The Last Gift (2 page)

Maryam rang their children Hanna and Jamal. She told them about what had happened, going round and round with her reassurances to keep them from hurrying home. If there are no further events he will be home tomorrow, she told them. ‘What do you mean
events
?’ Hanna asked. ‘That’s what the doctor said, if there are no further events,’ Maryam replied. She was taking her cue from the hospital staff, who seemed to want to keep everything calm, so perhaps that was best for Abbas, and having Hanna and Jamal rushing home would only excite him unnecessarily. She worked in a hospital herself, and knew that people sometimes made too much fuss about their sick relatives. ‘They are treating him now. They say he is stable. No, there’s no need to rush down. He’s not going anywhere. Of course you can come and see him any time, but there’s no need to rush. Come when you want. He’s all right now. They’re treating him. No, he will not need to inject every day, Jamal. He does so at the moment, but not for much longer. He will take medicine and follow a diet and there will be various things I have to check regularly. Like what? Oh, cuts and grazes on his feet, blood sugar, and other things. They’ll teach me all about it. He’ll be all right. It’ll take him a little while to be strong again. Don’t worry, he’ll be all right. Yes yes, come and see him soon.’

The illness left Abbas exhausted. Even small efforts made him shake and sweat, and made him whimper with frustration. He could not even sit up without help. He was always hungry but food made him queasy. His saliva tasted poisonous and his mouth smelled like a drain. When he forced himself to swallow food, he gagged and retched. A nurse from the hospital diabetes team came to visit and explained to him (and to Maryam) how he needed to look after himself. She laid down the law and gave them pamphlets and advice, before grumbling her way out again. He was even more exhausted after she left. After several days he still could not walk the few steps to the bathroom without help, and when she left the house, Maryam had to bring him a plastic bucket and put it beside the bed in case of an emergency. He had to use it once, and he sat on that bucket like a baby, groaning and moaning as his body spluttered and squirted, shaming him after a lifetime of waste and lies. Then when he was finished, he could not clean himself properly, could not wash himself as he usually did. He had never got used to cleaning himself with paper, still felt soiled afterwards, and now he had to get back into bed feeling as if his bum was scaled with dried waste. Sometimes he drifted away, into sleep or away from his moorings, into those deep silent places that he could not help returning to, that he hated returning to. Even in his daze he knew that he had left things for too long, as he had known for so many years. There was so much he should have said, but he had allowed the silence to set until it became immovable. There were times when he thought he was already gone, that he was out of reach, hanging on to a thin rope that was unwinding from a spool while he slowly dissolved. But he was not gone and he came awake again, and he remembered that dream he had had at times when he worked at sea, of hanging on to a piece of rope as his body dissolved in a rush of water.

When he started to get better, he became easily irritable, especially with his own feebleness, but it came out in the ill-tempered words he spoke to Maryam. The words hurt her but he could not help himself. Sometimes he could not bear it when she came into the room, chattering to him, fussing around in the wardrobe or in her bedside table, looking for what, putting her palm on his forehead, lifting him up to swap his pillows, bringing him the radio from the kitchen. Leave me alone. Stop fussing. Sometimes he could not bear for her not to be there, for her to be somewhere else while tears of self-pity and self-loathing slid down his face. I cannot bear this. I cannot bear this any more. He was the sinful traveller fallen ill in a strange land, after a life as useless as a life could be. Talking hurt him, it gave him a pain in the chest, and he was too weary to explain. His words did not make sense, he could see that in the incomprehension in her face. He could not make himself say the words so that they would make sense. He wanted to be left alone, but when he tried to tell Maryam that, he only uttered spluttering abuse and could not stop himself from weeping.

But he was getting stronger. He could go downstairs on his own, and return upstairs when he needed to, although that took him longer. He was able to keep the food down and was getting used to the new diet, which he did not find that arduous, except for the loss of salt and sugar. He would be able to look after himself, he told her. It was time for her to go back to work. He was not an invalid, just a little weak. So long as he took his time, he would be fine. It was a relief when she returned to work after three weeks, even though it left him the long silent day to himself. He tried to read but his concentration was poor, and the effort of holding up a book was tiring. He was getting stronger, and when he was well enough, he would speak to Maryam about all the things he had kept from her.

Maryam did work in a hospital but not doing anything glorious or life-saving. She worked in the staff and visitors’ canteen, and she knew that if she stayed away any longer she would lose her job. The canteen manager had told her so on the phone, kindly, when she rang to ask for another two weeks off work. Oh come on, she was not expecting to be paid, just two more weeks to be sure that Abbas could really look after himself, but the manager said no, sorry but they were short-staffed. Maryam had been working there for a long time, as had the canteen manager, but times were hard and jobs were not plentiful. Neither the canteen manager nor she were going anywhere. It was not as if Maryam was qualified to do anything else. She had been working in the hospital for twenty years: first as a cleaner until the children came, when they decided she should stay at home to look after them, then when they were old enough, she found a job in the hospital canteen. She often thought that she should do something else, something more challenging that would make her feel better about herself and very likely pay her better, but she never even got round to looking. When she mentioned the thought to Abbas, he nodded or made agreeing noises but he did not encourage her. She had no idea what that other challenging work might be, and perhaps neither had he. This was the kind of work she had always done, and she knew many people at the hospital. People came and went, but a small group of them had been there for a long time. She did not want to lose her job, not at this time with Abbas as he was. It was not as if she could say to the canteen manager, stuff your miserable job, I hate it anyway, I’ll go find myself another one in a bank. There was nothing else she could do. And also she had become used to the way the job filled her life. That was how she was all her life, always settling for less, always doing what was best, and it was too late now to start being awkward and taking risks. She never had that kind of strength.

In those first few days after she returned to work, she felt again the shock of what had happened to Abbas, he who hardly ever fell ill and now was so weak and confused, so angry, so quickly reduced to tears and sobbing for no reason. It was more shocking to think of him like that when she was away from him. Somehow when he was there in front of her, she could lose herself in the details of what needed to be done, even if it was an ordeal at times to go close to him. But at a distance he came to her in pieces, in shocking episodes that she could not get out of her mind. Her friends at work asked after him, and she told them briefly, making the best of her bulletins from sick bay. The bulletins helped her to reduce her shock into something more ordinary, to fit what had happened into familiar dramas. Who did not know a father or a sister or a husband or a neighbour who was struggling with a lingering illness or waiting for a major operation? After her bulletins, she listened to those of her friends and between them they made tragedies tolerable, blaming doctors, fate or even the unfortunates themselves for the miseries they described. It was better that way. They were not the kind of friends she could open her heart to. She did not have that kind of friend except for Abbas. She was afraid that if she spoke openly she would release a torrent of empty sympathy, which she guessed would be the best her friends at work would be able to offer. Which was probably also the best she could offer if one of them were to open their heart to her too. It was enough to feel the human gestures without probing too much, it was enough.

If anything, she did not want to think about how he was now. She wanted not to think about that for just a few hours in a day, but she could not manage it. It was not right to leave him on his own all day, but the doctor said he was getting better and it was worth a try. The medication is doing its work and he will be fine. Don’t fuss over him all the time, she said, let him look after himself a little, let him learn. Stop fussing, that was what he said too. She knew he wanted her out of the house so he could be alone with his silences. But it was not right when he could not manage, when he spilt things and soiled himself and sat weeping all day in his loneliness. It hurt her that he spoke roughly to her, which was not his way, but she had to get used to it. He was not well, and anyway, she would fuss if she wanted, what else was she supposed to do.

It was their regular doctor, Dr Mendez, who said don’t fuss over him all the time, let him look after himself, as if she was not a champion fusspot herself. She was very firm with Maryam, as she had always been from when Maryam first took the children to her all those years ago. Her instructions were to be obeyed in full, and her diagnosis often had a hint of blame, as if Maryam were at fault. Dr Mendez was a Spanish lady doctor, and a very stubborn one, in Maryam’s view. She was about Maryam’s age and had been their doctor for years, growing more and more like a rugged lady wrestler as she grew older and filled out. Perhaps it was Maryam’s own fault, that she had not found a way of preventing the doctor from bullying her, but she spoke to Maryam as if she was not very good at looking after herself. After the diabetes diagnosis, she lectured Abbas about his negligence too. Older men are too vain to go to the doctor until something terrible happens to them and then they are a nuisance to everyone, she said. He should have had regular blood tests as a matter of course, a man of his age, and then they would have diagnosed the diabetes years ago and would have had his heart problem under control too. Now the children must have blood tests at least once a year. These conditions are passed on in families, she said. It was as well that Abbas was so weak; doctor or no doctor, he would not have taken that tone of voice from her when he was well. As the stubborn Spanish lady doctor lectured him, Maryam thought she saw Abbas briefly smile, and she preferred to think that it was his mischief smile, saving up some mockery that he would deliver to her later, when he had the strength.

She thought of him then as he used to be, as he was when she met him all those years ago in Exeter. She often thought of him like that since his illness, the man she met when she was seventeen, not to compare or grieve that he was no longer like that, but as a pleasure, as a memory that came to her on its own and which made her smile. Perhaps it was also to mourn that ease that was now so completely past.

She saw him for the first time in Boots in Exeter, such a long time ago, in an almost imaginary life. They were both standing in a queue and he smiled. People did not always smile when they caught her eye that way, or she did not think they did anyway. More often than not she looked away before she could read what was in their eyes, so perhaps they did smile after she had broken eye contact, but in those days she was afraid of their despising, sneering looks and their angry faces, and preferred not to know. He was a slim, strong dark man, wearing a light-brown, polo-neck sweater and a denim jacket. He was ahead of her in the queue, and she had time to have a good look at him as he looked this way and that way while he was waiting his turn. Then he looked back and saw her, and looked again and smiled. It made her feel good, that smile, as if she was someone he had recognised, as if they were part of an understanding, of something the two of them knew that no one else there did. She was not surprised when she found out later that he worked as a sailor. It was the way he looked, like someone who had been places and had done things, someone who had known freedom. She was born in Exeter and had never been anywhere else or done anything. She was living with Ferooz and Vijay then, and that life was becoming difficult. The thought of Ferooz and Vijay made her wince, as it always did even after all these years, and she stretched her shoulders and neck, and then gently eased that memory away.

She knew, just by looking at Abbas then, without knowing anything about him, that he had done things. He had a certain look in his eyes, a mean look, a look that said I am not taking it quietly, whatever you have in mind. She had to say it was a mean look. When she knew him better she saw that it was not in his eyes all the time, only in passing when he did not like what he heard or saw, or when he suspected he was being treated with disrespect. He could not bear disrespect, all his life, even to the point of silliness. Sometimes that look was like something burning, his eyes glowing, and his face would be angry and determined, as if his mind had taken him somewhere else. When he was not about to burst like that, his eyes were calm and big, like someone who liked to see, and when she first met him she thought he was someone who liked to please.

Yes, that was how she would always remember him, while memory lasted, that slim restless man she met in the first summer after her last year at school. She had a job in a café at the time . . . and here she was still doing the same sort of thing a whole lifetime later. She thought then that if she could earn enough she would move out of Ferooz and Vijay’s flat and into lodgings with one of her friends from work. But the money was no good and the work was a drudge, although she liked her mates. It made a difference then, when everything was so hard, to work with people you got on with, people who laughed at everything as if all their lives were a stupid joke. Later she got a better-paid job in a factory, which was where she was working when she saw Abbas again. She still went to the café sometimes to have a cup of tea and meet with the people she used to work with, and always got a cream cake on the house. That was where she saw him the second time. He glanced at her and recognised her. He hesitated for a moment and when she smiled at him, he came over. He hovered for a moment with his tray and then sat down.