Limestone Man (27 page)

But that wasn't true, thought Parry. And he shivered in the fret that blew over the gorse. The breeze was more noticeable today, bringing the mist in from the sea.

Parry looked around. There was no feature he could distinguish, no clear direction. All the world was a milk
-
in
-
water whiteness. He pressed on with his impossible thoughts.

VI

Jack Parry hung on. His two strokes had occurred when he was seventy
-
one. Everyone thought they would have killed him. But Jack Parry persisted. Jack Parry had refused the invitation to the dark. That's how his son saw it. So Jack Parry had lingered in the same room of the same nursing home for eight years.

Dora Parry had died aged seventy, two years after her husband's illness. Their house was sold to pay for Jack's care. He was partially paralysed and required a surgical hoist and two nurses to move him from bed to armchair or his wheelchair.

If he had used the dining room, Jack would have encountered an immense sea view. There was also a field visible behind the building, where horses were kept. Often, new foals were to be seen there. Jack Parry's few friends imagined he would enjoy the horses.

His son had once taken him outside in a wheelchair and they had gone to the fence. One of the foals had approached and pushed its muzzle into Jack's lap. Parry recalled its nostrils flaring, the hairs red as copper wire. An orange tint in the matted mane.

But after the first two years, his father had insisted that his meals be taken in his own room. Parry thought the old man might have been afraid of some of the other residents.

Scared by their impairments. Intimidated by how much they had been reduced. The silent, the tearful, the dribblers. The incomprehensible gibberers.

These last were known as ‘the shouters'. Jack Parry had once been a shouter himself, his family was told.

What does he shout? asked his son. He knew the question was wrong. It should have been, who does he shout for? Or, what does he shout about?

But, as everyone said, at least the other residents could be companions. His father might learn from them. Surely, it could be comfortable there. At least bearable?

When Dora Parry was alive, she brought in yoghurt pots filled with the soil of their allotment. She also brought a velvet bag of sunflower seeds collected the previous autumn. He could see those seeds to this day. White as a cat's teeth.

Go on, she had urged her husband. Dib them in. Right in.

And, as deeply as he could, he had pressed the seeds into the soil. Dibbed with his left forefinger. Jack Parry's right arm was paralysed.

But no matter how much he was coaxed, Jack Parry remained adamant. He was determined to avoid the dining room.

Maybe it was a mistake to agree, a manager had once confided in Parry. But he seemed so unhappy when he met the others.

Now, usually we wouldn't pay attention to that. But the fact is, your father became hysterical. He was sobbing. He wouldn't stop.

The other residents certainly scared Parry. Especially the shouters. Yes, he understood why those people shouted. It should have been obvious to all.

Abandoned, weren't they? High and dry. Yes, worse than marooned. Shipwrecked on the shore of their old age. And worse again. Betrayed. That was surely it. Betrayed by life itself.

Some of the old men and women wailed before drugs or futility knocked them out. But the shouters and the shocked
-
into
-
silence shared a secret, Parry knew.

There was a poem he half remembered.
Into the heart a wind that chills.
Something like that.

That's the challenge, Parry thought. Live with this. If you could. If you dared. Live through this.

Life was a test. Like something mechanical, you would be tested to breaking point. And everybody broke. The lucky ones were those who shattered outright.

VII

Where am I? Parry wondered. The air was cloudy as the seabed. There was a mesh of rain in the air. Within a rock pool at his feet something glinted. It was a crab shell, white as a cranium. Floating on the pool was a yellowing gullwing.

Lost, he laughed to himself. Lost at home.

He recalled climbing the cliff above The Horns. Every dint was a tarn rimmed with rock salt. A cup of crystals.

Hadn't he and Sev thought they were lost on that occasion? They'd even boasted about it. Fflint had been predictably scornful.

But everybody was lost. Weren't they? The secret was not to stay lost.

Parry stepped over a ditch the departing tide had gouged into the beach. Everything was saturated, the sand, the air, the limestone. All bubbling. All breathing. He pulled his coat closer.

VIII

He thought he might have been near ‘The Mine'. This was an iron sphere wedged in a cleft west of The Horns.

It had been there longer than anyone could recall. Must have been from the war, they thought. But surely a mine, a real mine. Like a huge sea anemone. Raw ingot. Unhealable sore.

There was a pattern in the iron, a series of ornate
vees
. These might have formed a word, Parry thought. An eroded inscription that made no sense. VVVVVvvv. He had pondered on the meaning, with Sev or Gil or whoever else was prepared to walk that far.

Sometimes he had stood on the sphere, trying to dislodge it. The mine was wedged in the crevice. A blister on The Caib. A bloody welt. If the current couldn't shift it, what use muscle?

IX

The air was slurred with sulphurous fret. Parry recalled coalsmoke from steam trains, grey billows and a burning smell.

And it returned, the memory of a gang of kids trespassing on the line. A squall of coke flying from the firebox…

…No, he realised, he hadn't walked so far west for years. The way now lay along the dram road that led to The Works. If the tide was right, he'd taken this route himself. On the way to the carbon paper job.

He reckoned he was close to The Tramlines. This was an area of quartz set in red sandstone. A series of white lines he and Sev believed they had discovered. And so named.

He remembered a painting he had thought about on his walks to work. The problem was posed by the colours of mother
-
of
-
pearl, and how they might be recreated.

Fool, he smiled wryly. Painting wasn't copying anything. Painting had to combine spontaneous joy with hard
-
earned technique.

Make a mess, he'd told his classes in Adelaide. As much mess as you can. Because life's a mess. Isn't it? A human mess. And what's art but describing what's it's like to be human?

Those classes, he smiled. The first step was choosing their music. Art master as disc jockey. That was how he'd befriended Libby. She'd come into his class because Mozart's clarinet concerto was too loud.

Yes, sorry, he'd said. We were all getting carried away. Especially Wolfgang.

No, painting to music's a great idea, she had said. I'll try it myself. Let's have a look at what CDs you're lining up. Mostly Bluenote I expect, from what was on last week. Oh, some Indian things too, I see. And who's Etta James?

No, he'd never been a painter. Never had the guts to try the big canvas he had once imagined. One hundred feet square. It would be his depiction of the morning sky of The Caib.
Mother of Pearl
could be the title. A hundred different colours, most of them greys. The most delicate painting imaginable. Doing the dawn justice. Yes,
Mother of Pearl.

It was to be the cover of his first album, he grimaced. The image on his first book. And that book's title?

Dunesman.

He said the word again.

Dunesman.

Dunes Man.

Yes, mysterious enough. Intriguing. Surely. And of course, it might still be done. It should still be done. He wasn't old, after all. The right side of sixty. Mina swore he might pass for five years younger. Maybe ten. As if, he smiled, it mattered. But it did.

Now he licked the salt on his lips and kicked over a crust of sand. There was a gull in the rocks nearby. As Parry approached he noted it didn't fly away. Rather, it rose and came back to the beach, landing awkwardly.

He saw there was a nylon fishing line caught round its leg. Attached to the line was a lead sinker.

Sighing, he went through the motions. Come here, kitty, he called. Nice kitty.

Parry approached the gull and it flew away before falling back. He made his rescue attempt three times. Three times the bird escaped. Soon the kittiwake was lost in the fret.

EIGHTEEN

I

He couldn't locate The Tramlines. Thirty minutes later he was leaving the dunes and the dram road behind. Then slipping through the back fence of Rhidyll House.

Nearby in the grounds, two pale horses, the colour of the fog, were standing together. Two smoky smudges against white render.

Rhidyll had been built thirty years previously as a bar and hotel. Then become a nursing home.

Parry rang the bell and was admitted. He gave his hands an antiseptic scrub and signed the visitors' book. Jack Parry was, he was told, upstairs in room 33.

As ever, he thought, climbing the stairs.

For some reason Parry knocked, then felt foolish. When he entered, the light was on. The first thing he did was switch it off. Then he looked at his father and switched it back on.

Jack was belted into his armchair with a double tray on castors before him. There were crumbs on the tray and uneaten bread on the floor around his chair.

Morning, Dad. What about this fog, then? You ever remember it worse? I've never heard that foghorn used so much. Such a sad sound, Dad. Like a wounded animal.

Parry crossed to a radiator and warmed his hands.

Feels raw out there, Dad. Never known it so bad, have we? And you, Dad? You're the same colour, I'd say. The colour of the fog.

He regarded Jack more closely. The old man seemed to have shrunk since his son had last seen him. His cheeks were limestone's grey roses, his pyjamas and dressing gown too big. They were covered in toast crumbs.

Parry turned away and looked down at the two horses. They were old animals, manes and tails tinged with sulphur. Both had remained motionless.

I bet Mum could have told us when the fog was worse. If it was ever worse than this. Yeah, Mum could have said.

Jack Parry had anaemia and was due for a transfusion. It was thought he was bleeding internally. His face was white as paper and unshaven.

Still waiting, aren't we? smiled his son. Hanging on all over Christmas and now into New Year. But they'll give us a date soon, Dad. I know it'll be soon. Bound to be.

Parry ran the hot tap.

Wow, boiling as ever. So where's that razor of yours? Not that you look bad. Not half bad. Ever grown a beard, Dad? Might have suited.

But no, Mum wouldn't like you all whiskery, would she? Mum was old school. Still, I think you look pretty modern myself. Yeah, cool, Dad. You look cool. Ever been called cool before?

He examined his father's pale lips. Found a comb and dragged it through his hair.

Haven't had this washed for a while, have you? As bad as mine, it's so greasy. But yeah, you look modern with that stubble, Dad.

Parry scanned room 33: television, radio, CD player. An anonymous painting above the bed that he had meant to remove. And resolved, once again, to do so.

There was a framed photograph of Dora Parry on the bedside table. Beside the door was a photograph of The Horns at sunset that Parry had organised. Close by was another of what had been the Parrys' allotment.

In one corner was a mechanical hoist, used for moving his father from bed to armchair. Jack's wheelchair was nowhere to be seen.

I'll take you out for a walk, soon, Dad, he said. When it's warmer. Haven't been for ages, have we? For ages.

II

The last time Parry had seen his father was two months earlier. He had walked into Rhidyll House and a nurse directed him to the main lounge.

They're all in there, he'd said.

Who's that? asked Parry.

Everyone.

He quickly realised it was a birthday party. One of the residents was one hundred years old, that day, November 13.

Jack Parry too? his son queried, disbelieving.

Let me see … let me see. I'm sure, yes. Jack too. We're honoured. Aren't we! And you are?

There were twenty Rhidyll residents present, only three of them men. At first, Jack had been difficult to identify, as he was slumped in his wheelchair. He failed to acknowledge his son, who pulled up a seat beside him.

Morning, Dad. Or is it afternoon. Look, sorry I haven't been over. You know how it is. You know, Dad.