Inside Grandad (4 page)

He cleaned up the mess of painty turpentine on Grandad's workbench, put the brushes to soak in fresh turps, and made everything as neat as he could. As he groped his way down to bed he could hear Mum trying to find someone in Edinburgh who knew what Donald was doing that weekend.

His last thought as he fell asleep was, I'll finish
Selkie
in time for my birthday.

ext day was Sunday. Gavin slept late, and when he came down Gran was already on the telephone, telling her friends what had happened. Mum started making plans the moment he came into the kitchen. He half listened as he got his breakfast together.

"It's my Sunday on, darling, and I can't ask Mary or Bob to stand in because they've both got stuff fixed …"

(Mum and two other people in her office took turns working on Sundays, showing people houses.)

"… so Gran's going to take you in to Aberdeen on the train after lunch and I should be off by four so I'll come and pick you up and find out what's going on, if anything. And for tomorrow I'll ask Janet if she can have you after school until Gran gets home, or Bessie McCracken, or—"

"But—" said Gavin. He'd already decided what he wanted to do.

"All right, darling, if you don't get on with Ian I can always ask—"

"No. Please. I get on fine with Ian, but I want to go and see Grandad after school."

"No, darling. I'm sorry, but—"

"Please, Mum. I'll be all right. I wouldn't talk to anybody I didn't know. And Gran can show me today about getting to the Royal Vic. Please. It would be good for Grandad, wouldn't
it, having someone with him he knows? Gran can't get there till the evening. And then I can come home with her or you can come and pick us up. Please."

You could make Mum listen if you really tried. She started to shake her head.

"Please," he said again.

"I've got to go. I'll think about it, darling. Tell Gran, in case you want me today, I'll keep my mobile switched on and …"

Her good-bye kiss was a sort of punctuation mark in the flow. She was still talking as she went out the front door.

Gran could perfectly well have driven them in to the Royal Vic in Grandad's car, but she hated driving in Aberdeen. Almost as soon as the train pulled out of the station she started telling him about people who'd lived in some of the houses they passed, and their mothers and fathers, and (if the train hadn't come to another house for her to tell him about) grannies and granddads and who'd married who and then run away with who else, and so on. He realized it was only her way of stopping herself thinking about what had happened to Grandad, and Gran's talk could be pretty interesting if you were in the mood, but not now. He wanted to think. He got his homework out and pretended to be doing it, but that didn't make any difference. In the end he put his homework away and waited for a chance to interrupt her.

"Gran?"

"Yes, darling. What is it?"

"Do you know anyone who goes from Stonehaven to
Aberdeen every afternoon? After school, so I can go and visit Grandad without having to wait for you? I'm sure I could go on my own, but Mum's not going to let me."

"I don't know what we're coming to. Your age, I was on the bus out to Muchalls on my own for my piano lessons in the evening, Tuesdays, regular as clockwork, and that meant home in the dark wintertime, with the lighting nothing like so good as they've got it now, not that I couldn't've gone to Carrie Lennox—she was in Slug Road then, just a wee step away, but my mam had had words with her over us missing choir practice—those days we were all Auld Kirk, of course—so it was the bus to Muchalls for me, and Mr. McPhee, with his sister sitting in the corner so that none of us girls could make trouble saying he'd been stroking our knees or something, poor wee man, and to think he'd played in a concert once in front of the queen …"

"Gran?"

"Yes, darling."

"Somebody to take me to Aberdeen after school."

"I'm thinking, darling. Colin Smith could've done it, but he's been dead this eighteen years, since the train hit his van on the level crossing, hurrying, it came out, because of not wanting his boss to know he was taking a detour to visit Fiona Murray up at her dad's farm …"

And so on, all the way to Aberdeen. There was a bus direct from the station to the Royal Vic. Gavin could see it would be as easy as pie if only Mum would let him.

The stroke unit was upstairs, in a different building from the one with the casualty unit in it. It had a lobby with a reception
desk and a short corridor with several wards opening off it. Grandad's bed was in the corner of one of the wards. There were five other beds, all with somebody in them. A woman in a white coat—a doctor, Gavin guessed—was watching the dials on a bit of equipment beside one of the beds and making notes; and a nurse was standing at the head of one of the other beds slowly massaging the head and neck of the person in it. This was a woman who didn't look any older than Mum. She was rather pretty, in fact, except that her skin was kind of grayish.

There were curtains to go round Grandad's bed, but they were drawn back. Grandad was lying half on his side, propped in place with a pillow behind him. There was a short tube going into one nostril with a stopper at its other end, and wires from his chest to the monitor at the foot of his bed, and a drip feed. His right hand kept plucking at a button on his pajamas until Gran grabbed hold of it and held it. They'd only given him one pillow, so that even if he'd had his specs on he wouldn't have been able to see much. Ceilings aren't that interesting. All the same, Gavin looked in the locker beside the bed, found the specs, and put them on him. Grandad blinked again, but his eyes still didn't move. There was something funny about the blink, but Gavin couldn't see what.

Gran was already telling Grandad about all the people she'd called, and what they'd said. Gavin wondered if Grandad was listening. There aren't a lot of different ways of saying how sorry you are, and Grandad was used to tuning Gran out, just grunting now and then to show she wasn't talking to a brick
wall. Not that he could even do that now. Gavin got out his homework and started in on it for real.

After a bit Gran went off to see if she could find a nurse who'd tell her what was happening, so Gavin took hold of the fidgety hand and with his other hand got out the
Model Boats
he'd brought and read Grandad bits of that. It was last month's, so Grandad must have read it already, but he often read things two or three times if they interested him. There was a long article about a big show at Dortmund, in Germany, with hundreds of boats in it. Some of them were the sort Grandad used to build, not out of kits he'd bought in a box but making all the pieces himself. Scratch-built, it was called. There was one man who'd spent five years on a strange sort of fishing boat and hadn't finished yet. That sounded amazing.

Gavin didn't read the article straight off in one go, just a sentence or two, and then a pause, and then another short bit, as if it were something he was reading to himself, and telling Grandad the interesting bits. That made it sound a bit more like what used to happen when they were alone together. He'd have needed to keep pausing anyway, because of the way his eyes couldn't help misting up.

Gran came back eventually. She'd been so long because the ward sister had an aunt in Stonehaven, somebody Gran knew, and they'd talked about her a wee bit (one of Gran's wee bits) as well as what was happening with Grandad. There wasn't anything new, this still being the weekend. He was booked for a scan the next day, and then the doctors would be able to see how much damage there was inside his brain. At the moment all they could say was that it looked as if it was in the part that
controlled his left side, and his right side might be okay in the end.

Being Gran, she spun it all out, with plenty of side turnings and goings-back—all about the sister's aunt in Stonehaven, and so on. She'd taken over from Gavin, holding the fidgety hand, so he'd gone round to the far side of the bed to hold Grandad's left hand—the one that might never be any good again. This hand felt different, not exactly floppy, not dead, but not alive either. Like a turned-off TV—there's always a faint hum when the set's on, too quiet to notice, but when the set's off you can tell the difference. Like that.

Gavin didn't just hold the hand. He played with it as he sat and half listened to Gran, moving the fingers about, helping it to fidget like the other one, giving it something to think about, he hoped. And perhaps a few tiny crumbs of that something might find their way through to Grandad where he lay locked in his frozen body—a bit like a story Mr. Garton had given Gavin to read last term, about a man who'd been thrown into prison somewhere long ago, all by himself in a tiny dark cell, until he'd heard a faint tapping sound coming along a pipe on the wall. And the man had tapped back in answer to let whoever it was at the other end of the pipe know he was there.

Of course, no answer came back through Grandad's hand. That would have been too much to hope for. Yet.

Mum didn't show up till almost eight o'clock. And of course she needed to see the sister too, and find out exactly what was going on, and make sure it was the right thing—she'd been
checking out strokes on the Web the night before until after midnight—so by the time they were back in Stonehaven it was much too late for Gavin to go out to the harbor alone.

There was something he felt he had to do as soon as possible. It had come to him while he was sitting by Grandad's bed, remembering over and over again the awful moment of Grandad's stroke, happening so suddenly, out of nowhere. One moment Grandad had been putting his brushes away, relaxing, talking playfully about selkies, and the next …

It was like something he'd seen once on TV, a terrorist bomb going off in a peaceful street, and everything changing. The telly only showed the mayhem afterward, the mess, the ambulances. The people running around screaming. But something must have happened just before, triggering the explosion. What?

Grandad had asked Gavin if he'd thought of a name for the trawler, Gavin had suggested
Selkie
, and Grandad had agreed, and then …

"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."

When he went to bed Gavin set his alarm an hour early and put it under his pillow so that it didn't wake Mum or Gran up to come out and tell him no.

It was a still, pearly dawn, with the sea barely rippling against the harbor wall. There was no one about, apart from one or two joggers on their way to the main seafront, where
most of them ran. Gavin didn't really believe in what he was going to do. It was just something he could do—the
only
thing he could do—for Grandad. That seemed to make it better than not doing it. Near as he could find it, he chose the exact spot he'd been standing when the seal had popped its head out of the water.

"Selkie," he whispered. "I'm sorry. I'm really sorry. I should have asked you first. But please may I name my boat after you? She's really beautiful. She belongs in the water. It's her home. She's like you.

"And if you can do something for Grandad …"

His voice trailed away, leaving him feeling ashamed of himself for trying anything so stupid.

He trudged back up to Arduthie Road and let himself quietly in. Gran was in the kitchen in her dressing gown, drinking her early tea and reading her horoscope aloud to Dodgem, and Mum was having her shower. Gavin got Mum's orange juice out of the fridge and set it to unchill for her, and then made himself breakfast, just as he would have done any other day.

chool started badly. Gavin was pretty depressed even before he got there at the thought of having to wait for Gran to take him to Aberdeen, and so being with Grandad for hardly any time at all before they had to go home, and Gran talking the whole way through. And then, just after assembly, the headmaster, Mr. Henryson, sent for him to say Mum had called to explain about Grandad, and how sorry he was. And when Gavin got back to his class he could tell at once from the way the other kids looked at him, or didn't, that Mrs. Brenner had been telling them too while he was out of the room, and probably saying to go easy on him, or whatever.

It had to be like that, Gavin guessed, and anyway the kids probably knew already. Mr. Toller, the ambulance man, would have told Garry—bound to—and trust Garry to spread it around. But yuck! What had happened to Grandad was private, private, private, but now he'd got to creep into class with everyone knowing, feeling sorry for him maybe—fat lot of good that did, now!—or just inquisitive, or embarrassed, which was what he'd have felt, he guessed, if it had happened to one of the others….

After that it got better. The classwork was something else to think about—most of the time, anyway—and once or twice when he started brooding Mrs. Brenner must have noticed, and she managed to break it up for him without obviously picking him out.

Out of class the kids reacted in different ways. The ones he didn't know that well were mostly plain shy of talking to him, or even looking at him, which was fine by Gavin. His own friends said they were really sorry—they all liked Grandad— and Gavin said thanks, but he didn't want to talk about it; and then he wished he hadn't, because he'd have liked to talk to someone and there wasn't anyone at home. He didn't want to hang around with them either, with them trying to be nice to him and him feeling he was spoiling things for them, so he sneaked off to the library and read bits of a Harry Potter he'd read twice already.

When Gavin came out of school he found his brother, Donald, waiting for him. Mum had been trying to call Don but he hadn't answered, so Gavin hadn't been expecting him. He was supposed to go back with Ian to Mrs. McCracken's and wait for Gran to come and take him to Aberdeen so he didn't even notice Donald standing among the usual gang of parents outside the school.

"Hi, Gav. Don't want to know me these days?"

"Don! But …"

"Why don't you find your friend and tell him you're coming with me, and then we'll hop in Grandad's car and go and see how the old boy's getting on. You can tell me all about it in the car. We can't talk on my bike. Okay?"

So only a few minutes later they were whizzing up the A92 at twice the speed Grandad ever drove. Gavin had never been quite sure where he was with his brother. Donald was twelve years older than him, and had somehow never really felt like
part of the family. It was funny. Dad was away so much that when Gavin was small he had sometimes forgotten what he looked like by the time he came home again, but still Dad slotted in and belonged, in a way that Donald didn't seem to, though he'd lived at home then.

People always told Gavin that he could tell what he was going to look like when he was grown up—they meant fair-haired, blue-eyed, not very tall, maybe a bit pudgy, but sturdy with it—because he took after Dad so much, and Dad took after Grandad, though he didn't have a mustache. But Donald took after Mum, tall, lean, dark, impatient. Maybe that was why he and Mum used to fight so much. Maybe too it was why he'd decided to become a doctor. Mum had been absolutely furious about that, and it was still a sore point, so Donald didn't come home much, except when Dad was going to be there too.

As soon as they were clear of Stonehaven Donald dropped his jaunty manner.

"This is a bad deal," he said. "Poor old boy. I'm really fond of Grandad, you know. You were with him when it happened, Mum said. Care to tell me?"

So Gavin told him the whole story in its proper order, leaving nothing out except his visit to the harbor that morning. He even put in the bit about himself fainting in the hospital, though he was still deeply ashamed of that. Donald didn't interrupt at all.

"Lucky you were there," he said when Gavin had finished. "Sounds like you got it about right. He was down for a scan today, you said. That'll tell us a bit more."

"When will they know if he's going to get better?"

"They won't, not until it happens. He should start controlling his right-side movement in two or three days, the leg before the arm usually…."

"He keeps fidgeting with his hand. All the time. He doesn't seem to know he's doing it. It's horrible."

"Happens, Gav. A lot of this is going to be pretty upsetting for anyone who knew him before. Same when he starts trying to talk—he won't have any control of that either. Just grunts and gasps. And don't forget he'll find it incredibly tiring. For a long while everything's going to be a huge effort for him—stuff you and I do without thinking. The lines are down all over Grandad's body, Gav. You want to scratch your nose, your brain gets on the phone to your arm and tells it, ‘Scratch nose,’ and
pow!
, your arm's moving. Grandad's brain knows what it wants, just as much as yours, but all it can do is scribble a message on a bit of scrap paper and give it to whoever chances by. And even then the poor guy has got to find his way across country. Not nice tame country, either. Country after an earthquake—floods in the valleys, avalanches blocking the passes. Brain's going to lose a lot of messengers, and when one finally does get through he's going to find the proper nose-scratching machinery's been smashed in the earthquake and he'll have to juryrig something out of bits and pieces and do the best he can with that.

"We can all do a bit to help, but it's going to be mainly down to Grandad himself what kind of recovery he makes—him and the physios."

"What are physios?"

"Physiotherapists. Straight physiologists tell you what exercises to do when you've injured your leg or something, and you want to get it working again. Physiotherapists do that with the brain. They'll look at the scans and the external signs of brain damage, and then try to teach the undamaged parts to take over some of the functions of the damaged parts. A really good physio can make all the difference."

There was only one nurse in the ward this time, sitting on a chair and writing on a pad on her knee. She glanced up when they came in and went back to her writing. Someone had clipped Grandad's mustache—it looked very strange—but apart from that Gavin couldn't see any change in him. He was still lying there, on his back, with the tube going into his nose and the wires fastened to his chest. Donald studied the monitor for a bit, and read the notes on the clipboard beside it.

They'd taken Grandad's specs away, of course. Gavin found them and put them on him, and while he was doing it Grandad blinked. This time Gavin was ready and saw what was funny about the blink.

"His eye didn't shut properly when he blinked."

"That's right," said Donald, not looking up.

"But it was his right eye, and it's his left side that's gone wonky."

"It's the right side of his brain that's shot. Controls that side of his face, but then it crosses over and does the other side of his body…. Nothing about the scan here. Details won't have come up yet, supposing they've done it. I'll go and see. You'll be okay?"

"Yes, of course. Can I draw the curtains? It'll feel more like I'm alone with him, the way we usually are."

"Better not," said Donald as he lounged off. "Nurse needs to be able to check on him."

He sounded surprised, amused, sympathetic, all at the same time.

Gavin felt frustrated. He'd been planning to perch himself on the bed, where Grandad could see him, and he was fairly sure he wasn't supposed to, which was the real reason he'd wanted the curtains drawn. Best he could do was get hold of Grandad's fidgeting hand and stand and lean over the bed, which wasn't very comfortable. He'd packed another
Model Boats
in his satchel, but he didn't get it out at once. Instead he told Grandad about going down to the harbor that morning to ask the selkie for permission to name the trawler after it.

"I felt really stupid about it," he said. "I still do. I'm not going to tell anyone else about it, but…"

As his voice trailed away the hand stopped trying to fidget and something seemed to change in the still, blue eyes—a flicker, a gleam, barely there for an instant, then gone.

His heart missed a beat. He waited, holding his breath, but the gleam didn't come back. Grandad's hand let go of his own….

Grandad's hand let go of his own … ?

Grandad had been holding his hand!

It hadn't been just a fidget that felt like that—it had really happened.

When?

Just when the gleam came, it must have been—he'd have
noticed at once, earlier. So it was only for a moment. Like the gleam, there and gone. Both almost nothing, but for Gavin they changed everything. Grandad had heard him, and understood. He didn't think talking to the selkie was stupid, if it was what Gavin wanted to do. Until now, whatever people had said to him, he had never really believed in his heart that he would get Grandad back. Now, in that glimmer, that soft grasp, he had seen that he could.

He looked up for someone to tell the news to, but the nurse was on the telephone now. He could tell from the way she was doing it, laughing a bit, moving her free hand around, shrugging her shoulders, that she was chatting to a friend, so she might be going on for ages. He turned back to Grandad.

"Hi, Grandad, that was great. You heard me, didn't you, talking about going to the harbor and saying thank you to the selkie … ?"

Nothing. The blue eyes stayed blank. No, not nothing. The hand …

The hand wasn't trying to fidget anymore. It didn't even twitch. But it still felt all right, like Grandad's hand, not like the other one, only as if he'd napped off for a bit. When Gavin let go the fingers opened slightly, as if they were making themselves comfortable in their new position, and lay still.

He looked at the nurse, but she was still chatting away, so he took hold of Grandad's hand again and started to tell him instead, saying how exciting it was, just knowing Grandad was there, inside his body, and had heard him. But this time there wasn't any response at all, nothing he could feel or see, and his
voice began to trail away, so after a bit he used his foot to pull the chair as close as he could get and sat down and read bits of
Model Boats
in a low voice so as not to disturb the other patients. For some reason that little burst of excitement seemed to have left him feeling extraordinarily tired and dispirited. It was difficult not to mutter, as if he were only reading aloud to himself. He had to keep thinking of Grandad, really there inside that dead-seeming body, listening to every word.

When he looked up for a rest he saw that the nurse had stopped writing and was watching him. His heart sank as she rose and came over.

"I'm sorry," he said. "Am I making too much noise?"

"No, is fine," she said. "What you read him?"

He blinked. He hadn't realized she was foreign. She looked perfectly ordinary, dark-haired, with a rather bony face. She had a nice smile. He showed her
Model Boats.

"He held my hand for a moment," he said. "And now it's stopped trying to move around. Is that all right?"

"Of course. He is asleep now."

Gavin had been sitting too low to see Grandad's face properly. Startled, he half rose and saw that, yes, the lids were closed over the blue eyes. He felt a bit of a fool, reading all this time to a sleeping man, but maybe Grandad understood him just as well in his dreams as he did waking. And it was a huge relief to see him peaceful at last.

The nurse was still looking at
Model Boats.

"Is funny for kid to read," she said.

"It's what Grandad reads at home," he explained. "He makes the most beautiful boats. He was making one for my birthday when he had his stroke. He'd almost finished. It was going to be lovely."

"I like to see it."

"Okay, I'll bring some photos in when I've finished her," he said. "It might do a bit of good, him just seeing them. Remind him. Who he is, I mean. He's there—I'm sure he's there, only he doesn't know what's going on. That's why I'm reading
Model Boats
to him. To remind him. I can't do that while the others are here, and they won't let me come alone. We spend a lot of time together when we're at home. I'm … I'm what he's used to…. I'm right to try, aren't I?"