One Thing Led to Another (28 page)

‘We adopted Kira just before Christmas. By New Year I was at my wits end, we just weren’t getting along. Then one snowy day in February, something clicked. I suddenly fell in love. I have since learned that it sometimes isn’t immediate even when the baby’s biologically yours. I can’t believe I worried so much.’

Annabel, 36, Exeter

It turns out that whilst I was losing sleep over my loser of an ex, my dad was in his greenhouse knocking back three quarters of a bottle of vodka, and twenty-three paracetamol.

Lancaster Royal Infirmary is not a white, bright, modern type of hospital; it is very much an infirmary, for the infirm: dark stone, Victorian, ivy gripping its walls, like sadness has gripped my poor dad’s mind. My brother is waiting for me outside when I get there, unshaven and blotchy-faced.

‘Tess.’ He hugs me tight when he sees me. It’s only the second sober hug we’ve given each other in our lives. ‘Thank God you got here. He keeps asking when you’re going to arrive. I’m telling you, he just wants to see you.’

We go inside, the smell – of dust on red-hot radiators,
disinfectant and congealed gravy – makes my legs buckle. I have never seen my dad with anything more serious than a dodgy stomach and here I am, in this depressing place, where even your footsteps seem to echo like a ghost and it just seems so wrong, so shocking.

I follow Ed down the corridor, past a woman with swollen feet in a wheelchair, a jaundiced man with a packet of cigarettes in his pyjama pocket. We get in the lift with a male nurse and a man, also in a wheelchair, with snow white hair and pupils like frog spawn. He looks at least a hundred and fifty.

The lift stops at the next floor. ‘Alright Albert, this is us,’ says the nurse, as he rolls the man out into the empty corridor.

‘So how is he?’ I say, turning to Ed. ‘Does he look really bad? Should I prepare myself?’

Ed puts a brotherly arm around me.

‘No, no, he doesn’t look that bad. He’s just really tired and you know, emotional.’

It turns out that for once in his life my brother has been the master of understatement.

My dad, my bold, funny dad who once actually made me wee myself in a Lake District gift shop he was making me laugh so much, is sad, properly sad.

The round shiny cheeks have had the air sucked out of them, his eyes are sunken and dead. His skin, pale as the moon, seems to hang off his face like wet clay. This is not my dad.

I try to smile, not to look shocked but my mum takes the words right out of my mouth.

‘I know, he looks bloody awful, doesn’t he?’

Even in this state, dad manages to crack a smile.

‘Hi dad.’ I walk around the bed and kiss him softly on the cheek. ‘How are you feeling?’

‘Stupid, hungover,
blinding
headache,’ he mumbles. I sit down beside him and he takes my hand. ‘Now I can sympathize
why you two used to take to your beds all day after a night on the hard stuff.’

I look at mum, she smiles but her lips are quivering. I notice that dad has a drip in his hand.

I pick up a bunch of grapes from the bedside table next to him. ‘Is this all they brought you? Tight or what?’ Mum makes a half-hearted effort at a noise that means ‘charming’.

‘Thank God for your daughter, eh?’ I take the Terry’s chocolate orange I bought in Euston station out of my rucksack. ‘I brought you this.’

Dad pats my hand, ‘Good lass,’ he says. ‘My favourite, that.’

‘And this.’ I get out the Vaughan Williams CD, the one featuring ‘The Lark Ascending’ on it. ‘My doctor introduced me to this. She says it cheers her up, makes her feel happy to be alive.’

Mum fusses with his blankets.

‘Well let’s not get ideas above your station,’ she says. ‘Out of hospital will do for a start, full of the joys of spring is something to aim for.’

We sit – me, Ed and mum – around dad’s bed, the curtain pulled around the cubicle. It hasn’t been the four of us like this since about 1999. Mum wants to tell me the whole story. Ed says he’s heard the story at least three times now what with Joy having come to visit and the two nannas calling mum. Mum says she doesn’t think it’s healthy not to talk, not anymore she doesn’t, which makes me wonder what else she’s got to hide. The story goes: Mum woke up at two in the morning on Saturday to find dad not in the bed. When she came downstairs he wasn’t in the house either. She says, ‘I thought, oh marvellous, he’s only gone and slept walked and is probably wandering down bloody Glebe Close right now, stark naked, how on earth am I going to live that one down?’ Then she spotted the little torchlight on in the greenhouse.

He confessed to the pills immediately, apparently. ‘Although I would have known sooner or later because I count those pills religiously, every single night.’ (proving that she’s even battier than I thought.) Dad never wanted to actually die, he’d never do that to her, to us, she tells me, talking about him like he’s not even there. No, my dad just wanted to make it all go away for a bit, to go to sleep and then wake up when things felt better.

Mum says the paramedics were amazing. One of them looked like that ‘really dishy one’ from
Relocation Relocation
, apparently. And the hospital staff – apart from one ‘girl with a face like a slapped behind’ who’s probably just finished with her boyfriend – have been fantastic. Absolutely faultless.

Dad joins in occasionally, but mainly he lies there with something like an apologetic expression on his face, or maybe it’s embarrassment. And it’s ironic, this is the most tragic day our family has ever experienced – the day my dad ends up in hospital because he feels so utterly desolate that he wants it all to stop? And yet strangely, in some way, I know that this time, right now, will be a good one in the Jarvis memory bank. Bitter sweet, but sweet all the same.

At 7.30 p.m., an hour and a half after I arrive, Ed goes home to put the kids to bed and mum suggests we go to the canteen to give dad a rest.

‘Danny Ford Café’, no doubt named after a person who is no longer with us, which kind of puts you off your food for a start, is empty apart from two heavily pregnant women in dressing gowns and a man with some kind of brace around his head.

A mural – a depiction of all the seasons from snowmen and Santa Claus to a huge bonfire made from tissue paper, probably done by local school kids covers one wall, the other
is painted a sickly green. The tables and chairs – in white and red plastic respectively are stuck to the floor. I wouldn’t be surprised if a fair few people hadn’t sustained an injury worthy of a week’s stay in hospital after forgetting this fact and head butting the table when they stand up.

We queue up, mum buys an egg mayo sandwich and I get a bacon roll. Then we sit down. Mum folds her arms.

‘You must be wondering what all this is about,’ she says. The only sound apart from her voice, is the random clink of cutlery, like an avant-garde percussion piece.

‘Well, yeah, I suppose so. It’s a bit out of the blue,’ I say, conscious of not being too dramatic. She’s probably had enough drama to last her a lifetime in these last twenty-four hours. ‘I mean, dad’s depressed obviously, but I had no idea how bad he was, I mean how long?’

‘All your life.’

I blink, I don’t compute.

‘He’s suffered from depression all your life.’

‘But how, I mean how can he have? He’s always so…’

‘Happy?’

‘Yes.’

‘Oh Tess, he has been happy in his life. My God, when you two came along, it made him the happiest man in the world. But just before you were born, your dad had a nervous breakdown.’

‘What?’ It comes out as a whisper.

‘He took an overdose; far, far more serious than this and I very nearly lost him Tessa. My first and only love, very nearly gone.’ She smiles, she’s wearing the same pink lipstick she always wears, but her eyes well up with tears.

‘Oh mum, I had no idea.’

‘But, listen.’ Mum comes to sit beside me and gives me a hug because I’m crying too now. ‘I had you and your brother, thank God, or else I don’t know how I’d have got
up in the morning. And I had to carry on, I
did
carry on. It was very hard because your dad was in hospital for weeks and even when he came out he wasn’t fit to do much for six months…’

‘So you knew.’

I lift my head from her shoulder.

‘Knew what?’

‘You knew about being a single mum and there was I telling you to shut up! Oh God, mum, I’m so sorry.’

‘Don’t be daft.’ She gets hold of my head and makes me look at her. ‘I just wanted you to know I could empathize that’s all, I didn’t feel I could tell you why at that point. I wish I had now.’

‘So, why didn’t you tell us?’ I say, leaning back on my chair.

Even now, mum can’t help herself. ‘Don’t do that Tessa, please,’ she says. ‘You can break your spinal column like that.’ Then she continues, ‘We wanted to protect you, we wanted to give you the best start in life, the most normal family life possible. You wait.’ She pats my bump. ‘When you have that baby you’ll feel like that too. The thought of anything shattering their world just breaks your heart, and so we agreed never to tell you, I mean, it wasn’t like your dad was suicidal all the time.’ She laughs through the tears. ‘But our little plan didn’t quite work out, did it?’

‘So, you weren’t really happy, when we were younger? You just pretended to be, for mine and Ed’s sakes?’

‘Oh Tess, don’t be silly.’ Mum takes a packet of tissues out of her handbag. ‘We’ve had more happiness, more joy from you two than any parent could wish for.’ She looks straight at me now. ‘But it hasn’t always been easy, no. It certainly hasn’t always been what I expected married life to be like. But I wouldn’t change it because I love him, you see, that silly man in there. He drives me up the wall with worry
but I couldn’t do without him.’ She takes a tissue from the packet and dabs at her face. ‘And he
certainly
couldn’t live without me.’

‘No,’ I say. ‘I can see that.’

When we get back to his room, Dad’s propped up on his pillows looking physically much brighter.

‘I have to chat to the duty shrink,’ he says, tentatively. ‘But as soon as they’ve referred me for whatever it is they refer you for…’

‘Psychiatric care, Tony.’

‘Yes,’ says dad, ‘that stuff. Then I can go home.’

‘What about the drip?’ says mum, standing at the foot of his bed.

‘They’re going to test my liver function but they say I’m probably OK by now. All rehydrated, good to go.’

‘Dad, that’s brilliant news,’ I say, sitting back down on the seat beside his bed again and opening up the Terry’s chocolate orange. ‘Shall we have a segment? To celebrate?’

Mum starts rummaging in her bag, bottom in the air. ‘Well I’m going to ring your mother,’ she says to dad. ‘Otherwise we’ll have another one in here, dropping dead from worry.’

Mum leaves and dad and I sit in silence for a few moments, the smell of chocolate orange filling the room as we eat. I could talk about the weather or the sorry state of hospital food but instead, I take a leap into the dark.

‘Mum told me,’ I say. ‘About your depression.’

Dad breaks off another segment and sits there, holding it.

‘She did? Oh.’ He doesn’t look up. ‘She’s a sly one, that mother of yours.’

We carry on eating, neither of us saying anything and I realize that perhaps, all those times in the greenhouse, we only ever talked about my problems, or about my uncle, my dad never really talked about himself, and I never really asked.

‘You didn’t actually think you could hide it from me for ever, did you dad?’ I say eventually.

‘I was hoping I wouldn’t have to. I was hoping it would never come back.’

‘But it did.’

‘Yeah,’ he sighs, ‘the bugger came back.’

‘And it’s likely to again in the future?’

‘I suppose that’s what being a depressive means.’

‘Well I know I’m a lot younger than you and I don’t know much about life and all that but dad, I really hope from now on you feel you can talk to me about how you’re feeling, eh? I mean, really feeling. What do you think?’

Dad smiles at me then covers his face and makes a sound I’ve never heard him make before like he’s having trouble breathing. I worry he
is
having trouble breathing or that his headache’s come back but then I realize, that for the first time in my life, I am watching my dad cry.

‘Come on dad.’ I rub his arm, but inside I’m shocked to the core. ‘Come on, it’s OK, I promise you, it’ll get better.’

‘I’m the one who should be saying that to you,’ dad says, drying his eyes with the bed sheets. ‘I feel I’ve let you down, you and Ed, you must think your old man’s a right basket case.’

‘Dad, shut up, OK? Stop talking rubbish. You could never,
ever
let me down. That thing you did – hiding your illness from me even when you were at rock bottom, that’s the biggest sacrifice a parent could ever make. That’s not to say I’m not annoyed with you.’

Dad sniffs and manages a smile.

He takes hold of my hand ‘My Tess,’ he says, ‘you know, you always were that bit special.’

‘Special needs?’ I joke.

‘Yeah, well, that as well but no, I mean properly special. My special girl.’

‘Why?’ I say. ‘That’s such a lovely thing to say but why?’

‘Because I very nearly never got to meet you, that’s why. I very nearly wasn’t your dad.’

‘Right, that’s all done!’ mum suddenly barges in through the curtain, a trail of Paloma Picasso behind her. Dad squeezes my hand then lets go. ‘Your mother’s happy you’re coming home, where I can keep an eye on you. Now, shall I chuck these grapes out or has anyone brought a spare Tupperware?’

I spend the night at mum and dad’s. The next day, dad’s understandably quiet and not at all his old self but he begs me to go back to London, promises he won’t be on the vodka again in a hurry.

‘Now don’t you go worrying about me,’ he says, before I get in the car with mum to go to the station. ‘Just look after yourself and that baby, OK? Love you, girl.’ He hugs me and kisses the top of my head. I get in the car. As we drive away, I have a sudden bloom of clarity. I know what I have to do.