The Convalescent Read online

  “There are some characters here,” she called to him. “Will we be as interesting at their age, Alan?”

  “Of course, Alice,” the minister replied, so that William, following, had the impression that it was an exchange which had occurred before. “Some aren’t dimmed by age at all. Look at Miss Baxter: at crosswords she leaves me standing.”

  They passed an old lady in an overcoat lying slumped in an armchair, one arm trailing from her zimmer like a rope from a rowing boat, her stockings round her ankles. She was snoring loudly, her lips curled back over ill-fitting false teeth as though not even in sleep would the habit of contempt leave her. Would it leave her in death? William wondered. Would it leave her then? And had she missed her supper?

  By the time they had completed their tour William had identified the smell of the place. Fish and urine. It was everywhere, though stronger in some parts than others. Not even the disinfectants and air-purifiers and vases of flowers which stood on table after table could banish it.

  “Now let me show you your room,” matron said.

  The west wing was cool by comparison with the rest of the house, and it didn’t smell. Efforts had clearly been made to establish it as the staff quarters. The doors, for example, were locked (otherwise the elderly would stray in there, matron said, and wet themselves), the furniture was bright and modern, and there were posters on the walls. Even the light – lucid and even – struck William as different.

  “Even I find this a haven,” the minister said, “and I …”

  “…don’t even work here!” matron laughed. “Yes, it’s a pleasant complex, with pleasant rooms. This is yours, Mr Templeton introduce yourself to it and then – visiting hour is upon us, I’m afraid – just let yourself out. We’ll be pleased to see you whenever you choose to start. When might that be?”

  “I’ll start the day after tomorrow, I think,” William said. “All right?”

  “Excellent,” matron nodded.

  “So long, Mr Templeton,” the minister said.

  Alone in his room – matron was quite right, it was a very pleasant room, a room in which you could sit or read, write long letters to distant friends, sleep well for the first time in years – William walked to the window. The sun was shining, the colours were autumnal, and between the oaks and beeches there were broad paths, secret and silent. Round a bend in one of the paths then, came, very slowly, an old man and a nurse. Mainly the old man’s look was of extreme delight, but every ten yards or so – as though the very extremity of his delight unbalanced him – his left foot got stuck and he became distressed, giving himself up to the nurse. Dextrous for both of them, the nurse nudged the old man’s calf with her instep until his leg moved again. William watched closely, drawn by the nurse’s patience. Exemplary gentleness. Young and dark, she might have been thought naively forbearing but for her determined air. They combined oddly, in fact, the forbearance and the determination. (Too much one way and she would have had no presence, too much the other and she would have been overbearing.) William was made particularly aware of it because at one point – as though taking a moment off from her ministrations to remind herself that in spite of all it was a comparatively young world through which she and the old man were moving – she looked up and saw him. She didn’t smile, but her look wasn’t unfriendly, either, “Who are you?” it seemed to say. Simply that. It may not have been a question William could have answered, but nor was it one which at that moment – standing back slightly from the window – dismayed him. It was not with shame that it pierced him.

  July 22nd, 1980

  I am to meet mother at the hospital at two o’clock. Father has had a serious heart attack. After three weeks complaining about the heat he keeled over this morning after breakfast, grabbing at the tablecloth as he fell, pulling cups, plates, the teapot down on top of him. Mother is very distressed, naturally, I rather less so, I’m afraid. And not really surprised. A lifetime of tension and grumbling was bound to lead to something like this. It is fitting, really. I ask myself am I heartless as I walk to the hospital through bright July. Father and I have never got on. Never. I sometimes have a dream in which as a baby – but a baby with a sophisticated consciousness – I am lying behind a mosquito net or something of the kind. It has apparently been put there by mother to protect me from father. He glares in nonetheless, whenever he can. His famous gaze: a flat white face, terribly flat, straight hair brushed severely forwards, eyes which – as though limbering up for a shouting match, a coup – seem to be doing exercises. He looks in and is gone. Looks in and is gone. And I, helpless on an arrangement of scented pillows, look left and right for mother. But mother is not there, or is there but silenced, dying perhaps.

  Mother has been at the hospital for three or four hours. I meet her in the large cool entrance hall and she tells me that father is very bad. I touch her on the arm and she looks at me with one of her quick smiles. Even in grief she does me the honour of recognising that I have reason not to feel as she does. (Her journeys into the lives and personalities of her son and daughter have been remarkable, I realise.) She says that father is in the intensive care unit and that, though conscious, he is exhausted and behind an oxygen mask. The visit will be brief, conversation neither possible nor desirable. As we go up in the lift, I try to imagine what father will think of our appearance, healthy birds in his chamber of death. I cannot do so. He will hope that Marion, alerted in New England in the middle of the night, will make it in time. Or does he see himself recovering, walking perhaps with a stick, leisured at last, enjoying gardens? No. I think he has vexed himself to the grave.

  He manages to raise his right hand a little above the sheet. For once I am sure that he is as weak as he appears. Too weak for show. On an impulse I go round and touch his hand. It strikes me as alien, not a part of him, not a part of him at all, and this frightens me. What do I mean? It is his hand. Have I not touched it before? Emotional in the death chamber, I am aware of mother behind me, smiling, unsurprised by my state, ahead of me as usual in these desperate matters. She motions me to sit beside her and we agree that father looks rested. Is it tears behind his oxygen mask or perspiration? Perspiration. Mother rises to wipe it away, leaning gracefully over the bed, smiling. (Will I ever know what enables her to smile when I – such are the shadows – can hardly breathe? When what I hear is a kind of grinding?) She has managed, I notice, to dress both for the day and the occasion: a summer frock, but with the quietest of colours. The quietest.

  A nurse comes in, checks whatever it is they check at such times, smiles quietly, and goes out. Again father’s hand lifts a little, drops. This time it doesn’t have the air of a terribly reduced greeting, but of something involuntary. Maybe it was involuntary the first time and my feeling that it wasn’t really his hand had some truth. Is he gone already beyond the bounds of his body? Is that what mother’s smile means?

  After twenty minutes mother whispers to me that we should go. Father is sweating badly. I touch his hand again. It is clammy. There is no response. I should be used to this, but I am not. Mother wipes his forehead. Then kisses it.

  I tell mother she can’t wait around all day. She says nothing. She is going to a friend’s, ten minutes from the hospital, because the friend hasn’t heard the news. I accompany her, her walk no less vigorous than mine, if mine can be described as vigorous anymore. The pavements are baked, the parks and gardens parched. I think we both have a sense that what is going on outside the hospital has nothing to do with father. It is both a comfort and a comment. Although he has lived in the country, I wouldn’t say that he has been a lover of nature. I wouldn’t say that he has been a lover. These trees would not have been noticed by him.

  Mother asks me to come in with her to her friend’s, but I decline, pleading work, saying I’ll be back at the hospital later. I have no desire to work, however, I will take the afternoon off. If I hadn’t done my work so well over the years I’d still be striving, maybe. But, as it is, it has little left to offer. I h
ave mastered it, maintained my mastery more or less, become a kind of hub in the educational publishing world. A reputation of sorts. But now? Now? One can’t stay in the same place forever. It would be boring to try. The path downwards, to foothills in some other range, is more appealing than the same summit, month after month, year after year. How many people can summit hold anyway? There are younger men coming up.

  I drive to a pub in the country which I discovered in the days when I went birdwatching. Now I hardly even notice birds, I’m afraid, far less watch them. Can I understand why I had the passion? Never mind. The courtyard of the pub is quiet and white – bright July indeed – and I drink beer. I hear behind me somewhere a circular saw and now and then smell pine sap. It must be a thick trunk – a thick trunk or weak men – for the saw labours and there are pauses. Sometimes there are shouts: perhaps they aren’t sure after all where the tree will fall. I imagine it coming down across the courtyard, crushing me. Father and son departed together. Poor mother. Poor Marion. Would mother go and live in New England then? A visit, maybe, but not to stay. Away from her country she would wither, her eyes alone telling those with eyes to see that she had once been otherwise. But why am I thinking about mother when it is father who is dying?

  I get the impression that the tree is about to fall, for the saw is going fiercely and behind it I can hear shouts. When it comes, though, the fall is less impressive than the preparations. It is as if it is occurring in slow motion: light sounds, feathery sounds, a kind of whispering, at last a clump. Then, in the following silence, twigs snap, snap as in afterthought, casually. And go on snapping. I imagine dust and flies above the torn earth.

  Slightly drunk, I approach the fallen tree, and notice that not only has it been cut down but, as though diseased, uprooted. I am greatly impressed by its roots, too healthy to be out of the earth. It is an offence. Where are those responsible? I cannot see them. They have gone. More time must have passed than I thought. I am – I was about to say “we” – for the fallen tree seems to be a presence – on the edge of a forest. It is entirely silent now. I lean on the tree for support, and notice, coming from the earth that clings to its roots, ants and slaters and earwigs, hundreds of them.

  CHAPTER NINE

  When he woke in the Montgomery on his first morning, William was confused by what he heard. They were strange sounds: he hadn’t heard anything like them before. Sounds as of air escaping or being compressed. Sighs – but too extended to be human. He slept again, retreating from the strangeness, as though a patient himself, and dreamt of a hazy dawn in the Mediterranean, of the sounds and sights of a carnival. All the colours in the world were there, and young men and women were dancing. He himself was on a high bank with others, watching. When the carnival procession passed by many of the spectators ran down and joined in. William’s feeling was that if he could do that he would instantly become young again. But he stayed where he was. And was quite happy.

  He woke again. This time they were sounds he recognised – doors banging, plates being stacked, trolleys rumbling, voices enquiring, requesting – and knew that a routine was starting up, a routine, a day, in which he was to play a part. But still he lay, reluctant to rise. On the wall opposite him, the shadows of trees danced and were still, danced and were still. Or was it the pattern of the curtains that did so? Whichever it was, they seemed to matter more to him than the sounds of gathering purpose. Some of the elderly, he supposed, would be up and dressed before him, converging already, with that dry and musing slowness, on the breakfast room. Each at his own pace from dawn to dusk. The life of the place seemed suddenly clear to him: it was as if he had lived through it many times already. He dozed again, unable to overcome the feeling that he was a patient too, here to rest in pleasant surroundings, to complete a recovery, to have it recognised that his path had not been easy but that he had done well.

  There was a knock on the door. They had come to remind him that he had duties. He propped himself on one elbow and called, “Come in!” The door opened slowly, almost teasingly: it was the nurse he had seen with the old man. He had been introduced to her and the other nurses the night before, and had thought her much the kindest and brightest of the three. She was called Sophie Mackay. Of the others, May, in her fifties, was aggressively offhand, as though, with infirmity on all sides and death a more regular visitor than some of the relatives, she believed that a crude attempt at levity was better than none at all. The third, Margaret, was the same age as Sophie, but ill at ease with almost everyone. The impression given was not of a lack of kindness, however, but of imprisoned kindness. (An impression which, with William, had taken a strange form: such was Margaret’s pallor and thinness, she would one day look into a mirror and barely see herself.)

  Sophie entered, opened the curtains an inch or two and sat on the end of William’s bed. Breakfast had started, she said, but there was no hurry. None at all. She didn’t seem surprised at finding William in bed, and she didn’t seem surprised at his continuing reluctance to get up. She didn’t seem surprised at anything, in fact. It gave her the appearance, this unsurprised alertness, of looking boldly beyond the rim of the normal, of being on good terms with risk, challenge, adversity. Whether it was an expression of unusual naivety, however, or of painful experience, William couldn’t tell. Given her age, it was perhaps the former; but given the frankness with which she regarded him propped on one elbow, the ease with which she appeared to disdain – as out of a respect for what waited in the shadows – the more obvious features of the scene before her it was perhaps not. And was she smiling or not? He couldn’t be sure about this, either. All he knew was that with her brown eyes, brown hair and thoughtful mouth she was pretty.

  “You look as if you want to stay there,” she said.

  “I am staying here,” he smiled. “Hasn’t matron told you? I’m one of your patients. The oldest young one in the place. What’s your treatment?”

  “All right,” Sophie said. “ I’ll check you. Lie back and keep still.”

  Because he didn’t lie back immediately, Sophie placed her hands on his shoulders and pressed him gently downwards. And because, when lying, he didn’t lie still, she placed his hands together on his chest and indicated that he should keep them there. Then she felt his forehead, took his pulse, pulled down his eyelids, looked at his tongue. There were no signs that she was treating it as a game. No signs that she even noticed the little smile with which he submitted to these unexpected attentions.

  “You can get up,” she said. “You’re a bit bleary, but you can get up. Don’t you know you look well?”

  “My tan? It was a good summer.”

  “I’m not a real nurse, by the way,” she said thoughtfully. “Matron is the only real one around here.”

  “Why don’t you become one? You’d be good.”

  “I’m thinking of it. The trouble is I have so many plans I can’t choose between them.”

  “Too many futures? That’s a luxury, I can tell you.”

  “Well, are you going to get up?” she asked. “I think you’d better. And don’t forget to put on your white jacket. It’ll make you look like a dentist, but we’re all in white here.”

  “Except the minister,” William said.

  “Except the minister. He’s in black.”

  “Okay I’ll be along in a minute. What should I do, though?”

  “Talk to them, help them to their chairs, read to them, help them to the lavatory.”

  But even after Sophie had gone, William didn’t get up. From his bed he could see his regulation white jacket, with its little epaulettes, on the back of a chair. He didn’t want to wear it; it would indeed make him look like a dentist. When had he left the farm? Only yesterday. Already, though, it seemed distant. His shoes; his trousers; his cracked mirror; his razor; his transistor: he could see them all from where he lay – he itemised them, in fact, now in one order, now in another. But it didn’t bring the farm any closer. Could he not even hold on to his recent past? Did h
e not really care about what passed through his hands? His hands: slowly – as if he had never done so before and feared what he might find – he raised them until they were level with his eyes. Some of their lines were strong, strong and forked, some indistinct, vanishing in the middle of the palm, but what held him was the submerged blue of the veins at his wrist. Evidence of persistence, of mysterious stubbornness.

  There was another knock at the door. This time however he didn’t call “Come in!” because the knock had been so sharp, so imperious. He hadn’t heard any footsteps, and he didn’t hear any now. Indeed he was sure that were he to open the door there would be no one there. He got up and started to dress, proceeding hastily and without pause for fear that the knock would come again. Dressed and shaved, he checked himself in the mirror above the wash-hand basin. It embarrassed him to see himself so trim and ready, so defined. A second-rate dentist in a colony of the dying. A spoiled suburban vet. An attendant in a mental home. A waiter without a restaurant. All and none of these. He looked away. And found that he had lifted his hands again (as if sensing that he would have particular need of them in this place) and was turning them, palms in, palms out, slowly.

  He locked the door of the staff quarters behind him (everyone who slept there had a key) and set off down the corridor. It was hot and silent and the smell this morning – possibly because they had had it for breakfast – was of fish rather than of fish and urine. On the walls, dingy with age and hanging at an angle, were Constable and Turner prints, and arranged on a low table, as though for sale, were nine or ten pot plants. They had recently been watered, and William wondered who the gardener was. Further on, there was a small fish tank on the wall, brightly illuminated and making a purposeful bubbling sound, but either empty of fish or with sleeping fish.