"Yes."
"You speak German?"
"My father urged me to learn, after the war. So that ... his hope was that if people understood each other better, it would never happen again."
Ellis didn"t try to hide his surprise. "I can"t believe you speak German! You never mentioned it."
"It never came up."
Denny smiled and beckoned. "Come closer, I"ll tell you what the song says."
Ellis edged nearer. His dad"s voice was weak and he spoke slowly, drawing a new, hard-earned breath at the end of each line.
""Through troubles and joys We have gone hand in hand; Now we both rest from our wanderings High over the still countryside.
The valleys descend round about us; The skies are already growing dark.
Only two larks, remembering a dream, Are rising into the haze.
Come, let them fly Soon it is time to sleep.
We must not go astray In this loneliness.
O wide still peace!
So deep in the sunset glow, How weary we are with wandering Can this be death?""
It was not a procession of visitors they came a few hours apart but it gave the impression of one. First, the GP, who told Ellis that his father was becoming more ill faster than he"d expected. Then, whilst Denny slept, and to Ellis"s surprise, Bridget appeared, closing the village shop on a weekday for the first time in thirty years.
It had never occurred to Ellis that the village would miss the O"Rourkes, only that they would miss the village. But not only was the village fearing for Denny and his children now, they always had been. As Bridget spoke, it became clear to Ellis that Denny had always been perceived as a widower and a lone parent, and Chrissie and Ellis as motherless children, whereas Ellis, however much he thought of his mum and dreamt of meeting her, did not define himself in terms of being without her. The yearning he felt for her was deep but not constant. As a child, it could usually be diluted by his dad"s affection or play-acting. Ellis liked being the son of a single father. It was distinctive and to be able to give all his love to one parent made that love so potent that he didn"t always wish that things had been different.
"I miss your father so much," Bridget said.
Ellis made a note to himself: I must get out of the habit of presuming that women with enormous bosoms don"t have deep feelings.
He led her upstairs. She stood in the doorway and gazed at Denny O"Rourke as he slept, then nodded to herself, as if concluding what she had come to say.
After Bridget came Reardon. He sat at Denny"s bedside and read him short stories by Ronald Blythe. The sight of the Land Rover parked outside nudged Ellis with a nostalgia for the rides in the back he and Tim had taken and, suddenly, the prospect of photo shoots with pampered models and neurotic stylists and others perched on fold-up chairs in various poses of self-appreciation left him with a sickly taste.
Reardon"s face burned with sincerity. "Is there anything you want or need, Ellis?"
"Do you know what I did to Tim?"
"Yes, Ellis. I know."
"Do you hate me?"
Reardon grabbed hold of him. It wasn"t an embrace, his fingers dug in too deeply for that.
"Oh, Ellis! Ellis!" His eyes were kind and fierce. "You were just a child! You still are! You come to me for anything, you hear? Anything at all. For as long as I"m alive, you turn to me. Do you hear me, Ellis O"Rourke?"
The district nurse installed oxygen cylinders at the bedside. She washed Denny and his face settled with contentment. Ellis wondered how often since his mother"s death his father had been held or caressed. Maybe never. Certainly not often enough. Denny needed the oxygen more and more. And he suffered fevers in which he was curled up in pain. The nurse left morphine tablets. The morphine made Denny talkative. He spoke of his father and characters in Ilford when he was a boy. He also sang, very softly. "I Dream of Jeannie" was his favourite. It made Ellis laugh. One morning, after a bad night, Denny sang "For Those In Peril On The Sea" again and again and became distressed. His temperature rose to 39 degrees and as Ellis struggled to cool him with iced drinking water and cool towels, it occurred to Ellis that there was now probably a number on the conversations remaining for them. Not a stellar number but an everyday one. Thirty-eight more conversations perhaps, or maybe only fifteen. Sixty at the most. Whatever the number, it was trickling away into a stream of morphine.
"Sweetie ..." Denny muttered, as he strayed into unconsciousness. Then his eyes shot open and he smiled at Ellis. "No ... you"re not sweetie, you"re my dear boy. Chrissie is sweetie and your mother is the love of my life."
Ellis rang Chrissie and told her that their dad had said she was his sweetie and that he loved her dearly.
"Thank you for telling me. That"s lovely." She was tired and had just arrived home from the airport.
"Where have you been?" Ellis asked.
"Frankfurt. Thank you for calling, Ellis, you are thoughtful."
"Chrissie, I think it"s time for you to be here all the time."
"I don"t need to be told that by you, Ellis. I already know that."
"Then why aren"t you here?" he asked, quite innocently.
She told him that it was called "real life".
Ellis felt low. He wondered if he and his sister would grow closer or drift apart after the end. He told himself he loved her but knew how little he enjoyed being with her now. He concluded, with regret, that, without Denny there, they would drift apart.
He watched a little TV that evening. Soon he was staring at the screen but watching nothing. A fear came to him, the idea that after his dad died Ellis would remain where he was, sitting in front of this television, in a house full of other people"s furniture, unable to switch off the set and leave. He unplugged the TV, pulled the aerial out of the socket and ripped the power cable out of the back of the set. He sat down again. Later, he heard Denny"s voice from the doorway. "Good night, dear boy. I"m going up now." He knew before he turned to look that his dad wasn"t there, but he looked anyway and saw the old beamed stairwell of the cottage and heard the creak of the cottage floorboards as his dad went up to bed. He stared at the blacked-out television screen and began to cry. He said Tammy"s name and immediately hid his face in embarra.s.sment. He went outside and crouched down beneath one of the walnut trees in a half-hearted attempt at kneeling. And he was tentative, because he had never prayed.
"G.o.d ... cure him. Make him completely well again. You can do this if you choose to. Make my dad completely well again now. I believe you can do this. I know I"m lucky and have a lot but I am only twenty years old and I do not want to live without him. That"s what I"m asking for. Please."
Denny spoke to his wife a great deal the next day. He told her about Chrissie and Ellis in outpourings of soft, breathy pride. Occasionally, he"d stop and catch sight of Ellis as if his son had only just appeared in the room.
"Your mother was the b.u.t.terfly-lady ..." he"d say, and drift away again.
In the late afternoon, the delirium had pa.s.sed and Denny was lucid and it was hard to believe he was so unwell.
"When I was your age, I was fearless. Your mum stole that from me when she disappeared. I don"t want to have taken it from you. Be fearless ..."
"OK, I"ll try."
"She was always awake when I woke in the morning ... her green eyes looking at me. "What"s the capital of such and such a country?" she"d ask. If I knew the answer she made the tea. If I didn"t know, I had to get out of bed and make the tea. If she really wanted to stay in bed, she made up a country that didn"t exist ..."
Ellis listened and before him appeared a boy who played in Valentine"s Park in Ilford, an adolescent who went to war, a young man who saw a woman in a field of b.u.t.terflies and loved her. From time to time, Denny"s eyes met his son"s and they looked at each other without embarra.s.sment. Once, after morphine, Denny squeezed Ellis"s hand tight and said, "I"ve known you since I was your age."
A parcel arrived from Gerd. In it, Ellis found a cheque for his full pay, a batch of film stock and a photograph of the Hoover in the Days Inn in Cincinnati. The Hoover stood at the end of the claustrophobic green corridor like a schoolchild outside a headmaster"s office. Ellis tried to reconcile the ba.n.a.lity of what he had seen there with the haunting image Gerd had produced, in which every lonely, lost soul inside every motel room in America had been evoked. He pinned the beautiful photograph to his wall. Ellis put Chrissie"s suitcase in his room, changed the sheets and made up the sofa bed downstairs for himself. He offered to cook supper but Chrissie said she wanted to. Whilst she sat with her father, Ellis drank half a bottle of wine beneath the wide, low spread of the walnut trees. He imagined living by the sea with Tammy in their tiny attic flat, with lots of nooks and crannies. Later, he sat with his dad whilst Chrissie cooked. Denny turned his wedding ring on his finger and said, "You"ll wear this, won"t you?" Ellis nodded, then he lay on the bed beside his father.
"She loved you," Denny whispered. "She thought you were perfect."
Ellis stroked his dad"s arm. "Don"t let on, when you see her."
Then Denny cupped his hands round Ellis"s face and Ellis did the same to Denny in response, as if they were peering through a window at each other.
"You"re perfect to me, Ellie-boy ..."
"You"re perfect, Daddy."
Chrissie and Ellis watched from the doorway as the nurse hooked up a morphine drip that would be operated by Denny"s hand squeezing it when he felt pain. Feeling a directionless but urgent anger, Ellis marched away and rang Jed.
"Unlike vets, doctors in this country aren"t allowed to put their patients to sleep so they"ve devised a way for the dying person to do it themselves. Maybe it"s for the best because I"d probably kill the doctor who put my dad to sleep, although that"s really what they"re doing anyway ..."
Jed listened and didn"t try to make Ellis feel better, and for that Ellis was grateful.
Chrissie dabbed glycerine water on to Denny"s lips with a cotton bud. Sometimes, she and Ellis stopped breathing because they were listening so intently to their father"s life. Outwardly peaceful, Ellis"s mind raged, even now. Why can"t we just keep him alive, prop him up and piece him together so that he stays here with us? Why can we not do that? I could take care of him.
Chrissie fell asleep in a chair in the corner of the bedroom and Ellis saw the soft edges return to her face.
"You need to go to bed," he said as he woke her.
She looked nervously at her dad.
Ellis said, "We"ve got to accept that it doesn"t matter, it mustn"t matter, if he goes when one of us isn"t in here."
"I agree," she said.
Ellis watched his sister kiss her father goodnight and decided that if his dad were to die with him there and Chrissie absent then he would lie and pretend he had been out of the room or asleep. In the few moments in which she lay on her bed before sleep engulfed her, Chrissie resolved to do the same.
Denny opened his eyes. A child"s eyes, curious, trusting, a little frightened. He squeezed Ellis"s hand and his eyes closed again, very slowly. Ellis held Denny, gently, to camouflage the truth that he was trying to cling on to his father"s life, the same way he held on to special objects and stray dogs in his dreams in the hope of bringing them back with him to the other side of sleep.
"When old or sickly spiders leave home," Ellis whispered, "they draw a strand of silk out and wait for the silk to catch on the wind. When it catches, the spider is lifted into the air like a balloon on a gossamer line and set free. Charles Darwin found spiders caught in the sails of HMS Beagle hundreds of miles from land where the waves are huge and silent. It is your ship now rising out of the deep swell and you can see land ahead where none is charted. You are gliding gracefully towards the land and when you step ash.o.r.e you know that Mum will be waiting for you and you will never feel pain or loneliness ever again."
Eyes closed for ever, his breathing almost done, Denny smiled.
Chrissie woke Ellis at five o"clock and for a few moments he listened for the dawn chorus in the village and yearned for the air that rose from the fields there and moved through the cottage. He pulled on his clothes, washed his face and went to his father"s bedside. Chrissie had made a pot of tea with Mafi"s rarely used china and that way, she felt, invited her great-aunt to join them.
There was no talking but as they drank their tea they found themselves sipping and swallowing in harmony. They allowed this to continue for a little while and laughed gently at it.
At seven o"clock, Chrissie said some prayers. Ellis bowed his head and hid his face. Chrissie lay alongside her father a while on the bed. Later, Ellis found himself kneeling beside the bed. Chrissie did the same, opposite him. Ellis rubbed his father"s lips with the glycerine water. Denny gently pushed his tongue forward three or four times and Ellis painted the water gently on to his tongue. Denny"s eyes were closed all the time. His breathing became slower and very calm. Ellis rubbed the water on to his lips again. He put the buds down and he and his sister stroked the soft skin on Denny"s forearms. Then, Denny"s eyes moved beneath his eyelids and he gently expelled the air from his lungs. A serenity fell upon him and the ashenness lifted from his complexion and disappeared, and a breeze swept through the walnut trees.
21.
On a flight back from Lisbon with Milek, Mafi appeared to Ellis. She was a stewardess. She touched him gently on the arm and said, "Any day you see the sea is a good day."
Ellis hired a car at the airport and drove to the Marsh. On the shingle peninsula, near to the lighthouse, there was a small house to let. It was timber-framed, with a flat roof, and a part of it had once been a meat wagon. He viewed the house as a blizzard consumed the beach. From the dining room window he looked through a veil of snow flurries at the container ships heading south-west on the Channel.
He drove to Fairfield to think things over. He crossed the pasture to the church and hid from the winter wind at the spot where he and Denny had often stood.
"Good place for a bench," he heard his dad say.
When he had fixed things with the agent he rang the vicar of the Marsh churches and offered to purchase a bench to be situated on the sheltered side of Fairfield church.
"There"s no sheltered side at Fairfield," the vicar said.
"That"s true," Ellis agreed. "It was just tradition to say there was. I want to put a dedication on the bench, to my father."
He drove off the Marsh towards the Downs to the cemetery on the hill. He carried a bottle of champagne and stood over his father"s grave.
"I"m moving to the beach, Dad, like I said I would. Come and find me there, because I can"t find you anywhere."
A voice called out, "I wondered if we"d b.u.mp into each other here." Katie Morton was kneeling at a freshly dug grave nearby. He went to her.
"Your mother or father?" he asked, immediately fearing it could be her brother.
"My mother."
The sand and earth on Mrs Morton"s grave was still piled high in a comically human shape, an observation Ellis kept to himself. He raised the bottle a fraction.
"To your mum ..."
He swigged and handed the bottle to her.
"To your dad ..." she said, and drank.
He held her when she cried. "You"re freezing cold," he told her.
He wrapped his coat around her. She told him that Denny had visited her parents" house the day after she and Ellis were caught together.
"Did you know that he came round?"
"No ... I had already gone away."
Katie had watched from the top of the stairs.
"My parents shrank in comparison to him. They often did that with people."
"What did my dad say?" Ellis asked.
"Yesterday is the last time you ever humiliate my son. No matter what you think he might have done wrong, you need to feel ashamed."
Ellis said nothing. How many other moments had he never seen? What other things had he not credited his dad with being capable of?
As he watched Katie Morton walk away from the graveside that afternoon it occurred to Ellis how her body, the first he ever truly saw, would venture out across the earth now, covering maybe a few miles of it, or perhaps many thousands. She will forget him, or she will go years and years between remembering him. She will grow up and grow old. They might each become unrecognisable as the people they were. But she will still be there. That person who bared herself, those eyes that smiled and laughed at him, that very young woman who invited him to touch her.
And the aching he felt, he could not be sure whether it was urging him to smile or to sob. We don"t love each other, but we knew each other. We knew each other for a moment. And one day, one of us will take their last breath and the other won"t know of it. Those days of innocent exploration, when life is abundant with potential, will be distant but Ellis O"Rourke, he promised himself, will remember it all. And unlike the jewellery on Mafi"s dresser, which it was impossible to believe had ever been brand new, the Katie Morton who led me by the hand and slept tight against me will always be there. However the sh.e.l.l around her ages, even when it is worn out and dies, she will always be there. And I will never behave as if none of these things happened. I will never hide from my children all that I have ever been.
He stood up and stretched and looked at the sky. In it, he saw Mrs Morton, with wings and a harp, looking very p.i.s.sed off indeed as she glared from a film-set heaven at him, that wretched boy, standing on her own grave, with a bottle of champagne.