Witi Ihimaera - The Thrill of Falling - Stories

Really happy.

‘Whatever happens,’ he said, ‘from now on we’ll be together all the way.’

No, when I go to sea, I go as a simple sailor, right before the mast, plumb down into the forecastle, aloft there to the royal mast-head.

NORTH SHORE HOSPITAL, AUCKLAND, APRIL 1982 —

Why did old Mrs Travers wake so early nowadays? She would like to have slept for another three hours at least. But no, every morning at almost precisely the same time, at half past four, she was wide awake. For — nowadays, again — she woke always in the same way, with a slight start, a small shock, lifting her head from the pillow with a quick glance as if she fancied someone had called her, or as if she were trying to remember for certain whether this was the same wallpaper, the same window she had seen last night before Warner switched off the light.

Mrs Travers frowned. It was still so dark outside. If it weren’t for the night light beside her bed, and the crack of light from the door, ajar to the fluorescent glare of corridor outside, she could almost believe that she was alone in the living, breathing dark, indeed, the only person alive in the entire world. Did the thought scare her? No; at ninety-two, it was such a presumption to be afraid of anything. One was too tired to be scared, if the truth be known, and had no energy to waste on such a silly, vain and superfluous emotion. At this age one just wanted to go.

However, there was going to be a slight delay. ‘He won’t be long,’ Staff Nurse Warner had shouted in her ear. ‘Your son Elliot is on his way from England to New Zealand now.’

Elliot was the youngest of Mrs Travers’ four children and the only boy. The others were Molly, Kate and Joan, who, over all the years, had dutifully taken turns to go to Mummy’s pensioner flat every week and pester her about how was she feeling and was there anything she needed from the supermarket.

Why did everybody shout all the time? Mrs Travers could hear perfectly well. When she was a very young girl of thirteen, her beloved father Cyprian had told Mama, ‘The thing about our Essie is that her hearing is so acute. You must have been a bat in an earlier life, eh Essie my girl?’

And, of course, she was never alone. Her sight might be going but she could hear every footfall of the nurses as they walked past her room, every piece of gossip they shared as they came on night shift, every sigh of irritation when Mr Winchester in the next room called out, ‘Nurse! Nurse!’ (he called out all the time, the insufferable man), and every silly giggle when they went off in the mornings and back to their boyfriends or whoever they lived with.

All except Warner, of course. She never had a boyfriend. Or any sort of friend, man or woman. Warner was dedicated to her job.

It was her middle daughter, Kate, who had found Mrs Travers, two weeks ago, where she had collapsed in her kitchen while making herself a cup of tea. She’d had a stroke. Kate called an ambulance and Mrs Travers was whisked off to the hospital. At first the medical team had thought, once they’d brought her around, that she was making good recovery. But then she took a turn for the worse. Her kidneys stopped functioning.

‘Your mother has acute renal failure,’ Dr Paterson told Mrs Travers’ daughters. ‘If she was younger we might have considered the possibility of a kidney transplant, but, given her advanced age and the long waiting list for donors, well, we …’ His voice tailed off.

‘You mean there’s no hope Mummy will get better?’ Joan asked him, her eyes moistening.

The doctor was evasive. ‘What we’re talking about is end-stage renal disease. But we would keep her on dialysis until you’re comfortable and ready and have had the opportunity to say goodbye.’

Molly exchanged glances with her sisters. ‘And there’s no chance of any recovery?’

‘It’s just a matter of your choosing a time to farewell her,’ Dr Paterson continued. ‘Do you have other family who would like to see her and say goodbye?’

‘Our brother, Elliot,’ Kate told him. ‘He lives in London. He would certainly want to come to see Mummy before she … before we … before … after all, he was her favourite.’

‘Perhaps you should telephone him and tell him to come as soon as he can.’

When the doctor had gone Mrs Travers’ daughters looked at each other. ‘After all, Mummy’s had a very good life,’ Kate said.

And so they were all waiting for Elliot. Perhaps, for once in his life, he would be prompt. And then, thank goodness, finally, they would let her die.

Children? Ha! Molly was sixty, Kate was fifty-eight, Joan fifty-six, and Elliot was the ‘baby’ at forty-eight. And where on earth had Kate got the idea that Elliot was the favourite? Why would they all think that? Elliot had been mean and nasty as a boy and he’d become mean and nasty as an adult, a stockbroker whose only interest was making money.

And what was all this sentimentality about keeping her alive so that all the family could gather to say goodbye? The children had all taken after their father, Harry, and his maudlin Irish ways. None of them showed a whit of Mrs Travers’ disciplined no-nonsense personality. Now her father, Cyprian, with his precise scientific approach, wouldn’t have been pleased. He’d have said, ‘Waiting for Elliot? Does an old elephant wait for the herd to shake its trunk before it dies? Or a sperm whale wait for a sentimental rub from the other whales before it makes its final sounding? Does a dying albatross wait for some last salute before its eyes glaze over? No! They die when they die. It’s only humans who prolong life — and it’s all vanity, you hear? Scientists would not think of intervening! Charles Darwin would not have approved.’

Mrs Travers remembered going with her father to a public meeting, and the furore that erupted when he got into a fiery argument with a local bishop about Darwin’s theory of evolution. ‘The Church’s teachings from Genesis,’ Father shouted, ‘that every species has been created whole and has come through the ages unchanged, can no longer be sustained.’ Mrs Travers had just adored watching him in full, passionate, flight. ‘Read Mr Darwin! He will give you your answer: evolution by natural selection. The strongest survive, the weak die. Species respond to their environment by evolving to fill any niche available to them. And let us hope that mankind, too, will evolve from strength to strength.’

‘They die when they die.’ Suddenly, Mrs Travers heard a sound, coming from beyond the window frame, far, far beyond. It was a low, deep sigh, haunting, otherworldly, sibilant, somewhere between a deep hiss and moan. Not a sound to be scared of; rather, one you waited for with breathless anticipation.

Someone was calling her.

When Molly, Kate and Joan arrived later that day, Warner was only too ready to tell them about the ‘incident’.

‘Your mother was a little unsettled during the morning. She pulled out her catheter. It was probably an accident.’

‘But she was so good when we left her last night,’ Kate answered. Good was when Mrs Travers was drugged and unconscious; bad was when the drugs wore off and Mummy indulged herself in inchoate sighs and screams and incoherent ramblings.

‘You mustn’t worry about it,’ Warner lowered her voice to a whisper. ‘It’s what happens. But she’s all right now. We’ve given her something.’

Relieved, they settled down with their knitting, magazines and boiled lollies to keep watch.