Oh Dear Silvia (25 page)

From the day she went to live with her grandmother, Silvia chose not to speak to her father. He had already frightened her with his boozy bluster and bellowing, but through all of that, the truth was, she still wanted him to be her dad. After all, he was the only parent she had left, and she was bursting to be somebody’s daughter. Stanley was, sadly, too drunk to notice and too crushed to care. Silvia couldn’t forgive his rejection.

So, now, Jo eventually manoeuvres Stanley into a corner of
Suite 5, with all the concomitant crashes and bangs that go with the likes of Jo in charge of an errant and frankly disobedient wheelchair.

Winnie holds the door open and witnesses it all, wishing she could take over and navigate the chair herself. She has learned the trick, after all these years, of pulling the patient backwards in it, rather than attempting to push it forwards, forcing the badly designed small front wheels to lock. Instead, she has looks on as Jo eventually settles her ancient father into the room.

Winnie sees the strain on Jo’s face.

‘You wan’ cup o’ water? Fe you an’ daddy?’

‘Oh yes, please Winnie, thank you so much.’

Jo takes her coat off and sits herself down in the visitor’s chair, close to her dad. She reaches over and takes his coat which is folded neatly on his lap, and she tidies his collar back under his blazer.

‘There. Better. Very handsome, Dad, very smart. I’m sure Sissy would be very impressed if … she … could …’

Jo looks at her father. She hasn’t properly looked at him today because everything has been such a rush, and she was determined to get him here come hell or … high … hell.

‘Let me know if you need the toilet, Dad. We’re in the right place, Winnie or one of the other nurses can help, but you need to give me a bit of warning, OK? It’s up the corridor, the Gents is further than the Ladies. Anyway. Here we are …’

She looks again.

The old man is staring at Silvia. He says nothing. He hasn’t said much at all on this journey today. Jo thinks that perhaps he is a bit apprehensive, but she can’t be entirely sure that he knows where he is, or what is going on. He has periods of intense lucidity but, mostly, he is living the winter of his life in a blur of misty confusion. He seemed willing to come at least, so that’s good, but now he is finally here, he is very quiet.

He does indeed look extremely dapper, if a little shrunken, in his grey flannels, crisp white shirt, regimental stripey tie and dark blazer with the beautiful embroidered badge of the 2nd Battalion Essex Regiment emblazoned on the pocket in all its purple and gold glory. For the very first time, Jo looks closely at it, and notices there is a sideways sphinx perched on a block reading ‘EGYPT’ at the top of the image which seems, mainly, to be a castle with a key dangling from it. A sphinx. That’s odd. Perhaps it was a particularly important battle, or something, she has never thought to look closely or ask.

He has had a careful shave, probably one of the carers did it for him, but they have followed very carefully the line of his natty whiskers in the formation he has shaved them for maybe seventy years. He has a good-sized moustache, a bit like Errol Flynn, which, at its sides, joins on to the bottom of his thick sideburns. He still has plenty of hair although it has, of course, receded and is now entirely snow white. He looks very distinguished and irrefutably army.

Today, he has chosen to wear his medals. For display? For armour? Who knows? They are all lined up on a bar, brightly striped ribbons with silver discs hanging beneath, and bronze stars and pewter crosses. Jo doesn’t know what they signify exactly, but they are extraordinarily impressive. War medals, the Burma Star, the Africa Star, his Distinguished Service Cross, his Military Cross and more. A row of shiny honours, hard won.

His face is craggy and his expression is haunted but he is still a handsome man. His heavy-rimmed brown tortoiseshell spectacles sit perched on his nose, the lenses tingingly clean. He looks through those sparkling glasses, right at Silvia, with his milky grey eyes. His gaze doesn’t falter. He is intent on her. His hand is wrapped around the top of the extendable aluminium cane he uses to aid his wobbly walking, and Jo notices his worn and scratched rose-gold wedding ring, which stands proud from his shrinking old fingers. It is tapping against the metal cane as his hand continually shakes.

Tap tap tap.

‘Don’t be afraid to speak to her, Dad, somewhere in there, she can probably hear you. You just have to … sort of … tune into the right channel sort of thing.’

He continues to stare.

Jo realizes that, actually, she does the same thing with him, tries to tune in and find a level at which they can successfully communicate. He too is in a similar limbo to Sissy, somewhere
between life and death. Jo is uncertain where either of them reside. They are not yet dead but neither are they fully alive. In a way, she is the last one left from the tight little foursome they once were. She feels a wave of sadness about that. She didn’t expect to be without parents
and
a sibling, it seems too unfair. She shakes off the thought. Dad and Silvia aren’t dead … yet.

In place of the sadness comes an overwhelming sense of responsibility and, for a brief moment, Jo allows herself to experience being something akin to a mother, or a wife. Something she has never been able to be. Both of these people need her right now, to be their advocate and protector, and Jo guiltily enjoys the position she finds herself in.

It’s good to be necessary, especially after a lifetime of feeling entirely the opposite. It’s a shame the circumstances have to be these, but when you are Jo, you will take all the fulfilment you can get, anywhere you can find it. She settles for a paltry little amount of love, every time. The bar is low, and in this room right now is about as much as she can ever expect, so why wouldn’t she allow herself a tremor of pleasure about it? It’s a bit unfortunate that both participants are captive, and in questionable health, but she can overlook that in order to have her needs met.

Just as Jo is revelling in her importance, Stanley seems to emerge from his daze, and starts to speak.

He is distressed.

‘Has she fallen over?’

‘Well, I suppose in a way, yes, she has Dad. She fell from a balcony, that’s why her injuries are so severe.’

‘What?!’

Jo speaks louder, as if volume will resolve his confusion.

‘SHE FELL OFF A BALCONY! HURT HER HEAD!’

‘This is what happened last week, isn’t it? The first symptoms show in the arms and legs, she has been dragging her foot …’

‘No Dad, she fell off a balcony, she didn’t just fall over.’

‘Yes. That’s right. The twitching starts soon.’

‘No Dad, she fell off a …’

Jo begins to realize that Stanley is imagining Silvia to be Moira. She tries to clarify it for him.

‘Dad. This is Silvia in this bed. Your daughter Silvia …?’

‘Tell Mummy it’s over soon, not long. Not long … darling … settle down … there there …’

His voice peters out as his head slowly falls forward and Jo sees that he is crying silent tears which fall directly down from his stooped head into the glass in his spectacles, which fill up like tiny sad swimming pools.

‘Oh Dad. Come on now …’

Jo goes over to gather her father into a reassuring hug, and as she leans down to him, he raises his stick and starts to strike her. It is sudden and shockingly forceful.

‘No Dad, stop it! Please! That hurts!’

‘Get off me! Get away!’

Jo reaches for the stick to defend herself from the blows, and she wrenches it out of his hand. In the ugly demented chaos of the moment, Jo locks eyes with her father.

Amongst the frenetic confusion, he clearly says, ‘Give us a kiss then.’

‘Stop it Dad!’

Stanley attempts to stand up and reaches out towards her just as Winnie enters the room, carrying the two glasses of water.

‘Wha’s all dis?! Come on grandpa, sit back dung in de chair. You OK Jo?’

‘Yes, yes. He just has … these moments. It’s nothing. He’s confused …’

‘Of course he is, it all a bit much, yes?’

‘Yes. That’s right. Yes.’

Jo doesn’t want to play mum or wife any more. It’s too real and complicated, and she doesn’t have the patience.

Stanley groans a bit, sits back in his wheelchair and gradually calms down. He accepts the water from Winnie and seems placated. He looks at Jo, and although she is nervous to look him directly in the eye again, for fear of him kicking off, she does, and there she sees her familiar kindly old dad looking back at her and smiling.

He says, ‘Shall I treat you to ice cream? You like that, don’t you? Come on then, nipper … you want a flake?’

He slips back into his old skin and she knows there is nothing to fear. For now. How she hates these demented ghostly glimpses of a man she longs to be loved by. He was her closest ally in the young family back along.

She and Daddy.

Sis and Mummy.

That’s how it was …

‘I think I’d best get him back, Winnie. It’s his lunchtime. He’s better off in familiar surroundings.’

‘Yes, yes, h’okay Jo. Yu wan’ some help to put ’im in de car? De porter can do dat.’

‘Yes. Yes please,’ says Jo.

‘Yes please. Ps and Qs, please. And thank you,’ says Stanley, copying her. ‘We should leave Mummy to sleep while she can.’

His voice is croaky and weak.

‘Yes Dad, that’s right,’ says Jo, as she gathers up both of their coats.

Winnie thankfully takes charge of the wheelchair, and deftly turns it round so she can get Stanley out of the room backwards, with as little fuss as possible.

As he rolls past Silvia backwards, the last sight he sees of her is her head, the head of his darling Moira, with all the tubes and fuss of the ventilation support attached just as she actually had at the end.

‘Bye honey pie. Sleep tight …’ are his last words to her.

And he is out the door and into the slipstream of the busy corridor.

When Jo eventually gets him safely ensconced back into his room at Poppy Park, one of the senior nurses takes her aside and asks to speak with her on a delicate matter.

It would seem that this month’s cheque has not turned up?

Jo was under the impression that her father’s army pension paid for his care here, so what did she mean?

Oh no, the nurse explains, it all changed five years ago, when Stanley was moved into a different level of care due to his dementia. In order for him to be ‘bumped up to top flight’, a cheque has been arriving each month for the not inconsiderable difference. Stanley said the signee was his daughter, so the nurse has assumed this was Jo.

It isn’t.

It’s Silvia, who won’t be signing any cheques in the near future.

Silvia.

Who sold her family home for no obvious reason.

Silvia.

Thursday 2pm

With the beeping of the ECG machine and the regular gasping of the ventilator as her metronomes, and the visitor’s chair as her dais, Willow is in full voice, performing for ‘The Lady’.

She sings, or rather, shouts.

‘Have you ever had a penguin come to tea? Penguins, attention!’

She salutes, maintaining the demeanour of a penguin at all times.

‘Penguins, salute!’

As she starts the next verse, she vigorously waggles her arm, and continues like this throughout. She starts with one, then increases to waggling both arms on the following verse, then both arms and a leg, then both legs, then both legs and a head and so on, until in the final verse, she is jumping
about and jiggling her whole body wildly like kite tails in the wind.

The whole display is hilarious, and Willow is lapping up the encouragement and laughter of her mum and Winnie.

‘And so don’t ever have a penguin come to tea. Penguins, attention! Penguins, goodnight!’

Cassie and Winnie whoop and clap.

‘Well done darling, well done!’

‘Yes! Very good lickle cutie! You so clevva!’

Cassie gathers Willow up in her arms, and hugs her tight. She is aware that Willow’s eyes are darting over towards the bed and its curious occupant. Cassie agonized over whether to bring Willow into this strange environment, she wondered if it would disturb her, but in the end she reckoned that the possibility, however slight, that Willow’s presence might help Silvia to surface was just too significant to ignore.

Cassie also decided that she would break the cycle of rejection, and lead by example. She would be the bigger person and do the right thing, rather than let the toxic infection of hurt spread any further. Willow might have uncomfortable memories of this experience, but at least she would have been here. She wouldn’t, in the future, be able to level any blame at Cassie for denying her the chance to at least see her grandmother, or ‘The Lady’, as she knows her.

Cassie finds it hard to explain the peculiar relationship to Willow, it’s so unlike her close bond with her other grandmother,
Ben’s mum. Willow wouldn’t really understand that this log of a person
is
a grandmother, she has had nothing to do with her, so didn’t know her before she became a log. Maybe, ironically, that is a plus in a way. At least Willow doesn’t have to feel a massive sense of loss or anxiety, which she would surely feel if the two of them had a proper connection.

If she knew Silvia. Properly knew her.

‘Come on puddin’, why don’t you use your colours and make The Lady a lovely picture for her wall?’

‘Dat would be so cool Willow, mi haffi get back to work now, but I be in later an’ see what you done, yes?’

Winnie winks at Cassie, this is special treatment because children aren’t usually allowed on this ward, but Winnie has told Cassie she will make an exception in her case, and allow Willow in when she is on duty today. Winnie feels strongly that the hospital rules regarding children in the ITU are archaic and cruel, and that this is the most crucial time when visitors should be allowed free access to their critically ill loved ones. They may never have another chance. Sometimes, medicine and all the tightly controlled rules surrounding it should take second place to people.