They Do the Same Things Different There (24 page)

“It’s bile. And bring me the phone. I’ll need to call the vet.”

They’d stroked Blackie to calm her down, but she’d clearly been in some distress. And whenever they thought the coughing had stopped, that their dog had miraculously been restored to full health, off she’d start again. “I’ve made an appointment, first thing tomorrow morning,” said Lizzie. “We’ll have to keep Blackie in the kitchen tonight, close the door so she can’t get out.”

“Why?” asked Ernest.

“It’ll be easier to clean up the bile if we keep her off the carpets.” He’d carried Blackie down the stairs in his arms—such a big dog, such a dead weight. Normally Blackie would have cried and scratched to have been shut in the kitchen—she’d both cry and scratch merely to be shut away from her rightful place, at the foot of her mistress’ bed. But she didn’t make a sound of complaint as he’d closed the door on her, leaving her her favourite rug and her favourite cushion and her favourite squeaky toy. In the morning Ernest had opened the door, and Blackie didn’t appear to have moved from where he’d put her. Just for a moment he had a horrid thrill that she might have died in the night, just unexpectedly, she might have saved them the bother of having to. . . .—but no, when he’d called her name she’d raised her head slowly and incuriously. By the side he’d seen further traces of brown black gunk.

“It’s the kidneys,” the vet had said. “There’s really not a lot you can do.”

“Oh dear,” Ernest had replied. His wife hadn’t said anything, her mouth set in hard decision.

“Can’t you fix her?” Ernest had gone on. “I mean, I know there are kidney transplants and things. . . .”

“Not for dogs,” the vet had said. “Blackie could struggle on for a while longer, I can give some medicine. But the quality of her life would be drastically reduced, and she’d never be comfortable. I think you should strongly consider putting her to sleep.”

Ernest had made to protest, but “Do it,” Lizzie had said suddenly, and he’d shut up.

The vet shaved Blackie’s foreleg, and the whole while Lizzie and Ernest had stroked Blackie’s head, reassuring her. “It’ll all be all right soon,” Lizzie had promised her, “no more pain soon.” There was a syringe, it was in and out, and before Ernest could change his mind, before he could say, no, wait, this is wrong, we’re not trying
hard
enough, Blackie seemed to stiffen then slouch, and her eyes grew harder. And greyer. And wetter, or maybe that was just Ernest’s.

“They didn’t have the parts,” he said to himself now, as he put a fresh Tupperware bowl underneath his poor sick television. “They didn’t have the parts, you see.”

The next morning the plasters had come off. The blood had seeped through, made them sodden, and they’d fallen into the Tupperware with the rest of the matter. At first Ernest was heartened to see that the blood was red rather than the thick black he had been dreading—red seemed so much healthier somehow—but to counter that, there was rather a lot of it. When he’d gone to bed, the bowl had had no more than a few specks in it. Now it was lapping at the rim.

Ernest found a bigger bowl—one from Lizzie’s brief but fondly remembered cake-baking exploits. And he was washing out the older one when the doorbell rang. He was still in his pyjamas and wasn’t expecting anyone.

“What do you want?” he asked Billy. And it wasn’t just Billy either—there was his wife, and those two children.

“I told you I was coming today, Dad,” said Billy. “Don’t you remember?” He stepped past him into the hallway. Billy looked frail and a little feminine, and not unlike his mother. It hurt Ernest to be reminded of how she’d once looked; it hurt him even more to see her features cut off, rearranged, and pasted so inaccurately upon this ineffectual man standing there. Standing so awkwardly, as if he were a stranger, as if he wasn’t even his son. “You’re in your pyjamas,” Billy pointed out.

“I know.”

“Yes. Right.”

And after him trailed the two kids, barely concealing their disinterest, and then the wife. Oh, no, she wasn’t the wife, was she? That was the other one, before he’d got the divorce.

“Hello,” he said to the children, wishing he could remember their names. “Hello,” he said to the woman who wasn’t the wife, and therefore wasn’t called Jane, he mustn’t do that again.

“We’ve brought you presents, Dad,” said Billy. And indeed, the two children were each laden down with a cardboard box. “Put them down here, kids. That’s it.”

“Would you like a cup of tea?” asked Ernest.

“I’ll make some tea,” said the woman, and disappeared into the kitchen. This left Ernest with nothing to do but be drawn back to the cardboard box, which, he supposed, was the idea.

“What is it?” he asked, when Billy opened the first one and took out some gadget or another.

“It’s an answering machine,” said Billy. “You know, for the phone.”

“Why would I want one of those? Nobody phones me anyway.”

“That’s not true, Dad,” Billy said patiently. “
I
phone. I phoned yesterday, and you didn’t answer, I had to phone again. And it would make me feel much happier, if that happens again, that I could leave you some sort of message. No, don’t do that,” he said to the children. Ernest didn’t want to see what they’d been doing.

“If it makes you happier,” said Ernest, not, he felt, unreasonably, “then it’s more a present for you than it is for me.”

“If you say so, Dad,” said Billy with a sigh. The woman emerged from the kitchen with tea. “Shall we go to the sitting room?” he suggested.

“When can we go home?” one of the children asked its mother, as it flopped into Lizzie’s favourite armchair.

“Ssh,” she said, “not yet.”

“But I’m bored,” said the child.

Ernest stole a look of worry at the television set in the corner. He supposed it was resting, and if it were sick, it needed all the rest it could get. He didn’t want its peace disturbed.

“And here’s your other present,” said Billy, with just a hint of playfulness. “Ta-dah! . . . There you are, you see.”

It was another television. Newer, shinier, smaller, and a damn sight more plasticky than Ernest’s own.

“I don’t want it,” he said.

“Come on, Dad,” said Billy.

“I already have a television set,” said Ernest.

Billy laughed. “This old thing?” he said. “You had that when I was a kid!”

“Forty-eight years,” said Ernest. “I bought it the month after I married your mother.” It had been one of those little peculiarities in her that he had never got used to. Most of the time she’d been so practical, so careful with money. But once in a while, right up to the end, she could surprise him, could indulge in a bit of a “splurge,” as she’d called it. The honeymoon had worked out cheaper than either of them had expected. Both of them supposed that the sensible thing would be to put the leftover in the bank, but Lizzie had grinned at him a little wickedly and said, “Well, we
could
be sensible. Or we could just splurge out and buy ourselves a television set.” He’d laughed, but she’d been serious, and so that’s what they’d done.

He supposed it was the thing that had kept their marriage fresh. All those little surprises. “I’ve got cancer,” she told him one day.

“Oh,” Ernest had said. “Oh dear.”

“I don’t know what can be done, my darling. I don’t know, I’m sorry.” And she’d kissed him with so much tenderness, and he’d hugged on to her. He hadn’t wanted to cry, he had to be the strong one—and, looking back, he supposed she’d felt exactly the same thing.

A few nights later he had been lying next to her in bed. After that hug they hadn’t mentioned the cancer again. As if ignoring it would make it go away. “You know I’m dying,” she’d said to him in the dark.

“I don’t want to think about it.”

“I know, darling. I know you don’t. But it’s there.” And she had held him close. “I’m not going to get better, you know. I’m only going to get worse. I’ve been reading up on it in the library.”

“You think you know everything,” Ernest had said to her, not without spite. “But you don’t.”

“It would be easier, it seems to me,” she’d said there, in that thick darkness, and it had seemed to Ernest to get thicker, to make his head swim, “if we just stopped it now. You could, you know. You could give me a kiss. Say goodbye. And put a pillow over my face. And that’d be an end to it.”

Ernest couldn’t, and wouldn’t, he said he couldn’t and wouldn’t. . . .

“I know, darling,” Lizzie had said, perfectly placidly. “I know.” His poor Lizzie, who’d never even smoked, dying of lung cancer.

“I’m popping into the garden for a cigarette,” said the woman who wasn’t married to his son.

Billy waved her on with a smile. One of the kids ran out after her. The other was too busy wrecking the armchair. Billy moved toward the old television, sick and neglected in the corner, and no doubt trying to sleep through all the noise. “What are you doing?” asked Ernest. “No.”

“I’ll unplug this one, put the new one in. My God, it’s ancient. You said yourself, it was broken.”

“I said it was bleeding,” said Ernest. “Not broken. Look at the bowl underneath.” But, of course, he’d just changed bowls, this one was fresh and clean. “I said, don’t!” he said, more sharply, and pushed his son back. Billy looked at him in surprise. “I bought that with your mother,” he said. “I bought it with her.”

Billy stared at his father for a few seconds. “I miss her too,” he said at last.

“You have no idea,” Ernest almost spat. “You have no idea. You had your wife, what was her name . . . ?”

“Jane.”

“Jane. That’s it. And then you threw her away. Her and the grandchildren, you threw her away. And now you’re here with another woman, and children who aren’t even your own. It’s all fucked up.”

“Dad, Graham’s still here, he can hear you. . . .”

“It broke your mother’s heart. It did. She said to me, why’d he sling her out, Ernie, why’d people just sling things out? She never forgave you, you know. Not ever. Not even when she died. The last thing she said to me, and I was there when she died, I stood over her, she said, I’ll never forgive Billy, never.”

Billy breathed long and hard through his nose. Ernest wasn’t sure if the boy was going to cry or punch him. One or the other, he thought, do get on with it. This kid of his, this kid who had kids of his own, and kids that weren’t
even
his own, what sense did that make? This kid of his, who looked like Lizzie reassembled by an idiot.

But the Lizzie look-alike didn’t cry or punch; he finished that funny breathing thing, then bent down, back toward the television. “We’ll just swap these over,” he muttered. “Then we’ll get out of your way.”

“Don’t touch it,” said Ernest. “You’ll hurt it. It’s sick. If you must give me a television, for God’s sake, put it in the kitchen.”

Billy straightened up. “You don’t want a
TV
in the kitchen, Dad. This would be much more comfortable. With your nice chair, look. . . .”

“There’s a perfectly nice chair in the kitchen. I want it in the kitchen. Leave my old set alone. Put the new one in the kitchen.”

“William, just put it in the kitchen, if that’s what your father wants.” So said the non-wife, stepping back through the door.

“Right,” said Billy. “Of course. Fine.” And he picked the new
TV
up, carried it downstairs without another word.

There was silence in the sitting room as Billy worked away. “Thank you, Jane,” said Ernest at last. The woman ignored him.

“Mummy, I’m bored,” said a child, who may or may not have been the one called Graham.

“I know. We’ll be going soon.”

And indeed they were. “That’s the answering machine plugged in,” said Billy. “And the
TV
. Shall I show you how to. . . .”

“No,” said Ernest. And he closed the door behind them.

Ernest all but ran upstairs to the sitting room, as fast as his hip would allow. “I’m sorry,” he said to the television. “We’re alone now, I’m sorry.” There was still no blood in the Tupperware bowl, and for a moment Ernest thought his poor patient had come to no further harm.

But when he turned it on, he saw that the snowy fuzz that was BBC1 was no longer just grey. It was red too. And getting redder. All the dots of static fizzing in a frenzy, punching themselves against the screen, punch punch. And Ernest watched with horror as the screen began to bulge out under the pressure of them all, and a hairline fracture traced its way from one diagonal to the other, and then. . . .

. . . Out gushed the blood. Red and black, thick and coppery. It exploded out, over the room, over Ernest. “Oh dear!” he cried, and then, because he’d let it out anyway, so why not?—“This is fucked up, this is so fucked up.” It felt good to say that, to admit that truth at last after so many months of pretending everything
wasn’t
fucked up, he felt so much better as he stood in the centre of his sitting room, his pyjamas dripping with the blood of an elderly television set. He even allowed himself a smile.

Ernest waded over to the
TV
. “Do you feel better now too?” he asked, putting his arms around it soothingly. “There, there,” he assured it, “better out than in. It’ll be all right now.”

He felt he should dry himself off, but knew too that it would be heartless to abandon his poor television when it was suffering so badly. How would it look, he being so perfectly well and happy, to be worried about his personal
cleanliness
of all things? And it wasn’t unpleasant, this sensation of blood, on his hands, in his hair, even in his mouth: it warmed him, calmed him. So he stayed in the room. The blood could wait, all this mess, the gunk over him, over the new answering machine (was it?), over Lizzie’s favourite armchair . . . He wouldn’t abandon the invalid now.

He remembered how, near the end, Lizzie had begun to cough blood. “Never mind,” she would say, as she would dab at her mouth as pertly as if she’d been eating chicken, “never mind.” But, of course, he
did
mind, how could he not mind? Sometimes in the night he’d wake next to her, find her pillow drenched in the stuff. She’d asked him to move to the spare room so she wouldn’t disturb him, but he’d refused—he’d wanted to take care of her. And he’d only relented when she’d said it was for her sake, God, please, Ernie, it was for her, it was for
her.