The Man Who Didn't Go to Newcastle Read online

  When I get home, I’m so glad I didn’t go to the Cheese and Grain. The girls’ uniforms need ironing and Fran says she thinks she may have asthma. I’m a mother – and a wife. A middle-aged woman. Behave.

  I sit down with Peter to watch TV before bed.

  ‘I must really love you, you know,’ I say.

  ‘Why?’ he says barely diverting his attention away from the news.

  ‘Because I’ve just turned down an invitation to go out with a gorgeous thirty-something Adonis.’

  Peter grunts or farts or something and then switches to the History Channel. And then to the tennis. Wimbledon is on.

  ‘Federer won. Isn’t that great!’ he says, teasing me. He puts his arm around me and gives me a hug, knowing full well I don’t give a monkey’s about Federer.

  ‘I’m extremely pleased for him,’ I say.

  *

  Later when we’re in bed Peter asks me why I’m going up to London again tomorrow.

  ‘Is it for any specific reason? I mean Adrian’s not being discharged yet.’

  I have to think for a moment before answering. Is Peter annoyed at the amount of time I’m spending in London? His question makes me pause and mull over this sequence of events I’ve created.

  ‘To help Adrian, I suppose. And because I’ll be busy with the festival for the next week or so. Really because I have a free day.’

  Am I neglecting everyone else in my family?

  Monday 9th July 2007

  I have a cunning plan. I take the train from Warminster to Clapham Junction. The penny has dropped that Clapham Junction is not only nearer to Putney than Paddington, but this route is much cheaper. Once I’m aboard the train though, I realise it’s committed to stopping at every outback station between Wiltshire and the metropolis.

  When I eventually arrive at Clapham Junction, I discover it’s not a tube station, but only a mainline. I’m surprised at myself for not knowing this – especially as my father was from Clapham.

  I take a bus, even managing to work out the correct side of the road for Putney, arrive at the flat and find it is, of course, still clean! I eat some sandwiches I bought in Somerfield, watch a bit of TV, find the paperwork relating to Adrian’s shares, collect his mail and then get a taxi to the hospital. The taxi driver is suited and booted and, believe me, it is hot – and has been since the weekend. ‘You must be hot!’ I say to him via his rear view mirror.

  Adrian’s in a new ward in a bed by a grubby window which takes up the whole of the outside wall. A hospital social worker, Lucy, is sitting on a chair beside him. Adrian’s face is white – like thin paper.

  I introduce myself because Adrian doesn’t introduce me. And yet this was one of the things I’ve always loved about visiting him. He’d introduce me to his friends in such an affectionate way. ‘This is my sister, Ali.’ He made me feel as if he was proud of me. Now I sit down beside Lucy and gradually become drawn into the conversation.

  Adrian seems wrapped up in his anger. Something’s upset him during the ward move. As the conversation progresses I gather he went AWOL during the course of the move because he wanted to watch the men’s final.

  ‘Look,’ he says to Lucy. ‘These bastards can’t tell me what I can and can’t do. I’ve played tennis for forty years. I used to belong to Wimbledon tennis club.’

  Lucy looks taken aback and unsure what she should say. She and I both express our sympathy. Neither of us can figure why Adrian shouldn’t have watched television in the family room while the ward was being moved anyway.

  ‘I’m new here,’ Lucy says. ‘But I’ll look into all this for you.’

  ‘I travelled a lot in the eighties,’ Adrian says picking up on her Antipodean accent. ‘I’ve lived in the Middle East and I’ve been to Malaysia, Australia, New Zealand. Where are you from?’

  Lucy tells Adrian the name of her home town – Craggy Rock or some such – and he seems to know it. ‘I’m sure I’ve been there. It’s a very beautiful part of the world.’

  This exchange makes me think three things. Firstly, I’d forgotten just how much travelling Adrian has done. While I was popping babies, he was exploring the globe. Secondly, I’ve never been anywhere further south than Athens, and thirdly, what makes someone like Lucy swap Craggy Rock for Tooting? But of course I know the answer to the last one. We move away from our homes in order to find ourselves. To understand who we are and where we fit into the world as a whole. Maybe one day Lucy will return to Craggy Rock a more fulfilled person for having braved the NHS, Tooting branch.

  *

  I want to talk to Lucy in private and suspect she may feel the same, so we pretend (for Adrian’s sake) to go in search of tea. We end up sitting in the day room. I begin first.

  ‘Why shouldn’t Adrian go into the family room to watch television when they moved the ward? Why is he losing his voice? When will he be discharged? ’

  Lucy doesn’t have answers. Why should she when she’s just landed from a different hemisphere? However, I become concerned when I discover she doesn’t know what the DSS is either. She’s a social worker in a huge London hospital and she isn’t familiar with the abbreviation DSS. This is not right.

  ‘But I do think you should get power of attorney,’ she advises. ‘And sooner rather than later.’

  On my way back to Adrian’s bed I bump into Yasmin, the trainee nurse with five children. I take her hand and tell her I’ve been thinking about her – which is true. She says ‘You’re looking better,’ which I hope is also true.

  Lucy and I reconvene at Adrian’s bedside. He’s calmer now and Lucy quickly tries to move the conversation on to the topic of his finances, which is clearly in her remit to address.

  ‘I left my job in 2004. I’ve been in the process of setting up my own business since then. But officially I’m a Jobseeker.’

  Being a Jobseeker has been one of Adrian’s pet themes since he took a redundancy package from BT in 2004. Initially this new, somewhat absurd status seemed amusing as he was eligible for cheap entries to cinemas, had no intention of seeking a job, and had to make sure he was in London on Tuesday mornings to sign on. Now his job-seeking status seems less diverting. Surely no one has ever claimed a less fitting moniker.

  As we try to steer the conversation towards a solution for his apparent lack of cash Adrian is keen to hammer home his status with the DSS.

  ‘Do you know what that means? I’m a Jobseeker,’ he repeats to the ever-ignorant Lucy.

  I actually feel like crying at this point.

  *

  After he recovered from the heart bypass, Adrian returned to work at British Telecom where he was a statistician. His job was to forecast trends, but the stress of the job caused him to negotiate a redundancy package after a year. When he left he planned to set up a consultancy business with a work colleague, Phil Gullifer. Eventually Phil Gullifer also left BT and they created a company together, Twenty-Four-Seven. Not only does Adrian have two Carol(e)s, he also has two Phils. Does he like to have two of everything?

  Phil and Adrian enjoyed the conception, the procedure of setting up the business, even though the work they’d hoped for didn’t pour in. Adrian has piles of Twenty-Four-Seven business cards by his computer. I found one of these cards on Mum’s hospital locker after he’d visited her just before she died. I imagined him showing it to her, leaving it with her, proud – even though she was semi-conscious, foetal, incontinent, almost gone. Maybe somewhere something had registered with her. Despite his earlier post-acid resolve to burn out and not see the folks any more, Adrian’s love for our mum went very deep. He was still trying to impress her in her final hours.

  Most of Twenty-Four-Seven’s business meetings seemed to take place in pubs and they had plenty of company outings to the races and restaurants. But ‘the biz’, as Adrian calls it, didn’t work out as planned and after a couple of years, in order to have an income, Adrian was signing on. He’d recently been for interviews for jobs way below his qualifications. He’d been knoc
ked back, of course. One rejection letter was on his desk in the spare bedroom. The letter thanked him for coming for an interview, but regretted the post had already been filled. I wished in my heart that he hadn’t allowed himself to be subjected to this particular humiliation, but this is one of the provisos of the Jobseeker’s Allowance. The recipient has to prove that they are genuinely seeking employment. The efficient way he’d pinned the newspaper ad for the job on the rejection letter somehow made it worse.

  When Lucy’s gone I get out the paperwork relating to the shares Adrian has in various companies throughout the world. How can one person have so many small amounts of money invested in so many different places? I shuffle through various documents and share certificates trying to persuade him to choose which to cash.

  ‘Do you want me to have power of attorney?’

  ‘No,’ he says emphatically. ‘I haven’t lost my mind.’

  ‘Okay, but we need to cash maybe just one of these shares. You need about ten grand to settle your debts so you won’t have to worry about money.’

  But we get nowhere. He doesn’t want to part with any of the shares and keeps studying bits of paper, then other bits of paper and then reads the first bit of paper again. But he’s drugged-looking too. His eyes are rolling. He looks totally awful.

  ‘I don’t need my flat any more. You can arrange to have it rented out.’

  ‘So, you’ve definitely decided you won’t be going back there.’

  ‘It’s up ninety shares,’ he says.

  ‘No,’ I correct him. ‘It’s up thirty stairs!’

  As I stuff all the share certificates back into my bag, his mobile rings. It’s Carol.

  ‘Mum’s here,’ he tells her. I shake my head at him.

  ‘No, it’s not Mum – has she been here?’ he asks me, as if to gloss over his mistake but actually making it worse.

  ‘No,’ I say. ‘Mum hasn’t been here.’

  A nurse appears with tonight’s dinner menu. Pea and ham soup, followed by corned beef hash, with vanilla ice cream for afters. I recall the hundreds of times we’ve eaten together in various restaurants in different parts of the world. In 1998 Adrian and I took Mum on a cruise. The Mediterranean Medley on the P&O cruise liner, the Oriana.

  Mum had a romantic attachment to the sea, which went back to her childhood. Having been born into an army family and brought up in India she’d travelled at regular intervals back and forth from India to Plymouth. Since Dad died she longed to sail again.

  The three of us shared a cabin on the Oriana. How wonderful it was to cruise for days then wake up one morning with the sight of land, either a busy port or a sun-baked island. Adrian showed up at the formal meals each night in a white linen jacket and red tie. After dinner we went to the quiz, teaming up with people we’d met on board. I hadn’t much experience of quizzing but thanks to Adrian’s extensive general knowledge we won four bottles of champagne.

  Whether floating around Monte Carlo, Barcelona, Gibraltar, Venice or on terra firma in Florence, London, Bath, Frome, in all the different places we’d eaten out together he was always the same, giving his order to the waiters confidently polite, charmingly inquisitive. On the Oriana his favourite haunt was the Cricketers Bar where he’d hang out after Mum had gone to bed. He struck up a friendship with the head waiter, who greeted him each evening with a wide smile and a knowing nod when Adrian ordered his favourite tipple, a large Armagnac.

  Now he scowls at the nurse and can’t decide on a pudding. The dinner arrives only to turn cold as he fiddles with the TV hanging over the bed. Since his ward change we are now back to square one with the television reception. Despite the amount of money Carol and I have spent on various cards and phone calls (over thirty pounds), because he keeps moving beds, the screen is once again blank. Meanwhile his food becomes more inedible, he gets more frustrated and I sink further into desolation. Eventually he gives up and lies back on the bed. I kiss him goodbye – I have a train to catch – and as I do so, I feel his shoulder bone through the hospital sheet.

  Before leaving I stop at the nurses’ station and ask to talk to one of the doctors.

  ‘There’s no one available. There’s been a crisis upstairs,’ a nurse tells me. I try to envisage a crisis upstairs. I have a crisis here in my heart and the doctors are all keen to speak to me – or so I’ve been told. Perhaps they will ring when I get home. The nurse asks if they have all my details on their computer.

  Yes, they do.

  *

  I leave the ward feeling much smaller and more insignificant than when I arrived two hours ago. I trail along the meandering corridors where different names jump out at me from the rows of closed doors. Resuscitation Unit, Cardiovascular Treatment Area, Diagnostic Imaging Centre, PET Scans, Craniosacral Therapy room.

  Outside I take a taxi and get the same driver we had at the weekend when I was here with Emily and Fran. He remembers my name but neither of us can remember where he took us. I think it was Leylands on the Saturday night. He says, ‘Yes, but I didn’t see your face.’ He’s nice. I like him. It’s good to come across someone I know in the midst of this big, unfamiliar metropolis. As we drive past the vast black railings of the cemetery by the hospital he asks who I’ve been visiting.

  ‘My brother.’

  ‘Is he going to get better?’

  I catch sight of the flowers on the graves behind the bars. ‘No. He’s not going to get better,’ I reply. Then I feel embarrassed by his silence. Should I have wrapped my reply up into an acceptable piece of information? Pretended he’s a bit better today? Some people would.

  We’re still passing the graveyard – it looks to be about three acres of headstones, flowers and paths. How long before Adrian is here, I wonder? A year? Maybe a bit more? Please don’t let it be here. Please let him get away from this place. He’s said he wants to come to Somerset rather than stay in London. Please God, let him. I leave my taxi driver at Clapham Junction.

  ‘See you again!’ he says. I feel I’m making friends in a strange kind of a way. The taxi driver, Verity, Yasmin…

  On Clapham Junction station I buy Ed some Bonjela as he’s got a mouth ulcer. It feels so important to get something for Ed. To still think about everyone else in my family. I wait on the platform for the Westbury train. One of the trains listed on the information board is going to Liphook and Liss. Such memories these two place names evoke. We lived in Liphook briefly when Jack was little. And Ed was born in Liss.

  This is to be my last trip up to London until the Frome Festival finishes on Sunday. As I board the train home I cherish the thought of tomorrow’s Pamper Day at Orchardleigh House.

  Tuesday 10th July 2007

  My kitchen table is awash with documents. I’ve sorted Adrian’s paperwork into piles of share certificates, details of savings and bank accounts, and – the biggest pile of all – his bills. Sifting through these I see he’s been using a credit card which is throwing up hundreds in interest.

  And there’s some correspondence from the dating agency.

  Adrian came to our house last June when Mum’s name was to be mentioned during the Sunday church service. Mum died in June 2005 and her ashes are interred in the grounds of St Mary’s Church in Great Elm. Dan, the vicar, comes to the house every year and slots a scrap of paper through the letterbox inviting us to this service.

  The night before the service Adrian got drunk and told me he’d signed up with a dating agency. This is one of the only times I’ve ever seen him really tipsy. It was after midnight and he was standing in the doorway that leads from our kitchen to the living room, swaying with a glass of whisky in his hand.

  ‘I’ve arranged a date with a woman called Elsbeth,’ he said. ‘She sounds really interesting. She’s a music teacher. Plays the violin and she’s got a horse. She looks lovely. I’m looking forward to meeting her.’

  Although surprised, I was pleased he was looking for a permanent partner. But I worried any prospective girlfriend wouldn’t see the attract
ive and much sought-after person my brother used to be. The boy who brought beautiful girls home from school, the object of my school friends’ fantasies, the envy of all the ordinary boys who lived nearby. Instead she’d see a stooping, prematurely ageing man who drinks too much.

  A letter I find amongst his paperwork confirms my fears. It’s very polite but says the agency hasn’t heard back from his last introduction. I take this to mean she didn’t want to meet him again. I can’t dwell on this for long. But there are other letters from the same agency giving profiles of women he might be interested in dating. And one of Adrian himself.

  Adrian’s Profile

  Adrian is an attractive man both in looks and personality. He is fifty five years old and at 5’11 he is tall, slim to medium build with grey silver hair and blue eyes. Adrian is a Statistician by profession who has just recently set up his own company. He is a single man who lives in the South West area of London.

  Educated to degree level Adrian is intelligent, articulate and interesting company. He is a well balanced, rational and socially aware gentleman with a compassionate and sensitive nature. Adrian is a confident man who has an easy going, warm nature which belies strength of character which has served him well professionally. Adrian’s interests include art exhibitions, horse racing and playing tennis. He enjoys trips to the theatre, dining out and appreciates good wine.

  Adrian would be looking to meet a lady with a similarly lively mind who has lots of different interests. She would be honest, reliable and feminine; a stimulating conversationalist with interesting ideas and opinions. As Adrian is keen to see more of the world and a lady who is keen to travel would be a definite advantage. Adrian has a good social life and a job he enjoys but feels that he would really like to meet a lady with whom he could build a happy lasting relationship with. (sic)

  While I’m sorting through all this Adrian rings me. He sounds much better.