The Sunlight on the Garden (6 page)

He didn't mean it. You know what he's like. When he loses his temper he comes out with silly things like that. He doesn't mean them.

Are you happy with him?

Yes. Of course.

Fortunately at that moment Beryl entered the room. ‘I must just take his temperature' she said. I wanted to say ‘ What's the point of constantly taking his temperature? He's dying, isn't he?' Instead I leaned over him and shook his arm. He stirred, opened his eye. He glared at Beryl. Then ‘ Fuck!' The word was like a rifle shot in an empty room. ‘ What the hell are you doing here?'

‘Sorry. I have to take your temperature.' She approached his bed with a slight waddle, her large breasts jutting out under her white apron. Roy would find her attractive, I thought. Voluptuously ample, totally unlike me, she was his sort of woman. ‘What a mess you've got your bed into.' She might have been our Finnish au pair talking to one of the children. ‘ Let me deal with those pillows.' She put out a strong, fleshy arm, placed it around his shoulders and then eased him up. With the other arm she tweaked the top pillow away from under him.

‘Oh, you bitch!' he bawled. ‘You did that on purpose. You hurt me on purpose. You know how painful my neck has become.'

‘I'm sorry,' she said coldly. She looked across at me, shrugged, pulled a face. ‘There's no need to talk me like that.'

‘Oh, get out of here. Get out!' He yelled the last two words.

Again the shrug, the pulling of a face. ‘And what about your temperature?'

She once more approached the bed and extended the thermometer.

I expected him to shout more abuse at her. Had he bitten the thermometer once she had placed it in his mouth, I should not have been surprised. But now, to my astonishment, he was suddenly docile. Hands to his sides outside the bedclothes, he stared up the ceiling.

‘It's a glorious day,' Beryl turned her head to say to me, as she waited for the thermometer to cook.

‘How's your son?'

‘Oh, he's fine now. His throat's a little sore still. But he's back at school.'

‘That's good.'

After she had plucked away the thermometer, examined it and left the room, I demanded: ‘How could you speak to her like that. What's the matter with you?'

‘What's the matter with me? Haven't you realised? I'm dying.'

‘That's no excuse. No excuse at all. If the living owe a duty of respect to the dying, then the dying owe a similar duty of respect to the living. I was utterly ashamed of you.'

‘Oh, she's such a useless bitch. And I've told you, I hate that
smell
of hers.'

‘What are you talking about? Smell, smell, smell! She has no smell, except the smell of soap. It's your whole attitude that stinks. You seem to think that you're back in India shouting abuse at the wogs. You're not. Whether you like it or not, you're in another world. You've got to learn to behave in it.'

‘Oh, it's too late for that. You can't teach a dying dog new tricks.'

He closed his eyes. His usually grey face was blotched with an angry red. He had drifted away from me.

How can you bring yourself to speak to me like that? I thought you loved me.

I do love you, father. But you're driving me crazy. Why can't you die with decency and dignity?

Because dying is such an indecent and undignified thing. Do you now dread your visits to me?

Yes. Yes, I have to say it. Yes, I do. You frighten me. You shock me.

Would you rather not come?

Oh, no. No. I must come.

Every day. Why? I'm lucky if I see your stepbrother and stepsisters once a week.

I have a sense of duty. It's an awful nuisance. I inherited it from mother.

Don't you have anything more than that?

Yes.

What?

Well, love, I suppose.

His legs suddenly began to twitch under the bedclothes. Dogs' legs twitch like that when they are dreaming. His eyes opened. He stared at me, as if at a stranger.

‘Father!' The cry emerged from somewhere deep inside me with a terrible, tearing sensation. I jumped up and put my hands to his emaciated shoulders, my cold cheek against his hot one. Then I felt his hands pushing me away, with extraordinary violence for someone so ill. ‘Come on! Come on! What's got into you?' he protested.

From that visit, his attitude to Beryl wholly changed. He had never before called her by her name. Now he constantly did so, as though just to utter it gave him pleasure. Those bleak, extraordinarily pale blue eyes would suddenly darken and soften as he watched her going about her humdrum tasks of handing him his innumerable pills and then extending a tumbler of water, of taking away a vase of dead flowers or bringing in a vase of fresh ones, of straightening his sheets, of tidying his slippers or the books and magazines on his table. ‘Ah, there's Beryl,' he would say when she entered the room. ‘Beryl is going to take her children to Alton Towers,' he told me. ‘ Tomorrow she has the day off. So the children will be the gainers and I'm to be the loser.' ‘ Beryl has brought me her
Mail
. There's a long article about the ludicrous delays in getting Athens ready for the Olympics.'

She comes into the room and he at once turns his head away from me to look at her. ‘Oh, goodness, your pyjama top is soaked!' Now he yields himself gratefully to her ministrations. There is a yearning look in his eyes as she eases off the top and wipes down with a towel the once powerful, now emaciated chest, with the livid scar puckering down it. Curiously, there is the same yearning look in her eyes too. Before, she has carried out her tasks, often unpleasant and always unwelcome, with an unheeding briskness. Now her capable hands seem to linger over each small service with rare delicacy and, yes, tenderness. Those services have become stages in a secret rite that only they share. I am excluded from it. ‘That's better,' she says. ‘The poor dear is getting these sudden fevers.' She stoops over him. ‘Would you like a cup of tea?'

He shakes his head, smiles. The smile irradiates the shrunken face. ‘Perhaps for my daughter,' he says.

‘Yes, of course, dear.' There was a time near the beginning of his stay when she called him ‘dear' and he shouted at her ‘I'm not your dear.' Viciously he then added: ‘Get that,
dear
?'

‘I'm glad you're getting on so much better with her. She's a decent soul – and such a good nurse.'

‘Yes, she's a marvel.' I am amazed.

He is rambling on to me about a holiday that we once took, all

of us, to a rented house in the hills above Menton twenty, thirty

years ago. ‘Do you remember the yacht …?'
‘Yes, yes,' I say eagerly.
Suddenly a series of increasingly violent tremors pass through

his body. Is he having a fit, is he dying? I jump to my feet. But

now, breathing regularly, his face serene, his eyes shut, he lies

seemingly asleep.
Are you really glad?
Really glad? What do you mean?
That Beryl and I are now such good friends?
Of course I am. I hated it when you used to shout at her and

insult her.
I often call her my best friend. To myself, to her. Does that

surprise you?
No.
Does that make you jealous?
Of course not.
Are you sure? Of all of you, you were always the closest of my

children.
Of course I'm sure.

His sufferings are becoming unbearable to me.

As soon as I have taken off my coat and sat down, he says: ‘There's something I want to say to you at once.'

‘Yes?'

‘I want you to do something for me.'

‘Anything. What is it?'

‘I want you to speak to the specialist – what's-his-name – the one with the house in the Algarve.' His memory has begun to flake away in disconnected shards.

‘What about?'

‘I want you to ask him to give me an injection.'

‘An injection?' I suddenly feel chilled. ‘To finish me off.' ‘I can't do that.' I shake my head from side to side repeatedly. ‘
Please
!' ‘No, no! He'd be horrified at the suggestion. And in any case –

how could I, your daughter …?'
‘Doctors do those things. You know they do those things.'
‘Sorry. No. No, certainly not.'
He gives a dry, gasping laugh. The effort of it contorts his face,

his teeth suddenly seem far too large for his mouth. ‘Ring up the

vet then!'
He must be joking, I tell myself. But I cannot be sure.
Later, as I gaze across at his motionless body, the silent

interrogation resumes.
I have another idea. Couldn't you do it?
Me?
This is hell and I am in it? Quotation. Where's it from?
Faustus.
Oh, clever girl! You were always the cleverest of the brood.

Don't you want to release me from my hell?
Oh, father … I hate to see you suffer. But there's this taboo.

It's too strong.
Taboo? What taboo?
It's as though you were asking me to have sex with you. I – I

just can't help you – much though I want to. Oh, please understand.
It would be so easy. Wouldn't it?
That's what makes it so difficult.

I am thinking die, die, die, willing it but incapable of bringing it about, when Beryl enters the room. She looks at me, she looks at him. Then she crosses over and takes his wrist in her hand. She takes away the hand and places it on his forehead. She is staring at me.

‘It's horrible to see him suffer like this.'

‘The trouble is that he's so strong,' she says. ‘That's the trouble. I was reading in the paper the other day of a man who was in the Foreign Legion and then took to crime. The police cornered him and he shot at them. So they shot back. It took six bullets before they'd killed him. He's like that, your poor dad.' She looks down at it him. Appraising him, a miracle – or freak – of nature.

There is a long silence, as we stare at each other. She pulls out one of the pillows from under him, pats it vigorously and then replaces it. She pulls out the other pillow, but, instead of patting it and replacing it, she holds it against her ample breasts with both her hands. It might be a child to which she is giving suck.

Then the silent interrogation begins, no longer between him and me but between her and me.

Have you reached the end of your tether?

Yes, yes, yes! I can't take any more. And he reached the end of his tether long, long ago.

Do you want me to do it for you?

Please. Oh, yes, please.

Truly?

Yes, truly.

Now?

Now. At once. Please, please.

Time had stopped. Now it resumes. She moves towards him with the pillow. Her face is calm, tender, determined. She lowers the pillow. I turn away my head.

At the graveside she is on the other side of the grave. I hardly hear the priest's valedictory words. I scare across at her. Most of the family are in dark clothes. My own coat is black. But she is wearing a tent-like sky-blue coat wrapped round her generous body and a white hat with a sky-blue feather in it. Her high cheekbones are glistening as the sunlight shines on them. Is she sweating or is she crying?

I slip around the grave, away from Roy and the children, and stand beside her. Yes, she is crying. I put out my hand. She takes it. She imprisons it.

L
uke had never been interested in art – in photography, yes, with all the ardour of a besotted amateur, but never, never art. What changed that was Lydia's postcard.

His first thought was how odd it was that, rather than writing a letter, she should have scribbled her condolence almost diagonally on a picture postcard. But then she had always been odd and had become increasingly so since their divorce, amicable though that had been. With no preamble, the message at once began: ‘I can't stop thinking about you in your tragic and truly ghastly loss. Don't hesitate to call on me, please,
please
. I never had any bitterness towards Joy, none whatever, please believe that. Such a lovely person. Fondest thoughts. L.' Underneath she had scribbled: ‘Carrie joins me in this.' Carrie was their daughter, of whom Lydia had custody.

When he had turned the postcard over, Luke thought Lydia's behaviour even odder. It showed a drowned woman, floating on a stream with her hands raised as though to welcome or even, yes, supplicate imminent death. The picture was a famous one but he did not recognise it. He peered. It was in the Tate Gallery, he read. It was entitled
Ophelia
. The painter, whose name was vaguely familiar but of whom he knew nothing at all, was given as J.E. Millais.

That she should have chosen that picture, whether consciously or unconsciously, made Lydia's perfunctory condolence not merely odder but also, all at once, disturbing. What was she at?
Don't hesitate to call on me
. That was something that, after such a postcard, he would never, ever do. And yet … Did she perhaps imagine that that serene, resigned image of the pale face and even paler arms surrounded by all those summer flowers and by the outspread clothes that kept the lifeless body afloat, would bring him some kind of consolation?

He chucked the card into the waste-paper basket. He had kept all the other expressions of condolence but that card he would not keep. Then he stooped, retrieved it, and with panicky, violent gestures, tore it into scraps. As soon as he had done so, he wished that he could undo the action. He wanted to look again at the woman with the pale, uplifted arms and the pale, serene face.

He climbed the narrow, precipitous steps up to the attic that he now always called ‘ the photograph room'. It was a Saturday and he had decided to devote the whole of the weekend to work that he planned to submit for an exhibition of photographs of the borough in which he lived. But he could not concentrate, he kept making mistakes. He thought, with both bewilderment and rising indignation, of Lydia's choice of
that
picture to express her condolences on the death of the woman who had usurped her. Then, repeatedly, however hard he attempted to halt them, images began to flash on and off on the retina of his memory, like photographs projected in rapid succession on to a screen. Seen from every angle, they were of that body once so familiar to him and then, when he had had to identify it in the morgue, all at once grown strange and threatening.