Inside Grandad (2 page)

ext day was Saturday, and wet. Gavin was in Grandad's room at the top of the house, getting his homework finished so as to free up the rest of the weekend. Grandad was working on his boat. He built the most beautiful model boats, better than anything Gavin had ever seen in a shop. They weren't just models to stand on a shelf. You could set their self-steering gear and put them in the water and they'd sail themselves, or you could control them by radio.

This one was a trawler, of the kind Grandad's own grandfather had worked on until he'd been drowned in a North Sea storm. You could see she was an old boat, which had fished in all weathers and brought her catch home to harbor again and again and again. Her paint was fresh, but she had a used and battered look and a patched rusty-red sail, and the coils of rope and piles of net on her deck were pale gray with soaking in salt water and drying out in the sun—Grandad had experimented for weeks, soaking cord in different mixtures to get them right. It usually took Grandad several months to build a boat. People ordered them from him and paid thousands of pounds for them, and even then they'd have to wait a year or two before they got theirs.

But this one was for Gavin, for his eleventh birthday next month. It was almost finished.

"Couple more days should do it," said Grandad as he started to clean his brushes. "Another coat on the wheelhouse and a
bit of filling and touching up on the stand. Thought of a name for her yet, boy?"

Gavin had been worrying about this almost since Grandad had started. None of the names he'd dreamed up had seemed quite right. Now a new one seemed to leap off his tongue without his having to think at all.

"Selkie,"
he said.

"Good enough," said Grandad. "No harm in having the selkies on your side—they'll give you a hand if you're in trouble. But they can be touchy too, if the stories have them right. You'd best go down to the bay and ask them if they mind."

He twisted his chair round and started to stand up. That was when it happened. His whole body gave a violent jerk. His left arm flailed out, knocking his jar of brushes over and spilling painty turpentine across his workbench. His face twisted, with his mouth wide open and pulled sideways as if he were trying to scream, but all that came out was a ghastly croaking sound. He jerked again and fell forward. Gavin rushed to catch him, but he was knocked aside and Grandad hit the floor with a thud that shook the house.

Gavin was half winded but he forced himself to his knees beside Grandad's body.

"Grandad! Grandad!" he croaked, and shook him by the shoulder.

The shoulder felt wrong. The arm flopped about. The other arm was jerking around, the hand grabbing at empty air. Grandad's face seemed lopsided. His blue eyes were wide open, staring. There was a horrible rasp in his breathing, with a gulping sound between breaths. Gavin called again, twice, and
then raced down the stairs to the hall. He realized Grandad had had a heart attack or something, and knew from the telly that there was no time to lose. He picked up the phone and dialed 999. A man answered second ring.

"Emergency services. How can we help?"

"I think my grandfather's had a heart attack. He's fallen down and he can't hear me. There's no one else in the house."

"Hold the line. I'll put you through."

A woman this time. He gave the same message, then the address and telephone number. She told him to hold the line and some music came on. He thought of something else while he was waiting. The woman came back.

"The ambulance is on its way from the Kincardine Hospital," she said. "It shouldn't be more than ten minutes. Will you be ready to let them in?"

"Okay," he said. "Can you tell them he's at the top of the house? The stairs are pretty steep."

"They'll manage," she said. "Don't worry. He'll be all right."

Gavin's hands started to shake as soon as he rang off but he managed to call Mum's mobile. She couldn't answer while she was with a client, so he left a message. He tried to call Gran at Hankin's, but they were engaged. He couldn't bear to be away from Grandad much longer—what would happen if he suddenly came round?—so he propped the front door open with a wellie and scrawled a note on the telephone pad saying "Ambulance men. Come right upstairs" and put it on the doormat. He didn't know if he'd spelled "ambulance" right, but it didn't matter. He tried Hankin's again, but they were still engaged so he raced back up.

Grandad was lying as Gavin had left him. He was still breathing with the same horrible rasp and gulp. His face was blotchy.

Gavin didn't dare move him, so he covered him with the old rug Grandad used to wrap round his legs when he was working on a boat in the winter. His spectacles had come off in the fall and were lying beside him, so Gavin picked them up and put them in his own shirt pocket. Grandad's right hand had got hold of the edge of the rug and was twitching it about as if it was worrying him. Gavin eased the rug away and put his hand into Grandad's and held it, winding their fingers together. He'd expected the hand to feel different, strange, half dead, but it was firm and warm, with rough places on the palm. Grandad's hand, except for the way it fidgeted about. But alive.

And the woman had said he'd be all right. Of course, she had to say that. She couldn't know.

"You'll be all right, Grandad," he croaked. "You'll be all right."

A man's voice shouted, down below.

"Up here," Gavin called.

Feet thumped on the stairs. Two men came hurrying in with a folding stretcher. The one behind was Garry Toller's dad. When he wasn't on duty, he sometimes came down to the Leisure Center to referee the football. He knew Grandad.

Gavin started to get up.

"No, stay where you are for the mo," said the first man. "You're doing no harm."

He knelt and pulled the rug aside.

"Old Robbie Robinson!" said Mr. Toller, recognizing him now. "And young Gavin, of course. Where's your mam, Gavin?"

"Working. I've left a message on her mobile. Gran's working too, but they're engaged."

"Why don't you go and have another try while we're getting your grampa down the stairs," said the other man. "It'll take a wee while. Places some people choose."

He started to unroll the stretcher. The other man was getting something out of his pack. It looked like an oxygen mask.

"If I get her shall I tell her to come to the Kincardine?" said Gavin. "Is that where you're going?"

"First off, so the doctors can take a look at him," said Mr. Toller. "But they'll be sending him on to the Royal Vic, if I know anything. Or maybe Perth. Off you go now."

Gavin hurried down the stairs. The Royal Vic was the big hospital in Aberdeen. He hoped they didn't take Grandad there. It was too far to get to every day. Perth was even farther. The Kincardine was actually in Arduthie Road, right up at the other end, but still only ten minutes' walk.

The telephone rang and rang. The ambulance men had done the difficult bit from the attic and were starting down the main stairs before a man answered. Gavin started to give him a message for Gran.

"Hold it," said the man. "I'll get her."

"No, wait!" said Gavin desperately. He didn't want to talk to Gran. It would take forever, and the ambulance would be gone. The men were already passing him, reaching the hall. The oxygen mask covered most of Grandad's face, with bits of
mustache sticking out round the rim. His eyes were still open.

"Just tell her Grandad's had a heart attack or something," Gavin said. "They're taking him to the Kincardine. I've got to go. Thanks."

He put the phone down and rushed out into the road. The men were just finishing loading Grandad into the ambulance. Despite the rain, half a dozen people were out on the pavement, watching.

"Can I come too?" he said. "I was with him when it happened. I can tell the doctors. Or I'll walk."

"May as well come," said Mr. Toller. "We're not supposed to leave you alone in the house, anyway."

So Gavin sat beside the driver while the ambulance sped whooping off through the rain. They swung in at the hospital in less than a minute. He followed the stretcher in, but at the reception desk the clerk asked him to stop and tell her stuff like Grandad's name and address and date of birth and so on. He knew the birthday, the second of March, and he worked out the year by subtracting seventy-four from two thousand and three. When he'd finished he asked the clerk to ring Mum's mobile again and tell her what was happening, and she told him where to go next.

He went through two lots of swing doors and found Grandad, still on the stretcher, lying on a sort of table in a small room with a woman in a white coat bending over him and looking into one of his eyes through a sort of torch thing. A nurse who was there collared Gavin and took him into an
office and started to ask him a lot more questions about what had happened, making notes as she went on.

Then Gran showed up. Gavin heard her before he saw her, saying something over her shoulder to the clerk at the reception desk as she came through the swing doors. He could tell from the tone of Gran's voice that they knew each other— Gran seemed to know half the people in Stonehaven. They let her go in and see Grandad for a bit, and then they brought her into the office to help with the questions. She was very upset—crying some of the time—but that didn't stop her talking. Grandad was almost never ill, but Gran seemed to remember every little sniffle he'd ever had and wanted to tell the nurse about all of them.

That slowed things up, and before the nurse had finished her questions Mum arrived. She was probably upset too, though Grandad wasn't her father, but it was much harder to tell with Mum. Mum was quite different from Gran. Gran was round and smiley and a bit untidy, in a comfortable kind of way. She was really interested in people and everything about them. Strangers who came into the shop for a pack of hacksaw blades would finish up telling her stuff they mightn't have told their best friend.

Mum always looked smart. She needed to, for her job, but she still did even on holiday. She was slim but not quite skinny and didn't really look like anyone's mum. (Gran looked like everyone's mum.) She liked sorting things out, keeping life tidy and clean and under control. She wasn't exactly bossy, telling Gavin what to do all the time. Provided he had his own
life sorted—which he did, mostly, because he didn't like mess either—she left him to it. And if he had the right sort of problem—practical, with things to be done about it—she could be terrific.

Mum didn't normally talk anything like as much as Gran, but a crisis like this made her sort of fizz, like a bottle of fizzy water when you open it carelessly. Plans and ideas were trying to squirt out of her. Now Gavin could see how frustrating it was for her, having to sit and wait while Gran answered the questions, when what Mum wanted to know was what was going to happen next and whether that was the best thing for Grandad and what she was going to do about it if she decided it wasn't.

But it wasn't long before the woman who'd been looking at Grandad came in. She turned out to be Dr. Boone. She wasn't exactly a friend, but Mum had sold her her house and she'd bought stuff from Gran at Hankin's, so they both knew her. This was just as well. Mum had a thing about doctors. Usually she didn't trust them at all. She took a magazine called
What Doctors Don't Tell You.
It was all about doctors getting it wrong and she believed every word of it.

"I'm afraid it looks as if your husband has had a severe stroke, affecting his left side, Mrs. Robinson," said Dr. Boone. "It's a waste of precious time my investigating further. We've only been waiting to hear whether we should send him to the stroke unit at Aberdeen or Perth. They've both been extremely busy. But now a call's come through to say we can send him up to the Royal Victoria, and they'll have a bed for him there by this evening. Even if there's a crisis before that, they'll
be able to take better care of him than we could here. He'll be on his way in a couple of minutes. One of you can go with him in the ambulance, if you want, but you'll have to make your own arrangements about getting back."