The Language of Dying Page 3

  Its body is large, like a horse but more solid – without the elegance but with twice the power. I can see thick sinews bunch along its long neck as it raises its head again, glaring at me. A black horn grows twisted from between its eyes, a thick, deformed, calloused thing, a tree root erupting from the earthy ground of its forehead, the matt texture oppositional to the sweaty shine on its dark hide. I stare at it and our souls meet. It is power and anger and beauty and nature rolled into something other-worldly, waging a war with the night on its four thick hooves.

  I can’t breathe for a second and then the black beast rises up on its rear legs, frustrated at my inaction. It is perfection to me, not like the white, insipid animal of legends with which it shares it horn – that creature does not exist. This one exists more plainly than I do. It is gnarled and dark and full of passion and I know that if I could bury my head in that mane it would smell of the earth and sweat and blood.

  It glares at me and I know that below it is whinnying, a deep throaty growl of a sound. A terrifying sound. I smile. I can’t help it. This instant I am full of joy, pure and bright.

  I bite my cheek and stare in disbelief as the furious creature turns, its eagerness to travel through the night too great. Without looking back it jumps heavily over the fence, becoming invisible against the night. It is gone, its patience worn thin. It has no more time for me.

  The light inside me goes out leaving only the white heat of pain.

  The heat burns my face and burns my brain as I push away from the floor, my legs bursting with energy as I run in panic into the night. I think a whine escapes me, high pitched. I will not be left behind. I will not.

  I feel nothing after that. I can barely think; the world is a mess as I drift in the worst way. I know that the tarmac hurts my feet and I know the mud of the field is thick and cold and sucks me down. I see the last glint of bright eyes in the night before there is only the dark and my hot tears. I know I fall. I think I call out. I think I am still screaming, ‘Come back! Come back! Don’t leave me behind!’ when you, Penny and Paul find me on my filthy knees, sobbing in the darkness.

  *

  I remember everything from the night our mother left us. So many years ago, and yet still with me. Bubbles within bubbles. I quietly raise myself up on one elbow and look at Penny. She is sleeping, her hands tucked under her cheek and her knees pulled up into her chest. I smile and stroke her hair before quietly pushing back the covers, happy to be out of the heat. My eyes are wide open and they burn when I blink. My heart beats too fast to sleep and I want to shake off the feeling of alltime.

  Leaving the light off I pad down the long, dark corridor and sit with you for a while, even though you are sleeping too. I don’t speak; I just watch you. I resist the temptation to go down on my knees and slip my head under the curtain. I only allow myself one quick glance out. The road is empty. There is nothing in the field. And I wonder again if there ever really was.

  4

  By nine a.m. the breakfast bar is covered with the remains of our huge fried breakfasts and the scent of hot grease clings to our hair. I have pulled on some jeans and a T-shirt, but Penny has managed to apply full makeup in the same amount of time. I wonder how she does it. While we wait for the doctor I ring the library and tell them I won’t be in for a few days. My father is dying. The words feel odd in that order and they make the woman on the other end – I think it’s Shirley, but I’m not sure – close down.

  Hearing the language does that to people. There are no questions. They don’t want to hear about it. They don’t like the little bit of the language they already know; they don’t want to add to it. And I can hear all of this in the closed tone of Shirley’s voice. I hang up and wonder if I ever told them that you were sick or just that you were coming to live with me. I don’t remember. I don’t care. The world outside the house no longer exists. Not for a little while anyway.

  We drink tea and are just finishing the rest of the chocolate biscuits when the doctor arrives. He is a large, middle-aged man. A fat man who speaks very little and appears preoccupied when he does utter a few words. I offer to show him where you are, but he waves me away and takes his black bag upstairs, leaving us clinging to our cups of tea. We go back to the warm comfort of the kitchen, matching his heavy footfalls as he heads towards your room. We eat more biscuits until he comes back downstairs. The chocolate makes me feel sick as it hits the eggs and bacon and toast already in my stomach, but eating is better than talking. We think we know the answers anyway. I can see them in Penny’s scared, kohllined eyes. We think we know exactly what the doctor is going to say. We think your time is nearly up. In our hearts we know that you will be dead by tomorrow. After all, you look so ill and haven’t drunk anything for twenty-four hours. Open and shut case.

  We are very surprised then when the doctor’s closed face remains calm and detached. Penny is rambling on about the folder the nurses left last night, and where should we keep it, and how often should they write in it and then I cut her off. ‘He’s dying, isn’t he? How soon will it be? Should we get the rest of the family?’

  The doctor shakes his head vaguely, unaware of the panic in my voice. Or maybe he is just immune to it with this job of his. He shrugs.

  ‘He is very sick. I think he has a week. Not much more than that at any rate. Maybe a day or so less.’

  I stare at him as if I’ve been slapped in the face. Beside me, Penny too is silent.

  ‘But he can’t eat and he hasn’t drunk anything for at least a day,’ she says.

  The doctor shrugs. ‘Yes, he’s very dehydrated. Try and sponge his mouth. Maybe with juice as well as water. Pineapple juice is a natural cleanser and might give him some energy. The acids and enzymes in it work well in the mouth.’ Penny nods and quickly scribbles down pineapple juice on a piece of paper dragged from her handbag. She has always liked lists. They help her feel in control.

  ‘A week? Are you sure?’

  The doctor looks back at me and nods. ‘The body fights, you know?’

  After a moment I nod back as if I understand and perhaps I think I do. In fact, I know nothing. I am so naïve. Penny has started talking again and she talks the quiet fat man all the way to the door. Standing in the kitchen, I wonder at death. You look so sick. You’ve given up. You haven’t drunk anything. I think this should surely be enough to make death take over. I am wrong of course. You have so much more dying to do yet. You have to become so much less before you go. The doctor is, in fact, spot on. One week. Maybe a little less. The body fights, you know?

  Now I do.

  When the doctor is gone I go up to check on you, but you don’t seem to know I’m there. Or maybe you’re just ignoring me. I wouldn’t put it past you. I say as much and laugh as I leave the room, as if everything were normal. Or at least not-quite-right normal.

  By the time I get back to the kitchen, to the warm heart of our microcosm world, I am crying. Penny looks at me and then she is crying too. We cry at each other for a while and then we make more tea, light cigarettes and make lists. I am sure Penny’s list has a function, is organised, but I look down and see mine is just a jumble of words on a small sheet of paper. I have written morphine/pineapple juice as if creating a new cocktail. And maybe I have. Maybe it’s a Dad special. Then the words are blurred as my eyes and my nose run free.

  We eventually talk about the boys coming. I can feel the tension rising before we’ve even started the calls. Penny’s list of people we need to contact is getting longer, but I think maybe the best way to start is by looking through your little address book. I fetch it from its place by the phone and flick through the yellowed pages, looking at the numbers and words laid down in your neat, scratchy hand. My heart clenches.

  You won’t be writing again.

  Not ever.

  The finality of the thought is cold and makes me shake. I am so tired. It’s been a long few months and, even though time has folded from the first diagnosis to now, my body and soul know that I have liv
ed through every painful second of it. They sing it to me through aching limbs and a torn heart. I am not very strong. I never have been. I hand the book to Penny.

  ‘All Dad’s numbers are in there.’ She looks at it as if it’s something sacred and not a ninety-nine pence stocking-filler address book from WHSmith. ‘If you ring Paul, then he can ring the boys. They all need to come and say their goodbyes.’ The words don’t feel adequate as I say them. ‘I’ll go to Tesco’s and get some more food in. I’ll call Mary and some of the others when I get back.’ I start gathering my purse and bag together. I still have my jogging bottoms on and I haven’t showered, but I don’t care. The supermarket will have to put up with it.

  Penny pulls on her cigarette. ‘Oh God, what am I going to say? What am I going to say to Paul?’

  I look at her. I know where this is heading. ‘Just tell him what the doctor said. Tell him Dad is dying and he needs to come now.’

  Her perfect eyes are pleading with me. ‘Maybe you should call him. You’re better at this kind of thing than me.’

  I grit my teeth. What kind of thing, Penny? I want to scream. Clearing up the crap? For a minute I look past the make-up and expensive perfume and see only the worst parts of my sister. Selfish. Spoilt. Damaged by her glow. I feel bitter and I can’t stop it. Penny has always had Paul – the two of them are thick as thieves – and the twins have each other. I have you and now you are concentrating on leaving me.

  ‘You do it, Penny,’ I say, and then she stays quiet.

  *

  There are more people in Tesco than I expect on a working day and I lose myself in them as I drift up and down the aisles, filling my trolley with bacon and eggs and pineapple juice. I select a box of field mushrooms and then stare into the aisle. The lights overhead are too bright. A tired mother adds the large bag of King Edwards she’d obviously forgotten into her already overfull trolley, while the little boy in the child seat kicks at his metal confinement, squealing, ‘I want, I want …’

  I can’t make out what it is he wants, but I think maybe his mother will give in and get it for him just to find a moment’s peace. She is pretty but looks exhausted and I wonder if I’ve caught her at a bad moment or whether she lies in bed at night and wonders how her life came to this.

  Behind them an old man carefully pulls a plastic bag from the holder and selects three or four new potatoes. Just enough for one. He adds them to his sparsely filled basket and shuffles slowly towards the tomatoes. I can’t tell if the shuffle is brought on by age or by sheer soul-weariness. Behind me I can still hear the cry of ‘I want’ It seems that age is all around, brought to nothing under the glare of the too-white light and inane music. My throat tightens in a way it hasn’t for a long time and my ears buzz. Somewhere underneath my heartbeat and dry mouth I wonder if I might abandon the trolley and run back out into the cold air of the car park. But then the moment passes.

  I relax my grip on the trolley and rub my fingers. They are cold. My heart steadies and I continue my shopping, but I focus hard on the shelves rather than the people. When the old man passes me again I squeeze my eyes shut so tight that I think I can hear the pummelling of black hooves somewhere in the distance, but the panic doesn’t grip me again and I open my eyes and sigh out a long, shaky breath. I add the ketchup I’m staring at to my trolley.

  *

  By the time I get home I feel a little more stable. I am nearly forty, I remind myself. I can cope. The house is quiet. I go into the kitchen with the first run of bags and Penny is crying.

  ‘I’ve rung Paul,’ she says. ‘He’s going to ring the boys. I told him he’s the eldest brother, it’s his job. You’re doing enough.’ She doesn’t look up. She is looking at sheets of paper pulled from an open folder. I recognise the folder. It is red cardboard, like so many of his others, but for the words funeral arrangements scratched on the flap in black pen. Penny is staring at the receipt and the paperwork.

  ‘Did Dad do this, or you?’

  My shoulders ache as I put the bags down. ‘Dad. He did it while I was at work. Hang on.’ I go back outside and fetch the last of the bags, slamming the boot. Pen doesn’t come out to help. She won’t have thought about it. Air to my earth. When I go back into the kitchen she’s unpacking the first lot, though, tidying the fridge as she goes. She lines up the margarine and the eggs so that they are at perfect angles with one another on different rows.

  I’ve watched Penny over the years and I think maybe her need to clean and tidy is a little on the compulsive side. I think she will forever seek the order she’s never found in her life, despite her glorious adventures and her romances and her children. She cleans, she scrubs and she tidies. Her house is spotless when I visit and I know that it is always spotless regardless of visitors, and I wonder sometimes what it really means, this need to be clean. To be seen to be clean. Watching her rearrange the fridge so officiously I wonder if I really know her under the glow at all.

  I throw the mushrooms into the vegetable rack not really caring where they land. This is my order.

  ‘He had about three funeral companies round one afternoon and basically figured out which one did the best deal. He’s paid for it already. The car and flowers and everything.’ My tone is conversational and I feel as if we’re talking about you booking a holiday. Maybe it’s better that way. ‘He’s having a wicker coffin. He wanted cardboard but it was more expensive. Figure that one out.’

  I don’t tell her about the evening we spent trawling the Internet, examining the biodegradability of various coffins. I wouldn’t be able to say it and she wouldn’t get it. Penny laughs from behind the fridge door. ‘Only Father …’ It warms me to hear her laugh. It’s a good sound.

  ‘Yep,’ I say. ‘Only our mad dad.’

  She laughs some more at this and as I join in I wonder where laughter fits into the language.

  When the shopping is put away, Penny goes to have a bath. I wonder why she bothered putting on all that make-up and then I remember she’s already showered once this morning. I think about the bath and put the immersion heater on so there will be enough hot water for me later. Baths are not about washing. They’re about soaking. Floating. Drifting privately in the warmth. Maybe that’s what Penny wants. Some private time. I don’t mind. I understand private time and it’s good to have the kitchen to myself again. I look outside. It’s raining. I open up the window and put my face into it, stretching my neck. The fresh, dewy smell fills me up and the water hits my skin in tiny slaps. For a moment the sensation is exhilarating, but then the cold and damp are too real and I shrink back into the shelter of our home. I settle for watching the water streaming against the glass and trees, the drops erratically chasing each other before becoming one on the windowsill or the ground. I could watch for hours, mesmerised by the everything and nothing of nature.

  It was raining like this on that Sunday morning when we went to see the crematorium. Another bubble of time.

  *

  The windscreen wipers scratch across the glass in a steady rhythm, smearing the water. You sit beside me. You tell me I need to get new bloody wipers before they ruin the screen. I bite my tongue to stop myself saying that all of this is too bizarre, because you already know it is – just as I know I need to get new bloody wipers.

  We are silent as I pull off the clinical grid road and follow the sign down a sweeping drive. Even though it’s raining and the grounds look beautiful, I can’t help but think of Dachau or some other death camp. I look to the sky, half expecting to see a plume of black smoke rising and pressing against the grey clouds. It isn’t there, of course, but I see it through the window of my mind, far too clearly. I see a lot of things I don’t like through that window.

  ‘Are you sure you want to do this?’ I ask you, although the question screams inwards, at me. Only our mad dad, I think. Only our mad dad would ask me to do this and think that it’s fine. You smile at me and nod, and I see how tired you are, just the act of leaving the house draining more hours and minutes
away. I smile back. You put the small plastic sputum tub into your pocket. You carry it with you everywhere now, just like your tobacco and lighter. The yin to the smoke’s yang. But then all that spit has to go somewhere and it can’t go down, so it has to come out. Surreptitiously, though, and when no one is looking, because spit is rude, spit is wrong and you are always such a polite man. It doesn’t make me heave anymore when I see it. Not like it used to.

  I get out of the car and zip my jacket up so that it’s nearly touching my nose. Sometimes, at home, when you’re using the jar, I concentrate hard on the TV so I don’t have to catch sight of the tobacco-brown slime that escapes from you as you cough and choke it out. I don’t let you see my discomfort. I don’t want you to know that I’ve started to hate the feeling of my own wet spit flooding against my tongue. I’ll get over it. You won’t. Time will heal me. Time will take you from me.

  We don’t speak as we hunt out the office, our feet crunching on the gravel, disturbing the silence. The rain patters lifelessly to the ground. It’s thinned since we left the house; only drizzling now. Through the window of my mind I see an ageing, fat God sitting above us in stained underpants, hacking and choking as he sends his saliva down in rain. It’s a comical image, farcical. My mind does that to me sometimes.

  You are striding ahead and I run to catch up. There is no breeze or wind and it should be cold, but it isn’t. There is a nothingness to the weather, and although I normally like the fresh chill of water on my skin I don’t want it today. Too much water. Too much water under the bridge. The phrase makes no sense, but I think it anyway. My world is full of clichés. My empty thinking space finds trivia to occupy itself as we trudge along the path that leads from one brown building to another. Nothing is open. We find no one. I can feel your frustration. ‘This is a waste of time,’ I mutter, and then realise the depth of my words and bite hard on my cheek.