Tony Parsons - One For My Baby

One of her lungs showed up completely white on the X-ray, it was so full of fluids that should not have been there. The doctors gathered around, staring at it with awe. They were amazed she had kept breathing with all that stuff inside her.

But she seems happy, despite the humming of that ugly machine on the floor, despite the fluid being sucked out of her, despite the pain she must be in with that tube in her side. Night and day, the tube stays inside her. It will stay inside her until the fluid has all been drained. But my nan doesn’t stop smiling. How does she do it?

I know that my nan is a brave and tough old woman. But her sunny mood is more than courage, although she has plenty of that. Perhaps being in a hospital bed is not quite as bad as she thought it was going to be. Because she knows that, unlike her husband, my grandfather, she is not going to die in here. Not this time. Not yet.

She suddenly stops talking and we all turn to look at my dad standing awkwardly at the foot of the bed. He is carrying flowers and a box of Maltesers.

“Hello, Ma,” he says, coming forward to kiss her cheek.

“Mike,” she says. “My Mike.”

I am afraid that Joyce is going to start grilling my father about his sex life with Lena, but she remains stereotypically inscrutable, possibly for the first time in her life. She just takes my nan’s hand and tells her that she will soon be “as right as raindrops.”

My mother and my father seem more like brother and sister than husband and wife. They seem like two people who have a history together, but that’s all. There appears to be no hatred between them, and no overwhelming affection either. They are polite, businesslike, discussing doctors’ opinions and what my nan will need while she is in here. Only their avoidance of eye contact gives any clue that they both have a divorce lawyer.

And for the first time I feel sorry for my father. He hasn’t shaved today. His hair needs cutting. He has lost some weight, but not in any gym.

He has everything he wanted, but he doesn’t seem happy. Suddenly he seems to be getting old.

And he looks-what do you call it?

Only human.

Jackie Day’s first homework assignment was to write a critical appreciation of two poems: W. B. Yeats’s “When You Are Old and Grey and Full of Sleep” and Colonel Lovelace’s “To Lucasta, on Going to the Wars.”

I read her essay-neat, spidery handwriting-while she sits on the other side of the table, biting her painted fingernails.

Over by the window, the lump-does she have a name? have I already been told it?-is taking up most of the sofa and reading one of her disgusting magazines. The glossy cover features two sweaty, fat men rolling around on top of one another in spandex underpants. I wonder why her mother allows her to read this trash. I say nothing. Somewhere in the house, a cello is practicing scales. Outside the rain is falling.

“This is okay,” I say, placing the essay on the table.

Jackie looks disappointed.

“Only okay?”

“Well, you weren’t asked to review them. You’re not Frank Rich. You were asked to write a critical appreciation.”

“That’s what I did.”

“No, you didn’t. You stated a preference. You clearly liked the Yeats poem. And disliked the other one. The Lovelace.”

“I thought I had to put myself into my writing. That’s what you said. Put yourself into your writing.”

“Well, you do have to put yourself in there. But you weren’t asked to state a preference. Nobody cares which one you prefer. It’s not a beauty contest.”

“But the Yeats is so good. Isn’t it? It’s about growing old with someone. It’s about loving someone for a lifetime and still loving them even when they are old and worn out.”

“I know what it’s about.”

She closes her eyes. “ ‘How many loved your moments of glad grace, / And loved your beauty with love false or true: / But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you, / And loved the sorrows of your changing face.’ ” She opens her eyes. They shine with excitement. “That’s so great. ‘One man loved the pilgrim soul in you.’ I love that.”

“You write very well about it. But you’re too dismissive of the Lovelace. In an exam, that will cost you marks.”

“This Lovelace bloke-what does he know about it? ‘To Lucasta, on Going to the Wars’ is all about putting things before love. Above love. Honor. Country. All that stuff.” She snorts contemptuously and puts on a ridiculous, high-pitched upper-class voice. ‘I could not love thee, Dear, so much, Loved I not Honour more.’ What a load of old guff. What a tosspot.”

“It’s one of the most famous love poems in the English language. I think you’d probably lose marks for calling Lovelace a tosspot.”

“Mum?”

It’s the lump.

The lump has spoken.

It lives.

“What is it, darling?”

“There’s a lady outside. Standing in the rain. She’s been there ever since we came in.”

Jackie and I go over to the window.

A young woman is standing under a lamppost on the other side of the street. The hood of her parka is pulled up and she is hiding under a Burberry umbrella that looks on the verge of collapse. Although I can’t see her face, I recognize the beige tartan of the umbrella, recognize the parka, recognize the waves of shiny black hair pouring out from the hood.

Hiroko.

She is holding a bunch of flowers. Perhaps they are for my nan. That’s just the kind of thing that she would do. That small, thoughtful gesture is typical Hiroko. She has a good heart.

“Why do you live like this?” Jackie asks me.

For a moment I can’t speak.

“Live like what? Jesus. I can’t believe I’m hearing this. What did you say?”

“Why do you hurt these girls?”

Jackie Day and her fat daughter are staring at me. My cheeks are burning.

“I don’t hurt anyone.”

“Oh, but you do,” Jackie Day tells me. “You do.”

T HE FACES ARE ALWAYS CHANGING at Churchill’s.

New students are constantly arriving at the school, eager and bewildered, no matter if the part of the world they come from is dirt poor and developing, or affluent and overdeveloped, while the old students all eventually go back home, transfer to some other college, get married to some love-struck local, get deported for working without a permit or simply disappear into the life of the city.

But many faces remain the same.

I have all of my Advanced Beginners in class today.

There’s Hiroko and Gen, both of them peering up at me through their shimmering, iridescent hair. Imran, looking sleek and quietly studious next to Yumi, her face of delicate Japanese beauty framed by what looks like a cheap blonde halo: Kyoto goes to Hollywood.

There’s Zeng and Witold, both fighting off the exhaustion of long hours slaving in General Lee’s Tasty Tennessee Kitchen and the Pampas Steak Bar. Astrud, who is either piling on the pounds or in the early stages of pregnancy. Olga, sitting right up front, chewing her pen, struggling to keep up with the rest of the class. And finally Vanessa, inspecting her immaculate fingernails as I ramble on about past perfect forms.

Vanessa has her back to the door so she doesn’t see the man whose face suddenly appears in its little window, scanning the room. He is a good-looking forty-year-old, but seems a bit battered, as though something very bad has happened to him quite recently.

There’s a red mark on his cheek and one arm of his glasses is missing. There’s something wrong with the way his shirt is buttoned. He has made a quick escape from somewhere.

His eyes light up behind those broken spectacles when he sees the back of Vanessa’s golden head and I know immediately who he is, even before he begins to tap on the door’s little window. She turns around, gasps-really gasps-and then stands up, staring at our visitor in wonder.