Shtum (11 page)

‘All done then?’ she says.

‘Apparently I’ll live,’ I reply.

‘Thank heavens for that! How would we cope without him?’ she asks Jonah.

Now I’m blushing. At least, I feel hot. Her eyes have not left Jonah.
How old are you? Twenty-seven, twenty-eight?
I follow them out to the car park where we stand in a triangle by the car.

‘So what else have you boys got planned for the day, then?’

‘A supermarket, then back to the hospital to pick up my dad.’

‘Yes, I heard, I’m so sorry. Let me come and help. You’re injured, remember?’

‘But I’ve taken up enough of your Saturday already.’

‘I was only going to slob around. No, I’d like to help, if you don’t mind?’

‘Of course I don’t mind, and Jonah would love it, obviously. Where did you park? Do you want to follow us to Tesco?’

‘I came by bus,’ she says. ‘It’s why I took so long.’

She came by bus? I think: Jonah, you’re a lucky boy.

‘Well, hop in!’ I say, opening the passenger door. ‘And don’t worry about the mess on the floor, just stamp on it.’

I feel self-conscious strolling the aisles of Tesco with Maria at my side. Jonah fills the trolley with apples, crisps and Smarties, eating as he goes – it’s the only way to get him round. Emma and I developed a system whereby a ‘double’ is kept of whatever he eats, which is then scanned at the checkout and handed back.

Maria laughs at Jonah as he examines each shelf like a seasoned bargain hunter.

‘He’s such a sweet boy,’ she says. Her voice is soft. BBCish, Dad would call it.

‘I feel really guilty,’ I say. ‘Keeping you from your weekend, from your friends.’

‘Please don’t, really. I’m so sorry for the way things have worked out for you. I find it so disheartening that we can’t just be honest.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I interject. ‘Jonah! No butter, leave the butter alone.’

He drops it and skips towards the bakery. Instantly, Maria follows him and, sensing her behind him, Jonah laughs loud and high and speeds up. I hear them both laughing and skipping as they turn down the canned vegetable aisle and Maria trying to slow him down as they reach world foods. They’re skipping hand in hand when they arrive back next to me.

‘That seemed like fun?’ I say.

‘It was, wasn’t it, Jonah?’ she says. ‘I don’t know why anyone would deny that Jonah needs the waking-day curriculum you’re fighting for. How could you say no to him? I mean, look at this face,’ she says, gently taking Jonah’s face between her hands. ‘Who could resist this face?’

‘It’s one only a father could love,’ I quip.

‘How does that work, when you’ve got the same face?’ she says.

We sit nursing watery coffees in the supermarket café, while Jonah turns a chocolate gingerbread man to dust.

‘I speak to Emma every Thursday,’ Maria says.

I didn’t know. ‘What do you talk about?’ I ask.

‘Jonah, of course!’ She laughs. ‘What else?’

How shit am I?
The fantasy that has been swiftly coalescing in my head reforms into visions of unfaithfulness and recrimination. I feel my toe throbbing again and throw back a painkiller with my coffee. Women tie me in knots. Always have. Am I surprised by Emma’s weekly updates from Maria? Not when I think about it, it’s just I feel shitty because it has never occurred to me to do the same. I feel ashamed and jealous that Emma does these caring, responsible things for Jonah and it has rarely crossed my mind to do so. This knowledge chips away at my sculpted monolith of Emma’s culpability and leaves me coated by the dust of shame – shame at the kernel of an idea, a fantasy of a relationship with Maria. Talk of Emma has popped the dream bubble and the reality is all pain and a sense of foolishness, that a desire for more than I have could ever be realised or deserved, that I’ll ever be over Emma. Silly middle-aged sod.

‘Ben, I’d be really happy to spend more time with you and Jonah, if it would help?’

This hasn’t ended the confusion. Of course it would help, but here’s the strange paradox of my thinking: if she finds me attractive then it would be unfair to lead her on right now; but she can’t truly find me attractive, so she is offering out of pity and I can’t live with that either. I am arrogant and insecure, simultaneously.
How to Turn One’s Life into a Lose-Lose Situation
by Ben Jewell.

‘I understand,’ she says in the face of my silence, her words muffled by Jonah’s crazy thick hair.

‘No, no,’ I say, ‘it would be great, but with Dad and everything, it’s difficult to make plans.’

She removes her face from the back of Jonah’s neck.

‘Could we play it by ear?’ I ask.

She holds my gaze and I notice that she has dimples. ‘Absolutely,’ she says. ‘Plus, I’m travelling all summer when school finishes, so.’ She shrugs.

‘Where are you going?’

‘Latin America,’ she says.

‘Amazing,’ I say.

‘By myself,’ she adds.

‘Brave.’

She grins. ‘It’s an organised eco-tour – guides and everything.’

‘Very sensible,’ I say. ‘You must send us a postcard.’

‘Deal,’ she says, holding out her hand to shake on it.

After dropping Maria home, Jonah and I head back to the hospital, where we find Dad sitting up in bed drinking a cup of tea. Jonah slumps in the armchair and stares at the heart monitor next to Dad’s bed.

‘Even has a battle plan, this cancer of mine, like Hitler. First he took Czechoslovakia, then Poland. Mine? Invades my neck and has designs on my lungs.’

‘It’s in your lungs?’

‘Three little lumps like Myra’s
matzo
balls, only less toxic, he says.’

‘Do you want me to contact Mum?’

‘After I am gone, I could not bear to think of her miserable face at the funeral. Have you called Maurice?’

‘Don’t have his number.’

‘Here,’ he says, thrusting out his hand, ‘pass me your phone.’

‘You need to do the 020 …’

‘I know, I know.’

It takes him three tries to enter the correct number, but it’s answered immediately.

‘Maurice. Georg. You need to practise the Kaddish. Yes, that bad. Wellington Ward. No cigars.’

He hands me back the phone without ending the call, so I catch the tinny whimpering of his diminutive friend.

‘He will be here in an hour.’

Do I have to wait here with him until Maurice arrives? The whole hour? I can’t spend sixty minutes talking to him, cancer or no cancer.

‘Shall I go and pick Maurice up?’

He answers without looking up from his paper. ‘No, he needs the time to calm down.’

‘Tumours in the lungs, then?’

‘Yes.’

‘But nowhere else, thank God.’

‘What? The lungs are not enough? You don’t need to breathe?’

‘I just meant …’

He pats my hand. ‘I know what you meant.’

I unlock my phone and flick through the latest news stories. My attention is drawn to the picture of a mouse with a human ear growing from its back. Surely if they can do that they can knock him up a new thyroid and a couple of lungs. Medical science. Whatever the incurable condition is, the scientists always claim to be
just on the verge
, rather than saying:
yeah, we can fix that, no problem
. I study Dad with his red pen and his
Daily Mirror
. He is regrouping, preparing for a battle, I can feel it. I feel proud of him, this man of mystery with his camouflage fatigues on, getting ready for his own personal Stalingrad.

Jonah is up from the chair and is twiddling a feather in front of his eye by the window.

‘So what are they going to do?’

Dad sighs and folds his paper neatly, placing it next to him on the bed.

‘Apparently, they are having a conference this morning to decide. Probably radiation with chemotherapy for dessert. But if I do not like the menu I may not eat at this restaurant.’

‘What are you saying?’

‘I’m an old man, Benjamin.’

‘You have to try.’

‘For who? Me? You think I want you and JJ watching me shrivel like a prune? I will not have it.’

This is not the kind of bravery I want from him. No! Not surrender, it doesn’t suit him and it doesn’t suit me. The pride has turned to the vertigo of abandonment. Selfish old bastard.

‘Oh, you’re just so noble, aren’t you?’

‘There is nothing noble about death.’

‘You’ve got to fight it, Dad.’

‘What, death? Cannot be done.’

‘The cancer. Do the radio and chemo, please.’

‘Ben, I’m seventy-eight.’

‘Jonah …’

‘That is unfair.’

‘Maurice.’

‘Will agree.’

So I’ll work on Maurice. No, Maurice is his lapdog. Jonah, Jonah is the only way of changing his mind. I put my face in my hands and press the trio against the mattress. Then I sit up and clasp his hand.

I say, ‘Tell you what. We’ll make a deal. You start the treatment and if you can’t take it, stop, and I’ll say nothing else.’

‘The outcome will be the same.’

‘But it could give you another year or so.’

‘To see what? My grandson sent away and my son leave too, as soon as the cock crows the day after?’

As if he understands, Jonah skips over to Dad and sits on the bed next to him. Now I see it. Now I know. Cunning old bastard. He is looking away from me, but I can still catch the corners of his mouth turned down in a smile. How do I feel good about either of the sides of this bargain he’s foisting on me? You can’t bluff my father, you can’t bluff a man with a Luger, two bullets and a belly full of cancer.

‘Tell you what,’ I say.

‘I’m listening.’

‘Look at me then.’

He turns to face me, knowing, the sly old sod.

‘Jonah will stay at home, with both of us, while you are alive.’

‘So you’ll cancel this tribunal …’

‘Postpone it. It’s the best you’re going to get.’

There’s no way I’m going to postpone, so what am I doing? Hoping that he dies sooner rather than later, before I have to admit I’m lying?

‘I do not believe you.’

I don’t blame him.

‘You’ll just have to trust me. Bit hard to swallow?’

‘Everything is hard to swallow,’ he says.

‘Everything will proceed until all the reports are in, then I’ll halt it, but only if you have the treatment.’

‘Suddenly my son is a haggler.’

‘You’re the stall holder, Dad. It’s either take your medicine and have another possible year with Jonah at home, or be the martyr and say goodbye to him in three months.’

‘And you will stick to these odds? Honour a winning ticket?’

‘Absolutely.’

‘But you are betting against your own team?’

‘You’re both my team.’

But in the end, I have to make a choice and make a promise I have no intention of keeping.

‘It’s a win-win situation, Dad.’

‘Don’t treat me like a
shmock
. When do they start to fry me?’

When Mr Stonehouse arrives from the conference he says that they’ll start radiation tomorrow. ‘Would you like me to explain the procedure to both of you?’

Dad points at me. ‘He has an O-level in Chemistry, tell it to him.’

Then he turns away and sticks the hospital radio’s earphones in his ears.

Sad

He is not a good patient. Stoicism may be bonded to his haemoglobin but the house has become his own private clinic, complete with personal nurse – Maurice; personal porter and lackey – me; and entertainment – Jonah. With all the radiotherapy, I’m run off my feet. God knows how I’ll cope when the chemo starts next week.

‘Do not forget the prescription requests.’

‘I have them.’

‘No, you do not, they are still on the kitchen table – why should Jonah and I suffer more because you have a head like a sieve?’

I grab the three slips of paper. ‘Have you got a spare twenty quid?’

‘What for? Jonah and I don’t pay for our medicine and yours is only about seven pounds. What do you need twenty pounds for?’

‘Sundries.’

‘I am lying here like a burnt offering and he wants cigarettes. What a sensitive boy I have raised. Behind the carriage clock, there is some cash.’

I take two twenties.

‘You cannot let everything around you go to the dogs because of this, Ben, do you understand?’

‘Yes, Dad.’

The sound of Maurice’s key in the door is a familiar one since Dad started the radiotherapy. Only Maurice is allowed to touch him – and Jonah, who is disconcertingly gentle, as if he understands, or it may be he just likes the sensation of the soothing cream against my father’s scorched chest hair. Every morning Dad strips to the waist and Maurice bastes him like a turkey.

‘Maurice,’ Dad shouts. ‘Tea, and don’t forget to test the temperature.’

‘Georg, I know how to make tea.’

‘For the throat, Maurice, a nice temperature, please.’

Maurice ambles to the kitchen. Dad lowers his voice.

‘Benjamin, take care of the business and the business will take care of you, how many times?’

‘A million.’

‘Do not be facetious. Valentine is a hard worker, but you cannot expect him to run the business. This is our deal: you sort out the business – as best you can – get it into shape, get the accounts up to date, do an inventory and I will do all the paperwork for Jonah.’

I have very little wriggle room. ‘Okay.’

Maurice returns with the tea and a pump-action cylinder of emollient cream to help ease the fall-out of the radiotherapy.

‘Okay, Georg, shirt off.’

Maurice helps him, but I can see the difficulty he is having. Because of the scorching, the neckline on all his sweaters has been cut to ease the pressure on his neck. Maurice is very gentle, but I still see the grimace on Dad’s face.

Maurice pumps a cricket ball of cream into his hand and begins to gently rub it in circles across Dad’s neck and upper torso.

‘Not so rough, Maurice.’

‘Georg, shut up.’

I head for the door.

‘Remember the repeat requests and look after Valentine with a few quid – do you hear me?’

‘Yes, Dad.’

The first course of radiotherapy is almost over and it’s finally beginning to bend him. There was just some redness after the first two treatments, but now, like a mass prison break, the heat has come out fighting – blisters and scabs that weep and burn. The hospital recommended a Macmillan nurse, but he wouldn’t have it.

He is due another scan in two weeks, to see whether the beams of radiation have shrunk the tumour and then, inevitably, the chemotherapy, a cocktail of poisons that will denude him of his thick silver hair, eyelashes, eyebrows. I’m not looking forward to it. Valentine can wait, I need a drink first.

The Guinness is cold and smooth. There is so much going on in my head at the moment that I can’t seem to hold it all in. I can take it in, I understand and accept, there’s no denial, but I can’t organise my thoughts into any kind of coherent action – so the only course of action seems to be to do nothing. It’s sensory overload that requires the dampening effects of alcohol. Prozac may work for an adolescent Californian, but they’re Smarties to a miserable bastard like me. I have a second pint and then run the car the three hundred yards round to the warehouse. The ancient white Luton is still parked outside.

‘For fuck’s sake, Valentine.’

He should be well on his way with pick-ups by now, but there’s no sign of action whatsoever. I jump out, light a cigarette and walk to the metal shutter door. Not only is it pulled down, but the padlock’s there too. As I bend down to check if it’s locked, I spy an envelope poking out from underneath. It’s brown and addressed to me and marked ‘Inland Revenue’. My stomach churns the Liffey Water as I pull it out. It’s already been opened, which is strange, but there is a letter inside it that I unfold like a set of exam results.

I QUIT
VALENTINE
P.S. FUCK YOU!

Which for Valentine is verbosity gone mad.

As I drag the shutter up, the smell hits me like the Delhi-to-Mumbai express. Sunday’s Indian wedding for four hundred. Four hundred of everything: plates, side plates, knives, forks, spoons, glasses – all unwashed and piled high and hopelessly muddled, a shanty town of glass, metal and ceramic with an exponentially growing population of flies.

I check the cash box in the office and count through the notes. It’s all there bar Valentine’s weekly wage. He’s paid himself and taken nothing else. Twenty-two years of dirty slog has finally proved too much for him. Well, really, ten years of me. I pocket the wad of cash with no thought of pleading with him to come back, just a mental note to drop in some money for him, and stand staring at the shit. I’m not going to do it. I know I’m not. So it won’t get done. Even with the industrial washers it will take me all week to run the stuff through, then count and wrap and stack ready to go out again.

I’m done. Dad’s business – gone. My income – gone.

The phone rings.

‘I need a water boiler, dolly, for a shiva, this afternoon. And could you bring twenty tea plates for the marble cake?’

‘Where to?’

‘Streatham.’

‘No.’

‘No?’

‘No.’

‘
Nu
?’

‘Bye.’ I slam the receiver down, pull the phone from the wall and toss it into the pile of washing-up.

I have a pocket full of cash, a mild Guinness buzz and a few hours to kill. Jonah is at school, Maurice is with Dad and I can’t think of a single solitary thing to do that will give me any pleasure whatsoever.

I may as well have driven to Streatham, but all I know there is the Jewish cemetery where I attended the funeral of some distant cousin.

I sit and spin myself around in the office chair for five minutes until I’m giddy, then pull at a bulldog clip hanging from the wall, holding a thick wad of invoices addressed to customers stamped UNPAID in red.

I go through the debtors’ invoices with a feeling of rising anger, directed both at them and at me – this is Jonah’s money and I’ve been too lazy to call in the debts.

The warehouse is a shithole, because I’ve allowed it to become so. Valentine has left because I treated him with contempt and these people never bothered paying me because I couldn’t be bothered to chase them, while other regular clients melted away because I got orders wrong, never checked properly and on some level wanted to destroy the house that Dad built as my only means of escape from my personal prison camp.

I work my way through the invoices carefully – some of them date back three years – and divide them into private clients with home addresses and caterers that may still, or no longer, exist.

I arrange them into date order and pin them on the map of London, pasted on the office wall.

Finally, I grab a calculator and tot up the money owed to me.

There are seventy-two outstanding invoices. It takes me ten minutes to finish and then there is a sudden surge of adrenalin and shame.

TOTAL OUTSTANDING: £18,724.84