Authors: Ross Gilfillan
I push the stretcher out into the lobby towards the front entrance. Dad looks at his clipboard, I watch the chequered tiles passing under my feet. We’re almost at the doors when a voice behind us calls out, ‘Doctor!’ It’s one of the nurses at the desk. ‘I’ve no paperwork on this patient?’
‘That’s quite all right, nurse,’ Dad says, waving his clipboard. ‘All taken care of, all under control.’ And then we’re out in the warm summer night. Faruk is waiting with the van doors open. The inside has been configured as a bed which will accommodate Nana nicely. She gives a little moan as we transfer her to the van. Dad jumps in the passenger seat while I squeeze in next to Nana. The nurse from reception is at the doors waving at us as Faruk guns the engine and the campervan lurches forward. Faruk
drives off, checking his mirror like he thinks we might be followed.
I hold Nana’s hand as the caravan leaves the hospital grounds, swings through the outskirts of town and joins a ribbon of traffic heading in the general direction of Derbyshire. I’m still bursting with adrenaline but I can’t help smiling. Dad turns around in his seat and asks how Nana’s doing? I tell him I don’t know, but she looks comfortable. As we pass under a streetlight, I can see he’s grinning at me and now (he knows how to do this?) he offers me a high five. Amazing!
Faruk’s driving is amazing too – we really should let him do this more often. He drives quickly but every corner is smoothly taken and if there are potholes, Faruk avoids them. Soon, he’s backing the van carefully up to Nana’s front door, where GD is standing, draped on a pair of crutches, the light from the coach lamp illuminating a worried face. We take Nana inside and settle her upon the day bed under the stairs. The village doctor, a friend of my grandparents, is on hand to take a look at her. He can’t offer hope but he tells GD that she would have been no better off in the hospital, which seems to offer GD relief of a kind, anyway. He leaves painkillers with instructions and tells us to call him if she gets worse. Nana is unconscious still, unaware of what we have done, but her face no longer looks so awful and she appears peaceful. GD makes us all a hot drink, but no one wants anything to eat. We sit and talk quietly until it’s late. Faruk has fallen asleep in his chair and GD, Dad and I take turns to watch Nana and grab some sleep ourselves.
Throughout the next day, a succession of Nana’s friends drop in to pay their respects. Villagers stay only long enough to leave flowers or some other small gift and sit briefly with Nana, who seems unchanged since last might, though GD has cleaned her face with a damp cloth and gently brushed her hair. A nurse is in and out all day. Other friends have come from further afield and room will have to be found for some of them to sleep over. I
remember some of these people from my visit to Narnia as a child: Paul the professor of literature who used to have a yellow pony tail and wear a leather hat; Leo the guitarist has a grey mane now, while Samantha, an artist and teacher who tried to teach me to paint, looks just the same.
More visitors arrive and GD calls in favours and finds rooms for them in the village, some at B&B’s, but others courtesy of helpful friends and neighbours. They speak to Nana as if she is fully conscious, wishing her well and sometimes remembering days they had shared together. And then they drift out into the sunny garden, where they can talk without disturbing her.
Faruk is talking to Magic Mick and an American from San Francisco who says he knew GD many years ago. GD himself is dividing his time between talking to his friends and going inside to check on Nana. Dad’s here too, looking out of place in his business suit but getting along well with everyone just the same. Old friends are reunited and memories unearthed. There’s a lot of talk about Nana and about her poetry too. I didn’t realise that in some circles, Nana is almost famous. Someone has provided a picnic lunch, cold chicken, salad, glasses of white wine and after this, GD reads aloud one of Nana’s poems and we all raise a glass to her.
Then Faruk is calling from the house, where he’s gone to get Garcia a drink. ‘It’s your nana,’ he calls to me. Everyone tries to enter the house at once but GD asks his friends to stay in the garden while Dad and I follow him to Nana’s bed. She is lying quite still, with her head sunk deeply into the soft pillow, over which spills her silver-grey hair. Her eyes are open. She tries to say something, but it comes out as a croak. GD raises her head and helps her to take a sip from a glass of water. She is saying, ‘This is wonderful,’ as her eyes drink in every detail of the familiar room in the home she loves.
People have started to drift in, despite what GD has said. Nana nods as she recognizes familiar faces, smiles at others.
People settle themselves about the room, on furniture, floor and window seats and some upon the stairs. GD wants everyone to be quiet at least and let Nana rest but Nana says no, she wants to hear her friends talking. She squeezes GD’s hand and whispers, ‘This is just how it should be.’ Leo takes up his guitar and sings a song softly. It’s
The Attics of My Life
, an old favourite in this house. People join in. I join in, because GD has played it so often that I know all the words. Nana lies peacefully upon her bed listening to the songs and chatter. If she’s in any pain, she hides it well. No one notices when Nana dies. GD is at her side, still holding her hand and talking about old times. He looks up to reply to something his friend Paul is saying and when he turns back to Nana, she is gone.
In a place between the ring of standing stones and Nana’s Rock, a place which would command a widescreen view of the hills and dales of the Derbyshire countryside had not the sun gone down, we stand in a circle around the carefully laid logs and branches which make an enormous stack which must be nine or ten feet high. We hold hands, me, Mum and Dad, Magic Mick, Paul, Leo, Sam and many others who came to see Nana’s body as she lay on her bed, which was soon surrounded by flowers. Lauren and Diesel are over on the other side with Faruk and Clive. Ros is here too, brought along by Teresa, whose hot hand is in mine.
Magic Mick had organised everything the day before, directing Faruk and me and a lot of other helpers to collect together piles of wood and big logs he had already chopped which would only have to be dragged out from the nearby copse and assembled when a flashing torch from across the valley signalled that all was ready (mobile reception is pretty flaky here). Mum had arrived earlier in the day and with the help of a neighbour, had put Nana in her favourite blouse and skirt and arranged her hair.
People made their way to Nana’s Rock by car or on foot and by the time the camper van arrived bearing a bundle wrapped in a blue silk cloth, some fifty or sixty people were already waiting by the pyre. They are solemn faced now, as Magic Mick and Paul mount ladders and the long bundle is gently passed up to them. I have a queasy feeling in my stomach. A cremation isn’t something I have ever wanted to see firsthand. I can hear other expressions of doubt and concern too, but this is what Nana wanted. The cremations she saw in India seemed more like joyous celebrations of a life than mournful leave-takings and that was the way she’d like to go, Nana had told GD, if only that were possible.
I still think this isn’t right somehow, but I know I must respect her wishes and those of GD too, so I stand quietly as GD says a few words before lighting the fire. He tells us how happy she was to see her old friends on the day she died and of how pleased she would be to see so many of us here tonight. He tells us a little about her life, her travels in India, about the work she did for orphanages there and the contented life they have enjoyed together at their cottage in the hills. He says he doesn’t quite know what he will do without her, but intends to treat this not as an ending but as a new beginning, because that is what Ruth would have wanted. And with that, he sets light to paper and brushwood and stands back as the fire takes hold.
I am a little shocked, somehow, to find that joints are being passed hand to hand around the circle. But no one else seems to mind and even Dad takes a hit before passing it on. Now I have seen everything, I think. The fire blossoms and spreads and soon the bundle in blue is lost among the leaping flames and billowing smoke. The heat is tremendous and we all step back. Teresa gives my hand a squeeze. Ros mutters, ‘This is amazing.’
Somewhere in the crowd a lone female voice has begun singing her own version of something by Joni Mitchell, Nana’s favourite singer, and the song is taken up by others, until all I can
hear are beautiful harmonies and the crackling of the burning wood. Tears are winding down GD’s cheeks, but he’s smiling at the same time. I can see Diesel and Lauren are smiling too. Across the valley, we can see a tiny flashing blue light and a siren. It’s a pity there’s an ugly green Ford Escort with three flat tyres abandoned in the middle of the narrow lane down there.
It’s a month or so after Dad left and we’re gathered around the television in our front room. Mum, wearing a bright new dress, is sitting with Roger on the sofa while Clive and Poon Tang make use of big cushions on the floor. Clive’s hand rests on Poon Tang’s leg, just below the hem of her worryingly short skirt. We’re watching Roger and Clive’s appearance on
Bargain Search:
presenter Tom Honeypott mugs to the camera as he informs viewers that the Dysons, a father and son team from Sheffield, like nothing better than bagging a bargain! Actually, there’s a long list of things they enjoy more, but they’re not really suitable for exposure on daytime television. As I watch the Blue team rooting through the stalls of an antiques market near Peterborough, I can see that Roger was quite right about the blue fleeces – some people can carry them off, but Roger and Clive look like a pair of Smurfs.
The final edit makes it appear that Roger spent the whole of his allotted hour arguing with both Clive and his antiques expert but at last, the Blue team settles on a Clarice Cliff plate, a Toby jug and a brace of duelling pistols. A little later, the auctioneer reveals that the Clarice Cliff isn’t a Clarice Cliff, the Toby Jug has been inexpertly repaired and the pistols are fakes and by the end of the auction, the Dysons are minus two hundred and eighty pounds, which Tom Honeypott says might be a winning score, but it isn’t, of course.
‘What do I know about old plates and jugs?’ Roger’s grumbling. ‘I’m more Bauhaus, me.’
‘Not to worry,’ Mum says, giving Roger a quick, passionate
kiss on the lips. ‘I’ll be your bargain.’
From which little cameo, you’ll gather that there have been one or two more changes at this end of Laurel Gardens. The first comes about four weeks before the date that Roger and Poon Tang have set for their wedding. Roger has taken Poon Tang out to a Thai restaurant, where they both have too much to drink and they no sooner get home than Poon Tang and Roger are dragging each other off to the bedroom. Sex, she has told already him, in a matter of fact way as they ate their desserts, is now permissible.
Clive watches their bedroom door close with some misgivings. He sits on his bed in his room, which Poon Tang has lately been using as her own, and waits. He counts on his fingers. ‘Any second…now,’ is what he’s saying when there’s an anguished scream from the other room and it isn’t from Poon Tang.
Roger, bollock-naked and clutching his tackle in his hands, flies out of his room, down the hall and into Clive’s, where he slams and bolts the door. ‘It’s her, Poon Tang!’ he gibbers. ‘She’s got a whatsit, a thing, down there.’ He gestures at his own genital area.
‘You mean a cock?’ Clive says to his father. ‘I thought you knew.’
Clive didn’t think that at all but he didn’t much fancy telling Nutter Dyson that he had very nearly married a ladyboy. Even if he was his father.
‘Yes, a cock,’ Roger says, still shaking. ‘And it’s bigger than mine.’
Clive’s news hasn’t come as a complete surprise to me. I thought I’d seen something when Poon Tang was fighting with Carole, in the Casablanca. But when a bird flashes what looks a lot like a pair of balls and big cock it’s very easy to think you’re seeing things. It did come as a complete surprise to Roger, though. She had kissed him on the lips and slipped off her top, revealing what Clive assures me are the most perfectly formed
pair of tits. Not big ones, but very sexy all the same. The erection Roger got when he saw them hadn’t quite subsided when he burst into his son’s room in a state of shock. Poon Tang seemed to think Roger knew all about her little, or not so little, secret and had wriggled out of her panties and hoisted her skirt without a thought. Which was when Roger had screamed, leapt off the bed and claimed refuge in Clive’s bedroom.
It took Roger a little while to adjust to the new state of things. It didn’t take him long to cancel the wedding, though. Poon Tang understood and was very good about it, admitting that ladyboys weren’t everyone’s cup of chai. According to Poon Tang, men who suddenly discover they have inadvertently gone to bed with a transsexual either are horrified like Roger was or reckon they’ve got double bubble and get stuck in, though she might not actually have said ‘double bubble’. As far as Poon Tang was concerned, things had worked out for the best. She had soon realised that she wasn’t in love with Roger, but she rather thought she might be love with his son, Clive. And there was no doubt that Clive was in love with Poon Tang and would certainly have declared his love earlier if he didn’t think it might queer his dad’s pitch, he says.
Roger was in two minds about Poon Tang taking up with his boy. It wasn’t only because of the embarrassment she’d caused him. It was just that as a man and a Millwall supporting man at that, you have to have your doubts when your boy starts dating a girl with nice breasts and a big cock. But by this time, Roger was more worried about Clive coming home with a bloke. And, as Clive cannily pointed out, half a girlfriend was better than none. And so Clive was finally fixed up, if not to his father’s complete satisfaction. Which left Roger free and single once again, but not for long.
It was about this time that Dad had revealed the big change that would affect us all. As I’d suspected and had at first feared, my parents were going to split up. And because I thought I’d
seen it coming, it wasn’t the shock it might have been a year ago, when it would have rocked the Richter scale. But it was still sad and very strange. Weeks after it actually happened, I was still finding it disconcerting to come home in the evenings and find only Mum at home – if she wasn’t still out at her flower shop. Dad had left soon after she had signed the lease, going off like some latent hippie, to find himself.