Carnival Sky (24 page)

HE SAW HIS FATHER DRUNK ONLY ONCE,
and had no wish to witness it again. Warwick had been to Queenstown at a two-day summer conference, and arrived home very late on the Sunday. A colleague dropped him off, but didn’t stay to give any explanation to Belize. She tried to get him inside, but he was full of unnatural hostility. ‘Don’t start. Don’t start, woman,’ he said cuttingly when she scolded him. ‘Just bugger off and leave me alone. I’m going to have a few swings.’

He took off his jacket and dropped it carelessly on the grass. He disappeared into the garage and after a considerable time appeared again with a driver and some balls. Belize told Sheff and Georgie to stay inside, but they grouped at the door with her to watch their father flailing in the moonlight. He gave up trying to tee the balls and struck them where they lay. ‘Bugger,’ he said after each shot that went astray, and only once, ‘Yes, yes, you beauty.’

Quite suddenly the urge left him, and he dropped the club, left his jacket lying, pushed wordlessly past the family at the door and went heavily to the bedroom. ‘You father’s not well,’ Belize said. ‘Go back to bed now. Everything’s okay.’

Sheff and Georgie were still at primary school, but Warwick nevertheless made a formal apology at breakfast. He was groomed and in his suit for the office as on any other work day. ‘I’m sorry for last night,’ he said. ‘It was rude and silly, and I’m ashamed of myself. The whole weekend was just so damn boring.’

SHEFF WAS DREAMING of a balloon ride. One of those magnificent, multi-coloured balloons held in a net, with below it a wickerwork basket, as so often illustrated in books for children. He and several spotted Dalmatian dogs had their heads over the side and were gazing at the landscape passing far beneath – corn fields, clumps of trees, and long, sun-glittering canals. And with the typical illogicality of dreams he was concerned not at having spotted dogs as companions in a runaway balloon, but that no bubbly and club sandwiches had been provided despite earlier promises. There was also increasing anxiety as the balloon swept lower and headed ominously towards a line of huge red and yellow totem poles that hadn’t been evident before. Sheff searched above for the burner cord that would give a flaring burst, but there was no cord, no burner, and all seemed awry. The Dalmatians were united in criticism of him in a language that wasn’t canine, yet remained foreign and unhelpful. The basket began a violent rocking, and he woke to his mother shaking him by the shoulder.

‘He’s gone,’ she said, and behind her in the dimness loomed his satin-blue sister. Both turned back without saying any more, and he got out of the bed awkwardly, still with an ebbing fear of totem poles and linguistic exclusion. But he knew at once what had happened. In silence the three went back to Warwick’s sickroom and grouped at
the bed. Both his arms were restful on the cover, and Sheff wondered if Belize had arranged them so, but his eyes were still half open and his mouth almost completely, as if he were acquiescing to yet another spoonful of some pap. With relief Sheff realised that there was nothing intrinsic there of his father: he was gone at last and had left just this yellowed husk lying in the bed, a thing evoking neither love, nor terror. On the bedside table lay his discarded hearing aids, like small dead creatures with antennae.

Sheff put an arm around his mother’s shoulders. ‘Were you here?’ he asked.

‘Georgie was with him,’ she said.

‘What do we have to do?’ he said.

‘I’ll let Andrew know later, and I know he’ll come round first thing,’ said Georgie.

‘What time is it?’

‘Nearly five,’ Georgie said. She also had an arm about her mother, and the three of them stood close. None of them wept. ‘And afterwards we need to call the undertaker. You could do that for us,’ she said to Sheff, ‘and later a notice for the paper.’

‘Sure.’ He accepted his sister’s professional right to take the lead at such a time.

Belize wanted to tidy the room before Dr North came. Sheff and Georgie sat at the kitchen table and drank coffee, waited for morning to come. Bird calls began as if it were just another day. There was something Sheff needed to ask, and he did so after checking his mother was still in the sickroom. ‘Did you do anything, give him stuff as we talked about?’

‘Yes,’ Georgie said. Sheff waited for her to say more, but she just looked at him steadily. He would have to ask for anything else, and what was the point of doing that?

‘You did the right thing,’ he said. ‘I loved him, but I’m glad it’s over. I never realised that you could be so relieved to see someone go, and yet love them.’

‘Now we do,’ said Georgie. ‘The only way he lives now is in us. When we go that’s his final end, too. I’m glad I was the one with him. I was able to clean him before Mum came.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘All the muscles relax,’ said Georgie, and Sheff understood. At the end, as always, she had taken the difficult tasks, and he’d avoided them.

They were quiet together for a time, then he asked, ‘You reckon Mum will be okay?’

‘I don’t know. Maybe I can get her to come back with me for a while, or Aunt Cass could come here to be with her for a bit. She’s happy to do that, she says. They’ve always been close.’

‘You’ve been great, Georgie. Really great. I mean it. It’s made it so much easier having you here. You were the one Dad wanted.’ Sheff needed to say it, admit to himself and also his sister, and he found the truth wasn’t hard to say after all. His father’s final reliance on Georgie wasn’t a sign he loved his wife and son any less.

‘It’s just being a doctor,’ she said. ‘He knew I wasn’t responsible for his treatment, but I think he understood that I could do something if it became utterly unbearable. He needed that reassurance.’

‘Did he ask about it?’

‘Sometimes when we were alone he did, and I said I’d be there. Just knowing that he wasn’t entirely at the mercy of the disease was something: that he had an end-game strategy. He always liked the sense of some control of his own life. And although he wasn’t gushy, he had a lot of love, didn’t he?’

‘Yes,’ said Sheff, ‘and I feel that’s still there, still strong. I reckon we’ll always have a sense of that.’

‘So do I.’ They let talk lapse for a time, and sat watching the light coming into the garden, and listening to the birds heralding it.

‘I’m going through to see Mum,’ said Georgie, ‘and then I’ll ring Andrew.’

‘He won’t notice anything, will he?’

‘If he does I don’t imagine he’ll say a thing. He’s known our family a long time. I think what he’s prepared to do himself, and what he’s willing to allow others to do, are two different things.’

‘I’m happy with it.’

‘I’m glad,’ said Georgie. ‘We need to think of Mum now. Do you think you’ll still go overseas quite soon?’

‘I’ve rather gone off the idea. I didn’t think we’d be down here as long, and I don’t feel much like travelling right now. I could change my mind, though, and I’ll have to think about some sort of a job again soon.’

‘I’ll have to go back almost straight after the funeral. It’s not fair on the others at the hospital otherwise.’

‘Well, maybe if Mum doesn’t want to go with you, I could stay on here for a bit if Cass can’t come down immediately. And there’ll be Dad’s stuff to sort out.’

‘But Mum may not want it done straight away,’ said Georgie. ‘You’ll need to check with her. You’ll need to be patient, Sheff, you know? She’ll be up and down for quite a while, but you realise that. It really should be me here, I guess, but the pressure’s on.’

‘No, you’ve given a hell of a lot, and you made regular visits when Dad got sick. I didn’t do enough. I see that now. Maybe I can make up for it.’

Belize would prefer Georgie’s solace in her worst grief, but Sheff made up his mind to do his very best. He had the rather strange idea that he needed to shift some of the affection he had for Warwick to his mother. His father had been easier to love because he didn’t expect it, but no more deserving, Sheff realised.

‘When did you last go in?’ Sheff asked.

‘Just after you went to bed.’

‘Did he talk much?’

‘He said his mother was standing in the corner of the room. Nothing else.’

‘He told me the same thing sometimes, and yesterday he thought
you and I were there as kids, and he talked to those apparitions as he once did to us, while I sat beside him. Any divisions of time seemed to have collapsed. Spooky in a way, and sad too.’

‘It’s a common thing near the end,’ said Georgie. ‘Anyway I’d better ring Andrew now.’ As she stood up to go, she leant over to Sheff and touched his face briefly. ‘It’s okay to feel relief,’ she said. ‘I’m sure Dad did.’

Yes, he felt the flow of emotional release, but it was grief too. ‘It was absolutely the right thing,’ he said. He was too choked-up to say more. He felt no inclination, or necessity, to go into the sickroom again. There was nothing there that mattered. Everything vital of their father had become memory.

He was surprised how few people he felt it was necessary to tell of his father’s death. Belize and Georgie, however, were busy on the phone for a long time, talking earnestly to people who had been close to Warwick, or were to them. Sheff rang Chris, also Nick and Raewyn. It would be a brief topic of conversation when the journos met over Friday drinks in the Ascot bar. Raewyn and Nick would feel for him, the others would speculate concerning his plans now that his father was dead, and, he hoped, wish him well in a summary way before turning to things nearer to their own lives. Donna would understand, even though Sheff hadn’t got round to ringing her with sympathy for her own loss. It was borne home to Sheff that a diminishing number of people were essential in his life.

Lucy, too, needed to be told. ‘He was always good to me, as was your mum. It’s awful for you all, I know, and nothing helps,’ she said when he rang. ‘There was always more to him than he allowed to show, wasn’t there? When’s the funeral?’

‘Thursday.’

‘I could get down in time and I’d really like to. Okay?’

‘Sure.’

‘Would you mind if Nigel came?’ she said after a pause. ‘We’d probably see his folks on the way back. He needn’t be at the service if you’d rather not.’

‘No, it’s okay. Let him come. It’s not going to be a religious service. Dad didn’t want that.’

‘I’m really sorry. It’s so sad.’

‘I know you are,’ he said.

‘Would you mind booking us a motel? Just for Wednesday night?’

‘No problem.’

‘I’ll ring again when I’ve got myself sorted.’

‘Okay then,’ he said. How should he feel about that? Lucy’s partner coming to his father’s funeral. He gave himself a moment to reflect, and found he felt nothing at all.

‘Oh, I’ve been to the house a couple of times. Things look okay and someone’s been collecting the mail and doing the lawns.’

‘Janice said she’d look after mail, and Nick’s been round a few times to check on things. I’ve given him a key.’

‘I’ll see Janice and go through stuff. I’ll bring down anything I think can’t wait.’

‘Thanks. That’ll be good.’

‘It must be awful for you,’ Lucy said.

‘He was ready to go.’

‘Yes, but that only helps so much, doesn’t it? How’s Belize?’

‘Too soon to tell really. She’ll be pleased you’re coming.’ Sheff was surprised how much he was affected by talking to Lucy. Not by what was said, for they had lost the ease and trust that enabled self-revelation. But the voice remained that of the woman he had loved and married and with whom he had a daughter, and whenever he heard it, all that fulfilment was there, as well as the pain and bewilderment that followed. He must have failed her after Charlotte’s death, because she sought consolation everywhere except with him: hospital counsellor, the local woman vicar with whom they had no history whatsoever, friends, grief consultants, her muddle-headed mother, Janice next door, and once Sheff had come home to find her weeping with an aromatherapist she had met while in the dentist’s waiting room. Their natural reactions to tragedy were diametrically opposed: he could
cherish his child’s memory only by binding all close to himself; Lucy had sought release.

Later Sheff rang Jessica, too, who had appointments for the morning, but said she could meet for a walk and coffee at lunchtime. Sheff parked outside the clinic a little before twelve and was observed with some curiosity through the main window by a bespectacled receptionist, an elderly woman who worked her jaw continuously like some contented ruminant. ‘She doesn’t trust me,’ said Sheff when Jessica, a little late, came out to the car.

‘Who doesn’t?’

‘Your office lady.’

‘No, she’s just curious, and sympathetic. I told her you’re a friend who’s just had a loss. I’m really sorry. I know how sick he’s been, but the shock must be awful all the same.’ It was the word Lucy had used too – awful. But for Sheff it wasn’t awful, at least not in the sense they intended.

‘It’s all happened so quickly in the end. He was very low last night, but that wasn’t unusual, and then Mum woke me and he was gone. The three of us still keep our voices down even though there’s no need.’

‘I hardly knew him really,’ said Jessica, who remained standing outside the car, close to the driver’s side. ‘Georgie I’ve caught up with off and on, and Belize I’ve got to know again through bridge, though in a different way. Once she was my friend’s mum, and now we’re equal adults at the club – well, almost. A few years mean a hell of a lot when you’re young, but the distinctions fade.’

The receptionist was still chewing, and glancing often at them through the office window. Belize had told him as a boy that it was rude to sit and talk to a woman who was standing. He opened the door slowly to allow Jessica to back off, and got out to be beside her. ‘You’ve got time now?’ he asked.

‘I’ve got an appointment with a parrot here after one,’ she said.

‘You’re joking.’

‘Nope.’

‘You can bring it back a cracker.’

‘Maybe.’

‘I remember you said you don’t like treating birds.’

‘They’re often difficult, just like people,’ she said.

The walk in the sun through the streets to their café was a pleasure for him. No wind at all and little traffic. They had blueberry muffins and hot chocolate at an outside table, close to locals strolling by. Sheff had been in the town for several weeks, and yet he felt quite suddenly it was a different place, and he a different person. He no longer had a feeling he should be with his father – that’s what it was. The sickroom was no longer the focus, whether he was there physically or not. Warwick didn’t need him any more. He shared some of this with Jessica, but said nothing to her about the decision Georgie and he had made to hasten their father’s death. No one else need ever know of that. It was something done of mercy and duty, and quite without public excuse. To kill someone dear to you for their sake is a fusion of the two most powerful forces in life – love and death.

‘Georgie has to go back to Wellington almost straight after the funeral,’ he said. ‘I’ll probably stay on for just a bit, until Mum’s settled, or decides to go to Georgie’s, or her sister’s, but we don’t think she’ll do that.’

‘It’s a big place to keep for just one person,’ said Jessica. ‘The house wouldn’t be so bad, but there’s a heap of garden.’

‘Too much,’ said Sheff. His mother could afford to have someone come in to keep it, but he knew she would worry, try to do everything herself, and the satisfaction would be gone.

‘I’ve never lost anyone close to me,’ said Jessica. ‘No one who took up part of my life. I’m really sorry for you, but I don’t know what it’s like. Separation from Kevin is different.’