Not only into the sights of a fifth-century village, but the sounds and smells as well. A little boy in the wagon behind says, ‘Ugh, Mummy, Viking poo,’ and everybody laughs.
Mum’s fascinated. Miranda’s fascinated. Gareth’s bored. Jasper’s bored too, but since he’s on Mum’s lap and sucking his thumb he doesn’t mind. Looking down, Gareth can see the bald patch where the nurse cut his hair off, and the little barbed-wire ridge of stitches. Everybody says he’s getting over the accident really well. And it was an accident. It’s fixed in Gareth’s mind now, what happened that afternoon, and it won’t change. The pebbles he threw will never grow back into stones. None of them will ever connect with Jasper’s head.
There comes a time when you’re watching somebody die when the sheer tedium of it overcomes you. How much longer, you catch yourself thinking, can this possibly go on? And then you’re overwhelmed by guilt because every moment should be treasured.
Sitting on a hard chair in Geordie’s room, watching him sleep with open toothless mouth and thin lids stretched across constantly mobile eyes, Nick catches himself thinking, I’ll have a bottle of wine this evening. I wonder if there’s any cricket on, and then he’s ashamed that, even for a second, he could have taken his thoughts away from the dying man. This is one of the last few days, he thinks. The last time we’ll ever have together. He tries to whip his tired brain into feeling the seriousness of the events, the preciousness of the last few grains of sand, but his thoughts run into cliché. The fact is that birth and death both go on too long for those who watch beside the bed. The appropriate emotions dry up. You stretch, scratch, ease sticky thighs away from plastic seats, plan forays into the canteen or the kitchen for reviving cups of tea, the chance of a chat. When Frieda comes back with the shopping they giggle in the kitchen like a couple of school kids. Nick’s persuaded Frieda to go home for the rest of the day and have a lie down, though she insists on coming back for the night. They each have an unspoken sense that it won’t be long. ‘I’ll just look in on him before I go,’ she says. ‘I’ll not wake him.’
But Geordie feels her presence, the outdoor air on her clothes, and forces his eyes open. ‘Hello, Dad,’ she says, moving further up the bed. He peers up at her, moistens his dry lips, and says, ‘How long does it take for a chap to die?’ And immediately Nick’s more ashamed than ever, for he sees that Geordie’s being spared nothing of all this, not even the tedium. Rather he feels it worse than they do, because for him there’s no escape.
After Frieda goes, Nick sits in Geordie’s room and tries to make him talk about the past, poking him between the bars of his inertia, as you’d try to rouse a moribund animal. Reminding him of his memories is one way of restoring him, of shoring up the crumbling self. He feeds his own stories back to him. ‘Tell us about the time…’ ‘Do you remember when…?’
There’s little response. Either he’s given up entirely or all the memories have contracted into a single memory that he’s not prepared to speak about. ‘Tell me about Harry,’ Nick wants to say, but he says nothing. Instead he watches the brown-spotted hand crawl across the counterpane, all that’s left of those midnight patrols. Geordie’s too weak now to leave the house. He can’t last long, Nick thinks, watching him sink back into sleep.
As you leave the exhibition there’s a video screen. Miranda stops in front of it. In the Viking village she’d noticed a man on a barrel gutting fish.
The video tells the story of how they made his face. You uncover a skeleton. From the bones and the teeth you discover the age, the gender and the build of the person it belonged to. Then you detach the skull and put it on a revolving stand, direct a laser beam at it, and feed the exact measurements into a computer, which uses them to produce a three-dimensional model. Select a living person of the same age, gender and build as the skeleton. Dust talcum powder over the face and hair, and then using the same techniques produce a three-dimensional computer model of the head. Then, on the computer, the living person’s flesh is wrapped around the bones of the skull. What results is a composite face, but because facial features are determined more by bone structure than by anything else, the resemblance is to the dead person rather than to the living. You are now looking at the face of the past, or as close to it as we can get.
Miranda watches the entire video through twice, then walks, white-faced, through the shop and out of the exhibition into the street, where there are crowds of people laughing, talking, eating, and you need never think about the skull beneath the skin, or the anger that’s always on the outside, trying to get in.
EIGHTEEN
‘I’ve been thinking,’ Geordie says, sitting up in bed chasing the scrambled eggs he’d requested, with diminishing enthusiasm, around the plate. ‘I’d like to see Helen again.’
Nick stares at him blankly. Until this moment he’s resolutely refused to see any of his friends, has restricted awareness of the inevitably squalid symptoms of physical decay to his immediate family. Nick’s surprised by this sudden desire, distrusts the vivid circles of red on Geordie’s hollow cheeks which burn there as distinct and unnatural as a doll’s paint. ‘All right,’ he says cautiously. ‘I’ll give her a ring.’
Geordie abandons all pretence of eating. Silence. Nick realizes he’s expected to get up mid-breakfast and phone Helen now. ‘All right.’
Her telephone voice is clear, cool, almost wary, making Nick wonder whom she thought the call might be from, but the tone warms gratifyingly when he says his name, and softens when he mentions Geordie’s request. ‘On my way,’ she says.
‘Hey, not yet. Late morning. Eleven-thirty. He needs a couple of hours to pull himself together,’ he explains apologetically. ‘He’s looking a bit rough.’
‘All right. Eleven-thirty. See you then.’
As soon as Nick repeats this, Geordie’s eyes go to the clock, counting.
‘I thought we might change the sheets,’ Nick says, not relishing the prospect.
‘No, I’ll come down.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘ ’Course I’m sure. And get some fresh air into the place.’
In spite of all Frieda’s efforts the house smells of his sickness. Another thing Nick’s been hoping he didn’t know.
The next two hours are spent on Geordie’s
toilette
, getting him dressed, pushing the frail limbs into tubes of cloth which suddenly seem as inflexible as corrugated cardboard. ‘You’re going to have to rest on your bed after this,’ Nick says firmly.
‘All right.’ But he can hardly keep still, squirming about in the chair, while Nick tries to shave him. Why is it so difficult? He uses a razor himself, has never felt comfortable with a dry shave, a legacy from watching Grandad shave himself: the intent gaze, the careful scraping round the curves of the nostrils, the cleft in the chin, the smears of soap dabbed away with the special pink towel, the rapping of the razor against the edge of the enamel bowl. All watched intently, and then, behind closed doors for fear of being laughed at, practised on childish down and disappointingly sparse adolescent hairs. A lot of shared unspoken history’s gone into these scrapings and tappings, though it’s bloody difficult to reverse the movements on somebody else’s chin. At last in desperation he stands behind Geordie, leaning over him, and gets the bulk of it done that way.
‘Sweeney bloody Todd,’ says Geordie, not relishing the position, head held back, the razor hovering near his throat. He dries his chin himself. ‘There,’ he says accusingly, pointing at a tiny red stain on the towel.
‘I’ll put a plaster on it.’
‘You will not. I‘ll have some o’ yon pansy stuff you put on your chin.’
Will you indeed? Nick thinks, going to fetch his carefully hoarded bottle of Antaeus.
‘Jesus wept,’ Geordie says, sniffing it. ‘Smells like a French whore’s bedroom.’
He often said that in Nick’s teenage years, watching Nick getting ready to go out, desperate to impress some girl.
‘Were you ever in a French whore’s bedroom?’ Nick asks.
‘Never you mind.’
The doorbell rings. ‘I think that’s your date,’ Nick says, going to answer it.
Helen’s looking away from him down the street when he opens the door, so that for a split second he’s able to observe her before she turns to him and smiles. She’s wearing, instead of her usual jeans and T-shirt, an ankle-length dress made of some dark blue material, the crinkly stuff that doesn’t need ironing. He guesses she’s made a special effort for Geordie and likes her even better for it. When she turns to face him, he sees she’s carrying a big bunch of roses, not the cruelly wired formal drops of blood you buy in a florist’s, but floppy open-hearted blooms from the garden. He kisses her and the stalks wet the front of his shirt. ‘Come in.’
Geordie’s sitting up, incredibly erect, though a few minutes ago he’d been slumped over his swollen belly. The suspicious areas of brightness in his cheeks are more clearly marked than ever.
‘Hello, Geordie,’ she says, bending over Grandad and kissing him. ‘I’ve brought you these. I didn’t know whether to bring you beer instead.’
‘No, I don’t think I could face beer.’
They sit and chat. Unselfconsciously, Helen holds Geordie’s hand, his skin against hers speckled with the fall-out of old age, moles, brown spots, tags of flesh, a raised rough patch of something he needn’t worry about now. Her skin’s lighter, smoother, though even her hand, Nick notices, no longer has the unmarked firmness of youth. She must be nearer forty than thirty, and a woman’s hands age faster than the rest of her body. Around her wrists are lines where even a few years ago no lines would have been. ‘The bracelets of Venus.’ Nick dredges the phrase up rather proudly. Since he apparently goes round smelling like a French whore he may as well think like one as well. ‘Would you like a drink?’ he asks. ‘Wine? Or is it too early?’
‘Wine would be lovely,’ Helen says.
They’re chatting together easily and yet intently, still holding hands, and suddenly Nick realizes something that’s probably been staring him in the face for years. Geordie’s in love with Helen, in love with a woman sixty years younger than himself, hopelessly, helplessly and no doubt at times humiliatingly in love, and has been ever since he met her. This is why he’s achieved this minor resurrection from the dead. This is why it matters so much that he should be shaved and dressed, and that the house should not smell of his decaying body.
It seems only right, having had this perception, to leave them alone as long as possible. Nick opens and pours the wine, then withdraws to the kitchen and busies himself tidying up. He doesn’t want to think about what he’s discovered, doesn’t want to drag it through the rag and bone mill of his mind, he’s humbled by it and he knows that this is the right feeling.
Meanwhile the flow of conversation from the next room goes on, too low for him to distinguish individual words. When he finally rejoins them Helen’s leaning over Geordie giving him a kiss.
Hours, they’d spent together, taping his recollections of the war and the years that followed. Geordie was puzzled at first by the direction of her questions. He was so used to telling people about the trenches – that’s what they always wanted to hear – that it took him a while to understand that Helen was interested in the ways in which, over the years, he’s learned to manage his memories. Once he understood, he was interested in her theories, though he always denied that his memories had changed to accommodate changes in public attitudes to the war. ‘I wish they did change,’ he said, trying to get her to see the perpetual present in which his worst memories existed. Reading the transcripts, Nick had seen it clearly. The wordless, hallucinatory filmic quality of his memories. A flare goes up, illuminating bleached sandbags and tangled wire, but the trembling light never falls. A scream begins and never ends. For Helen, memories are infinitely malleable, but not for Geordie. Geordie’s past isn’t over. It isn’t even the past.
Grandad sips his tea. ‘Tastes of iron,’ he says to Helen, not complaining, merely making an observation. ‘It’s the pills.’ Then to Nick: ‘Can’t I have a drop of something stronger?’
Nick gives him a glass of brandy, pours more wine for himself and Helen. Geordie never could get a taste for white wine even at the best of times. ‘Virgin’s piss,’ he called it.
The wind blows rain against the window pane, a spattering of drops that makes Geordie jump. It grows rapidly dark, a storm closing in, the first signs of autumn. A leaf whirls down, and clings for a moment to the glass. Geordie grows more exhausted by the minute, though he’s reluctant to give in and let Helen go for what he must know will be the last time. Nick, seeing her now through Geordie’s eyes, thinks she would be easy to love.
At last Grandad’s had enough. Immediately Helen drains her glass. Nick realizes she doesn’t want Geordie to have to reveal his weakness by getting up while she’s still there and hobbling towards the stairs. Another kiss, this time on the mouth, and then she’s ready to go.
Outside, blinking in the rain, flushed from the wine though she’s only had two glasses, she says, ‘How long do you think he’s got?’
‘Not long.’
‘He doesn’t seem too bad. He’s better than I thought he would be.’
‘He was holding himself together for you.’
She kisses him and gets into her car. ‘Ring me.’
Going back inside, Nick finds, as he’d expected, that Geordie suddenly looks dreadful. The change from a few moments ago with Helen in the room is almost unbelievable. His cheeks are sunken, he won’t see Helen again, ever, and the knowledge is written all over him, in the defeated sag of his shoulders, in the way he allows himself to be half supported, half carried to the sofa, where he sinks back against the cushions, refusing even to think about the trek up the stairs. Bereavement’s nothing, Nick thinks suddenly, in comparison with the total loss, the absolute bereavement, experienced by the dying. He’ll go tonight, he thinks, then immediately disowns the thought. He’s said that the last three nights and Geordie’s still here.
After a while Geordie drifts off to sleep. Nick finishes the rest of the bottle and then, for good measure, has a brandy. He feels desperate, restless, phones Fran, has a word with Miranda, hears Jasper gurgling away in the background, feels they’re a million miles away. A good day in York, and Gareth didn’t cry when Fran left. ‘Did you?’ he asks. Long pause. ‘A bit.’
Geordie’s stretched out, looking more ill than ever, his mouth slightly open. Nick watches for the rise and fall of the thin chest beneath the shirt, and it’s a long time coming. He realizes he’s been holding his own breath and forces himself to breathe normally.
The wind howls down the chimney, hurls rain against the ‘window, chases drops diagonally across the pane. He remembers some childhood illness, fever, a sore throat, pain, and Grandad sitting on the bed beside him, watching individual trickles of rain race each other down the glass.
Another childhood memory of bad weather. Grandad saying, ‘Pity poor Mary on the wild moor on a night like this.’ The words are as evocative as those lakes of orange tea ruffled by his breath.
‘Do you want to go upstairs now?’
‘Not yet. Why don’t we have a proper fire?’
Because, Nick thinks, the rooks probably nested in the chimney last spring and we’ll set the whole bloody row on fire. He brings in newspapers, coal and sticks, rakes out a whole summer’s worth of fag ends, ash and bits of paper, then, criss-crossing sticks with nuggets of coal on a bed of scrunched-up paper, begins to build the fire. Geordie watches, taking pleasure in the exercise of a simple skill. Nick applies a match to the fans of paper, but the coal’s wet, the fire spits sullenly and burns dead. He holds a sheet of newspaper across the fireplace, feeling it sucked in at once by the fierce draught. Rapidly the paper grows yellow, hot and thin. A picture of ruined Sarajevo blackens and begins to burn. Only just in time Nick whips away the page in a gust of sparks and acrid smoke.
When he looks back into the room, Grandad’s awake. The firelight, seeking out the hollows of the eye sockets, seems to strip flesh from bone. He’s looking at a skull.
‘Do you want a pain-killer?’
‘Aye, go on, I think I’d better.’
Nick watches the swallowing of water, the cautious placing of the pills on the back of the tongue. It takes three swallows each to get them down, the back of his throat’s so dry. ‘Do you want some artificial spit?’ He sprays artificial spit, as they both call it, round Grandad’s mouth. The stuff smells awful and tastes worse, but there’s no doubt it adds to Grandad’s comfort. He settles back against the sofa cushions and stares into the fire. Nick thinks he might read for a while, though in fact he stares at the newspaper without even trying to read it, since he knows from experience he’ll retain nothing. Extreme tiredness seems to demolish concentration, almost like shock or grief or the after-effects of anaesthesia. He can’t even locate himself in the week, has to look at the top of the paper to find out what day it is. At last he lets it slip, sighing, to the floor.
Geordie’s eyelids are drooping, the pain-killers beginning to work. ‘Come on,’ Nick says, tossing his cigarette on to the fire. ‘Let’s get you up to bed.’
He carries Geordie upstairs, and undresses him. Stone cold, Nick thinks, feeling his legs, though the fire downstairs was blazing hot. ‘Do you want a bottle?’
No answer. His eyes are closed. Nick fetches his pyjamas, puts them on and slides in beside Geordie. If he can offer nothing else he can offer the warmth of his body. He lies tensely aware of Geordie beside him, reluctant to turn and look at him, willing him to go to sleep. After a few minutes Geordie’s breathing becomes deeper, and Nick risks a sideways glance.
At first sight he seems to be asleep; his eyes are slivers of white and his mouth’s open, but then, as Nick watches, the tip of the tongue comes out and works its way round his lips to moisten them, and the eyes flicker. He says, and the words cling to his dry mouth, ‘I am in hell.’
Nick turns on to his back, and stares into the darkness for what seems to him a long time, until sheer exhaustion presses his face down into smothering folds of sleep.
Waking early the following morning, stiff and cramped, Nick finds Geordie not merely asleep, but probably, he thinks, unconscious. His breathing’s laboured, his skin looks flushed, but feels clammy, and even a shake of the arm fails to rouse him.
Nick runs downstairs, phones Frieda and Fran, tries again and again to reach the doctor. When he finally gets through and books a visit he wonders why he’s bothering, what he expects the doctor to do that hasn’t already been done. Frieda arrives, panting for breath, goes upstairs by herself and comes down again, red-eyed. They stand in the kitchen together, drinking tea, talking about funeral arrangements, half ashamed, wondering whether there isn’t something indecent about doing this while Geordie’s still alive. St John’s, they decide on. Frieda’s mother’s buried there, and there’s room in the grave, though Frieda can’t for the life of her remember where she’s put the deeds.