Rosie Thomas - If My Father Loved Me

‘Mum, is that you?’

Upstairs a door clicked and Lola materialised at the head of the stairs. She ran down to me.

‘What?’ I repeated to her, but my mind was already flying ahead.

That was it. Of course, it was why he had been in my thoughts tonight. I had smelled his cologne, glimpsed his shadow out of the corner of my eye even in the slick light of a trendy new restaurant.

Was he dead , then?

Lola put her arm round me. Jack stood to one side with his head bent, curling the toes of one foot against the dusty mat that ran down the hallway.

I looked from one to the other. ‘Tell me, quickly.’

‘The Bedford Queen’s Hospital rang at about nine o’clock. He was brought in by ambulance and a neighbour of his came with him. He had had a heart attack about an hour earlier. They’ve got him in a cardiac care ward. The Sister I spoke to says he is stable at the moment.’ There were tears in Lola’s eyes. ‘Poor Grandad.’

‘We tried to call you,’ Jack said accusingly.

But I’d forgotten to take my mobile phone out with me. It was on my bedside table, still attached to the charger. I put to one side my instant regrets for this piece of negligence. ‘Is there a number for me to call?’ I asked Lola.

‘On the pad in the kitchen.’

I led the way down the stairs to the basement with my children padding behind me.

The light down there was too bright. There were newspapers and empty cups and a layer of crumbs on the table.

‘My father. Mr Ted Thompson,’ I said down the phone to a nurse on Nelson ward in the Bedford Queen’s Hospital. She relayed the information that Lola had already given me. ‘Should I come in now?’ I asked. I didn’t look at them, but I knew that Jack and Lola were watching my face. We hadn’t seen their grandfather since Christmas. We observed the conventions, meeting up for birthdays and Christmases, prize-givings and anniversaries, and we exchanged regular phone calls, but not much more. That was how it was. Ted had always preferred to live on his own terms.

‘I’ll check with Sister,’ the nurse said. A minute later she came back and told me that he was comfortable now, sleeping. It would be better to come in the morning, Sister thought.

‘I’ll be there first thing,’ I said, as though this was important to establish, and hung up. Lola put a mug of tea on the counter beside me.

‘Thank you,’ I said.

Jack lifted his head. ‘Is he going to die?’

He was over eighty. Of course he was going to die. If not immediately, then soon. This was reality, but I hadn’t reckoned with it because I wasn’t ready. There was too much unsaid and undone.

‘I don’t know.’

I put down my tea and held out my arms. Lola slid against me and rested her head on my shoulder. I stroked her hair. Jack stood a yard away, his arm out of one pyjama sleeve. He was twisting the fabric into a rope.

‘Come and have a cuddle,’ I said to him. He moved an inch closer but his head, his shoulders, his hips all arched away from me.

After a minute I pushed a pile of ironing off the sofa in the window recess. Lola and I sat down to finish our tea and Jack perched on a high stool. He rested his fingertips on the counter top and rocked on to the front legs of the stool, then on to the back legs. The clunk, clunk noise on the wooden floorboards made me want to shout at him, but I kept quiet.

In the end Lola groaned, ‘Jack, sit still.’

‘It’s quite difficult to keep your balance, actually,’ he said.

Lola sniffed. ‘What if he’s going to die? I don’t want him to die, I love him.’

‘So do I,’ Jack added, not to be outdone.

It was true. My children had an uncomplicated, affectionate relationship with Ted. They teased him, gently, for being set in his ways. He remembered their birthdays and sent them occasional unsolicited cheques. In a corner of myself I envied the simplicity of their regard for each other.

I stroked Lola’s hair. ‘Let’s all go to bed,’ I suggested. ‘Grandad’s asleep. If anything changes they’re going to ring us. We’ll see him tomorrow.’

I followed Jack up the stairs into his bedroom. I sat on the end of the bed and he lay on his back with his arms folded behind his head.

‘Are you all right?’ I asked.

‘Can we tell Dad what’s happened?’

‘Of course. In the morning.’

Tony wouldn’t appreciate a call about his ex-father-in-law in the middle of a week night.

Jack turned on his side, presenting his back to me.

‘I’m going to sleep now.’

‘That’s good.’ I leaned over and kissed his ear, but he gave no response.

The air in Lola’s room was thick with smoke and joss.

‘Lo. Have you been smoking in here?’ Obviously.

‘We’ve been sitting worrying, waiting for you to get back.’

‘I know. I’m sorry.’ Did all mothers have to apologise so often? Was this the main transaction in every family, once your children stopped being little? Or was it just the case in my family?

‘Goodnight, Mum.’

‘Goodnight, darling. I love you.’

In my own bedroom I turned on the bedside light and drew the curtains. Then I lay down on my bed, still fully dressed. I stared at the ceiling. Now that I tried to picture my father’s face, I couldn’t conjure up his features. All I could see was his shadow.

‘Don’t die,’ I ordered the dark shape. ‘Not until I’ve had a chance to talk to you.’

I felt cold, even though the room was warm. I knew that I was afraid of his going, but it was at a distance, as if I couldn’t reach inside my own heart and get at the fear and the love that went with it. I was reduced to making a numb, dry-eyed acknowledgement, a nod in the direction of real feelings, as though my emotions belonged to someone else.

They had put him in a small room off the main ward. There he was, lying on his back, his head propped on pillows. I saw that his profile had become a sharper, bonier version of the one I knew, as if layers of fat and muscle had been scraped away from his skull. His nose looked bigger and his skin was pale and shiny, stretched tight over the bones.

I hesitated at the door but he opened his eyes and turned his head to look straight at me. ‘Hello, Sade. Sorry about this. Damned nuisance.’

I smiled at him. ‘Hello, Dad.’

All night and as I drove out of London I had been dreading this moment. I had been afraid of how he would look and of what we would say to each other with the spectre of death in the room. Now that I was actually here I saw that he was hooked up to wires and tubes ran into his arms. He looked ill, but still not so different from his usual self, and my fear was not in speaking of painful matters, but that he might go away before we had a chance to talk at all.