Canvey Island (31 page)

‘Bit more colour to you today, Mr Turner …'

‘I'm doing my best,' said Dad and then whispered to me, ‘It's all right for some.'

I didn't believe my father could look any paler. The doctor checked the chart at the end of the bed. ‘We could be letting you home soon.'

‘Dead or alive?'

‘No, no. Once everything's back to normal.'

‘I don't know what normal is any more.'

The doctor smiled again and moved away. Immediately Dad started grumbling. ‘Don't know why I have to have one of them.'

‘What do you mean?'

‘You know …'

‘Dad, he's probably very well qualified.'

‘Oh, for an Indian gentleman, he knows his stuff. I'll give him that.'

‘Then what is the problem?'

‘It doesn't feel right, that's the problem.'

Dad knew he couldn't be rude about someone upon whom his life depended but he was determined to have the last word.

‘Here, son, you know why Asians are no good at football?'

‘Yes, Dad, I do.'

‘Every time they get a corner they open a shop …'

He had never accepted the pace of social change: that it wasn't funny to bite the heads off black jelly babies or to say ‘ten points' while accelerating towards an Asian on a zebra crossing. He still thought it acceptable to call West Indians ‘one swing from the jungle', just as Claire's mother had shut her cat away when black missionaries had come to visit:
We don't want them eating Mittens, do we?

‘I know what I think, son. I'm too old to change now.'

‘That's just an excuse.'

‘I've seen what I've seen.'

Apart from the war Dad had only been as far as London. He didn't even have a passport.

I was afraid for him and fearful of everything that lay before us: not only my father's decline and eventual death, but also the future lives of my wife and child. Even on our wedding day I had looked at our surviving parents and thought,
Well, that's at least three deaths we have to get through
.

Out of the hospital window the sky was dull silver, like the back of a herring too late to sell.

Len made a bit of a recovery and we got him back home after ten days, which was a bonus because I couldn't abide the nurses in the hospital all calling him by his Christian name.

‘It's Mr Turner to you,' I said. Coming over all familiar took away his dignity, if you ask me.

Len never did tell me what the joke was that had set him off and I didn't want him to start now. He smiled and told me how one of the boys in the home had died in Georgia's arms. ‘Going out with a bang,' he called it and started to chortle but it was a much sadder laugh now, and all the energy had gone.

He started to have relapses, coughing up stuff that looked like candyfloss with blood on it, and I could tell his lungs were filling up, no matter how much they tried to drain them.

‘I'm turning into a balloon, Vi,' he said. ‘“Up, up and away in my beautiful balloon”. I never liked that song …'

‘Well, don't sing it then.'

‘Can't sing anything any more. Nothing to sing about.'

‘Now, now. Don't get maudlin.'

We could never get Len comfortable; that was another thing. Every time he lay flat he felt he couldn't breathe and we had to keep propping him up with pillows.

It took me a while to realise that rather than releasing Len home from the hospital to make him better they had actually sent him home to die. You could tell there wasn't enough blood going round his body and his chest was as white as lard. I'd never seen so much of it, it just kept swelling.

It was a Tuesday when it all happened and Martin was with me. I could tell something was up as soon as Len's breathing changed. It had a low rasping sound and his lips had gone a bit blue; cyanosis, the doctor called it.

He looked frightened and a bit anxious, like he thought I was going to leave, but I'd taken my jacket off so I don't know what gave him that idea.

‘I'm not going anywhere,' I said, stroking his face. ‘Don't you worry, Len. I'll always be with you.' It was hard to speak without a tear in my voice. He looked so frail.

Then he smiled, as if he'd thought of a joke.

I'll never be rid of you then. The only way I can get a bit of peace and quiet is to die
.

He gave a little chuckle and I could see his eyes gleam for an instant, like something had lit up in his mind, and then he was gone. It was so quick that I thought I'd missed it. Martin did too.

‘Is that it?' he said.

Len's face had stopped like it was frozen. Even though I'd been trying to anticipate it, the end came too early. It was like the end of a dance when you want to keep on going.

I didn't think I would know the moment but I did.

‘Oh Len …' I said.

Martin didn't want to look. I couldn't comfort him because he was on the far side and Len was between us. I don't think he was crying but I didn't want to stare. Then I stood up, opened the door and let the world in.

The nurse came, leant over and listened against Len's chest and mouth. Then she tried to take his pulse.

‘Just,' she said. Perhaps she didn't want to say the word ‘dead'.

‘He was such a lovely man,' I said.

‘Dad,' said Martin.

I had to see to the undertakers, the death would have to be registered, and there'd be a notice in the papers, but I didn't know what to do first.

‘Would you like to be on your own with him?' I asked Vi.

‘Do you want to go, dear?'

‘Just a bit of air.'

I walked out to the King Canute. It was about four in the afternoon and the pub was empty apart from three or four boys playing snooker and a couple of decorators who had knocked off early. I could already imagine my father greeting them.
Plastered already?

The barmaid asked, ‘How's your dad keeping then?'

‘Very well.' I didn't know whether I wanted to spare her embarrassment or prevent her pity. I ordered a large whisky for the grief and a pint of lager for the heat.

‘As long as he stays out of mischief. He's a good bloke, your dad. Very popular round here.'

I avoided the table where we'd sat before and watched the boys playing pool. It seemed too early to tell Claire.

When I got back Vi was busying herself around the corpse. She was wearing an apron over her blouse and skirt.

‘Here, Martin,' she said, ‘put these on.'

She handed me a pair of disposable gloves and closed the windows. ‘I know it smells musty but we don't want him getting too cold too quickly. You fetch his clothes. We can't have him going into his coffin in his pyjamas.'

‘What are you doing?'

‘We're going to wash and dress him. It won't take long.'

‘Don't the nurses look after that?'

‘We're going to do it. It's only right.'

‘But I don't know how …'

‘Oh, Martin, don't be a baby. We'll do it together. We want him to look nice, don't we?'

She began to unbutton my father's pyjama top, exposing the white mound of his chest, the nipples indented and faded, the hair still matted with the sweat of death. She wrapped a strip of cloth tightly round Dad's jaw so that it wouldn't slump forward. Then she lifted his head and placed a towel underneath.

I went to the wardrobe and opened it to see my father's clothes. Vi had already sorted them in readiness for the charity shop: his donkey jacket and tweed cap; an Aran-knit cream cardigan with leather buttons; the grey shoes with a Velcro strap that he always hated but wore for comfort; the dinner suit and dancing shoes.

‘There are some good clothes in there,' said Vi. ‘You might find them useful. We don't want them going to waste.'

He's not my size
, I thought.

‘I've had a word with the nurse,' Vi said. ‘Told her we didn't need any help. After all, we don't want strangers, do we?'

‘Shall I bring his suit?'

‘That would be best. And a nice white shirt. Don't forget the pants and socks.'

Pants.

Vi had laid out towels round the bed and was filling a bowl of water. ‘Come on, Martin, don't dilly-dally.'

I hung the suit and shirt on the back of the door and laid the socks and underwear on the chair.

‘We'll start with the eyes. It's best to do them first, when everything is clean. We don't want him getting an infection.'

I realised the only way to get through it was to pretend that Dad was still alive. His eyes had opened as the muscles relaxed and I only wished the undertaker would come and put in the caps so they would stay shut. I didn't want to look into their milky vacancy.

Vi wrung out the washcloth and handed it to me.

‘Go gently,' she said. ‘Wipe from the inner corner of the eye to the outer corner. Then dry the eyelid.'

I felt the soft pressure of my father's eyes under the towel.

‘Don't be scared. It may be the first time, but it's also the last.'

Until she said the words it never occurred to me that I might ever have to do this again. But then I thought:
What about Claire, or Lucy?

‘Good,' said Vi. ‘Now let's do the face, neck and ears. You wash, I'll rinse and dry. We want steady, even movements.'

‘I don't know how to do this.'

‘Don't worry. He's hardly going to complain. And I'll clean up if you do anything wrong.'

She began to pat my father's face. The eyes, temples and cheeks were hollow; the corneas were filmy and flat.

‘We'd best take his pyjama top off now. It will make things easier. Here, Martin, get behind him and help me lift him up. I'll hold on to his forehead so his face doesn't fall forward.'

I put my hand in the middle of my father's chest, the other under his back, and lifted the dead weight of his torso. Vi eased off his right sleeve and folded the pyjama top across his back.

‘I've got him. Let go and take the rest of the pyjamas.'

‘Are you all right?'

‘Just get on with it, Martin. I can't hold him for long.'

I pulled the pyjama top away and eased Dad's arm out through the sleeve. The flesh had yellow-brown pigmented patches and tiny blood vessels breaking through the surface.

‘Shouldn't we do his back now?' I asked. ‘While he's up.'

‘That's not the order.'

Vi lowered Dad gently back, supporting his head as she did so, but it lolled over towards me, resting on its side. I was glad she had bound the chin. I could already imagine what it would be like if the jaw fell further, the open mouth like the last gulp of air before death.

We each took a hand. The thumbs had curled inwards, approaching the root of the little fingers. I wondered what would happen if my father's hand suddenly tightened around mine, as if we were in a horror film and he had come back into momentary life, and I remembered how, in my own bed at night, Claire
squeezed her hand in mine as a final farewell before turning away into sleep.

Night night, darling
.

I washed between my father's fingers, taking each one in turn. I wondered whether I should find a brush and scrub the cracked nails. They had already yellowed but the shrinkage of the skin made them appear to grow after death. The hair on the back of the hands might still yet. His breathing had stopped, but Dad was warm and there were marks of sweat on his face. They renewed themselves even after Vi had dabbed them away. I could sense the blood beneath the skin, the motions of fluids continuing in the minute vessels as if the body was alive even in its degeneration.

It didn't feel right to be wearing gloves. I looked at the water bubble on his fading skin, the veins more prominent than I had remembered, raised but already losing their colour. Then I washed over one of Dad's tattoos, the mermaid's tail with the word ‘Lily', and I tried to imagine how proud he must have been when he'd had it done; with the future before him and love secured.

Vi folded down the blanket to wash Dad's chest and stomach. I couldn't decide if his abdomen had already taken on the greenish tinge of death or whether it was a trick of the light. I went over to the sink and changed the water, grateful for something simple and necessary. As I did so I looked at myself in the mirror and saw a tired hot face and three days' stubble. I wondered how Claire had ever agreed to marry me.

Vi patted my father's chest dry. ‘Now let's turn him on his side. Towards me, Martin. Put one arm round his head and shoulders, the other underneath his waist and lift him across. I'll come round and take the legs.'

It was a single bed and I could see that we had to be careful not to tip Dad off the other side and on to the floor. I reached right over underneath him and pulled him towards us.

‘What are you doing?'

‘Making room. Now we roll him, Vi. You stop him so he stays on his side.'

As I lifted and turned I had a sudden memory of childhood – roly-poly down the hill. I remembered a slope, newly cut grass, lying at the top, closing my eyes and rolling as far as I could,
opening my eyes to a circling, dizzy world. I had even shown Linda how to do it.

Roly-poly? At our age? Don't be daft
.

‘All right, Martin. Now we have to take his pyjama bottoms off. You lift and I'll pull.'

Vi took the elasticated waist and eased the trousers away. I saw my father's heavy white thighs and hoped he was wearing pants but he wasn't. His pubic hair was coiled and grey, but it was also sparse, almost downy, like baby hair; the penis limp and shrunken, the circumcised head overwhelming the stump. Below, the scrotum and testicles had swollen in death, resting heavily between the thighs.