Life Sentence (22 page)

It was almost possible to overlook her husband, for all he was over six feet tall, as he hovered apologetically at her left shoulder, not quite sure how to greet anyone, and leaving a bony hand dangling in mid-air. Mark reached and shook it firmly, introducing himself while Hazel chuntered to Fran about the journey. Despite his
cadaverous appearance, Grant was remarkably easy to talk too, and by the time they’d reached the car they had progressed from golf handicaps to whisky.

‘You may have heard on the media about our kidnapping, down in Kent: it was Frances here who ran the perpetrator to earth and arrested him. I’m very proud of her,’ he declared loudly enough to be overheard.

‘Mmm,’ Hazel murmured noncommittally.

Grant laid a hand on his arm and held him back. ‘Don’t, whatever you do, let the dear lass come down here and nurse them. There’ll be a death within the month if you do – and I wouldn’t know whose. That mother: I swear I always check the moment I see her for horns and tail.’

‘I didn’t think you’d seen her for some time,’ Mark commented. It was hard to keep the note of criticism out of his voice.

‘Alas, Mark, my stipend doesn’t run to trips like this. It’s only thanks to Fran we’ve ever come down. As a matter of fact, I rather think the old lady had disowned Hazel, but somehow Fran managed to win her round. Once seen, never forgotten, that old bat. And in my experience, Mark, people don’t become saintly with age. They merely become more themselves.’ He shot a glance at his wife, for some reason fingering the fabric of Fran’s jacket, and dropped his voice. ‘These days Hazel can do anything with them – in her they’ve undoubtedly met their match – but I swear Ma will end
up in some circle of a Dantean Hell, telling Old Nick what a poor job he’s doing.’

Fran had opened the boot and as he stowed cases, he caught her eye. To his surprise – and, he had to admit, possibly to hers – he mouthed very clearly across the few feet separating them, ‘I love you.’

Whatever had prompted him he was glad: the result was as if he’d switched on a light bulb behind her face.

He made a point of taking her hand and holding it very tightly as they headed from the car park into the hospital, four abreast.

‘I’m afraid you’ll be very shocked,’ Fran said, ‘not just by Ma and Pa – who are every minute of their age these days – but by the state of the bungalow. I’ve had it painted outside every three years, but the inside is – well, let’s just say if I were a social worker seeing it for the first time I’d accuse the carer of neglecting them. I saw Mark was shocked this afternoon. He can’t deny it. In fact, every weekend when I go down I’m shocked, too – but then I get the first little job to do and the bigger picture fades. I’ve nagged; I’ve begged; I’ve cajoled. But they simply will not permit anyone, even me, to disturb the tenor of their life by applying paint or buying new curtains.’

‘Pop them into respite care while you do it.’ Hazel said crisply.

‘Respite care while Fran pays someone else to do it,’ Mark couldn’t stop himself from retorting.

‘She earns in a month what Grant and I subsist on for a year, so I don’t see that as a problem. And now there are two of you…’

‘Fine,’ agreed Fran. ‘You get them to agree to the care, get them into the home and keep them there. I’ll pay for everything. But we’re getting diverted. I don’t think they can survive as they are, not with Pa in hospital. Ma’s just not up to looking after herself. And to be honest, I think they need a different sort of care from anything I can offer. Even if I were living in. It was seeing things through Mark’s eyes today that brought it home. I’m sorry, but there it is.’ Everything came out in a rush, as if she were a child confessing to breaking an impossible promise.

Which she was, of course, Mark realised. He squeezed her hand.

Mr Harman was alone in a side ward, or he had a feeling that their arrival well after visiting hours wouldn’t have been welcome. The very old man, unshaven and dentureless, was propped up in bed staring at a blank TV screen. He looked up as they came in, the men standing back as the daughters ran to his bed, one either side. His face lit up. ‘It’s never our Hazel! It is, it is!’ He turned his head towards Fran. ‘But who’s this other lady? I don’t know her, do I?’

To his great anxiety, Fran was the life and soul of the late supper they ate in Exeter. At first he’d thought it might be drink talking, but although they’d had drinks on an empty stomach, he knew she could hold her liquor if she needed to. All the same, there was a glitter about her eyes that made him take her quips and fancies more as an indication of her hurt than of any real happiness.

Perhaps it was his fault if she were drunk. He had had no idea how the city might buzz in the evening, and, not having booked a table, was turned away by three places before a fourth promised them a table in half an hour. They could wait in the bar area. Throughout all the delays and hesitations, Fran scintillated.

Grant, hesitantly, had put himself forward as the driver, so the others could drink: ‘It’s nothing to do with my calling, so don’t be embarrassed that I’m about to impose total abstinence on you all. I’m simply taking antibiotics, which give you a hangover on the sniff of a barmaid’s apron. And I have full insurance, whatever vehicle I drive. But I shall quite understand if you don’t want me to drive that gleaming beastie of yours, Fran.’

She flipped him the keys with the brightest of grins.

She’d said nothing about her father’s appalling snub, all the more painful for being its being unconscious, and he doubted that she ever would. Imagine, her own father not recognising her, but making such a fuss of her long-absent sister. But it explained something he’d thought odd at the time, her request, urgently whispered as they first made love, that he call out her name when he came. He’d thought it was to do with Tina, and perhaps it was, predominantly. But now he feared it came from a deeper anxiety, only now realised.

If he hadn’t been able to protect Fran from this evening’s pain, there was at least one thing he could stop: a family gathering at the bungalow, and Hazel’s narrow-eyed and ruthless inspection. It had been bad enough for Fran to have him see it, someone she trusted to be non-judgemental, work matters apart. But
non-judgemental
didn’t seem to be part of Hazel’s vocabulary: it was as if she had embraced Calvinism when she’d embraced a man of the kirk. Not that Grant was in any way a stereotypical minister, getting more cheerfully inebriated on sparkling water than Hazel, whose waspishness increased in direct proportion to the amount of wine she insisted on drinking. Their curries were quite excellent, better than anything he’d been able to find in Kent. He’d never subscribed to the curry and lager school of thought, and had also settled for water with the meal, but didn’t propose to deny Grant what he suspected would be an enormous treat.

At a suitable moment he would announce that they had to return first thing the next morning. The Rebecca case was the obvious reason. Maybe Fran could think of another. Much as he wanted to protect her, the thought of telling her what to do and more specifically what not to do was abhorrent.

It wasn’t until – at his apparently romantic suggestion – that Grant parked the car under the
fairy-lights
on the almost deserted Teignmouth seafront, so they could take in the sight of the moon over the surprisingly calm sea, that he managed to get Fran to himself for a moment.

‘Shall we paddle?’ he asked, taking her hand and running between the flowerbeds on the prom towards the beach.

‘In these clothes?’

‘Why not?’ But he contented himself with walking along the sort of sand that brought back memories of hours of beach cricket. He drew her close so that they faced each other. ‘Fran: will you indulge me in something?’

‘Of course.’ But the moonlight showed her puzzlement.

‘I don’t think a big family reunion in the bungalow tomorrow would be a good idea. Do you?’

‘Ma’s heart, you mean, with all of us thronging round? No?’

‘I was thinking it wouldn’t be pleasant for you—’

‘But—’

‘I know you don’t expect life to be pleasant, but there’s no need to make it worse. My suggestion is that I find a police reason to be away early. We pop in to see your Ma to say goodbye, and thence to the hospital to see your Pa, so your filial duty will be done.’ He hadn’t meant to give such a curl of the tongue to the words. But he couldn’t call the intonation back, could he? ‘That way Hazel gets some idea of what you’ve been up against. If she’s in charge, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t make a leisurely journey back –remember the M3 and M25 traffic.’

‘Why is this indulging
you
?’

‘Because I don’t like to see anyone treated the way your mother treated you today. And the fact she didn’t mean any harm made it worse in my book. It looked as if it came with practice. And don’t forget I’ve seen you when you’ve just got back from your weekend’s labours down here. Why did you never say what a strain it was?’

She shook her head as if genuinely puzzled. ‘She’s just being Ma.’

‘Will you do it? Indulge me?’ He surprised himself again with his earnestness. He might have been proposing marriage, it mattered so much.

‘OK. Yes, OK.’ She said it as lightly as if he were suggesting poached, not scrambled eggs. She was perching on one leg to strip off her popsocks and roll up her trouser legs.

She was only going to paddle!

He had an idea that Grant saw through his ploy, but since he said that they were responsible for overseeing
the final details of the case against Rebecca’s abductor, Hazel could make no objection.

Ma did, when they called in to see her. ‘You can go back on the train now; she can drive back tomorrow,’ she said. ‘She always does.’

He said, with some brutality, ‘That’s not possible. She has to be at work tomorrow.’ If the old woman remembered that the next day was Sunday, he’d have to extemporise. ‘She’s run out of leave, you see, with all her journeys down here. So no more days off for Fran. Sorry, but there it is.’

Ma sniffed. ‘It’s about time you left that place. We always said you would. You were going to live here and look after us.’

‘I haven’t retired yet,’ Fran said.

‘You’ll have to speak up. You know your Pa can never hear a word you say. This Mike of yours, he’s got a good voice. Doesn’t mumble like you do. Now, if you’re off, I’ll just use the commode so you can empty it before you go.’

‘Allow me to help you to the bathroom,’ Mark said firmly, having painfully tangled with the sitting frame and supports designed to make loos more accessible to the old and now determined that the apparatus support the person for whom it was meant.

Ma took a firm grip on his arm. Her hand was almost devoid of flesh. ‘And you can get out my pink dress,’ she said over her shoulder. ‘I want to make a bit of an effort for our Hazel.’

Mark thought Pa was noticeably frailer, although he’d been hauled out of bed and propped in a chair. At last recognising her, he let his hand rest in Fran’s, the age spots so profuse it was hard to tell the original colour. His legs, vulnerable between the jaunty paisley pyjamas and slippers fastened with wide Velcro strips, were deeply discoloured, bruised as he fell, perhaps.

‘They’re kind. Very kind. Only I’m so thirsty. So very thirsty. Could you just nip and get me a cup of tea, Frances? You always were a good girl.’

Fran shot Mark a look: should she acquiesce? Or were there medical reasons for his lack of fluid – the possibility of an operation, perhaps.

‘I’ll go and ask a nurse,’ he announced, thinking Fran deserved the odd affectionate pat her father gave.

Was it because it was the weekend that nurses were an endangered species? At last he cornered one, speaking to her with the easy authority he prided himself on. If constables jumped, this young woman showed no signs of moving.

‘So why is he thirsty? Is it a symptom of his illness?’

She shrugged.

‘Will you find out, please? He looks pretty dehydrated to me.’

‘The consultant doesn’t do his round on Sundays.’

‘Why don’t I speak to a staff nurse?’ He recalled Fran recounting the battles she’d had with Michael Penn and his colleagues: what had happened to the angels who used to flit around wards making people better by their
very presence? Government directives, that was what had happened.

As he strode back to Fran – surely the nurse would recognise a man used to giving orders and being obeyed by his walk – a tiny gnome of a man opposite Pa called him over. Laying an almost transparent hand on his arm, the man said, ‘They leaves his tea on the side there and he can’t reach it, can he? So they takes it away again. And ’cos he’s mostly asleep, they doesn’t ask him why he hasn’t drunk it, see? Not nurses – they’re just tea girls. Piece-work, I’d bet. See how many cups you can dish out and collect in again. Tell you what – they say I can get up tomorrow: I’ll look out for him.’

But by now there was a bustle across the ward: Pa’s curtains were being drawn and Fran expelled, heading towards him hands spread. ‘I ran a junior doctor to earth as she was prowling along, trying to be invisible. They’re going to fit a drip, he’s so dehydrated! Why didn’t I notice, Mark?’

‘Because you and your Pa were sharing a tender moment and – hey, what’s up?’

Fran? Weeping? He drew her out into the corridor.

‘He’s dying, isn’t he? He won’t come out alive, will he?’

Mark shook his head. ‘Is that what you think or what he thinks?’

‘He says he’s had enough. He wants to give up.’

If you thought of the state he’d been living in, you could hardly blame him. But Mark asked quietly, ‘Isn’t a
man his age entitled to say that? When did he last leave the house? When did he last enjoy himself? Life’s for more than enduring, Fran. It’s for living.’

God help him, he was already working out how the old man’s death would affect Fran. And was that because he loved her and wanted to save her further exertion or because he loved her and wanted her to himself? As for Fran, her face was inscrutable: perhaps she was speculating in exactly the same way.