She tells him that the sun is beautiful. It’s making the living room a patchy gold. She murmurs this, making sure that she’s louder than his snuffled breathing; and she strokes his hair, fingering the grey strands.
“So beautiful…so soothing. Isn’t it soothing? Your warm head on my lap…the warm sun on my arm… I am so comfortable and the room looks almost stunning in the light. My! You should see the garden…
“The birds, in silhouette, are diving up and down. I don’t think for food, no, it looks too much like a dance to be for food, for necessity, this looks like it’s for fun, for leisure, for beauty. What a photograph that would be. There is one cloud in the corner of the sky, in the distance to the right, a small white puff just bobbing there. In the garden, so many shades of green, all of them luminous in the sun. Next door has a circle of dead grass in the middle of the lawn. The paddling pool must have been out. Toys are strewn around- gosh! A robin had just landed on the window sill…so close. I can see its black, beady eyes.”
“Take the photo,” he says.
“I can see it though. I will remember it,” she says.
“I know, just, well, it’s nice to know that there’s a recorded version of it. That the sky is safe.”
“The sky? I thought you were talking about the robin.”
“No, the sky.”
“Don’t worry, the sky is safe.”
“Please, Marianne.” The use of her first name hits her hard.
She lifts his head up off her lap and, supporting the back of his neck, stands up; then, in the same movement, she slowly lowers his head again. She walks to the kitchen to get her camera. She moves carefully, deliberately, wondering if his silent figure is scrutinising the sound of her steps.
It’s in the drawer along with the cutlery. After sifting it through the box, she finds it. She takes it out, holding it in her right hand, then turns around and leans backwards against the kitchen work top. If she leans to the right, she can see him: the downstairs – the kitchen and the living room – is open plan and only two-thirds of a wall separates them.
When she came back from University, a rat-bag to feel sorry for, her parents willingly moved out and gave her the house. They were all smiles and laughs. A bit dilapidated, but, hey, enough for a rat-bag, she had thought. She didn’t think of where her parents would go.
When she walks back, he is still there, still lying, sprawled in the same position. As she steps towards him, she gets distracted by all his hospital documents that are on the table behind his head. Before they got like they are now, he would comfort her:
“I can hang on, girl. Don’t you worry: I’ll stay. I’ll stay.” He would stroke her hair, and murmur happy thoughts into her ears.
He still comforts her, in a different way: he talks, shows that he’s aware she’s there, let’s her know that he’s still stubborn.
Marianne crouches down gently. She looks at his face, at his jaw with the skin sagging off, as if it’s too weary, tired to hang on anymore;; his cracked, thin lips with the top one thin enough to disappear; the remaining teeth, small, round and useless; his wide, hairy nostrils; his patchy, rough nose; his white lashes; his creased lids; empty eyes; wrinkled him. So old.
His face is in half shadow. The lines, the creases, are highlighted. They are so obvious.
“The sun is on your face,” she says.
He understands: “I can’t see it.” A pause. “Do I look old?”
“No. No. You don’t look old.”
The window is behind the sofa so she balances her knees on the edge and leans over him, terrified of collapsing. She doesn’t know if he has noticed her. With a sudden knock, his walking stick, leaning against the arm of the couch, falls. He doesn’t move. She decides to leave it on the floor. She puts her elbows on the back of the settee; it’s hard and digs in to her bone. Her arms are wobbling; the photo will be blurred.
The back garden was like any other city back garden: a green rectangle with a tree in each of the far corners; a fence surrounding the green and a barbeque porch that doesn’t contain a barbeque.
The camera clicks, a pause of black processing and then the picture comes up on the digital screen. The garden looks better than the photo: the grey clouds; the few daisies and the grey shed create a moody look.
She pushes herself back and crouches by his head. “It’s a beautiful picture.”
He nods serenely; she bends down and wriggles her fingers under his neck. His skin is hot. As she lifts it up, she slips herself between his head and the sofa and lays his skull down again. She catches her breath silently, and then resumes stroking his hair.
Grey like a wise owl. The hairs are separated, distant, few. They are as coarse as rope. The nits of childhood have gone – not much hair to hide in. Not much juicy blood left. The clump of hair that Marianne herself had cut out when he was in his twenties, had gone. Or maybe it hadn’t; it’s too hard to tell. Before dinner one day he had stuck gum behind ear. It got stuck in his long locks. They tried to pull it out, but it was too stubborn. She had to take it out with kitchen scissors.
“The photo is more beautiful than the reality,” she says.
“The photo is just a distorted version of the reality.”
“That sounds very clever.” She sits down gently on the edge of the blue sofa, and sinks into it. His foot goes down, non-fighting, with the cushion.
His foot in words: soft skin like a baby’s and wrinkled like a duvet cover; cut nails level with the skin of his foot; small black hairs, around four on each toe, curled and pathetic. His foot in words was very different to his foot in reality.
“It’s not; it’s just a clever way of saying it. You know me: I sound cleverer than I am.”
“That’s not true,” she tells him. That’s not true.
His foot in words: yes, a little repugnant, but not disgusting. His foot in words, in description, will never be able to describe how it looks like his skin is grey, almost rotten.
She strokes his forehead, and repeats that it’s not true, reassuring them both that it’s not true.
He smiles.
It looks painful for him to smile. The cracks on his lips stretch, like an open wound, surrendered to the air. Dry and curled in, like a fish: no teeth. His breathing is deep and flawed. It comes upon challenges: a snuffle, a rasp, a cough. Each breath moves his whole body. His eyes, as always, are closed. Shrivelled eyelids protect his shrivelled eyes.
“It’s all in here,” he says and tries to tap his head with his index finger.
“Hey, I know it is.”
“Just a distorted version of the reality.”
“Very distorted – knowing you.”
He chuckles. “At least it’s sunny today.”
“It is sunny; the birds are swooping. It’s beautiful.”
In eleven seconds he will simply stop breathing; she will click her toes and think about whether she should move the furniture a bit, to have a new environment. In twenty six seconds she will notice her coat hanging from a hook on the door; the hood will be stuck. Annoyed, she will walk over and tug it out then turn around.
A reasonable age: sixty-nine. She won’t notice at first.
As she walks back she will talk:
“I haven’t done the washing up yet. You can tell me off while I’m doing later. Can’t you, Dad? I never did do it right.”
In 3 minutes, seven seconds, Marianne will sit down and stroke his hair. In five minutes, thirty seven seconds Marianne will breathe out a gasp; in five minutes, fifty nine seconds Marianne will phone the mono-tone emergency services woman and a mono-tone thought will run through her head that she will forget when the mono-tone woman asks what service she requires. Yes, she does want the ambulance.
When she gets back from hospital the room will be untouched apart from a white walking stick lying on the floor and an indent in a cushion.
In 5 hours, 32 minutes, 43 seconds, Marianne will dunk her hands in hot, soapy water and scrub, on her own, staring out of the dark window.
For the first few months Marianne will visit his gravestone, kneel by it, put a flower down next to all the other bouquets from people in black and maybe take a camera and make sure the sky is safe, and she will put the sky into words, because the old man never had a problem with his hearing, and every day she will do this, though, after a couple of months she will meet a nice man, not her Father, but a nice man, and he will be called Fred, and he will look after her and make sure she’s happy and she will be happy, very happy, and their relationship will grow from a meeting at a café to love-filled nights on warm beds, and they will go together, once or twice, to visit the grey grave and he will comfort her and she will be happy again, very happy but at the same time very sad, and eventually the idea of visiting the old man will get almost boring and it will become less appealing, and love-filled nights on warm beds will replace it, and then she will move in with Fred and have children, Fenn and Billie, of her own but she will not forget him - no never forget him - and when she dies, in 52 years time, she will think, not of Fred nor of her children, though she loves all of them dearly, but of the day her father died, and she will remember the blue, sunny sky and be thankful that she hasn’t forgotten it, just like she promised, she hasn’t forgotten it and she will die with the sunny sky her father died to and with her father in her mind they will disappear together, though Fred will think of her on his death bed, in 57 years time, and cry.
