. It seemed the most normal thing in the world to sit here and chat to a pleasant unknown girl with all my mind fifty yards away.
‘You’re very brave, Jennifer,’ she said suddenly, after a little.
I shook my head. ‘No, I’m an absolute coward, but I don’t want him to suffer.’
‘Would you like me to go and see what’s happening?’
‘Yes, please.’
Minutes passed. I wiped my damp hands with the crumpled piece of kitchen roll from my skirt pocket. Figures passed the open door. The young people who had sped down the ward with the trolley, like students in a charity pram race, returned more slowly to wherever they had come from. A tall doctor strode past going the other way, the tails of his white coat flying, a stethoscope round his neck.
I was staring out of the window when I heard a firm but soft footfall at the door. It was the sister, a small smile on her face.
‘Has he gone?’ I asked, turning towards her.
‘Yes, Jennifer, he has.’
‘I think I’m glad.’
She came towards me, and to my surprise gave me a little hug. ‘Sometimes we’re glad too. Would you like to go and see him?’
She came with me to the entrance to the unit and then slipped away into her office, leaving me free to walk alone towards the large circle of screens which had appeared around my father’s bed. Like a settler’s encampment, I thought, as I found the small gap and went through.
All the machines and tubes and wires had gone. I could walk up to him, take his hand. It was warmer than mine now. It was joined with the other across his chest and the right one had elastoplast on it.
You look as if you’ve been pruning, I said silently, as I observed the chair, a proper chair, not a plastic stackable, that had been left for me. I looked down at it and stayed standing.
‘You managed it, Daddy, didn’t you? You nipped off up the hill to the top before they caught you. I hope it has a good outlook,’ I said quietly.
I patted his bare shoulder, kissed his cheek and went back through the barricades. He wasn’t there any more, so why should I stay? I’d know where to find him whenever I wanted him, now he was free.
I waved and smiled to the young woman by the little girl’s bed and walked on out of the ward, feeling life flowing back into me again, bringing me a joy and a light-heartedness I could not begin to understand.