Left and Leaving Read online

  ‘Something along those lines,’ she said. ‘I’m being selfish, too. I miss you.’

  Louise never did that ‘wasn’t it great when?’ or ‘d’you remember the time?’ thing. She was one of the few people he knew who anchored themselves in the present, content to make the most of now, rather than fretting about what had been or would be.

  ‘Thanks, sis. Can I ask you a favour? Could you not mention the baby to Mum or Rachel?’

  ‘No worries. That’s up to Polly. Oh, I take it you’re still bunked up with your neighbour. Feray, isn’t it?’

  ‘We’re hardly “bunked up”. It’s pretty much an open relationship.’

  She laughed. ‘Whatever.’

  12

  Vivian was checking the fenestration schedule for the gallery when a call came through on the office landline.

  ‘Someone from St. George’s Hospital,’ Ottilie said.

  For a second she thought it must be to do with the explosion but, when the voice on the other end asked ‘Is this Vivian Carey? Daughter of Philip Frederick Carey?’ she knew that it wasn’t.

  ‘Yes.’ Vivian said. ‘What’s happened?

  ‘Hello, Miss Carey. I’m Doctor Ababne. I work in A&E at St George’s. Your father’s broken his hip, I’m afraid. We’ve just admitted him.’

  ‘He’s all right?’

  ‘Yes. A little confused but he’s in no danger.’

  ‘What happened? Where was he?’

  ‘He fell. That’s all I can tell you I’m afraid. As I said, he’s slightly disorientated and I’m sure he’d feel reassured if you were here with him. Or is there someone else…?’

  No. There is no one else.

  ‘I’ll come now,’ she said. ‘It might take me a while to get there.’

  ‘No hurry. We’ll let him know you’re on your way. That’ll lift his spirits.’

  Howard thought she should take a cab but it was getting towards rush hour. ‘Tube’s quicker,’ she said.

  ‘Off you go,’ he said, shooing her away with his hand. ‘We’ll cope. Sort your father out. Hips can be nasty when you’re old.’

  By the time she reached the hospital it was five-thirty. The waiting room for A&E was bigger than the one at UCH although it smelled the same and was just as hot. The seats were occupied mainly by men in work clothes or mothers with children. Everyone looked either apprehensive, resigned or plain bored. Not surprising as the scrolling screen opposite the entrance informed her that ‘The waiting time to see a doctor is currently three hours.’

  The receptionist found her father’s name on a list and directed her down a warren of corridors to ‘Assessment’. This turned out to be a large area subdivided by curtains suspended from tracks into, perhaps, a dozen bays, each big enough to take a hospital trolley, a small desk and a chair. The curtains were made of floral-patterned fabric, presumably to cheer the place up, but they looked merely domestic and out of place.

  Staff in white coats or blue uniforms bustled about, intent on whatever it was they were doing. There didn’t appear to be anyone monitoring or directing members of the public. She wandered down the centre of the room, glancing to left and right. Where is he? No one stopped her. No one demanded to know what business she had there. Bearing in mind the rigorous checks everywhere else in the city, the lack of security here was alarming.

  She found him in the fifth cubicle on the left. Head tipped back and eyes closed, he was half-sitting, half-lying on a trolley, propped on several pillows and hooked up to a drip. His lower half was covered by a cellular blanket and the sides of the trolley were fixed upright like the sides of a cot. Were it not for his wristwatch she might not have been sure it was him.

  The watch was a Timex, which he’d had forever. As a child she had been captivated by its expanding strap, gazing transfixed when he’d pulled it on, mesmerised by the way it more than doubled its length, then shrank to grip his wrist. He’d forbidden her to touch it without his permission. But on one occasion she’d come across it on the bathroom window sill and had been unable to resist. The cold heft of it. How its scissoring innards were exposed when she stretched it. How, when she folded it first one way, then the other, it became a rippling serpent. She hadn’t heard him come upstairs. He’d lectured her about respecting other people’s possessions, his tirade bouncing and echoing off the tiled surfaces. Then he’d confiscated her new torch, locking it in his desk drawer for a whole week.

  She positioned the chair next to the trolley and studied him. His mouth gaped. Where were his dentures? He wore a grubby grey shirt, open to the second button. The blanket had slipped a little on the one side revealing a sliver of pale, hairless skin at his waist and it was apparent that he was naked from there on down. This shocked her. Maybe it shouldn’t have. Nakedness was no big deal in a hospital. Her father had damaged his hip (left or right?) so they needed to get at it easily. But he was a fiercely private man and he’d hate to be seen like this, even by his daughter, and she adjusted the blanket to cover the bare flesh.

  After her mother’s death, she could hardly bear to be with her father. She hated him for living, for casting the shadow of his old age across her life. She’d contemplated running far, far away, but something – love for her mother? A sense of responsibility? Fear of criticism? Superstition? – prevented her from running further than Belsize Park.

  Time had gone on and she’d been unable to sustain that level of loathing. It would have worn her out. The hatred had modified to chronic exasperation seasoned with blame. To be fair, he’d demanded little of her, and he’d proved to be remarkably robust for such an old man. Good health wasn’t, however, a guarantee against accidents. This fall, or something like it, was bound to happen sooner or later. It was too much to hope that he would die, healthily and independently, in his own bed. No one did, did they?

  She watched the clear liquid, drip, drip, dripping from the bag into the tube taped to the back of his hand. Was this all that was keeping him alive? She could try fooling herself that everything would be all right – but it wouldn’t, no matter how this played out. Through no fault of her own, her life was about to change. Her mother should be the one sitting here, having to deal with this. Marry an old man, bear him a child then vanish when things were on the point of getting difficult. It wasn’t on. So why not walk away now? Disappear. No one knew she was here. He was in safe hands and they couldn’t force her to take responsibility for him. Could they?

  ‘Drink,’ he moaned. Eyes still closed, he turned his head towards her and murmured, ‘Thirsty,’ his voice frail, his toothless consonants imprecise.

  ‘I’ll fetch someone,’ she said.

  His hand reached out, flapping feebly yet impatiently. ‘Drink.’

  ‘Miss Carey?’

  She turned to see a young man holding a large manila envelope.

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  ‘I’m Doctor McKenzie.’ He had a Scottish accent. White coat a size too big, stethoscope slung self-consciously around his neck, he looked like a ten-year-old on his way to a fancy dress party.

  They shook hands. ‘What’s he done exactly?’ she said.

  ‘Your father has a fracture of the left femoral head,’ he said, easing two X-rays from the envelope. Jamming them into the clip above the light-box behind the trolley, he flicked a switch. ‘There.’ He traced a barely visible line running like a thread of cotton across the ethereal image. ‘See?’

  ‘The doctor I spoke to on the phone said it was his hip,’ she said.

  Perhaps she should ask him to fetch someone who knew what they were talking about because she couldn’t believe this child did.

  ‘Yes. Well. “Hip” is shorthand for the hip joint but, if we’re going to be dead accurate, it’s the head of the femur that’s damaged.’

  ‘I’d like us to be “dead accurate” if that’s possible,’ she said, glad to find a target for her anger. ‘So what happens now? And what’s the prognosis?’

  Her questions seemed to throw him as if, in i
dentifying the injury, his job was done. He glanced around. ‘I need to get one of my colleagues to talk to you about that.’

  ‘My father’s asking for a drink. Can he have one?’

  ‘I’m afraid it’s nil by mouth until we complete the assessment. The drip ensures that he doesn’t get dehydrated.’

  ‘He’s thirsty. His mouth is dry. He wants liquid in his mouth not his hand.’

  He shook his head. ‘I’m sorry. I’ll find someone to explain what’ll be happening from here on.’ And, having discharged his duty, off he went.

  Her father was rousing and she guessed that whatever medication they’d given him was wearing off.

  ‘Hello, Dad.’

  ‘Vivian,’ he said. ‘I’m so thirsty. Can you get me a drink?’

  His lips were scaled with dry skin and she felt wretched. ‘In a minute, Dad.’ She took his hand, hers sweaty, his cold and dry. ‘What happened?’

  ‘I tripped. Fell.’ He shifted slightly on the trolley and his faced distorted with pain. ‘Oh, God, oh, God.’

  This was ghastly. She felt like a torturer, standing there, doing nothing to alleviate his pain or his thirst.

  ‘Drink. Drink. Drink,’ he intoned, over and over and over, and she wanted to cry.

  She waylaid a passing nurse. ‘My father’s desperate for a drink.’

  The nurse glanced into the cubicle. ‘He’s nil by mouth, love. I’ll bring you sponge and you can moisten his lips.’

  She wanted to scream stop telling me he’s nil by mouth but instead, fearful that the nurse wouldn’t come back, she went with her, returning with water in a stainless steel bowl and a synthetic sponge wrapped in cellophane.

  Some people knew instinctively how to make ill people comfortable. The right things to say and do. They had no qualms about flesh, saliva, blood and worse. Vivian wasn’t one of those people. Moisten his lips. Having steeled herself to touch his slack mouth, she was doing reasonably well until he grabbed the sponge from her and began sucking it. In her haste to take it from him, she spilled the water on the blanket.

  ‘How are we doing?’ Another doctor, a woman this time. Older. Wearing a headscarf and carrying a folder. Vivian glanced at the tag clipped to the pocket of the doctor’s white coat. Doctor Ababne.

  ‘He’s in pain, semi-conscious and thirsty,’ Vivian said, ‘and I don’t have a clue what’s going on. Apart from that we’re doing brilliantly.’

  The doctor gestured for Vivian to sit down. She explained that her father had been given a pain-killing injection which had made him woozy but, until they’d decided when to operate, he couldn’t have anything to eat or drink.

  ‘Who makes the decision?’ Vivian asked.

  ‘I do.’ Doctor Ababne consulted her notes. ‘Mmmm. Considering his age, I’m inclined to leave it a day or two. Let him get over the shock of the fall. Give us time to run some tests.’

  ‘You have to operate?’

  ‘It’s standard procedure for this type of fracture. As soon as we locate a bed, we’ll take him up to the ward. And I’ll get someone to bring him a drink.’

  Vivian felt a surge of gratitude. ‘Thank you. I’m sorry…’

  The doctor shook her head and smiled calmly. ‘Don’t apologise. You’ve had a shock too.’

  A nurse – a different one – brought a jug of water and a plastic tumbler. Also a ‘bottle’ made of compressed paper. ‘In case he needs a wee. Don’t worry though. We’ve popped a pad on. Just in case.’

  Sponges. Bottles. Pads. Vivian wasn’t sure she could do this.

  After a few sips of water, her father became more alert. More restless, too, fidgeting on the trolley, moaning, complaining that his back was aching and that his feet were cold. Vivian folded over the bottom of the blanket and tucked it beneath his heels, taking care not to lift his legs in case the movement caused more pain.

  ‘Tell me what happened, Dad’ she said, taking his hand again.

  After his morning coffee, needing to tighten a screw on a door hinge, he’d gone in search of a screwdriver. (The small one in the kitchen drawer wasn’t up to the job.) The path leading to the garden shed was damp and slick with moss. On the way, he’d slipped and gone down heavily on his left side.

  ‘Lucky I wasn’t on my way back. I might have stabbed myself.’

  Vivian let herself in. This was the first time she’d used her keys – the first time she’d been alone in this house. It was near midnight but the kitchen table still held the remnants of her father’s breakfast – toast crusts on the willow patterned plate, dregs of tea in a mug, a bottle of cod liver oil capsules. Relics from a bygone era. Before the Fall.

  She’d established more or less what had happened. After he fell, his neighbour Mrs Francks, the ‘prying woman’ for whom he’d never had much time, had heard his cries and gone out to check. She’d phoned for an ambulance. The paramedics had gone through her house and climbed over the garden fence to get to him. If not for her, he might have lain there all day. He might have died of hypothermia.

  It was bitterly cold in the house and she studied the boiler controls, scrolling through the functions until she found ‘constant’. The boiler fired up and the pipes started clicking into life. Her father would be horrified at her profligacy but there was no chance of her sleeping unless she could get warm. She needed to eat something, too. Neither the fridge nor the bread bin offered anything inviting but there was an unopened bag of porridge oats in one of the cupboards. Golden syrup too, in a sticky tin. She measured oats and water into a pan and lit the gas ring. Whilst she stirred the thickening mixture she tried to remember what the nurse had told her to bring to the hospital next morning.

  Sweet and bland, the porridge soon dispelled the hollow feeling in her stomach and warmed her. The house was starting to feel warm too.

  Now she allowed herself to consider the implications of her father’s accident. At best, he faced a rocky few months or more – at worst a loss of independence. Whatever the outcome, and whether she liked it or not, she would become his lifeline. Richard wasn’t going to pop down from Scotland with clean pyjamas. John wasn’t going to fly over from Toronto to check the mail and make sure the pipes weren’t frozen. ‘Vivian Johanna Carey’ was the name in the next-of-kin box on the hospital admission form. There was no escaping it.

  She couldn’t be expected to put everything on hold, could she? She had a job to hold down. A life to live. It was important that she set down the ground rules, made it clear what she was, and wasn’t, prepared to do. She’d visit the hospital at the weekend. Maybe sleep at the house on Saturday to keep it aired and to organise his washing. He’d have to endure weekdays alone. It was his own fault. If he’d not been such a resolutely antisocial man, he’d have a crowd of friends, other old people happy to visit him, delighted to while away a couple of winter hours in a cosy hospital ward.

  She had yet to tell her half-brothers what had happened. Their contact numbers would be in her father’s address book. But it was late and she was too tired to think. She would do it first thing tomorrow.

  She ventured upstairs. Her father’s bed was unmade and the room smelled stale. She couldn’t sleep in there. The bed in the spare room had been stripped and she located bedlinen in the bottom drawer of the tallboy, draping it over the radiator to air whilst she found an old but clean bathrobe to wear in bed. It was her habit always to carry a toothbrush in her bag so, more or less ready for sleep, she went downstairs to lock up.

  The back door had been bolted but not locked – a conscientious paramedic she assumed, or perhaps Mrs Francks. She must remember to go round in the morning and thank her for all she’d done.

  13

  Gil woke in Feray’s bed. Dawn hadn’t broken but the flat was illuminated by a pale radiance. When he sneaked into the kitchen, he saw that a couple of inches of snow had fallen during the night. It covered the small yard, transforming the dank area into something brand new. When he opened the front door, the steps up to street level were topped w
ith plump, snow-pillows. He drew his robe around himself and grinned. The arctic cold made his teeth ache but he didn’t care because snow was up there in his all-time top ten.

  Last evening Kennedy had taken Melissa and James to a show – something in the West End – and they’d spent the night at his flat. It was his ‘Christmas treat’. The children had been worked up for days. Probably, Feray was quick to point out, because he’d never done anything like it before. She’d been twitchy, fretting that something would go wrong or that he’d fail to get them to school on time this morning. Her reservations, Gil guessed, were exacerbated by the fact that her ex-husband had a new girlfriend and she didn’t trust them to ‘behave’ in front of the children. Gil had tried to take her mind off it by picking up a ‘two-dine-for-a-tenner’ meal from M&S. The offer included a bottle of wine. He’d chosen the red and watched Feray relax a little more with each glass before (thanks to the kids’ absence) they’d indulged in noisy and inventive sex.

  He carried two mugs of coffee into the bedroom. ‘It’s snowed.’

  Feray heaved herself up, pushing her hair back from her face. ‘Damn. The kids’ feet will get wet.’

  She was naked, her skin dark against the white duvet cover, her nipples erect in the chill of the cold room. He felt himself stir beneath the robe, torn between making love and getting to work on time. Feray made the choice for him, taking her phone from the bedside table and ringing her son to make sure that he and his sister had survived the night, nagging them to leave in good time for school.

  The snowfall, although forecast, had caught London on the hop and played its customary havoc with public transport. Staff and patients were late getting to the hospital and schedules had to be shuffled but, despite the inconvenience, everyone was upbeat and there was an air of bonhomie.

  The cold snap had begun several weeks ago, launching an outlandish array of cold weather gear onto the city’s streets. Evidently today’s snowfall had upped the ante and sent everyone rooting around for yet wackier knitwear and headgear. Even senior staff (normally booted and suited) had got into the swing, looking sheepishly pleased with themselves for breaking the dress code.