Sarah May - The Missing Marriage

She’d gone into the kitchenette to make tea and left Anna to face Erwin alone after calling out, ‘Anna’s here,’ making it sound like she’d travelled hardly any distance at all.

Erwin was sitting on the sofa in the lounge beneath the framed copper engraving of the Chillingham Cattle. He was watching Tom & Jerry cartoons, his mouth open – smiling. His clothes looked too big and his skin was grey. There were some specks of dried blood on his upper lip from an earlier nose bleed, and he was wearing a cap because of hair loss from the chemotherapy.

‘Granddad!’ By the time she said it, she’d been standing in the lounge doorway for what seemed like ages.

He’d looked up – reluctantly – from the cartoon, still smiling, still rubbing his hands together where the skin had gone dry between thumb and forefinger.

‘Alright, pet,’ he said automatically, as if she’d just come from upstairs or the kitchenette. He tried to engage in her, but he wasn’t really that interested. In fact, he was almost impatient, waiting for her to leave the room; the house . . . go back to London. The man who’d loved her all her life.

It struck Anna that neither of them wanted her here; that they were embarrassed about Erwin dying with her there. Alone, together, they knew how to behave with each other, and with death in the house, but they didn’t know how to behave with her there.

She didn’t know what to say and, leaving him in front of Tom and Jerry, went into the kitchenette, closing the door gently behind her.

Mary tensed, but carried on putting the teapot on the table next to the tea set that usually lived in the china cabinet in the lounge.

She sat down at the small drop-leaf table and poured their tea.

Anna noted, relieved, that the table was set for two.

Erwin, who’d never watched daytime TV in his life before, was left in front of Tom and Jerry.

‘Why didn’t you tell me sooner?’ Anna said at last when Mary showed no signs of breaking the silence other than to ask if she’d had a good journey up, and how work was.

She finished her mouthful slowly, prudishly. ‘We didn’t know ourselves until recently.’

‘Well, why didn’t you tell me when you knew?’

‘What could you of done?’ Mary let out, angry. ‘What can you do now? What are you going to do? What are you doing here?’ she finished, exasperated and suddenly tearful. ‘He’s dying.’

‘I know,’ Anna said, angry herself now; raising her voice. Only she hadn’t known; not really; not until she’d seen him on the sofa just now in front of Tom and Jerry. The man who’d been a father to her, and who’d been so strong still even at the age of fifty when she was born; who she’d always thought of as invincible.

The air cleared after that and Mary had been happy to take Anna through the small pharmacy lined up under the key rack – a gift from a school trip to Scarborough – on the kitchen bench beside the microwave: the slow-release morphine tablets, anti-inflammatory tablets, anti-sickness tablets and laxatives.

All the labels on the pots had been turned to face outwards. Mary was almost proud of them, and was waiting for some comment from Anna, who tried to think of something to say but couldn’t.

Instead she got up to pour herself a glass of water at the sink, and saw through the nets at the window that it was the garden where the cancer had taken its toll. The house was as still and immaculate as always, but the garden . . . Erwin’s shed was the only thing to rise out of the debris with any semblance of its former self. The plot that had fed the Fausts, their freezer, and many neighbours was laid to waste. The shed looked embarrassed – as though it was just about holding onto its dignity with the help of the crocheted curtain, white still at the tiny window.

Looking out at the garden, Anna finally felt afraid; afraid of what was happening here at number nineteen Parkview, and afraid of what was going to happen. Erwin and Mary had been there all her life; they brought her up when her mother disappeared off the face of the earth – grandparents who became parents again. She wasn’t losing a grandfather; she was losing a father.

Erwin had an appointment at the hospital the next day, and although they let Anna drive them because she was there, she knew they’d have preferred to go on the bus like they usually did.

They weren’t doing any tests – it was just a consultation to see how things were going to be at the end , as Mary put it, re-arranging the brooch in her scarf.

Anna was left outside in a waiting area, on a blue chair next to a water dispenser and wire rack full of cancer care leaflets.

Erwin and Mary had gone into Dr Nadafi’s room – Mary had long since got over her agitation at being assigned a ‘coloured’ man – and sat down in front of his desk. Before the door shut, Anna saw them taking hold of each other’s hands beneath the desk, and her heart broke suddenly for them.

The waiting room, which had been empty, soon filled with young couples, children, a teenage girl and her parents.

Unnerved, Anna stood up to get herself some water from the dispenser, her hands shaking, aware that people were staring. She felt them wondering about her, briefly, then went to wait in the corridor – standing against an old radiator whose heat she could feel through her jeans.

‘You didn’t have to hang about,’ Mary said when they came out, verging on angry.

‘For C-christ’s sake, Nan!’ Anna was angry herself now. ‘We could have got the bus home,’ Mary persisted. ‘I want to be here. Just let me be here.’

Erwin, looking stunned still from the consultation, said nothing.

‘I need the toilet.’ Mary set off down the corridor. ‘Where’s she going?’ Erwin asked Anna, in a panic at the sight of Mary’s retreating back.

‘Just the toilet.’

Erwin nodded as Mary called back over her shoulder, ‘Take him down to Out-Patients – we’ve got a prescription to pick up from the pharmacy.’

Anna started walking towards the stairs when Erwin grabbed hold of her suddenly and pulled her back, staring intently at her and chewing rapidly on the inside of his cheek.

It felt like the first time he’d even noticed her since she’d arrived the day before.

‘Whatever she says – I want you to be here, you know, at the end.’

She cut him off. ‘Granddad.’

‘Please,’ he insisted, keeping a tight grip on her arm, his breath rasping. ‘I mean it.’

He hadn’t really spoken to her until now, and, listening to him, she was aware of his accent – how German he sounded.

‘Not for me,’ he added. ‘For Mary. You have to be there for her because I’ll be leaving her alone.’

Anna put her hand over his, which was still gripping her upper arm. ‘You know I will. You know that.’

‘Hearing’s the last thing to go,’ he started to mumble, more to himself than her, ‘isn’t that strange? You’ve got to carry on talking to me even when I lose consciousness, even when you think that might be it. You’ve got to keep on talking because I’ll still be able to hear you.’

‘I will.’

He nodded and they carried on walking down the stairs, following the blue signs to Out-Patients.

Mary stood by the bedroom window at number nineteen Parkview, looking out for the nurse the hospital was sending them. Her poise of earlier weeks was shattered after having spent an entire night lying next to someone she was convinced was dying. When Anna, angry, asked her why she hadn’t phoned earlier, all she could think to say was, ‘What was the point?’ – unsure even what she’d meant by that.

‘Where’s the nurse?’ Mary said irritably.

Anna, sitting in a G-Plan chair that was as old as the house and still upholstered in its original Everglade green, shut her eyes. She held on tight to Erwin’s hand. His face was turned towards her, his mouth open – rasping. As soon as she so much as started to loosen her grip, his hand slid away from her down the side of the bed, and that scared her. The furniture in the room, like the carpet she remembered from childhood with its dense pattern of ferns, was still in good condition so had never been replaced. Neither Erwin nor Mary would have dreamed of growing tired of these things before they became threadbare.