The Language of Dying (11 page)

We still don’t get it and she sighs. ‘It’s a video monitor for babies. You set the camera up in the bedroom and then plug the receiver into a TV somewhere else. I thought we could bring the portable down from your bedroom into the lounge. That way we can see when he’s trying to get up.’

I look at the machine and then at Penny. She shrugs. ‘I was just thinking how awful it would be if he fell out of bed and we didn’t know for a while. I couldn’t bear it.’

I look at her plump lips and perfect face and wonder how I ended up with the empty thinking space. It isn’t fair. I should have thought of the baby monitor. I should have. But then, unlike Penny, I guess I never got to actually have any babies.

‘It’s a good idea, Pen,’ I say, and I’m glad my envy of her can’t be heard. ‘Good thinking.’

She doesn’t say anything, but she smiles a little and I know she’s pleased. I look at Davey making more tea, and Penny unwrapping the box and I think that sometimes I don’t know them at all.

It takes us about half an hour to get it set up and we put the monitor in the kitchen. I turn the grill on to make more bacon sandwiches. We are pleased with ourselves, as if the monitor will actually solve the problem. It doesn’t though. Of course not – it’s designed to display the problem, not solve it. Our self-satisfaction doesn’t last.

One side of the bacon has barely started sizzling when Penny scrapes her stool back. ‘Oh, he’s moving!’

The three of us gather round the screen. The image is projected in a strange green colour, which makes it even more surreal. I feel as if we’re spying on you. Your legs slip over the side of the bed.

‘I’ll go.’

*

And that becomes the pattern of the day. You barely settle at all, and I find that I am transfixed by the portable TV. In the afternoon we take it into the lounge so that we can watch a movie, but my eyes keep drifting away from the big screen to watch you on the small one. The pale green light makes me feel queasy, but I can’t help but stare as your toes twitch and I know that any
moment now you are going to start those strange jerky movements. I wonder where the energy comes from. Your organs must be eating themselves to stay alive by now. That’s if the cancer hasn’t got there first.

The three of us don’t speak much. Penny tries, but gives up after a while. Even she can’t make this easy. My thighs hurt from running up and down the stairs and my neck throbs with the start of a headache. The tension is unbearable.

We have take-away Chinese for dinner, which we eat silently. We get up twice during the short meal to get you back into bed. As I bite into a spring roll I wish with a breaking heart that you’d just hurry up and die. I don’t feel any guilt. I know wishes don’t come true.

Night falls, another circle of the clock done. I like to see the empty blackness outside. It lets me believe for a while that the whole world is within these walls. That nothing else exists. I don’t want you and us diminished by the million others looking out into the blackness, listening to the clock tick away the life of someone they love. Penny goes to bed at ten. She’s been asleep on the sofa for an hour and Davey gently wakes her. I can see he’s tired too, whereas I am wide awake in my exhaustion.

‘You take my bed, Davey. I’ll stay down here.’

‘No,’ he says. ‘Don’t be stupid.’

I shake my head. ‘I’ll wait up for the nurse. I’m not tired anyway and I want to watch some telly for a while. Maybe read a book.’

He looks at me. I shove him a little towards the stairs. ‘Go on. Do as you’re told.’ I kiss him on the cheek and won’t take no for an answer.

‘Thanks, Sis. Just shout if you need me for something.’

His tread is tired on the stairs and I know he’ll be sleeping in minutes just like Penny. He didn’t need to thank me. I didn’t give up my room for him. I did it for me. I can’t bear to be away from that green screen. I’m not sure I can take the hard much longer. Things inside me, inside my head, are beginning to snap and I don’t want to think about them.

The nurse comes at eleven. She is a strange creature, this Macmillan nurse. Everything about her is a whisper, as if she only comes alive in the night and even then not in a way any ordinary human would. Her cheekbones are high and fine and a wisp of dark hair has flown free from her bun. She is young, younger than me. Her feet barely make a sound as she glides up the stairs. I explain to her where the tea and coffee is and that I’m sleeping in the lounge and then I tell her about your agitations. She smiles serenely as if she has it all under control and then she settles into the chair in the hallway and opens her book. I don’t see what it is she’s reading, but it’s a thick text and the writing is small. I watch her for a second before going back downstairs. I think maybe she is the angel of death in disguise.

I don’t sleep much, but pull the duvet up round my
neck on the sofa and watch you on the screen. I’ve got one of those ideas in my head. I think she’s going to creep into your room, settle you down and then put a pillow over your face. I don’t know why I think this. But it’s in my head, burrowing away. I watch her go in to you several times as you try to get out of bed. She settles you. She doesn’t put the pillow over your face.

At some point in the night I hear her make a cup of tea. You are keeping her busy I think, up there. I see you sitting on the edge of the bed and your eyes shine white in the camera’s green night vision. I don’t see you in them, though. They are strange and confused. And a little afraid. And then I see her ease you back down.

She leaves at six and I unwind myself from the sofa to say goodbye. In the dawn light I see the circles under her young eyes and the sympathy in them. She is pretty and delicate, but she is just human after all.

‘I’ll be back at the same time tonight. If you need anything in the meantime, just call the nurses. I’m sure Barbara will call in at some point.’ She smiles a little. ‘He should be calmer now, I think. His breathing is becoming more irregular, which is normally a sign that the agitations will ease.’

I find it hard to understand her language. I just want to know what it all means. I think she sees this in my face. Her voice is soft. I wonder if it will melt into something like Barbara’s as she ages. I think it might.

‘Your father is moving into the next stage. His
breathing will slow. The pauses between each breath will get longer and longer. It’s called Cheyne–Stoking. He’s not there yet, but I think in the next day or so.’

She doesn’t need to point out the rest. The rest I understand.
Chain-smoking causes Cheyne–Stoking
. The little rhyme forms a rhythm in my empty thinking space. The rhythm is like hooves on tarmac.

‘Is he in any pain?’ I ask.

She shakes her head. ‘No. The morphine and sedative are taking care of that. I’ve just changed them – upped his dose a little. He’s somewhere between sleep and unconsciousness. Quite peaceful.’ She pauses. ‘I don’t expect that he’ll come out of it much, if at all, anymore.’

She knows the weight of those words. You’ve gone where I can’t reach you and you can’t reach me. Somewhere in-between.

I thank her and let her out. The house suddenly feels cold. I turn the heating up.

I touch the walls as I creep upstairs to your room. Even as I trace the familiar light pattern of the paper it feels wrong under my fingertips. Things are changing again. And like all the most important changes, this one will be irreversible too.

The sky is lifting outside as day leaves the dregs of night behind and I feel as if I am the only person alive in the world, trapped in this moment, torn between the two states of existence. This is something tea won’t cure.

As I pass my room I hear Davey snoring. It’s a thick sound and if I’d heard it anywhere else in the world and had to pick the person that sound belonged to I would say Davey without missing a beat. Maybe we are most true to ourselves when we are asleep. Or when the rest of the world is asleep. My heart pounds quickly in my chest and I don’t know why. No sound comes from Penny’s room. Maybe if I listened harder I could hear
her soft, steady, easy breath, but I don’t. Her breath will go on and on. I hope she doesn’t wake up just yet.

The nurse has pulled your door to and it creaks a little as I open it. The sound doesn’t disturb you. There are different doors creaking open for you, ones that I can’t see and ones that you can’t quite get to yet, but somewhere in that strange sleep I think you’re seeking them out. I wonder how far down you’ve gone and whether the nurse is right and that you’re gone for good. I like to think you’ll find your way back to the surface just one more time. I think I need that one more time.

I sit by the curtained window, but I don’t look out over the road and the field. There will be nothing out there. Nothing for me. There is no hot tingle in my bones. I watch you in the bed for a long time. Maybe an hour. Maybe more. You try to get out of bed once in that time, but the attempt is more half-hearted than the previous ones. Either you’re sinking or the sedative she’s given you is a strong one. Or a combination of both. I ease you down on to your back and you comply. The daylight that crawls into the room allows no softness. Your skin is yellow and your pyjamas look ludicrous on you. My head flashes with images of the commode and the crematorium and that awful smell and then from nowhere I see you laughing at a barbecue at Penny’s, a cigarette in hand, laughing because I’ve burnt the tuna steaks and she looks fit to explode. Your
teeth fit your face then. Your skin is tanned and firm. Your eyes sparkle.

I pull the cover over you and sit back in the chair, my face burning. Time unwinds, bubbles of time bursting, exploding in my head. Tension buzzes under my skin. I’m at breaking point. Or maybe just beyond it. Who knows? Inside I feel the distant drumming of hooves. I squeeze your fingers.

*

When I’m calmer I go downstairs. Penny is in the kitchen. She looks at me funny. ‘You okay, darling? I popped my head into Dad’s room and you were just sitting there, staring into space.’

I shrug. I can’t think of what to say because I have no recollection of her coming in. I wonder at that. ‘Sorry, I was lost in my own world. Thinking about things. You know, Dad. The past. Stuff. Probably half asleep.’

Hey, Lady Penelope. Nudge your sister, she’s off again
.

Penny hands me a cup of tea. ‘As long as you’re okay.’

I wish she wouldn’t look at me like that. I grin and kiss her on the cheek. ‘I’m fine. As fine as can be expected, anyway.’

She picks up her phone and pushes the call button. Nothing happens and she hangs up.

‘I’m trying to get hold of Paul, but it’s on answer-phone.’ She tries again to no avail. I snort and raise an eyebrow.

‘Don’t,’ she says, lighting a cigarette. ‘Things are bad enough as it is. I hate that we’re all upset and angry and falling out. I hate it. And now we can’t get hold of Paul.’

She uses ‘we’ because she thinks it makes her words less accusatory, but it just makes them vaguely patronising. She hasn’t actually fallen out with anyone. I don’t think she ever has. It’s always easier to get along. I watch her try the phone again and sip my tea.

‘I know you hate that, Pen, and I’m sorry about what I said to him.’
Whatever the hell it was
, I think inside. The place where those words should be is still blank. Just angry white noise. I take a cigarette from her packet and light it. ‘But he’s the one who’s turned his phone off. Not you.’ I wave my arm around dramatically. ‘In the middle of all this, he’s turned his phone off.’

‘He can’t deal with it, that’s all,’ she says.

‘That may be true,’ I answer. ‘But it doesn’t make him any less of a shit.’

She doesn’t say anything after that. I can see her trying, those ridiculous swollen lips twitching, but even Penny, who’s always been so tight with Paul, can’t really defend him now.

She goes into the lounge with her cup of tea and takes her phone. She doesn’t say much more to me, but I hear her ringing home and talking to little James. She probably tries Paul again but I don’t hear her talk to him and it doesn’t surprise me. He’s gone into hiding. Not as far hidden as you, but still out of our reach.

Davey gets up not long after and makes himself some toast. We don’t say much. He goes into the lounge and I hear normality blare from the TV. A bulb flickers above me, threatening to go out. The house is subdued, just as we are. I wonder if the bricks feel anything other than the cold.

Eventually I go into the lounge and join the other two.

On the monitor, you are lying still in bed. Not even your hands are trembling.

‘He hasn’t moved since we got up. Maybe he’s settling down.’

I nod. ‘The nurse said it would pass.’

There is silence for a while and I wonder if it’s my imagination, but it feels as if the tension isn’t just inside me. I can feel it between we three, tight as a tripwire. There is another snap inside my head. I need those breaks to stop. I need some peace.

‘You know, I was thinking,’ I say, ‘why don’t you go home for a day or so? See James. You could take Davey. Nothing’s going to change here by tomorrow and now that he’s calmed down and the night nurse is booked, it seems silly all of us just sitting here.’ I wonder if I’m rambling. All I know is that I don’t want them here. They don’t belong here. Not now. I look up to catch a glance go between them and I see all I need to see to know; they don’t want to be here either. It surprises me. It hurts me.

‘I was thinking the same thing,’ Penny says, ‘but I don’t want to leave you alone. Will you be okay?’

I grin through tight, thin, unplumped lips. ‘I’ve been okay for the past few months, Pen. I can manage a night on my own.’

She looks at Davey as if to say,
I can’t do anything right
. She doesn’t say that, though. She says, ‘Well, if you’re sure. I’ll have my mobile on. Call if you need me or there’s any change. I’ll be straight back in the morning.’ I nod.

They sip their tea and pretend they’re not in a hurry to get out, but I see through their cracks. Just like I think they’re starting to see through mine.