Are We Nearly There Yet?: A Family's 8000 Miles Around Britain in a Vauxhall Astra by Ben Hatch

Author:Ben Hatch [Hatch, Ben]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 1849531552
Publisher: Summersdale Publishers Ltd
Published: 2001-01-01T13:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 17

Dad’s wearing a checked jacket. The checks are lime green, pink and blue. The yellowness of Dad’s eyes is the colour of an unhealed bruise and his breathing has a background sound to it. It’s like the hum of a fridge at night. We’re in the living room, Dad has two friends over and Mary’s face is fidgety like a sparrow’s head. It moves in and out, back and forwards, catapulting out the bullets of fear she confides as the day wears on. ‘Is he looking worse to you?’… ‘Do you think he’s fading?’… ‘The blockage has made him so tired.’ Dad’s friends are telling stories and Dad’s head moves slowly towards their conversation. He sits stiffly in a simulacrum of relaxation – an arm over the back of the sofa, legs apart slightly. When he smiles it’s slightly too late. His teeth seem larger as well, too heavy for his jaw. He gulps before he says anything and I feel his loneliness from across the room and I want to get up, go over and touch him.

After they’ve gone, Dad plays the piano. ‘The Lord’s Prayer’. I stand in the doorway of the barn conversion where he can’t see me. It’s too much. The tears twist up and I blub in the bathroom. I dry my eyes, wait until they’re less red, and come out. I move behind Dad and hold his shoulders. I feel the notes resonate through his flesh. Dad’s quiet on the way to the hospital. Mary and I hoist him out of the passenger seat. Leant against the car door he pants and winces. His belly hurts. I ask if he wants a painkiller. He shakes his head without looking at me and widens his eyes. We stay this way for a few moments. Then he nods. ‘Clear the path.’

I swing open the main hospital doors. I come back.

‘Ready?’

‘Not yet.’

I wait until he puts his hand out. I hold it and we steer him. Dad proceeds in the scared, stop-start way you move across a ship’s deck in a storm. He falls into a seat at reception, exhausted, bent forward slightly, his cold clammy hands on his knees. We pat his still heavy shoulders, stroke his damp head and tell him how brave he is, how much we love him, and he occasionally looks up and blows us a kiss between pants.

In his room on the ward I stand outside the bathroom like a guard while Dad changes into his hospital gown. Five minutes later when he hasn’t emerged I shout, ‘All right, Dad?’ I walk in. Dad’s standing up, his boxers round his ankles. He can’t reach down to take them off. They’re caught under his feet. I pull them off for him. I slip his gown on, do it up at the back as he leans on the washbasin.

‘Now put some toothpaste on a brush,’ he tells me.

‘You want to do your teeth?’

He nods. ‘Not too much and wet it.’

I do what he says.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.