The Spider Truces (28 page)

Denny had viewed four small houses in four different villages but none of them was right. The villages were too enclosed and the houses lightless. He missed the cottage. He missed the way in which his village had allowed the sky in, right up to the doorstep. He loathed the suburbs that surrounded him. He sat in the living room and the afternoon clouded over without his noticing. He rocked gently back and forth, his arms folded across his stomach. He took the phone up to his bedroom and shut the door before calling the doctor and making an appointment for the next day. He went to bed soon after eight o’clock. Ellis brought him in a glass of water and put it beside his bed.

“I’ve never done this before,” Ellis said.

“What’s that?”

“Looked after you when you’re ill.”

“I’m not ill, just a little off-colour.” Denny smiled to back up his claim.

Ellis retreated to the door. “What sort of off-colour?”

“Just a tummy ache, that’s all.”

The week was slow and empty. Ellis noted with wry admiration his dad’s ability to navigate clear of the word ‘tumour’ throughout it. When the time finally came, he drove Denny to the hospital. Chrissie couldn’t. She had what she called “wall-to-wall meetings” all day.

Father and son were synchronised bravado. They wore identical smiles and the unruffled body language of the Invincibles and they ‘oohed’ and ‘aahed’ at the same houses in
Country Life
magazine. But, in Denny’s room, where hotel luxuries and medical equipment made a strange marriage, Ellis felt things change when Denny asked at what time the next day his son should collect him. The consultant looked amused, initially, then appalled.

“Are you aware of the scale of this procedure, Mr O’Rourke?”

Ellis watched the warm, confident smile evaporate from his father’s face and realised that Denny had not begun to grasp the enormity of the impending assault on his body.

“This is surgery many people make a full recovery from but you are having a significant portion of your bowel removed this evening. It is major surgery. You are not going to be going home tomorrow. You are not going to be going home the morning after that, not for a couple of weeks.”

“Why ever not?” Denny was stunned.

The consultant spelt it out. “Because you will be in a great deal of discomfort.”

Ellis was shocked less by the seriousness of their outing than by the discovery that his dad didn’t keep the unpalatable truths of life at arm’s length just from his children but from himself also.

“Do you want me to take you through any other details?” the consultant asked.

“No thanks,” Ellis said. “Send in someone funnier.”

Chrissie seemed more indignant than upset that evening.

“All of a sudden we’re talking about a tumour. You told me it was just a lump and they’d whip it out.”

Denny placated her. “Well, it is a lump … and, chances are, whipping it out will do the trick.”

“Chances! I want to know for sure!”

“Yes, dear girl, me too.”

“Think of it like this,” Ellis began, making his sister squirm at the prospect of taking his counsel. “It’s great that the GP noticed this lump and it’s great that Dad kept up his health insurance from work and it’s great that Dad’s in here so quickly and by tomorrow it will have been cut out. I mean, that’s what happens, this is the reality of people finding out they’ve got stomach cancer and having it successfully removed.”

“Don’t say cancer, Ellis,” Chrissie said.

“Thank God it’s in my stomach,” Denny said, “where there’s loads to spare and they can just cut it all out. If this was on my lungs or liver …”

“You’d be fucked!” Ellis said, trying to lighten things up.

Chrissie smiled, despite herself.

“OK,” she retreated, “but don’t use the word cancer.”

They sat awkwardly and quietly, mulling this over.

“Isn’t that going to be quite difficult?” Denny asked.

“What?” Chrissie said.

“Not using the word cancer.”

“We’ve got to be able to talk about it,” Ellis said.

“OK,” Chrissie said, “but why don’t we choose a different word for the c-a-n-c-e-r? We could say TB.”

Denny was confused. “TB? As in tuberculosis?”

“Yes. It’s quick, medical and easy to remember.”

The room went quiet.

“I thought,” Denny said diplomatically, “the idea would be to replace c-a-n-c-e-r with something a little lighter.”

“Indeed,” Ellis agreed.

“Oh,” Chrissie said, confused. “OK, if you like. For me though, anything other than c-a-n-c-e-r is an improvement. That’s why I went for something catchy but still relevant.”

“How is TB relevant?” Ellis asked.

“’Cos you ‘get it’ and Dad’s also ‘got’ something.”

These days, Ellis and Denny found it difficult to know when Chrissie was being ironic and when she was being earnest.

“How about …” Ellis said, gazing at the ceiling.

All three of them thought hard.

“The disease,” Chrissie suggested.

“Again,” her dad said, “a bit dark.”

“You mind cancer but you don’t mind ‘disease’?” Ellis asked.

“Don’t say cancer, Ellis. The ‘thing’?”

“Too vague,” Denny said. “We’ll come a cropper the first time we are having a conversation about the c-a-n-c-e-r and also happen to mention a thing. All of a sudden, we’ll have two ‘things’ in the conversation and we won’t know what we’re talking about.”

“We just call it your condition,” Ellis suggested.

“No, sounds like I’ve got a rash.”

“We could name it …” Chrissie said. “Geoff or Scottie or something.”

“Girls have to name everything!” Ellis protested. “You give your cars names for God’s sake!”

Denny climbed out of bed and took a seat in the
high-backed
armchair by the window.

“We’ll call it my headache,” he said. “Today, I’ve got a headache and tomorrow, my headache will be gone.”

Denny was pleased with this and Chrissie seemed to like it, too. They settled into a comfortable quiet. But Ellis, seeing that there was still an hour to kill before surgery, decided he wasn’t finished.

“But what if tomorrow you really do have a headache, which is quite possible considering what you’ll have been through?”

“I think I’m getting one now,” Denny sighed.

Chrissie despaired. “Oh, call it sodding cancer then, I don’t care.”

“Cancer it is!” Denny said.

“When all is said and done, cancer has that ring of accuracy to it,” Ellis said.

“I’m actually growing to like it,” Chrissie agreed.

Denny sighed contentedly and looked out of the window.

“You’re a pair of idiots,” he muttered.

Ellis and his sister watched the steam rise off their plates of food until the steam had gone. Ellis scraped the food into the bin. The phone rang at ten minutes to nine. Chrissie darted to it ruthlessly. Ellis felt his heartbeat quicken and the blood and enzymes and chemicals pumping out of control. Chrissie slammed the phone down and grabbed Ellis into an embrace.

“It’s gone very well,” she told him.

It was late and the hospital was quiet, like a hotel on the moon, and the corridors seemed to smell of Fry’s Peppermint Cream. Chrissie hurried ahead and was already at Denny’s bedside when Ellis walked in. She felt her father’s forehead and glanced up at her brother in the doorway.

“He’s sleeping,” she smiled, a tear rolling down her cheek.

Ellis smiled stiffly at her, resisted the urge to say “No shit” and ushered himself and his anger out of the room. He sat in the corridor on a soft chair, leaning over a coffee table. He stared at a column of magazines which were fanned out to reveal the titles. He rocked a little, back and forth, held his fingers across his lips and breathed heavily through his nose. All of these mannerisms belonged to his father, as if Denny had lent them to Ellis whilst he hadn’t the energy to be himself in such detail. Ellis looked through the open door of his dad’s room at the high-backed chair Denny had sat in earlier. He hummed to himself to contain the anger he felt at someone reducing his father to what he had just seen lying in the bed. Once, when he was thirteen, on a Saturday afternoon in winter, Ellis had taken a cup of a tea to his dad after they had been working in the garden. He found him sound asleep on his bed, his hands clasped together behind his head and his mouth open. He looked helpless. Lifeless. Ellis had wondered then if this was how his dad would look when he died. It was how he looked now.

He returned to the room, pulled a chair up to the bed and stroked his dad’s left forearm. It was unchanged, still powerful and cobra-wide at its most muscular point. It was the rest of him that had been lessened. He could feel his dad’s pulse and it dawned on him that he understood perfectly the task ahead. The body that he could feel functioning beneath the pressure of his fingers was the vessel his dad had been given to live in. They simply needed to protect, service, and correct this vessel and his dad would always be with them. It was uncomplicated. It was achievable. They had cut out the bad bit. They could always cut out other bad bits if necessary. It wasn’t really his dad that was ill, it was just his body. And it was only his body that looked different for now. He was inside this lifeless shell, lying dormant whilst they repaired him. Tomorrow, he’d come back to them. Tomorrow, he’d be waiting for them when they arrived. Tomorrow, he’d come out to play. Ellis looked at his sister.

“You’re right.” He smiled, feeling great love for her. “He’s just sleeping.”

The phone rang at seven the next morning. Ellis heard it in his sleep, ignored it, then remembered everything and leapt out of bed. He threw himself downstairs in panic but Chrissie beat him to the phone.

“Who is it?” she demanded. Then her face softened. “Oh! Hi,” she chirped. “You are thoughtful to call, Ree.” She put her hand over the mouthpiece and assured Ellis it wasn’t the hospital.

“For fuck’s sake!” Ellis hissed. He stormed into the kitchen.

“I’m going to call you back, Ree.” Chrissie hung up and found Ellis filling the kettle. She waited for him to be
empty-handed
, then wrapped her arms around him.

“I’m sorry, Ellie. That was a horrible start to the day for you.”

He freed his arms and then wrapped them around her. He could no longer remember what it had been like to be smaller than her.

“Who the hell is Ree?” he murmured.

“Henry. He’s a banker.”

“Daft time of day to use the telephone.”

“He’s got a penthouse overlooking the Thames.”

This sounded instantly ludicrous to both of them.

“Relevance?” Ellis asked.

Chrissie shook her head. “Don’t know why I said it.”

“Does Milek like Henry’s penthouse?” he asked.

“They’ve not met.”

“You don’t say.”

Denny O’Rourke stirred. His face creased up and his eyes flickered open.

“Pain …” he groaned.

“I know,” Chrissie whispered.

They watched the waves of agony cross their father’s face. They held his hand, avoiding the tubes that ran into his nose, hand and stomach. Chrissie found a payphone in reception and settled down to make work calls. The day passed in silence and was beautiful. In the late afternoon, Denny’s eyes opened again. He grimaced, looked at the ceiling and squeezed his son’s hand. Ellis sat up. He blinked his eyes affectionately. Denny smiled back meekly and drifted back to sleep. He stirred again later as Ellis left the room.

“I’m just popping out for a cigarette, Dad,” Ellis said. He stood over Denny and grinned. “A lovely, smooth, satisfying smoke, outside in the sunshine. A lovely, lovely ciggie.”

Ellis drew on an imaginary cigarette and exhaled ecstatically. In response, Denny muttered his first distinct words of the day: “You bastard …”

They were days of sunlight and simplicity. Ellis needed no props, no magazines or books. There were no hours. There was only the sunlight that filled the room and his father, lying in bed, squeezing his hand, smiling bravely.

With the breeze playing percussively in the walnut trees and his son and daughter there to assist him, Denny washed the first of his chemo pills down with a bottle of wine. He said they were celebrating the removal of the headache and brushed aside talk of the shadow that had been detected on his lungs since the operation.

“These pills will take care of that as well, especially with a Chablis like this,” he declared.

Ellis believed him and the belief took root fast and grew vigorously. Chrissie smiled at the men who were her family and knew that her dad would never get well again.

Denny spent the summer sitting in the garden and watched the evening primroses appear, the hedge become speckled white with flowering bindweed, and the walnut trees, whose leaves transformed from orange to green, stand out against light blue skies. He no longer heard the motorway and he ignored the surrounding houses, living within the open country of his mind’s eye and noticing only that which enriched his days. The paleness departed from his complexion, his movements became less laboured and the soreness inside him abated, allowing him to laugh out loud again.

In midsummer, as if to take everybody’s mind off the shadow on Denny’s lungs, Chrissie dumped Milek for Henry the banker and moved into his penthouse overlooking the Thames. Ellis felt he could now ask Milek for work without turning to his sister for help.

“Look, Milek,” he started, “I know that my sister dumping you, and me drawing a picture of your clients engaged in lesbian sex isn’t a great platform, but I was wondering if you’d give me a job.”

“Ellis, I presume.”

“Yes. I really want to work for you and get into photography.”

“OK. No problem.”

And that was it. The job application and interview was over. He started the following week and Milek took him out for dinner and Ellis ate Japanese food for the first time and when Ellis saw the bill his heart skipped a beat and Milek threw a credit card into the wicker tray and slapped Ellis on the back.

“Come and meet my new girlfriend.”

Milek seemed to be largely over Chrissie. Carla was Italian and worked as assistant to a costume designer called Richard. Ellis could not speak to Carla the first time he met her, such was the extent and exoticness of her beauty. Richard was the first gay man Ellis had ever met and Ellis told him so.

“I doubt that, somehow,” Richard replied.

They took to Ellis immediately, the way rich women take to Pomeranians.

“She drinks pints!” Ellis muttered in admiration.

“That’s the tip of the iceberg,” Milek confided.

“I’ll tell my sister she’s a dog,” Ellis said.

Ellis worked six days that week, two in a studio in Wandsworth, one in a forest in Buckinghamshire, a day at a lido in south London and the other two doing runs to the labs and stock shop. Milek corrected his invoice and adjusted it upwards.