The tenth post-massage pee was the worst. I stood, holding the rail handicapped people use to drag themselves out of their wheelchairs onto the pot. Presumably. One is never actually witness to such scenes. Thank heaven. My sister had told me what a nightmare it had been getting Mother onto the toilet when they released her from hospital a week or so after the fall and sent her in an ambulance down to Swanage. She couldn’t get herself to the bathroom; she was in too much pain even to stand. Back pain, spine pain. Something was seriously wrong. At the same time she hated to use the bedpan. She felt demeaned by the bedpan, humiliated, I suppose, by the proximity of her own excrement. The water closet whisks your shit away, dilutes your piss in an instant, the bedpan does not. Even if only for a few minutes, before your carer comes to sort you out, you are obliged to lie in close contact with your piss and shit. With your smell. Your corruption.
For some reason that unpleasant word ‘corruption’ came to my mind in the ground-floor lavatory of the Claygate Hospice, with its paraphernalia for allowing people who are infirm and handicapped not to feel they need be in any closer contact with their excrement than the able-bodied who cheerfully flush it away without a glance, as if it had never been, as if piss and shit were just not part of who you are. In the newspapers, corruption means shady payoffs to government officials in foreign countries, but in the Bible, as I recalled – and what did my parents ever read to us as children if not the Bible and its endless spin-offs – corruption meant corruption of the flesh. Sin reaps corruption, and virtue eternal life. As I stood over the loo, my right cheek and my lower abdomen were throbbing in unison. The body is of its nature corrupt. What would the nurses think when they saw the bruise, I wondered? Flowering on my cheek. How could I explain to them that taking ten minutes off from my mother’s dying, ostensibly for a breath of fresh air, I had managed to get myself belted in the face by the son of the man who had been my best friend in my philandering days? ‘Stop it!’ Deborah screamed. ‘Prick!’ Charlie shouted again. He slapped me hard. ‘Coward!’
In the bathroom I soaked paper towels in cold water and held them to my face. Was it puffing up? Could I pretend it was there before, but they hadn’t seen it? My abdomen seemed desperately in need of emptying, but no emptying came. Then, exactly as I began to zip up, there was a leak. Infuriating. Now I was damp. Now I would smell. I had been in too much of a hurry to get back to the bedside. For some reason, then, opening my trousers again to sort myself out, I remembered, and this seemed a complete non sequitur, that my sister’s one real complaint against my mother as a patient, those three weeks at her home when by all rights Mother should have been in hospital, was that she had refused to watch television or listen to the radio. Mother would not ‘while away the time’, my sister had complained, with some TV drama or radio comedy. As a result, she thought too much about her illness and became gloomy and anxious. She wasn’t cheerful. And what was striking about this comment was that while my mother and my sister were thick as thieves, if I dare use that expression, when it came to giving one’s heart to Jesus and going home to glory, so that in this regard their side of the family (sister and mother) were diametrically opposed to our side (my brother and myself), nevertheless I could perfectly well understand my mother’s refusal of TV entertainment, her reluctance to ‘while away the time’, while my sister could not. TV entertainment, aside from the News and Weather, or the occasional detective yarn – Mother always used the word ‘yarn’, as if storytelling had to do with knitting – was perhaps not a great deal preferable to the bedpan and the excrement, for my mother. A game show, for example. Or the open tumours on her breasts. It had a smell of corruption. Of triviality. Mother refused to be trivial. And I was on her side over this. Where my brother stands on the matter, I have no idea. Though it’s true that my brother does set a considerable store by cheerfulness and it was evident that my mother, when communicating with my brother, made a far greater attempt to seem cheerful with him than she did when with myself and my sister. The cheerful person, I thought, frees others from worrying on their behalf. The person chuckling over an old episode of The Big Bang Theory, or enthralled by Breaking Bad, does not make you feel you need to comfort them over their imminent demise, their embarrassment with a body that is no longer lavender and roses. Was this my sister’s problem? Mother’s gloominess was a form of demand for sympathy. If Mother had actually been gloomy, that is, if it wasn’t just my sister’s projection. But why did my mother protect my brother, but not my sister or myself? Were we perceived as stronger? Was it because my brother had been so long and so seriously ill as a child? But what on earth was the point of posing all these conundrums, when I had a bruise swelling on my cheek and once again my pee was blocked? Only the gesture of putting my penis back in my pants had made it flow. And what can we say of the person who is trying to be cheerful, trying to allow us not to be worried on their behalf, but isn’t really cheerful, understandably so, and actually has every legitimate reason for being worried and having us worry for them? Is that heroism or madness? Or was it, perhaps, that my brother had managed to make my mother feel guilty if she didn’t present herself to him as cheerful. If so, how had he managed to do that?
Suddenly, standing in the lavatory – and it was after midnight now – I was aware that I, Thomas Sanders, had come to a complete dead end, a position of utter impasse and ugliness. Every thought was a knot, a snarl. Yet the very extremity of the awfulness, or my awareness of it, brought a small sense of relief. You have hit bottom, I told myself. So just breathe and relax. Forget your mother’s dying, even if only for two minutes, and breathe. Untangle yourself. Aren’t you a man in love? I could still taste the cigarette on my breath. Breathe deeply for all the time it takes to pee. I coughed. There’s no hurry. Fill your chest, drop your shoulders. Remember Elsa. Remember Dr Sharp’s exercises. Perhaps the problem had been smoking that cigarette. Could that have had an effect? Anyway, nothing was going to happen in the next few minutes, was it? There wasn’t really anything I needed to do, standing here in the lavatory. I was quite safe from attack, safe from disappointment. I wasn’t going to die here. And in fact, after a few deep breaths, the flow had actually begun and was even promising, when a message arrived in my pocket. With a sudden happy conviction that this must be Elsa sending a goodnight kiss, I pulled out my Nokia and read. ‘Charles won’t get in the car. What on earth am I to do?’
I cleared the screen and texted Elsa, ‘Think of you constantly. Can’t wait to be back.’ It wasn’t true. I hadn’t been thinking of her at all. But I very much wished I had been thinking of her and it seemed the right thing to text.
There was a knock on the bathroom door.
‘Are you all right in there?’
‘One moment, sorry.’
As I came out, the nurse told me, ‘I’m afraid your mother’s been sick again.’
‘I’ll come at once.’
She looked at me hard. The light was low in the corridor and perhaps it wasn’t altogether clear that the changed state of my face was the result of a violent blow.
‘It might be useful actually,’ the nurse now said, ‘if you could spend the night with her. So you can call us if it happens again. We can’t be in there all the time.’
‘I ought to send an email,’ I said, ‘to my brother, if you have Wi-Fi here. He ought to know what the situation is. He’s in the States.’
The nurse said there was Wi-Fi in the visitors’ lounge at the end of the corridor. ‘Just connect. No password is required.’ I went into my mother’s room where I had left my bag and computer. Again, on entering, I had the impression I was stepping into a different dimension, a limbo zone between life and death, so that although what was happening in that room, which was what always and inevitably happens, I suppose, in hospice rooms, could only take so long to unfold, nevertheless there was a comforting sensation of timelessness here. Mother was on her back, breathing noisily. I sat down beside her.
‘Mum?’
She did not reply.
‘Mum, I’ve left home,’ I said. ‘I’ve separated.’
She didn’t stir.
‘I’m now with a very lovely woman, Elsa. Though I’m afraid she’s much younger than me.’
‘Why, Señor Sanders,’ the shrink asked, ‘do you always say you’re afraid she’s younger? Rejoice!’
‘I know it’s early days, Mum, but I hope sometime to marry her.’
Nothing. The light was dimmer than an hour before. The room felt warmer. Blanket and sheet were perfectly smooth. The nurses must have changed her twice in the time I was away. It was chastening. I picked up my bag and stood to go and email my brother.
Then sat down again. Chaste, chasten, chastise. Somehow those words held me beside my mother. Why? I muttered them out loud. There was some connection. I let go of the bag. Chasten, chastise, chaste. Chased. Mother didn’t move. She had vomited blood twice and they had changed her bedclothes twice. The body was corrupt but the nurses kept it clean. With a chastening effort. Then I had it. Or I had something. An incident in childhood. Perhaps it was just a continuation of my thoughts in the bathroom, my bathroom thoughts. I and a friend called Malcolm played a game where we watched each other pee. How old were we? Six? Eight? We had peed into jam jars. In the back garden in Blackpool. Do all kids do that? We wanted to see the colour of our pee. Mother kept a supply of jam jars in the garden shed, for autumn jamming. We left the pee in the jars in the shed. Why? Why not throw it away? I can’t recall. I only remember a powerful smell, and my mother’s dismay when she discovered it. Who would have thought she went to look at the jam jars in the shed? She opened the jars with their yellow liquid and was distraught. It seemed I had done something terribly wrong, something far worse than the time I stole half-a-crown from her handbag. I couldn’t understand it, just associated her anger with the urine smell and the excitement of two boys peeing together. That was transgression, the urine and the smell. Mother yelled and wept. I felt cowed. I can’t recall in the end what the punishment was. Perhaps seeing Mother weeping was the punishment. Feeling you had hurt her. Did she suppose we were perverted? Gay? The word hardly existed then. Later my friend Malcolm, whose parents were missionaries, was hacked to pieces in Burundi. His whole family were killed. They had refused to renounce their faith. They were cut to pieces with machetes and their mission centre burned to bits. 1965? 1966? My father held a commemoration service for them, throughout which I couldn’t stop thinking of the powerful smell of urine in a jam jar in the garden shed. I suppose neither Malcolm nor I had known that urine smells worse when you leave it in a jar in the shed for a few days. It must have been that smell that upset my mother so much. The smell of our bodies. Our corruption.
‘Mum,’ I chuckled. ‘What a lot of weird thoughts in your old son’s head.’
She lay still.
‘And in yours too most likely.’
If only, she had cried out.
I picked up What To Do When Faith Seems Weak from the bedside table and looked at the chapter headings. Kenneth E. Hagin offered ten steps for having one’s prayers answered. This is a practical guide, he said in the preface, to successful prayer. Step one was recognising that your enemy was Satan. Step two was checking whether God had in fact promised to deliver the particular goods you were praying for. Step three was making sure there was nothing in the way you lived that upset God and prevented him from honouring his promises.
I put the book down.
‘Do you remember my old friend, David, Mum?’ I said. ‘David Pool. He came to dinner a couple of times, remember, with his partner Deborah. Can you believe they married recently, after thirty years together? Anyway, it seems his son is going crazy.’
Again I was surprised to find myself talking to my mother like this. As if she were in a position to offer advice. ‘He’s gay, and he has it in for his father who’s always been super-heterosexual. Do you think I should try to help? Deborah asked me to talk to him. After all, you always tried to help.’
This was true. Mother was always helping others. There was always a teenager who was pregnant, a man who believed himself possessed by demons, an elderly lady who could no longer look after herself. During the first AIDS crisis my mother had volunteered to assist sufferers when no one else would go near them – this despite her conviction that AIDS was a scourge sent by God. Throughout the summer I spent in her house, and regardless of her own growing difficulty moving around, she never failed to make her Monday-morning visit to a man with no legs who refused to throw away the lifetime’s collection of newspapers and magazines with which he was now slowly walling himself in, or her Thursday-afternoon visit to Mavis who, without in any way suffering from dementia and despite being some five years younger than my mother, had simply ceased, after her sister’s death, to look after herself, so that now a dozen or so ‘good folks’ from the parish had to share the task of doing her washing and cleaning for her.
Mother always had fascinating stories to tell about these people. The legless man, for example, had married a woman twelve years his senior, who complained that her husband was overweight but at the same time fed him a diet of bread, potatoes, fried foods and chocolate. She also told good stories about the people who regularly came to her for ‘counselling’ and for whom, during that summer, I had to vacate her tiny sitting room while she served them coffee and home-baked cakes. Mother’s fruitcake was remarkable. But it had always been like this from earliest childhood. We heard nothing of my parents’ early lives, but everything about so-and-so who had been beaten by her husband, and so-and-so whose arthritis had led to her losing her typing job. To be around my mother was to be made constantly aware of people less fortunate than yourself. The refugees in Rwanda, for example, for whom I had knitted those four or five squares of coloured blanket, near-neighbours of the revolutionaries in Burundi who had chopped my friend Malcolm to bits. Had I learned how to knit, I wonder now, to make up for the smell of urine in the garden shed? Was it remotely possible that some of those red-and-yellow squares could have ended up in the hands of those who slaughtered my companion-in-crime?
‘Mum,’ I said. ‘Do you remember Malcolm? The Pearsons? Who died in Africa.’
It was a glorious destiny, my father said, to be a martyr for Christ.
‘Would you have preferred that, Mum, to the stink of cancer and the moments when faith seems weak and victory lost?’
I muttered the words in a very low voice, as if there were a danger of her hearing them. She breathed deeply and noisily. Mother had been obsessed, my sister had said, while staying at their house, by the fear that the district nurse would be late coming to dress her weeping tumours and the smell would intensify. ‘If only she’d been willing to while away some time with the TV, she would have worried a bit less.’
‘No one to help now, Mum,’ I said out loud. Unless myself, of course.
If only …
Damn. I got to my feet. I had wanted to transmit sympathy to my mother. Instead I felt angry. How many holidays had we gone on with some miserable loser whom my parents were struggling to help? A school friend they offered to foster, when his mother committed suicide and his father turned to drink. A lesbian army sergeant discharged for molesting a private. A jilted young woman on antidepressants. These people were always with us at the seaside, in the Scottish Highlands, the Yorkshire Dales, always ready to raise their voices in prayer after my father read from the Bible when the dinner plates had been cleared away.
My mother would definitely have taken time out from a deathbed to help Deborah and Charlie.
‘Mum?’
She lay quite still.
I picked up my bag and walked down to the visitors’ lounge, which I now saw was called the Commemoration Room. There were cheap red-foam sofas round the wall, and a counter with kettle and mugs, tea and instant coffee. I made a coffee and, while the computer was firing up, looked at my phone. There was a missed call from my daughter. Apparently at some point I had muted the thing. And beneath that call, so to speak, an unread message. ‘He’s standing right outside the hospice. I don’t know what to do.’
Meantime the computer had booted up and connected itself to the Wi-Fi, but for some reason the Internet wouldn’t work. How was it possible, I wondered, that Deborah felt she had the right to insist like this, to bombard me with messages about her unhappy son, who had just slapped me across the face, for God’s sake, when my mother was dying? But had I actually told Deborah Mother was dying? I couldn’t remember. I must get the truth from the doctors tomorrow morning, I thought. The coffee was bitter, in part because there was no milk and I will not use powder. I hate powder. But then how was it that I myself didn’t rebel at Deborah’s presumption and tell her to get lost? How the shrink would have chuckled. ‘You’re a bit of a sucker, Señor Sanders, that’s the truth, isn’t it?’
‘Arrived an hour or so ago,’ I typed rapidly to my brother on Outlook, waiting for the Net to connect. ‘’Fraid I’d hardly started to talk to her when she began vomiting blood. Things don’t look good. She’s in pain. Tomorrow morning I’ll talk to the doctors and we’ll see if they have anything up their sleeves.’
Up their sleeves?
‘Far from being a sucker,’ I told the shrink sharply, ‘I’ve had any number of affairs with an army of beautiful young women.’
‘Guaranteeing yourself an ocean of guilt to expiate,’ the shrink observed.
‘As soon as I’ve spoken to them, I’ll let you know.’ I wrapped up the email to my brother, then added, ‘What’s worrying Sis is that they’ll want to move her again for some treatment they can’t do here.’
I signed off and clicked Send, but the Net still wasn’t working and the email remained unsent. The coffee was undrinkable. My cheek was growing puffier by the minute. I should ask the nurse for an aspirin perhaps. Or ice. I didn’t want to look a state at the Berlin conference, the 27th annual gathering of European linguists. But was it likely I would be at the conference? I ought to cancel. It was a shame, though, when I had the inaugural limelight.
I stood up and walked back out to the porch, where, through the glass doors, I saw Charlie.
‘What’s up?’ I opened the door and called to him.
He didn’t reply. He was leaning against the railing beside the gate, looking away from me.
‘Charlie!’
It was drizzling and chill. All he wore was a short leather jacket. I didn’t want to go out and let the door shut behind me, since that would mean ringing the bell again.
‘Charlie! For Christ’s sake!’
He must have heard. Why stand outside the building where I was if he didn’t want to respond when I offered to talk to him? I closed the door and went back to the Commemoration Room, where an elderly man had appeared in pyjamas and was waiting for the kettle to boil.
‘Would you like me to make you some tea?’ he asked at once.
‘If it’s better than the coffee,’ I laughed. He didn’t smile. I asked him if he was spending the night in an armchair too. He shook his head, but now he did smile as if amused by my question. He must have one of the guest rooms my sister had mentioned, I thought. Sitting on the sofa again, I found the computer had managed to send my message to my brother and that no fewer than fourteen emails were now waiting to be read. Scanning the list, I saw Elsa’s name. Deborah’s, Dr Sharp, the conference organisers in Berlin, an academic publisher, both twins, my wife, an insurance company, no doubt requesting payment, an old girlfriend of a decade and more ago, two names I didn’t know or perhaps couldn’t remember. As I tried to decide whether to take a quick look at these emails before going back to my mother, another message arrived, from my brother. I clicked at once.
‘Coughing up blood not much fun,’ he wrote. ‘Poor Mum. But by no means fatal. I still wonder if the doctors are not maybe overlooking something that happened when she fell. See if you can arrange for a second opinion. She sounded pretty chirpy on the phone when I spoke to her.’
‘Here.’ The old man placed a cup of black tea on the low table beside me. Shaking, his wrist was scarred with injection marks. An inmate, I realised. I was being served by the dying.
‘Thank you.’
‘You’re welcome.’
He smiled again, as if he had understood what I was thinking.
‘Got yourself a little knock,’ he said, observing my cheek. ‘How did that happen?’
The truth seemed too complicated.
‘I was walking and texting. Ran into a post.’
He shook his head. ‘You young folks. Always in a hurry.’
‘I’m fifty-seven,’ I laughed.
He sighed, as if I’d confirmed what he meant.
‘Is it safe to leave my computer here for a few minutes?’
‘I’m not going to steal it,’ he said. His voice was squeaky. Halfway back to the counter and his own tea, he suddenly sat down on a chair.
I walked back down the corridor, carrying my tea. My hand shakes too, I thought. The man had unnerved me.
‘Edward?’ my mother asked. ‘Edward, is that you?’
I hadn’t heard her call his name in decades.
‘It’s Tom,’ I told her. ‘I’m back. Good to see you awake, Mum.’
She looked lost. She had pulled herself up on her elbows and, through her nightdress, I could see the thick bandage wrapped around her breasts, or what had been her breasts.
‘Sorry.’ She tried to smile, her bottom lip sucked in over toothless gums. ‘How stupid. Did I say Edward?’ Her speech was slurred.
‘It’s okay, don’t worry.’ I sat on the chair. ‘I just went out to get myself a cup of tea. Do you want anything?’
She stared at me.
‘Is the nurse coming or not? I’m in pain.’
‘Did you call her?’
‘Hours ago.’
‘Let’s call her again.’
I reached for the buzzer that was lying by her hand.
‘We mustn’t bother her, Thomas.’
‘She won’t be bothered.’
The fear of bothering someone seemed to have brought her back to herself.
‘She’ll be upset if we ring twice.’
‘No, she won’t.’
‘I don’t want them to think I’m a nuisance.’
‘But if you’re in pain …’
My mother shut her eyes. ‘Oh, do what you want,’ she said sharply. It was unlike her.
I pressed the buzzer, put it down and took my mother’s hand. She pulled it away.
‘Mum?’
I sat waiting for the nurse to arrive, sipping the tea, which was no better than the coffee. After a minute or two I became aware that I was looking forward to reading my emails, especially the one from the old girlfriend I hadn’t thought of for years. As soon as I recognised this, I felt irritated with myself: why couldn’t I just be with my mother and forget everything else? But irritation changed nothing. My computer was calling me. I could feel its pull, a kind of magnetism down the corridor. I was wondering if Deborah had explained anything further in her email. I was wondering if the twins had written to say they were coming. In which case where would they stay? What had Elsa said? And my wife? Could my brother be right that I should ask for a second opinion? What did I know about vomiting blood? Red or black. Only now did I realise I was proud to have been present when she had vomited, proud to have reacted promptly, grabbing the bowl – bowls, rather – and holding them one after another under her mouth, pushing my hand in the grey hair behind her neck. Yellowish-grey. I was proud to have been involved in this tiny way in her agony. Now I was going to spend the night in this room, and perhaps it would happen again and I would help her again and she would register that Thomas was really there at the end and was helping her, unfazed by the smell and the vomit, the corruption, and she would be glad of that and there would be a kind of sad happiness between us, my mother and myself, at the end.
I could bring the computer in here perhaps. Into her room. Even if there was no Wi-Fi, I could read the messages offline. Reply to them here, during the night. Then just walk down the corridor for a few minutes to connect, when I wanted to send them. Why not?
‘Did you ring?’ The nurse put her head round the door.
‘Mum’s in pain.’
‘Are you feeling bad, Martha?’ the nurse asked.
My mother grimaced, screwing her closed eyes.
‘I’ll go and get something,’ the nurse said. ‘I won’t be a moment, Martha.’
I marvelled at the thought that this was the same nurse who just a few hours before had no idea who Mrs Sanders was, then realised that perhaps the nameplate on the door was actually there for that purpose: each time a nurse opened the door, she had the name there and could address the patient in a friendly way, and I imagined mother approaching the Pearly Gates, and St Peter provided with a nameplate or idiot-card so he could say, ‘Welcome, Martha’ to someone he didn’t know from Adam.
Why does my mind work like this? What is gained?
I sipped my tea. I had imagined the nurse would return immediately, but she didn’t.
‘The children are coming tomorrow, Mum,’ I said. ‘The twins as well, maybe.’
She seemed to struggle. At last she said. ‘What are you doing here, Thomas?’
‘I’m here to be with you.’
‘It’s night, isn’t it? It’s dark. When are you going to your hotel?’
‘I haven’t got a hotel, Mum. I’m spending the night with you. You’ve been poorly. I’ll be here. In the armchair.’
I hadn’t said ‘poorly’ in decades. It was because the nurse had said it earlier, because it was a word that went back to childhood.
She shook her head and kept shaking it, back and forth. I couldn’t understand if it was a response to what I’d said, or to her pain.
‘Go to your hotel, Thomas.’
‘I haven’t got a hotel, Mum. You’ve been sick a couple of times. It’s best you have someone here.’
‘I don’t want you here, Thomas.’
The nurse walked into the room, stripping plastic packaging from a small box. She skirted the bed and went to adjust the drip hanging on the far side.
‘I don’t want you to see me like this,’ my mother insisted.
The nurse was now examining the drug pump in the sheets. I tried to find my mother’s eyes. ‘It’s no problem, Mum. I’m glad to be here.’
Why did I keep on with that mantra? Because she might expect I wouldn’t be glad?
Her head was twisting this way and that. It must be serious pain.
‘This will have you comfortable, Martha,’ the nurse said brightly.
‘You should go to your hotel now, Thomas,’ Mother said. Her speech was slurred but stern, as if talking to a small boy. A boy who had peed in a jar. ‘It’s late now.’
I exchanged glances with the nurse, indicating I would like to speak to her outside. At which point she noticed my cheek. I saw the sudden narrowing of the eyes. As soon as she came round the bed, I got up and followed her into the corridor. She pulled the door to.
‘How did you get that?’ she asked. As I told her the same story I’d told the old man in the Commemoration Room, I was aware of the irony that nothing could be less like me than this man who blundered into lamp posts while sending text messages. ‘You heard what Mum said,’ I hurried on, ‘about not wanting me to see her in such bad shape. What should I do?’
The nurse frowned, still staring at my cheek. I had the impression she was confirming for herself that it could not be the consequence of a collision with a lamp post.
‘The morphine will make her sleep,’ she said. ‘She won’t know you’re there. It would be useful if you stayed. We have two other critical patients, so it’s going to be a busy night. Meantime, I’ll go and get some disinfectant for that wound.’
‘Thank you,’ I told her. ‘I’ll just sit quietly in the shadows then.’ Glancing up as I said this, I saw Charlie was standing at the end of the corridor, near the Commemoration Room.
‘On the other hand,’ the nurse was saying, ‘I suppose you have to decide whether you want to respect her wishes.’
Charlie had folded his arms and was gazing down the corridor.
‘I’d appreciate your advice, Nurse,’ I said. ‘What do you think?’
I was hoping she hadn’t seen Charlie, hoping I wouldn’t have to explain about Charlie and confess that he had been responsible for my puffed-up face.
‘There’s also the problem of whether to book a flight or not,’ I said.
A buzzer sounded and a light began to flash over a door halfway down the corridor. Turning towards it, the nurse must have seen Charlie, who hadn’t budged. But now another nurse appeared from one of the doors quite near to him.
‘I have a major conference in Berlin,’ I said, ‘the day after tomorrow. So I need to know …’
My voice faltered. The second nurse had exchanged words with Charlie, who was nodding in my direction.
‘It’s my son,’ I said.
The nurse beside me seemed lost for a moment. She was still holding the packaging of the drug she had given my mother.
‘One thing at a time,’ she said. ‘Let’s get through tonight first.’ She frowned. ‘I suppose, if you’re sure your mother is the kind of person who would be upset by your seeing her so ill, perhaps you should respect her wishes. It’s up to you.’
‘But where would I stay? I haven’t got a hotel. I don’t have a car here.’
She turned to watch her fellow nurse disappear in the door where the emergency call light was flashing.
‘My son,’ I said, seeing the objection before she did, ‘is in a tiny bedsit with his girlfriend.’
The nurse had begun to move off. ‘I can give you one of our guest rooms. That way, we can call you if she takes a bad turn.’ She smiled more kindly. ‘Just let me know when you’ve decided, Mr Sanders.’
‘Thomas,’ I said.
She smiled.
I went back into Mother’s room to find she was snoring lightly, almost healthily, though still with a grimace of pain knitted into the forehead. I looked around at the dimly lit space, breathed its smell, and now it seemed to me I very much wanted to spend the night there with her, in this warm nest, ready to help, if help was needed. I imagined myself dozing through the small hours, or communing quietly with my mother, trying to remember the good times, maybe, the country walks, fishing for newts, looking for unusual wild flowers. Or even the evenings, decades later, playing Scrabble when she put her feet up and took her shoes off and kept on saying, ‘I wonder’ to herself over the little rack of letters she had, ‘I wonder, I just wonder.’ How her feet smelled in their nylon stockings when she took her shoes off! Stronger than the cancer smell, come to think of it. Mother had never worried about my smelling her feet. Perhaps she wasn’t aware they smelled. Children have sensitive noses for their parents’ smells. I had seen that with my own children. Yes, now that she had forbidden me to stay, I found I very much wanted to stay and sit with her. Yearned to. My computer with its fourteen unread emails had lost all allure. On the other hand, I knew Mother had meant it when she said she didn’t want me to see her in that state. She didn’t want me to associate this broken, stinking, vomiting body with her, Martha Sanders, on her way home to glory. I bent down to kiss her. The eyelids puckered.
‘Mum.’
You could feel she was still there, in this body. Or rather you could feel this body was still alive.
I let my lips press on the old skin, very aware of what I was doing, as if being observed. Then I realised there was somebody behind me. Charlie. He was in the doorway, staring. I turned and hurried him out into the corridor. I didn’t want him to see my mother, in that state.
‘What in God’s name are you doing here? You’re soaked.’
I began to walk back down the corridor to the Commemoration Room. He walked beside me without answering. On our left, one of the nurses appeared with a basket of dirty sheets.
‘I said you were my son.’
‘How funny.’
In the Commemoration Room the old man was gone. I went to my computer, where the screen was in standby.
‘You can make yourself a coffee, if you like. Or tea.’
‘I’d rather have a Coke,’ he said. He went to a machine I hadn’t noticed in the far corner of the room, dispensing cold drinks and snacks.
‘Want one?’
‘Why not?’ I thought it might sharpen me up.
As I lifted the computer on my lap, it occurred to me that it was a mistake perhaps not to stay with mother. Whether she liked it or not, she needed me. In the end, I had only left the room because of Charlie. I hadn’t actually decided to leave. Then it also occurred to me that almost every decision I take I quickly regret having taken, with the result that not only do I always feel I have taken the wrong decision, but also that I haven’t really taken a decision at all. Or not altogether.
And Elsa? The thought presented itself with surprising urgency. Have you really taken a decision over Elsa? If so, why ask your sister not to mention her to the kids?
‘Here,’ Charles said, putting a can of Coke in my hand.
I clicked on Elsa’s email and saw a long paragraph in Spanish. About her sister. Something had happened between her sister and her mother. As my eye moved across the paragraph I became aware of Charlie looking over my shoulder.
‘Mi amor,’ the email finished.
I closed it.
‘Don’t mind me,’ Charlie said. ‘I no speak no dago.’
I turned on him. ‘What are you doing here, Charlie? You didn’t want to talk to me, so why not just go home? Your mother is worried sick.’
Charlie leaned back so sharply his head clunked against the wall behind the sofa. It was quite a knock, but it didn’t seem to bother him. He stretched out his long legs, shut his eyes, raised the Coke can to his chin and sipped. Along the corridor another buzzer sounded and I heard the nurses calling to each other. Suddenly, all I wanted to do was read my emails and go to bed, hopefully get some sleep before the early-morning meeting with the doctors.
‘Call your mum and get her to come and pick you up.’
‘I’m sorry about the bruise, Tom,’ he said.
I looked at him. He seemed a picture of youthful health.
‘You don’t sound sorry.’
‘Sometimes I feel so angry I don’t know what I’m doing.’
‘You need help, Charlie. You need to see an expert. I can’t understand why your mother wanted you to talk to me, of all people.’
‘I can,’ he said.
It sounded like a bait. I opened Elsa’s email again. Her sister had finally told her mother she was pregnant. This was an ongoing saga. There had been a heated argument. ‘At least it takes the spotlight off us, Tommy.’ Elsa still hadn’t told her family about me. But why should we hurry to tell our families? To hell with families.
‘Is your mum dying?’ Charlie asked.
‘Seems so,’ I told him. ‘Just you can never tell how long these things will take.’
Without intending to, I managed to sound as though I had considerable experience in such matters.
‘How does it feel?’
He was still sprawled in the same position, head back on the wall, face upturned, eyes closed.
‘Feel? I don’t know. I haven’t had time to feel anything.’
But just saying these words, I experienced a sudden rush of emotion. I had to put the computer to one side. ‘I feel sorry for her,’ I said quietly. ‘I wish she didn’t have to go through this. I wish she didn’t have to suffer.’
After two or three sips of Coke he asked, ‘Were you close?’
I hesitated. ‘In some ways. In others, we were poles apart.’
‘But she had a good life, didn’t she?’ Charlie insisted. ‘I mean, from what I heard from Mum. She’s old now. She had a normal marriage and everything. They didn’t leave each other or make each other unhappy.’
I had no real answer to these questions. What is a normal marriage? On the other hand, trying to answer them seemed the best way to deal with Charlie.
‘My dad died thirty years ago,’ I said. ‘She’s been alone since then.’
Saying this, I sensed a connection somewhere; a thought was pushing to become conscious.
‘She never had anyone else afterwards?’ Charlie seemed genuinely interested.
‘I think there were a couple of offers. One guy in particular. Worked on the stock exchange. A Dutch bloke. But she wanted to live with the memory of my father.’
‘Noble,’ Charlie said at once.
I looked at him. His position hadn’t changed, but his face had relaxed a little. My emotion of a few moments before was receding too.
‘I mean, unusual – romantic,’ the boy elaborated. ‘These days.’
‘I suppose so.’
I tried to remember what the story had been around this rather wealthy Dutch man. Or was he Danish? They had met through the Church of course.
‘I guess she would have felt guilty if she had started something with someone else.’
Again a dark wing brushed by. There was a thought out there.
Charlie sat up, drained his Coke, put the can on the floor and reached across me for the computer. ‘Can I show you something?’ he asked. ‘On Facebook?’
Since he seemed to be cheering up, I let him go ahead. Moments later we were scrolling down photos of his parents’ wedding on his mother’s Facebook page. David had worn a bow tie. A turquoise bow tie. His long hair was tied back in a ponytail. He had always kept his hair long. His glasses had thick turquoise frames. His big beard was unusually neat above his barrel chest. It was a strange mix of formality and burly flamboyance.
‘Mum wearing white was a kind of joke,’ Charlie observed.
There were more pictures of the couple raising glasses, intertwining arms and champagne cups. David had a glazed look; Deborah was gleaming. I was glad I hadn’t gone. One picture showed the whole family. The newly-weds embraced, Charlie had his arm round his mother from the other side. The other two children crouched in front.
‘He doesn’t deserve her,’ Charlie said flatly.
‘Nobody deserves anybody, Charlie,’ I told him. ‘They’ve been together thirty years. Get a life.’
‘You left your wife after thirty years, didn’t you?’
‘Charlie, for Christ’s sake. I’m tired. I’m going to bed.’
I snapped the laptop shut and stood up. Charlie got to his feet too. He was tense again. The photos had worked him up.
‘You should have stopped it,’ he said.
‘Stopped what?’
Again there was the sound of a buzzer along the corridor. I turned but couldn’t see where the light was flashing.
‘The wedding.’ Now he was emphatic. ‘You should have stopped the wedding.’
‘Why on earth would I have wanted to do that?’
Rather than answer, he glared. He looked wild.
‘Charlie, if you so much as touch me, I’ll call the police. Is that clear?’
‘Even if I’m your son?’
‘Enough. I’m tired.’
‘You didn’t have any trouble telling my parents I was gay.’
I pulled my old Nokia from my pocket, pressed for recent calls and phoned Deborah.
‘Mum wanted me to speak to you because she said you knew Dad better than anyone.’
This was unexpected. ‘Years ago, maybe.’
Charlie’s face changed again.
‘I definitely will kill him, you know. I feel I will.’
The phone rang, but Deborah didn’t answer. How was it possible that she had left her seriously disturbed son with a friend whose mother was at death’s door?
‘Why don’t you tell her what kind of man my father is?’
I wanted to be shot of him.
‘Your mum’s not answering, okay? But it’s really time you went now, Charlie. Let’s do this, I’ll call a cab and you go home in it. But my advice is that you leave the family, go and live somewhere else, and keep as far away from your parents’ relationship as possible. Whatever they think of each other is what suits them. Your father is a brilliant publisher and a fantastic man. The heart and soul of every party. Your mum loves him. Everyone loves him. Leave them alone.’
‘Actually, I live with my boyfriend,’ Charlie answered.
This was a surprise.
‘So why don’t you just be happy with him?’
As I spoke I was looking around for where I had seen a noticeboard with useful phone numbers. In reception? I stepped out of the Commemoration Room, with Charlie following. Down the main corridor a red light was flashing over a door to the right. I remember a fleeting anxiety that the nurses might not have seen it: somebody was in trouble, and no one was going to help. Remembering this now, I realise I am ridiculous, quite ridiculous. But I wasn’t wrong about the useful numbers. They were on the same small noticeboard that was advertising the Christmas party. I called a minicab.
‘I haven’t got any money,’ Charlie objected.
‘I’ll give you some.’ I, who hate paying for my own cabs, was now longing to pay for his. Then I remembered I had only my cards and some euros. I couldn’t give him cards.
‘Damn.’ I explained I had no cash. ‘Your mother can pay when you arrive.’
‘What if she isn’t home?’
He was relishing my unease.
‘It’s nearly two, why wouldn’t she be home?’
‘Maybe she’s gone to see Dad.’
This was exasperating. I closed the call exactly as a voice answered. At the same moment an elderly woman in a dressing gown appeared from the main corridor and shuffled towards the Commemoration Room, leaning on a stick.
‘Call your boyfriend. Perhaps he can come and get you.’
Charlie shook his head. He looked hard at me. ‘I couldn’t believe it when I found out you’d told them. I was furious, but in the end you did me a favour.’
‘Call your boyfriend. I’m going back to my mother. At a push, you could always spend the night on the sofa in there.’ I nodded to the Commemoration Room.
‘Drinking tea with moribund insomniacs?’
It was exactly the kind of thing his father would have said.
‘You don’t have to talk to anyone.’
‘While you sit with your mother?’
‘That’s right.’
Once again I found myself lying. I wouldn’t be sitting with Mother. But it was too complicated to explain. Then if I mentioned a guest room, who was to say Charlie wouldn’t want to join me there? He seemed to need my company, while I needed to be alone, with my thoughts and with the pain in my abdomen that had now become a deep scalding from bladder through to groin. Yet the thought that I was lying again upset me. Another person wouldn’t have lied. ‘The person I’d like to be,’ I’d told the shrink, ‘does not lie.’ ‘So don’t,’ she said.
Charlie was watching me. ‘Let me have your computer,’ he said.
‘What?’
‘Lend me your computer for the night, so I have something to do.’
‘No.’
He sighed. He looked around the reception area as if there was something he might have forgotten, then turned to me again.
‘I thought they’d be incredibly upset and disappointed. With me being gay. Instead they converted the top floor of the house into a separate flat for myself and Stephen.’
‘Great parents,’ I told him. ‘There you are. And now you want to ruin their lives.’
The boy swayed on his feet, hands thrust in his pockets.
‘Thinking about it, you could probably walk home from here, right? It can’t be more than a few miles.’
‘Stephen is away,’ he said. ‘On a training course.’ He looked out of the window. ‘And I don’t have an umbrella.’
I felt a powerful urge to walk away, but was worried he might follow me. Should I offer my sister’s umbrella? Where had I left it?
‘You say I’m ruining their lives,’ he went on. ‘But don’t you want me to tell you why I hit Dad?’
‘Charlie, I asked you that in the car and you wouldn’t answer. Now I want to sit for a while with Mum. You can tell me tomorrow, if it will help, but not now.’
As if we were bargaining over something, he said, ‘If you let me have the computer, I’ll just sit in the room here for the night and surf and maybe write something.’
‘Charlie, I’m not giving you my computer.’
‘Why not? You’re not going to be using it while you sit with your mum, are you?’
‘Because not.’
‘You don’t want me reading your emails?’
‘Among other things.’
Charlie laughed. ‘I read your emails ages ago.’
‘I beg your pardon.’
He grinned, ‘I read your emails to Dad. That’s why I sent you those stories. I felt I knew you pretty well.’
‘You read my emails to your father?’
‘I cracked his email password. Years ago. It wasn’t hard.’
This felt considerably worse than a slap in the face, and certainly more dangerous. At the same time there was a large part of me that just did not want to deal with it right now. Making a gesture I hadn’t expected to, I raised both arms to the boy’s shoulders.
‘Charlie, as one human being to another, let me have these moments with my mum; today, tomorrow, whatever. Do me this favour. Then we can have a long talk.’
I gave him a small, friendly push and headed off down the corridor.