Between My Father and the King (30 page)

‘Don't look. This is the summer valley. This is
our
place.'

‘Something is dead, then, in the bushes.'

‘But nobody lives here or has ever lived here except us. This valley belongs to us alone.'

‘Something is dead.'

‘Don't look. We are the people of the summer valley. We are alive.'

‘It is a man. He is dead. Do I know him?'

‘And a dead woman. There's no doubt who they are.'

‘They are the people of the summer valley.'

At the party, she looked like a beautiful spider. Her short black velvet dress was starred with some kind of dust that shone in points of light, and her blonde hair hanging below her shoulders shimmered like a multitude of strands of fine sunlit web. Her face and lips were pale, her eyes big and bright, her legs long, shadowy in black stockings. When she spoke her voice was soft with a hint of breathlessness. She and the young man had spent all day together and had dined in the evening with the fashionable lawyer and his literary wife and they had promised to come to the party and they kept their promise. The young man was handsome with a shirt the same colour as the autumn leaves in the woods and a dark-eyed gaze that used to be described in romantic novels as ‘smouldering'. A fine word!

Shortly after arriving at the party the two had separated to meet and talk to the other guests. She sat curled up in an armchair, not looking at him for ages, playing the role of being absorbed in
conversation, questioning her companion, a composer, about his work and listening intently to his replies; while he, with the air of paying attention to no one else in the world, ever, took a seat by the three older women one of whom was the sculptor, the guest of the evening, and talked to them, laughed with them, flattered them with such animation that neither the guest of honour nor the ageing writer whose unmentionable birthday it was, nor the third woman, a widow, with snow-white hair and used skin, could resist his charm. They found themselves flirting with him and they grew warm-cheeked and bright-eyed under his glance.

These two were the youngest in a room of older people — mostly composers, painters, writers, none greatly talented or successful, some rich with names to drop, for where a publication, exhibition or performance could not be dropped as often as the dropper desired it, a name could be substituted. ‘You know, he is . . . He's one of the most . . . He was the one who . . . I know him quite well . . . Oh yes, oh yes, I did meet him . . .'

Inevitably, like two beads of mercury in a confined space, the two young people came together again, in the centre of the room, he talking, she listening and smiling. They shared a joke with the distinguished lawyer and his literary wife. (He was the lawyer, who, you know, the one who . . . He is the most . . . the only . . . over two thousand lawyers in New York City and only he . . .)

Names and deeds were being dropped regularly now. The room grew hot. Someone said, ‘Shall we turn down the thermostat or open a window? If we turn down the thermostat . . . if we open a window . . .'

They opened a window and the sudden breeze from the birch and maple woods caused the white paper skeleton hanging nearby to dance and rustle and grimace. It was taller than anyone in the room. The two had brought it when they came to the party, dangling it before them as they entered, capering about and shrieking with laughter. Ha ha, a skeleton. Groovy. Put it here.
No put it here. No here will do. Yes, hang it there by the window. What a great idea!

The two remained in the centre of the room.

‘She looks radiant, doesn't she, in that black velvet?' one of the women said.

The sculptor turned to the writer beside her.

‘They tell me it's your birthday today. How old?'

The writer made a giggling sound.

‘Thirty-nine. Every birthday's been thirty-nine for years. I used to be quite happy to tell my age but now . . . '

Each looked at the other, observing, not speaking. Their eyes kept a remnant of the brightness the young man had put there. Each was remembering his voice, his eyes, his smile; his chest broad as a young rooster's, his stance as arrogant. Their thoughts led each to gaze at him again.

There was a shriek of laughter.

‘Oh, oh.'

He was kissing her. The celebration champagne was quite strong but they would have kissed anyway. It was a public kiss, a throwaway from immeasurable bounty.

A blush came on the sculptor's cheek. She breathed quickly. She smiled.

‘Look at them,' she said.

Everyone in the room was looking. Many were laughing and some of the laughter was mixed with memory and with nostalgia which is sometimes memory that, bypassing the preservative process, turns sour.

Once again the names began dropping.

And now the three older women were silent as they watched the young couple. Among the suddenly crowded gathering of their lost, discarded, outgrown, obliterated, murdered, mourned-for selves they began to drop, not names, but unvoiced memories — and if you had been there you would have known it was so. And
though the white paper skeleton was in attendance even in their most private parties, though it grimaced, danced, rustled, taller than all their memories, in the sudden cold wind, the skeleton was not what they feared and longed most to be rid of or to become.

No, it was not the skeleton. It was the black velvet spider with the shimmering golden web.

Her name was Bernadine though everyone called her Mrs Winton. Mrs Winton in Bed Seventeen. Good morning, Mrs Winton. How are you today? I never heard her speak more than a few words, usually about the weather or the day or that she was feeling fine oh fine; in the bathroom in the morning with the test tubes of urine in their row on the shelf caught sparkling like wine by the morning sun. Such gold!

This is Bernadine in hospital, the colour of her sickness not known. She lay on the ‘heart' side of the ward as opposed to the ‘lung' side, and we on the ‘lung' side had the macabre entertainment of watching the televised heartbeats of those with Pacemakers attached to their heart and of experiencing the shock and panic when the travelling graph suddenly faltered or stopped and the piping alarm signal sounded through the ward.

Visitors came on the morning of Bernadine's operation — her husband, a short broad-backed man with heavy hands and a round
worried face like a moon frowning on a suddenly uncontrollable and not understood ocean. There were sisters, too, and their husbands, and small children in warm coats and hats and long white socks. Bernadine always had many visitors who came directly to her — unlike those who showed panic on entering the ward as they searched for ‘their' face, sometimes in their confusion and worry making astonishing mistakes: one would find oneself smiled at by a stranger, Oh, I'm sorry, I thought you were . . . Mary, Harriet, Joan.

But not Bernadine. No one could have been mistaken for Bernadine. It was not only her dark skin but a kind of inward silence that distinguished her. She was isolated in her sickness and made a quiet contrast to her neighbour, a woman in her forties who had died and been revived by the machine and, as the current marvel, was allowed visitors at any time and was always surrounded by handsome men and brave clean beautiful well-behaved children, and flowers, flame-coloured and golden, in heart-shaped bouquets, delivered fresh each morning, and huge heart-shaped boxes of chocolates that tempted the passing doctors. One was not sure whether the flowers and chocolates were being laid on the altar of life or of death.

But this day was Bernadine's day. Looking back I remember the bleak morning sunlight over the rows of chimneypots, the flash of colour as the test tubes of urine were touched with the rays, the coming and going of students with syringes and blood bottles; and Bernadine wandering up and down in a listless silence. Her operation was to be late in the day. I kept thinking, Everyone will be too tired, too tired.

At five o'clock the green-coated theatre porters came and Bernadine was wheeled away and her bed was made ready for her return. She would be awake by visiting time, the nurse said.

Visiting time came. Bernadine had returned and was lying unconscious with screens around her. Her husband and family
came; the screens were partly removed and the visitors sat silently around the bed while Mr Winton held his wife's hand. He spoke her name once or twice but she was still too deeply unconscious. He stared with a kind of fear that threatened to become panic at the tube and bottle attached to her ankle.

‘Perhaps,' the nurse suggested, ‘you could go home and we'll let you know when she wakes up.'

The friends and children went home but the husband said, ‘No, I'd rather stay'.

He found a chair and sat on it, still holding his wife's hand.

Visiting hour finished. Formal hospital night came when all strangers were ejected.

‘We'll let you know,' they promised Mr Winton, ‘as soon as she wakes up. We'll get in touch with you.'

They urged him to leave.

‘No,' he said. ‘I'd rather stay. Bernadine has had an operation and I want to stay with her.'

The nurse went to speak to the sister at her desk. The sister came forward: tall, authorative; winged cap, frilled sleeves.

‘Won't you please go?' she said. ‘Everything will be all right.'

‘No,' he said. ‘I'd rather stay.'

They left him. The night staff came on duty. Mr Winton now sat in the centre of the ward drinking a cup of tea. The day sister, having made her report, spoke again to him, showing less sympathy than consciousness of his nuisance value.

‘You're disrupting the smooth running of the ward.'

Now how could that be? Sickness is not smooth. Sickness and death are rough and crooked and can't really, by routine and care, be made entirely smooth and plain.

Obstinately Mr Winton held his place.

‘I must stay. She's my wife.'

‘But she's only had an operation. She'll be awake soon. We'll let you know the moment she wakes. We're not going to hurt her.
Look, here's the doctor. He'll explain to you.'

She spoke a few words aside to the doctor. His approach was bright, his voice low and calming as he promised faithfully that all was well, operations were being performed every day, as soon as Mrs Winton regained consciousness they would get in touch with him.

‘I want to stay,' Mr Winton said simply. ‘You see?'

The doctor spoke sharply.

‘I told you we'll let you know.'

Mr Winton could not be persuaded to leave. He had left his wife's bedside and sat hunched in the chair by the ward fire, his face intent, listening, watching, waiting; as if he knew all events and waited only to receive them, to confirm them.

Ten minutes later when a nurse reported irregularities in Mrs Winton's breathing and a doctor attending another case looked over the partly drawn screens and cried, My god, a haemorrhage, and a phone call brought the surgeon and his registrar and the screens were completely drawn around Mrs Winton, her husband pushed his way through the screen.

They led him back to his chair. Everything was going to be all right, they said. By staying he was interfering with the necessary treatment.

The sister suggested that perhaps he could go to have a meal at the hospital cafeteria and when he returned Mrs Winton might be ready to see him.

He stayed. Mistrust showed in his eyes. He held fast to his empty teacup and crouched in his chair and listened like a fox to the urgent whisperings and rustlings beyond the screen and one could almost see his heart pounce again and again to the rescue of its beloved possession. Though his face was grim and dark and he was silent, there was ravaging evidence of each thought as it passed and left its scar.

He became a central figure in the ward, as much a part of the
night as the half-darkness, the traffic and the night-voices in the street outside. As the lights were dimmed and the tablets, for pain, were given out, and the ward sister and nurse took their places by the electric fire, switched to high, he stayed like a post, like an isolated pylon in a deserted valley and his black skin, in the sensitive time of conflict and confusion between skin and skin, black and white, yellow and brown, black and pink, began to speak for him in a ward where all others except his unconscious wife were pink-skinned. He was a captive and his captors were civilisation, advanced medicine and surgery where the body may be attacked and wounded and then, surprisingly, cared for and nursed: surely this was the behaviour of gods rather than men?

There were now three doctors attending Bernadine. They had entered, remote, best-dressed, laughing, like the ‘three young rats in black felt hats' but their faces changed when they saw her and they stopped laughing. Their voices were low, in a working intonation, but when their pitch heightened and one darted from behind the screens to make a phone call and there was the sound of running footsteps in the corridor, we knew that Mrs Winton had died and they would try to revive her.

Floor space was needed. The screens were extended to cover a third of the ward, yet we witnessed it all, clearly reflected in the top panes of the tall windows, three images of three patients, innumerable deaths and dreams of revival.

Mr Winton paced the ward and when once again he invaded the screen and perhaps glimpsed or guessed the crisis, he let himself be taken out of the ward, the first time that he had surrendered: because he knew.

They would call him, they promised, as soon as Mrs Winton had passed the crisis and the apparatus was removed. They did not speak so confidently now. They did not reassure him that all would be well.

And now the ward was almost asleep except for those who
could not help viewing the images in the window and could not turn away from them. I tried to close my eyes. I listened. I heard the ragged untidy urgent coordinated sounds of living and working; and breathing; and then, gradually, another sound — a neatly tailored silence that living and life have no place for. Then, like a sea entering the ward, the sound of washing, of water lapping against the world; a sound of peace and sleep; and death.