16 August 2004
Not Again
Dick Stevens, widower, father-of-three and grandfather of more than he can remember, doesn’t normally watch daytime television, but the rain today has driven him indoors. Since he lost Maureen three years ago, his daily routine has revolved around golf or fishing, gardening or the pub. Her death from lung cancer was the trigger he needed to finally give up smoking. Maureen only ever had a ciggie to be ‘sociable’ so it doesn’t seem fair she succumbed to what’s called passive smoking, when he’s puffed away twenty a day for sixty years, ever since he was fourteen. Was it his fault she got a bad chest or was it their love of pub lunches? Every pub he’s ever been to has a welcoming fug of blue smoke and yellowed ceilings. Should be banned, then he wouldn’t sit there with his Daily Mail, trying to breathe in the tempting but now forbidden scent of tobacco when he has his pint.
So these days he’s replaced his filthy habit with other vices. When he walks to the nearby Tesco Express for his daily newspaper, he is always tempted by the newly baked croissants and pains au chocolat, his favourite. Lovely with a fresh cup of coffee. And when his eldest daughter Billie calls in as she does every day, with ready meals or easy-to-cook chops, she nearly always stays for a cuppa and offers him a piece of home-baked lemon drizzle or an iced yum-yum. Him and Billie, they’ve both got a sweet tooth. Hasn’t done either of them any favours. At least the fags helped him keep his weight down. Maureen always told him he’d balloon once he gave them up. He must have put on at least a stone since she went.
Placing a fresh cup of tea on the coffee table next to a new pack of plain chocolate digestives, he settles himself with an indulgent sigh into his most recent purchase, an immensely comfortable, easy-rise reclining armchair, upholstered in brown jumbo cord. A sensible choice, he decided, since he planned to take most of his meals in the chair. Always been a messy eater, he has.
‘Ugly thing,’ Billie said when it was delivered. ‘You won’t catch me letting Kevin have one of those, no matter how relaxing they are. He’d be dozing off in no time.’ But that’s the point, Dick tells himself, thinking of Billie’s stiff leather sofas, so slippery he always fears sliding off and onto her shagpile carpet. If you can’t indulge in a few bad habits by the time you reach your seventies, when can you? He presses the chair’s switch, stretches his legs out on the cushioned extension and sighs with pleasure.
Dick takes a bite of his biscuit and switches on the television, expecting to find a gardening programme, though he’d prefer Homes Under the Hammer, reminding him what a good investment his house is. He keeps the garden tidy, but his expertise is limited to mowing the lawn and clearing leaves from the paths. Maureen was always the one for potting on seedlings in the greenhouse and filling the gaps in the borders with bedding plants. She was so patient and pinched out her sweet peas to achieve long-stemmed flowers that won second place in the Garden Club show the year before she became ill. Dick might not have his late wife’s green fingers, but he enjoys watching others working hard and sometimes thinks he might transform his suburban garden with smart decking or a water feature. That would be soothing, sitting in the sun, when there is any sun, listening to the sound of harmonious trickling.
But the scenes bursting into his sitting room are not calming or inspiring, there is no transformed garden with a cheery Alan Titchmarsh or buxom Charlie Dimmock, no cosy antiques auction, no smug property expert trying to persuade reluctant buyers to make a decision. Instead, the screen is filled with cars floating like corks, a turbulent river tossing a van like a tin toy, a helicopter hovering over roofs and lowering a winch. Dick hears the roar of crashing water and the thunder of heavy rain, the underlying accompaniment to the newscaster’s dramatic commentary:
Scenes like this have not been seen since the Lynmouth flood of 1952. Today in north Cornwall the River Valency burst its banks and emergency services have been summoned to the village of Boscastle. Persistent rain over a period of a few hours has caused a flash flood and created a state of emergency. Officials say sixteen millimetres of rain fell in fifteen minutes this afternoon. Rescue crews from all over the West Country are attending the scene and helicopters have been alerted all over the south of England.
‘No, it can’t be,’ Dick moans. His heart turns over, his breath is rapid. ‘Not again, how can it…?’ He tries to reach the remote control to turn off the droning voice and the rolling news coverage that’s stirring up memories, reminding him of that time, of all he has tried to forget and put behind him. The drone of the helicopter blades sounds like the bomb convoys, the crash of rocks and cars like broken homes, the urgent commentator like the air raid wardens shouting at them to take cover and the slap of the water like the thwack of the beatings.
As he stretches out to grab the remote control, he gasps. A fierce pain stabs his head, he feels faint and he senses all strength draining from his muscles. He is feeble and helpless, unable to move. He slumps back in his chair and the control drops from his weakened hand to the floor.
But the commentary on the newscast rolls on, the water rages and the cars are thrown against the bridge. Dick cannot halt it, nor can he prevent himself from watching it. If a punishment could be prescribed to suit the person, to match the crime, this would be it. Like Prometheus, Dick is fated to watch the doom-laden rolling coverage of the disaster now occurring in Cornwall forever. And if he closes his eyes, he can still hear that urgent voice and the thunder of the circling helicopters and the hurtling river. On and on it goes, repeating the highlights of the incident in dramatic, excited tones:
All roads to Boscastle are closed. A ten-foot-high wall of floodwater surged through the car park at forty miles an hour, crashing into the visitor centre, which collapsed shortly afterwards. Helicopters have begun winching residents and visitors to safety…
‘No, no,’ Dick mumbles, his mouth drooping, saliva seeping from his lips. ‘Roo, ere are oo…’ And his eyes well with tears, which slowly trickle down his lined cheeks to meet the drool that is dripping onto his checked shirt, till his chin, his neck and his clothing are damp and stained with the sticky mush of the chewed chocolate digestive. But still he stares with wet, glistening eyes at the flickering screen, at the graphic images, at the roaring water, and still he moans.
16 August 2004
On the Stroke of Five
Billie knows he’ll be at home. Dad is always home at the end of the afternoon. Ever since Mum died three years ago, Billie Mayhew, trained librarian and mother-of-two, keen baker but lapsed Zumba enthusiast, has made a point of calling on her father at 5 p.m. every day, whether she is working or not. She is the eldest and the nearest of his three children, but even if Keith and Pam did live closer she knows they wouldn’t be as attentive. She delegated her duty to them at Easter so she and Kevin could go to Bournemouth for a break, but her brother and sister didn’t bother going to see him every day. Keith said he could only manage to pop in once and Pam said he had plenty in the fridge so she didn’t see the need.
‘But it’s not just about what food he’s got in, is it? It’s company,’ she told them, ‘as well as checking he’s okay. Oh, I’ll do it myself.’ And she does. Every day, week after week. She doesn’t really mind. He’s her lovely dad and she can’t bear to think he might be lonely. Besides, she’s been on her feet all day, sorting returned books and helping people use the internet. She’s dying for a cuppa and one of the chocolate brownies she picked up at the Women’s Institute stall in the civic centre. She got a jar of this year’s strawberry jam too, but she might keep that for herself.
The lights in the house are already on, although it’s early. Drizzly rain has hidden the sun all day and gloom is descending over the street. She can hear the TV (or is it the radio?) burbling in the sitting room as soon as she lets herself in through the back door.
‘Dad,’ she calls out, ‘I’m here. I got you some lamb chops and broccoli in Tesco.’
She puts the meat in the fridge, checking he’s eaten the ham she left for his lunchtime sandwich. So he must have stayed home instead of lunching at the golf club or the pub. Billie approves of both, as it’s good for him to get out every day, now he’s on his own in the house. When Mum was alive they had lunch at the garden centre or a bistro pub at least once a week. Mum loved her plants and was always finding room for something new. Pelargoniums were her favourite, overwintered in the heated greenhouse and planted out all summer. Mum was talented like that.
Then Billie calls again, thinking he must be engrossed in a programme. ‘Dad, I’ll make us a cup of tea now. I’ll bring you a cake as well.’ But as the kettle begins to boil and there is still no answer, she feels her heart give a sudden flip. Mum had given them all fair warning with her cancer, all that awful treatment and relapses spread across four years before she couldn’t hold on any longer, but surely not Dad without any warning? He was right as rain yesterday.
She rushes through the kitchen door. He’s there alright; he’s watching the news on TV, stretched out on that horrible new chair that he loves so much. But what’s wrong with him? He isn’t taking his eyes from the screen. He isn’t acknowledging her, he’s slumped to one side, his face drooping, his mouth drooling.
‘Dad, what’s happened? Are you ill?’
He can’t tell her, but his right hand is trying to point. It wobbles and shakes as he holds it out, but he’s definitely pointing at the television screen. And at the same time he’s attempting to speak. His lips are twisted, his mouth has fallen to one side, the sound is distorted and Billie can’t make out what he’s trying to say.
She kneels down beside him, holding his shaking hand, desperate to understand what he is saying. ‘Dad, what is it? What’s happened?’
‘Roo… ey,’ he seems to be saying, in a trembling gasp. ‘Roo, rooey…’
‘What do you mean, Dad? What are you trying to say?’ Her chest is fluttering with anxiety, but she tries to keep her voice steady and calm.
He takes a deep breath, as if he is summoning up all the strength he has left. He pulls his hand away from hers and his finger straightens and jabs in the direction of the screen, then falls to his side.
Billie turns to find out what is making him so agitated and sees a picture of chaos and devastation. Helicopters hovering, a river raging, cars tossed like rubber ducks, buildings crumbling. She catches fragments of words from the commentary… flash flood… torrential rain… winching to safety… And the ticker tape caption rolling across the bottom of the screen… Boscastle… destruction… danger…
And her father is still trying to articulate words and pointing, but Billie knows she has to act fast. ‘Don’t try to talk, Dad. I’m calling an ambulance. I think you’ve had a stroke. We have to get help right now.’
16 August 2004
Snapshot From the Past
‘You don’t know how relieved I am, Dad. I thought I was going to lose you there.’ Billie sits beside her father’s bed in the hospital room, holding his hand. The air is stifling and warm, scented with hand sanitiser and the biscuity smell of starched clean laundry. She longs to open a window to breathe the cool evening breeze and she strokes his hand as she speaks. ‘Thank goodness they could give you that injection so quickly. They’re sure you’re going to be alright now.’
Dick doesn’t open his eyes. He lies back on the stiff plumped pillows, looking exhausted in a blue and white hospital gown, a crisp white sheet and a drip binding him like a straitjacket to the bed. His lopsided mouth trembles and for a second Billie thinks he might have something he wants to say, but no words or sounds emerge from his dry lips. She wonders if she should offer him cool sips of water or dab his mouth with a wet cloth, but she knows he has to stay on a drip until the consultant is sure he can drink and swallow without choking.
Billie fans herself with a folded newspaper, bought in the hospital’s shop. It does little to cool her flushed face. Menopausal women don’t thrive in hothouse conditions like this. ‘I’m going to have to go home in a bit, Dad, but I’m sure you’ll want to sleep soon.’ It was a little after five when she found him slumped and mumbling in his new armchair and it’s now nearly ten. The emergency responders said it was just as well she had rung for help promptly, so they could treat him within the key window of time for strokes.
‘You gave me such a shock, Dad, finding you there like that. When we get you home, we’re going to have to look after you properly. I’ve told Keith and Pam, and they agree with me, we’ll all just have to pitch in till you’re back on your feet again.’ Billie only mentions her younger brother and sister to reassure her father that they know what has happened to him and that they care, but she knows they won’t come rushing to help. They will expect their big sister to look after him as she always has, ever since her mother died.
Billie dabs her eyes with a crumpled tissue. She’s always thought of her father as so strong and invincible. And now he’s a deflated figure, unable to help himself. When she was a little girl he lifted her up, right over his head. He thrilled her with drives in the bucket seats of his many fast cars (don’t tell your mother we touched 90 just then) and offered her the first cigarettes from his own pack of Player’s (I’ll be the one getting in trouble for this, not you). Now he’s a shell of the man he was, weak and helpless. He was mowing the lawn only the day before, after a game of golf. How quickly he’s been felled.
‘I’ll just put the TV on for a moment and catch the news while I’m waiting for Kevin to get here.’ She’d ridden in the ambulance with her father, holding his hand and talking to him all the way, then paced the corridor with a scalding coffee and a packet of crisps from the vending machine while he was being assessed. She should have brought those chocolate brownies with her. They would have kept her going.
Billie aims the control at the TV and flicks through the channels. The ten o’clock news is just beginning, with aerial film coverage of the devastation in Boscastle. She’s transfixed by scenes of the river breaking its banks and roaring through the picturesque village, tearing the shops and homes apart, gathering rocks, trees and vehicles as it raced through the narrow valley to the sea. She is so engrossed by the news coverage and the voiceover that at first she doesn’t notice her father has become wildly agitated. While she gazes at the screen, he is shaking and tossing behind her, trying to attract her attention. It is only when she hears his moans that she realises he’s become terribly distressed and then understands that he is reacting to the images and words on the screen.
He is trying to lift himself up with his good arm, then begins tugging at the tight sheet stretched across the bed. His eyes are bulging, his forehead is beaded with sweat and creased with anxiety. He looks terrified.
‘Stop it, Dad,’ Billie cries. ‘You’ve got to stay in bed.’ But he slips to one side of the mattress, crashing against the bedside cabinet, knocking over the jug and spilling water across the sheets and the floor.
She rushes round the bed and hauls him back before he can slip any further. ‘You can’t get up, Dad. You’ve got to stay put. You’ll pull the drip out if you fall off the bed.’
He groans, alternately clutching at her arm and feebly pointing to the television. ‘Okay, I’ll turn it off, if that helps. It looks awful, doesn’t it? But they’re saying there’s been no loss of life. Everyone’s been picked up. You wouldn’t believe such a dreadful flood could happen in the middle of summer, would you?’
She settles him back on the starched pillows and tucks the sheet around him again. He plucks at her sleeve, staring at her and making unintelligible sounds. ‘Dad, I’m really sorry, I wish I could understand you but I can’t right now. But never mind. You’ll soon be your old self again and then we’ll be chatting away like old times. Don’t you worry.’
Her phone buzzes and she takes a quick look. ‘That’s Kevin, Dad. He’s waiting for me outside in the car park. I’ll have to go right away. He doesn’t want to pay for a space. They charge a ridiculous amount. Kev says it’s such a rip-off.’
She walks around the room, collecting her father’s belongings. ‘Now, I’m going to take all your clothes back home with me. I’ll be back in the morning with some clean pyjamas and your sponge bag. If they haven’t managed to clean you up, then I’ll do it somehow. You’ll feel so much better once you’re freshened up and I expect before long you’ll be able to come off that drip and catheter and have a shower.’
She folds the garments and packs them in her bag, then opens the drawer of the bedside cabinet. ‘I’m taking your wallet with me as well. I know you always like to keep it with you, but you never know what might happen in hospitals. I think it’ll be far safer coming home with me.’
But before she tucks the wallet away in her handbag, she thinks she should take a quick look at the contents. As well as two ten-pound notes, it holds his library ticket, a bus pass, a debit card and a driving licence. Billie looks at the tiny blurred photograph on the licence and laughs. ‘This is the worst photo of you I’ve ever seen. It looks nothing like you! And that reminds me, I’ll put the MG in the garage tomorrow. I know you don’t usually, but I think it’ll be safest in there until you can drive it again.’ She knows how her father loves his blue car, which she suspects was bought with the insurance payout after her mother went. She didn’t approve, but it wasn’t her money, so she kept her mouth shut.
As she slips the licence back into the wallet, she sees a folded raffle ticket, left over from the church summer fair. ‘And you don’t need this either. That was all over ages ago.’ She pulls out the folded ticket and something else tucked behind it falls on the floor. She bends down to pick it up. A little black and white photo of a young woman. The snap is crumpled, as if it has been handled many times, the corners are dog-eared. She stares at it for a moment. The hairstyle is quite old-fashioned and the face is smiling. Could it be Mum, or Dad’s older sister, Auntie Joan? She doesn’t recognise the girl but then she hasn’t seen early photos of either of them in a long while, though there are some in a box back at the house. She is about to ask her father who it is, but when she looks back at him she sees he is finally sleeping, so she tiptoes from the room, thinking she will show him the picture in the morning.
1 September 1939
An Awfully Big Adventure
‘I don’t want to wear that hat today,’ Ruby said as her mother tucked her long plaits back behind her ears and tied the knitted blue pixie hood under her chin. ‘It’s not cold. And it makes my ears all itchy.’
‘You’ll be glad of it in a few days’ time when it’s not so warm. And it might be much colder out in the country. Now let me think. Have you got everything?’ Her mother frowned and consulted the Ministry of Health leaflet listing the essential items every child should take with them. Christchurch School, which Ruby had attended since she was five years old, was being evacuated to a village near Barnstaple in Devon, where Mrs Morrison hoped and prayed kind, generous families would take care of all the children, especially her precious Ruby. She didn’t really want to send her only child so far away, but everyone was urging parents to dispatch their children while they had the chance, before the Germans started bombing the whole of London. But at least she’d be going with all her school friends. That should help to stop her getting too homesick. And since Frank had been lost at sea two years ago, she felt she had no choice but to send her daughter off to live with strangers. An accident before the ship left Hong Kong, the telegram said. Drunk and beaten up in the stewpots of Stanley, more like. Still, she got his pension and that went further without him spending all his pay down the pub. He always came home from his stints at sea with extravagant presents, all smiles and charm, and then he’d be off drinking again. He was enough to put her off men for life. But at least she and Ruby were better off than some families, with him inheriting his parents’ house and leaving it to her.
‘Now let’s see… It says gas-mask, underwear, night things, plimsolls, socks… Oh dear, I do hope I’ve given you enough… toothbrush, comb, towel… Honestly, you’d think they could give you all a clean towel… Oh well, soap, facecloth, hankies… That’s everything then.’
She clicked the little case shut, then checked that her daughter’s coat was buttoned up and the label with her name written on it in capital letters was securely pinned to the lapel. Then she hung Ruby’s gas-mask in its cardboard box round her neck on a piece of thick string. ‘There now, you’re all set. And I’ve made you ham sandwiches for the journey, with a bit of fruit cake. They said just to give you chocolate, raisins and an orange for the train, but I can’t see that keeping you going all day on a long journey.’
Ruby took the paper bag of food. She didn’t like fruit cake, but she could swap it later with Joyce or Grace or one of her other school friends. She was looking forward to the train and going away with her class. It was going to be a big adventure. Getting away from home, where Mum fussed so over every smudge on her dresses and every graze on her knees. She’d never been far from home before. Mum only liked going on the train as far as Epping and the bus to Romford market.
If Dad was still here, Mum wouldn’t be so bothered and maybe there’d be brothers and sisters. But Dad had hardly ever been home, he was almost a stranger, and now he was drowned he’d never come back. Ruby last saw him two Christmases ago, when he brought her a wind-up tin monkey, clashing cymbals in its paws. He said it was a toy from China, but she didn’t think it looked a bit Chinese, not like the dark-eyed family at the laundry that Mum used for their sheets and blankets.
Ruby was sure she was going to have a grand time, like when the school had its annual seaside outing to Southend and she got her socks and knickers wet, paddling at the beach. She’d been sick on the way home too, after eating all Joyce’s pink rock as well as her own, but she hadn’t told Mum that. Miss Harris, her class teacher, had mopped her down with a damp hankie, so nothing showed up when she arrived home tired but happy.
‘Come on, Mum,’ Ruby said. ‘Miss Harris said we’ve got to get to school early this morning. She said it’s really important we’re on time for the bus to the station.’
Mrs Morrison looked at herself in the hall mirror, patting her hair and touching up her lipstick. She put a clean handkerchief in her jacket pocket, then opened the front door. Ruby skipped down the path, turned and called to her mother, ‘Race you there,’ and she was off down the street lined with dusty lime trees, their leaves just beginning to turn colour after the first chilly night as summer ended.
All the pupils at Christchurch School were lining up in the playground when Ruby ran in. She knew exactly what to do, because this was how the classes assembled every morning. Their parents stayed outside, while they all lined up in their forms, so the teachers could see at a glance that everyone was there. Usually they checked the register in the classroom, but today they stood outside in the cool sunshine on this first day of autumn. But at that moment, as the names were called one by one and each child answered ‘Yes, Miss Harris,’ Ruby realised that this was not going to be quite the big adventure she had been expecting. She had been looking forward to going away with her two very best friends, playing games of hopscotch and skipping, giggling about the boys in the class and singing ‘Ten Green Bottles’. But now it was all wrong. Joyce didn’t answer to her name when it was called; nor did Grace. Ruby twisted her head and looked up and down the column of other ten-year-olds. Her friends weren’t at the front of the class line and they weren’t behind her either. Nor were they racing across the playground, apologetic latecomers.
‘Right now, children,’ said Miss Harris, ‘I was expecting a few more of you this morning, but it seems perhaps some families have changed their minds at the last minute. But all of you here will be travelling together and as our bus is waiting for us, we can all set off. Single file now and n. . .
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