Ferney (51 page)

‘How can it?’ Gally asked gently. ‘Look at America. It runs right to the ocean all around.’

His face lost its colour and she watched, feeling sympathetic pain as he struggled for breath for a whole minute, pushing the pain down. It subsided leaving him visibly weaker, shrinking in the
bed in its backwash. After a long silence he pointed at the television and said in a smaller voice, ‘That’s a bridge. That thing. It’s got a lot wrong with it, but it lets you
visit and when you see enough of a place it’s harder to hate it. We’ll get beyond the oceans somehow.’

‘You’re an optimist, then?’

‘Oh, that’s another question completely. All I’m saying is this nationalism business – it changes all the time. There wasn’t any nationalism in this country until
Napoleon came along – not the sort of nationalism that had everyone spouting slogans and singing. That’s quite new really. Before that wars were just things the nobs organized, nobs and
mobs.’ He fell silent, perhaps feeling he was getting a bit near the limits they’d agreed. ‘That’s in books,’ he said and she smiled.

In the next two weeks they quickly fell into a gentle pattern in which she pottered about the house, gradually tackling the small jobs that fine-tuned it to her vision. With
each day, Ferney was less able to sustain a long conversation without breaking off for long moments in which he would wrestle with his cruel, multiplying invader and she would have to sit there in
her own minor harmony of pain wishing she could help with more than words. If she had to go out, pedalling down from the ridge to the nearest shops for supplies, she would try to do it when the
nurse, a capable and sympathetic woman, was there or else she would ring for Mary Sparrow to come over, but on those occasions Ferney would make a face and ask her not to be too long. In the
evenings he would go to sleep early. She knew the nurse had left tablets he could take to help him sleep, but she let him have the dignity of making that decision without her interference. She
would sit downstairs by the fire, certain that if he needed her she would know. On one such evening, early on, she found herself deeply aware of the new life inside her in a more direct way than
she had been before. At the same time, she felt a faint finger of Ferney’s pain feel towards her from the room upstairs and as she put down her book, disturbed by it, the pain hardened inside
her into an uncomfortable muscle spasm that tightened and pulled into cramping discomfort low down in her guts. It caught her off balance, just as she was reaching out towards Ferney’s pain
and as she was wide open, it magnified her own and had her gasping and confused with its twisting squeeze until it had its way and started to subside. Then she recognized it as a contraction and
curled up around her belly to protect it, feeling the muscles gradually return to their normal state. She waited for a long, suspended time, staring into the fire. A log tipped, its balance eaten
by the flames, and overbalanced, coughing sparks but no more pain came. Braxton Hicks, she said firmly to herself, just a Braxton Hicks contraction – not the beginning of the end, not yet. It
made her think, for all that, and the experience looming in the fog of the near future seemed more like a reef than a harbour.

In the firelight she took an inventory of herself and her resources and had a sense of the progress she had made in the months since that panic attack down by the roadworks. No more Boilman, no
more Burnman. They were history now, not horror. The old nightmares had gone. The new one hadn’t. She didn’t understand the change, but perhaps she would in time. Guilt went with it
still. She felt less irrational fear now, a touch of claustrophobia maybe. I am getting better, she thought, it’s wisdom I’m still short of.

Her thoughts were interrupted by headlights turning across the window with the descending growl of a car entering the gate and it was then for the first time that she realized this was Friday
and the footsteps approaching had to be Mike. They met in the hall and he studied her as if he were not sure what he would find.

She kissed him on the cheek and he raised an eyebrow.

‘That’s a bit formal.’

He put his arms round her and kissed her on the mouth and she had to suppress the reaction that it felt an intrusion.

‘Have you had a good week?’

‘All right in parts. How’s it been with Ferney?’

‘He’s going downhill.’

‘Have you been able to cope?’

‘Oh yes. The nurse is pretty good.’

He looked round the hall. ‘You’ve painted the doors.’

‘Do you like them?’

He thought the green she had used was too dark and said, ‘Yes,’ with just a shade too much enthusiasm, so she knew he didn’t.

The weekend passed quietly with her inhabiting the no man’s land between the two men. Each day as Ferney diminished in tiny stages which could only be noticed, like the movement of an hour
hand, by looking away, she found herself more and more in touch with the new life inside her and able to imagine it taking on the mental outlines of a person. On Sunday morning she took Ferney his
breakfast as Mike prepared hers downstairs. Ferney’s face was stretched on a bony rack of pain and she stood by him, holding his wrist in support, feeling a one-way flow of life between them
that she knew would now be evident whenever she stepped into the inner circle of his presence.

When he recovered and even smiled a little, she had to bend to hear him.

‘I want to pay my keep,’ he said.

‘No, that’s fine.’

He frowned. ‘I don’t want you to say that. It isn’t fine. Listen to me.’

She saw it mattered to him and kept silent.

‘Go to the bungalow for me. There’s a room at the back – before the one where the picture is?’

Gally remembered the quick glimpse of shelves and a row of clocks, Ferney’s odd storeroom. ‘Yes.’

‘Go in there. By yourself, if you can. There are some tobacco tins on the right, under a green cover. Bring me one.’

Mike wanted to come too when she said she was going to get something for Ferney.

‘I’d rather we didn’t leave him by himself,’ she said. ‘Do you mind staying?’

It was raining; she would have walked anyway, but he made a big thing about her taking the car and so as to limit the disagreement she gave way. She picked up the mail from Ferney’s mat
– it was mostly junk apart from two magazines, an electricity bill and a rather official-looking white envelope – then, with a sense of keen anticipation, she went into the room at the
back of the house.

It was not nearly so full, she was sure, as when she had glimpsed it previously. All but one of the clocks she had seen had gone. The remaining one was an old bracket clock shrouded in a clear
plastic bag which contained a sachet of crystals inside it, marked ‘desiccant’. Another shelf, she could see, held a few toys in boxes, from Dinky cars of the sixties through to modern
plastic. Most of the rest of the shelves which had previously been piled high now contained only folded sheets and rugs except in a corner where one sheet covered several lumpy shapes. Though she
felt trusted by Ferney to use her eyes, she respected his privacy too much to lift the covers. She knew perfectly well without having to risk any journey into her memory that what she could see was
the remaining currency of his squirrel-caches of objects, the means by which he had learnt to transfer wealth between his generations. He must have been busy putting them back in the ground.

She followed his instructions, lifted the cover and found two square Navy Cut tobacco tins. They were heavy for their size and she took one, covered up the other and returned to Bagstone Farm
after checking that all was well with the rest of the house.

When she gave the tin to Ferney he was clearly pleased. He held it in both hands and had trouble managing even that moderate weight. He fumbled with the lid, failed, sighed and she took it from
him again.

‘Shall I do it?’

He nodded.

Inside the tin was a folded plastic bag and inside the bag were twenty coins, heavy coins carrying inscriptions and Queen Victoria’s head. They shone golden.

‘Sovereigns,’ Ferney whispered. ‘I’ve got a number you can ring. There’s a man at Shaftesbury gives me a good price for them. They’ll help pay the
bills.’

The man arrived with cash on Tuesday. Gally dreaded his questions, but he didn’t seem inclined to ask any. He wore a fur hat and had thick glasses and his car was a highly-polished old
Rover.

‘It used to be the Queen’s,’ he said as he got out when he saw Gally looking at it. ‘Mr Miller’s staying with you, is he?’

‘Yes, he’s not too well. He asked me to fix it with you.’

‘I’ve done a lot of business with him over the years. He’s a good man. Give him my best wishes.’

That was the extent of his curiosity. He peeled £20 and £50 notes off a large roll and left without a backward glance.

The crisis came in the form of Dr Killigrew on Wednesday afternoon. He arrived unannounced, which was quite rude enough, but it was clear to Gally from his whole haughty
approach that he saw her as an obstacle that simply had to be swept aside. Even before he’d seen Ferney he started laying down the law that he thought they’d come to the end of what
they could hope to do at home.

‘We
are
coping,’ said Gally defiantly, keeping him from going straight upstairs.

‘It’s not within your realm of competence. He needs a proper regime of pain management,’ said the doctor. ‘He’s got to be in a suitable place for that.’

‘This is a suitable place. He’s very happy here.’

‘But you’re not even family, are you?’

‘What’s that got to do with it?’

Upstairs he behaved as though Ferney were an imbecile, speaking loudly and slowly to him.

‘Mr Miller. We’re going to see if we can’t move you to somewhere nice. I think you need a bit of special looking after. How would that be?’

‘I’m staying here,’ said Ferney.

‘Yes, yes. I’m sure Mrs Martin’s seeing to you very well, but it wouldn’t be good for you. We’ll have to see.’

‘No we won’t,’ said Ferney, summoning fresh strength into his voice. ‘It’s got nothing to do with you. I want to stay.’

‘Look, Mr Miller, I’ve got your best interests at heart and I do know what I’m talking about.’ The words were caring, but the voice betrayed them. ‘We can do a lot
more in hospital to help you through this than we can if you’re here. You should listen to advice.’

‘I know what it’ll be like.’

‘With respect,’ said the doctor, with no respect, ‘I don’t see how you can.’

Ferney’s face, so pale lately, flushed with more colour than Gally had seen in it for weeks and she was afraid for a moment that he would tell the doctor exactly what was wrong with his
presumption. All he said, with slow-paced controlled fury, was, ‘You are a fool and I am staying here. Now bugger off.’ Then, paying the price of his emotion, he gasped in pain.

Dr Killigrew chose to see only that and left the house with the arrogant speed of an insecure authoritarian, leaving Gally fuming in his wake. She kicked the door hard as he drove away without
once looking back towards her, then went slowly upstairs.

Ferney’s eyes were closed but they flickered open when she closed the door softly behind her.

‘You can’t get through to people like that,’ he whispered.

She found she was crying. ‘We’ll stop him,’ she said.

‘There’s something I want to tell you.’ His voice was so faint she had to lean closer. ‘The policeman. He sent me Billy Bunter’s . . .’ He gasped then
clenched his teeth in pain and it was all forgotten as she found the liquid for him, spooned it down and then sat there holding his hand until he went off to sleep.

That evening she tried to ring Mike, but the phone rang and rang and he hadn’t come back at ten o’clock when the emotion of the afternoon turned to exhaustion and she fell asleep,
fully dressed, on her bed.

The dream was heading for its conclusion, her hands around her father’s neck, when she woke at four in the morning to the immediate and certain knowledge that Dr Killigrew’s plans
did not matter one bit. A great silent voice was crying through the house. All the ranked generations of Ferneys and Gallys seemed to be there with her in the room, reaching out to her, helping her
up from the bed with an intensity of love and pain. In the room at the other end of the house, she knew immediately, Ferney was dying.

In the dark the house was a stone organ sweeping her to him down the wooden tube of its corridor in a whirl of inaudible music. Her skin trembling, she paused for courage
outside his door, then pushed it open to enter the stage for his final act.

He lay, head arched back a little like a bishop on a tomb, straight and white on the bed and she inched towards him in fearful reverence. He breathed in a light rhythm, slow and shallow, and his
eyes were closed. They opened as she bent over him, focused beyond her, and in a remote breath of a voice he said, ‘Gally?’

‘Yes, I’m here.’

‘It doesn’t hurt any more.’

‘I’m so glad.’

‘Stay here.’

‘Of course I will.’

There was a long silence and she kept still, bending over him while his eyes flickered shut then open again. The room was warm and the house was utterly quiet now that its summons had been
met.

‘Don’t be afraid.’ She could barely hear his words.

Pulling the armchair to the side of the bed, she tried sitting down, but he moved his head, looking for her, and though she could see his lips moving, the faint words weren’t clear.

‘I’m here,’ she said softly and with tremendous effort he summoned up a full voice, timeless and devoid of age. ‘Lie with me,’ he said.

The bed was wide and she carefully lay down next to him, on her side, facing him with one of his hands clasped between both of hers. She had to lie curled, aslant, to make space for her full
belly. The effort past, he had only a whisper left, but it was enough at this short distance.

‘I can see so much,’ he said in tones of delight.

‘What do you see?’

‘Maypoles. When the maypoles came back.’ The remains of his voice changed pace, becoming less deliberate – the accidental outer manifestation of what was passing in his mind.
‘Cheer for the king. Gally, there’s a king again. I don’t care for kings but we can dance now and that’s worth cheering for. Let’s dance. I love to dance with you.
Come with me.’ He gave a small cry of delight and in her mind’s eye for a second she saw striped, fresh-painted maypoles, people whirling in cavalier joy. High poles, tall people. She
and Ferney holding each other, scampering in their midst, so small, so happy, so complete.