Chapter 36

Lars peered through the raised plastic canopy of his flying saucer.

‘House is yellow. Bathroom’s yellow. You’re yellow.’

He squinted at his brother. ‘You’re yellow, Bruce.’

Bruce was the name of an imaginery dog at nursery school.

‘How do you like being Bruce, Ian?’

‘I’m Aidan. Ian Aidan and I’m a good boy, Daddy.’ His interrogatory look belied the confidence of his statement.

‘Of course you are. Most of the time.’

In a voice half an octave too high for comfort, Lars asserted himself. ‘I’m putting my motorbike on the window sill’.

He gathered red socks, green pants patterned with spiders, blue trimmed vest, beige trousers and a grey top with a red Harley-Davidson splashed across the front in one hand and Pooh Bear in the other. Climbing up a small plastic step, he pressed them onto the window sill. He held his arms open to be lifted onto the lavatory and sneezed.

‘Bless you.’

‘Yes,’ he said - adding ‘bless me. I need a Daddy cuddle. On the sofa.’

‘Shoes or slippers?’ Having arranged the clothes at the foot of each cot, Piers wanted to take out the right footwear.

Generally it was shoes on a school day, otherwise slippers. He pulled open the sliding mirrored double doors gently, avoiding the spring back as the limit of travel was reached, and slid the drawer out. He placed six slippers in serried ranks and stood back to admire the symmetry. It was momentary. Ian flew from the bathroom along the cots. In his wake came a colourful trail of flotsam.

'It's called 'having brothers', Piers.'

‘Can I take baby?’

‘Yes, Ian.’

‘No, don’t WANT baby. Want Muck.’ A red plastic digger was pulled from the toy box, its electronic voice singing ‘Bob the Builder, can we fix it? Bob the Builder, yes we can’.’

‘No we can’t,’ added Lars.

Dolls and toys were trailed downstairs.

‘No toys at the table, please.’

The collection was parked on shelves.

‘Can I put my man in my pocket, Daddy?’

‘Yes, Piers, but try and take it out before it goes through the washing machine again, won’t you?’

‘Are we having a boiling egg?’

‘Yes, Lars, if you like.’

‘I don’t want one. I WANT one,’ said Ian. ‘Wazzat?’

‘Your finger. Pointing.’

‘No. It’s milk.’

‘You knew!’

My father had lived just long enough for his grandsons to call him ‘Grandad’. For a small part of his long life of ninety four years, he had known for a few seconds at a time that he had grandchildren. Oblivious to reality, his was a half-world of shadows from the past—enabling him to quote verbatim from his 1918 school report (‘A bright and intelligent boy; always attentive and well-behaved’) and to know that he had been in ‘Dwyer Ward One’ with appendicitis at the age of five—while remaining unaware of the season, the year or, increasingly, who I was. I was never sure quite what he made of the three small beings who had entered into his world quite suddenly; beings with whom he had more behavioural similarities than he would ever have imagined. I watched him react to them.

A dangling slipper led to a foot that led to a leg that led to a lap as a small child made his way along the sofa in the nursery. Already cradled in the lap was another small child. A third was eyeing his brothers’ progress and crawling through the obstacle course of toys. A hand reached out and stroked the child on the lap. Through the hair and down the back the hand moved rhythmically. The child moved across onto the cushion and slid onto the carpet. Another child took the place of the first. The stroking continued. That child followed his brother. The hand, oblivious, stroked the arm of the sofa. ‘Come on Piers, your turn’, I said. The child looked into the grey eyes staring into the middle distance. I put him on my father’s lap. He stroked Piers’s blonde hair.

‘Is it a baby or a cat?’ I asked.

‘Cat,’ came the immediate reply.

My father would recite in its entirety Longfellow’s ‘Psalm of Life’—‘Life is real! Life is earnest! And the grave is not its goal; Dust thou art, to dust returnest, Was not spoken of the soul’—but had no idea of a name of the town he had lived in for more than fifty years. One by one his faculties were closing down. The one-time sportsman, spokesman, committee man, protector, bread-winner and beloved father had become utterly dependent and helpless.

Even in his final year, there were moments of clarity. For just a few seconds at a time the cranial connections worked. I had been chatting about the boys, concentrating on driving, providing mental stimulation as a matter of course. ‘What are their names?’ My eyes moved from the road ahead. I looked him full in the face.

He was staring intently at me. ‘Piers, Ian and Lars.’

‘Don’t think much of those.’

‘What do you think I should have called them?’

He considered for a moment. ‘Matthew’ was the reply.

‘Why?’

‘Don’t know. I just like the name.’

‘If you’d told me that a few months ago, I would have called one of them that name, but it’s a bit late now.’

‘Oh.’

‘I love you, father.’

‘I love you, Ian.’ He paused, looking me full in the face. ‘Passionately.’ He meant it.

‘More than anything I want to tell you all about it, but you’ll be switching off in a few seconds so I can’t. I wish I had you back.’

The glazed look had returned. Once again I had lost my father.

There was nothing specific, no warning bells, but I sensed that the fraught way in which I lived was about to change. There were days when I thought ‘what have I forgotten?’ and then it came to me. I had forgotten to eat. The change came sooner than I had anticipated.

I was on my own on Christmas Day in 2002—or as alone as one can be with three small children and an elderly dementing father to look after. I decided to let him sleep while I dressed the boys, sat them down to breakfast and started opening presents. He had slipped out of bed that night and it had taken a while to get him settled.

He would be tired, so I thought I might be able to get the boys organised and playing in the nursery before attending to him.

My plan was working perfectly. I had cooked the turkey the previous day, so lunch would be as simple as possible while still being the traditional British Christmas dinner.

The boys had no idea what Christmas was about. The rocking horse was too tall for them to clamber onto its saddle and clasp its leather bridle. The bright wrapping paper was of more immediate appeal and we played in the hall amid the clutter while I kept a customary ear cocked for sounds of waking from upstairs.

I managed to feed the children their turkey before my father woke, so I dispensed with his breakfast, deciding to go straight into lunch. Boys safely in the nursery, I manoeuvred my father out of bed and into the bathroom, showered him, shaved him, dressed him and then sat him in the sitting room with Vera Lynn on a CD while I gave the boys a drink. It was at times like these, juggling two surprisingly similar roles, that I amused myself by bringing to mind David Mellor’s pithy epithet about me: ‘Spoilt millionaire.’ Chance would be a fine thing!

When I came down from putting the children down for their nap, it was clear that my father was not himself. I moved him to the lavatory. He was leaning to one side. It was his custom to wander around the room, feeling the walls and the door telling me ‘Let me out!’

As it was a mild day, I put his coat on and took him down the drive to look at the garden he had created. I gave him his tea. Eating had become a problem for him. His food needed to be semi-liquidised, but even this was falling out of his mouth.

After I had put the boys to bed, I carried him up the stairs to his bedroom, feeling the sweat trickling down into small of my back. He was trying to tell me something. ‘The Greeks have a word for it,’ he said, frustrated but with sudden clarity.

Those were the last words he ever said.

The next morning, Boxing Day, when I carried him to the bathroom, he went deadweight. I put him on the floor. His legs flailed. I called for an ambulance. The paramedics came and helped me put him to bed.

From that moment, he needed to be fed and given fluids. The boys sat with me while I did this. They knew that he was their grandfather and I told them that he was a great man. On 7 January 2003, I sensed that the end was at hand. I waited until the boys were asleep and called the doctor. 'I've called an ambulance so her can go into hospital in Basingstoke. He might have a little longer.' She paused and looked me full in the eye. 'Or you might prefer to let it happen here.' For this fleeting moment I felt I had the power of life and death. I thought quickly. My mother's death had been untimely. It had all been quite wrong. Yet death seemed the natural progression for my father. The one choice would mean a postponement of the inevitable for a day or so; the other would at least ensure that I would be with him. She sent the ambulance away and left. I pulled the duvet off my bed and lay on the floor beside him.

It must have been the cessation of his stentorian breathing that woke me. I kissed him, closed his eyes, took my duvet back to my room, made my bed and phoned the doctor.