The Bower Bird (23 page)

Mum loves the hand-coloured photograph of her grand- father’s
Croix de Guerre
and cannot believe I coloured it myself.

Dad has sent me film and a photograph album and a brilliant book on the portrait photographs of Jane Bowen.

Mum and Alistair look happy and are sitting on the sofa, his arm around her waist.

‘Thanks, Mum, I love all my things,’ I say and kiss her.

‘You haven’t opened the main present yet, sweetheart.’

‘What? Where?’ She points to several large boxes tucked behind the tree.

‘Are those for me?’ I scrabble with the paper and tape. I don’t believe it! It’s a computer! There’s a printer and a keyboard, a screen and all sorts of other bits and pieces, wires and a mouse and mouse pad. There’s even a ream of printing paper. It’s a joint present from Mum and Daddy.

Alistair says he’ll help set it all up for me tomorrow. I am overwhelmed. Now I can be a real writer.

‘You haven’t seen your main present yet, either,’ I say to her and smile at Alistair, who winks at me, conspiratorially. ‘It’s from Alistair and me.’

I pass her the heavy parcel wrapped in gold and red paper with a big gold ribbon, saved from two years ago when it was wrapped around our Christmas cake.

Alistair pours more wine and we nibble walnuts and almonds.

‘What is it? Shall I open it now or save it?’

‘Open it now,’ Alistair and I chorus.

She unwraps and folds the paper carefully, just like Grandma used to do, recycling for next year’s presents. The second-hand book has a photograph of a handcrafted chair on the cover.

‘Oh, this is nice, Gussie.’

I can see she is bemused (yesterday’s word of the day, which I haven’t had time to think about let alone use. It means: to put in confusion, to stupefy).

‘Look on page
85
,’ I tell her.

There is a mention of my great-grandfather Amos Hartley Stevens, painter/photographer in St Ives and a short history of his life, mentioning the names of his children: Menzies, who died while he was still a baby; John, who died at sea when he was eighteen, and Fay, who became a painter and married James Darling, master craftsman and cabinet-maker; and Hartley, businessman.

‘Now page
40
,’ I tell her.

James Darling, b
1884
d1942. This master craftsman of Arts and Crafts domestic and architectural furniture married artist Fay Stevens (daughter of renowned Cornish photographer Amos Hartley Stevens, and Mary Menzies, novelist). One son – Amos.

‘Fay? James Darling? Moss’s Mum is your Grandfather Hartley’s sister?’ Her eyes are wide. ‘So we are related to the Darlings?’

‘Yes, Mum, that’s right. We are part of their family. And Dad’s grandfather was the famous photographer, Amos Hartley Stevens, and Fay’s son Moss (Amos) is named after him.

‘How amazing! So Fay, Gabriel’s gran, she’s your great-aunt?’

‘You would probably never have known if Gussie hadn’t done the research,’ said Alistair. ‘I think this calls for another bottle of bubbly.’

EVERYTHING IS SET
; holly wreath on the front door, tree lights on, table set with starched white linen and lace, dishes and plates lined with lace doilies and full of nuts, fruit and goodies. The cats are all wearing red bows on their collars and looking, as Mum says, Like Butter Wouldn’t Melt. I wish someone would explain that saying to me.

Arnold of the Holey Ears turns up with his very normal looking wife at the same time as Eugene, who is dressed as Santa Claus.

Mum, unbeknownst to me, has invited Ginnie. It’s so lovely to see her. She gives me a hug and a subscription to the
RSPB
. I’ll talk to her about Pop the herring gull later.

At the moment she’s kissing Eugene under the mistletoe he brought with him.

Bridget and her family arrive – (excluding
SSS
, who has a bad cold. Shame). Brett, Hayley and Steve arrive, laden with gifts for us, which they put under our tree for us to open later. Mrs Thomas, in her Sunday best, is staying to share our Christmas dinner. Mr and Mrs Lorn bring a bottle of whisky for Mum and a huge pack of chocolates for me. Our holiday neighbours are dressed in elaborate fancy dress – eighteenth century costume – in rehearsal for New Year’s Eve, and last but not least all the Darlings arrive.

Phaedra and Troy stay long enough to hear our news that we are second cousins or whatever and then shoot off to ride the surf at Fistral Beach with friends who are waiting in Barnoon car park in their Beetle. Mum and Claire fall into each other’s arms as if they are long lost sisters. Amos smiles benignly. Ha, I’ve used the word of the day.

Fay gives me a big kiss and says ‘Welcome to our crazy family, Gussie, and please call me Fay, not Auntie Fay or Great Aunt Fay, just Fay.’

She hugs me to her on one side, Gabriel on the other, and says, ‘This is the best Christmas present I’ve ever had.’

Me too.

‘Fay, could you tell me about my grandfather?’

‘Hartley? Well, I hardly knew him, my dear, he was so much older than me. He’d left home when I was still a small child. We didn’t see much of him really, he was always up to some get rich quick scheme. I think he was in Plymouth and Bristol, then he came home, married your grandmother, and ran a car sales company for a while.’

‘And what about her?’

‘Well, my parents didn’t approve of her, I remember that. Bit of a gold digger, pretty, but no good for Hartley. He was weak you see, easily led.’

Later Daddy phones to say Happy Christmas. I thank him for the computer, and say Alistair is going to help set it up for me and tell him about the Darlings.

And guess what, Daddy’s not coming after all. I don’t even wait to hear his excuse. I don’t care what it is. I don’t care if he’s broken a leg even. I don’t care if he’s broken both legs. I hand the phone to Mum without saying a word more to him.

‘What is it?’ she says, seeing my face.

‘I knew it was all too good to last.’ I go to my room.

WE HAVE TO
leave immediately.

My Life Call bleep goes off at
6
am. Mummy phones the transplant coordinator and they say there is a possible donor and we are to get there straight away.

Ohmygod, I don’t believe it. A new heart and lungs! Mummy cries and hugs me. Alistair will drive us. He has a bigger faster car than us and has a week’s leave.

Mrs Thomas will take all our left-over food, feed the cats today, and then the Lorns and Darlings will look after them until we get back home, which could be weeks or even months.

‘Don’t you worry about a thing,’ she says, still in her dressing gown, in our kitchen, ‘I’ll see to the cats and everything.’

I think about Mrs Thomas’s eighty-year-old heart. It’s probably in a similar state of decay as mine, battered and bruised like an old balloon that’s been kicked and punched too often and all the air has escaped and it’s collapsing and wrinkled and can’t float any more, but she’s still very much alive and has plenty of fight in her.

And I think about the donor heart. Is it waiting in an icebox? Or is it still warm, beating inside a person who’s been injured in a car crash, and the lungs kept pumping artificially by a machine? Are parents sitting holding the hands of their loved one, waiting for them to die? Did they have to give permission for the healthy organs to be used by someone else or did the dying person have an Organ Donor Card?

Mum tries to phone Daddy but he’s not there.

I pack Rena Wooflie, my cricket cap, pyjamas, flip-flops, T-shirts and baggy trousers. It’s always very warm in hospital. It’s like packing for a desert island. What books shall I take? I pack
The House at Pooh Corner
. Charlie tries to sit in the suitcase on top of the clothes: she wants to come with me. Oh, Charlie, I wish you could.

Mrs Thomas stands at the door waving and the cats are sulking at the window. Heavy rain falls, but the sun is shining from between two enormous black clouds, a shaft of light pooling the town. I look over my shoulder at the huddle of houses sparkling white, the little harbour where swirling gulls laugh and fret and a few boats swing on the choppy waves.

‘Gussie just came to me. I don’t write for children, I write for a reader. It’s a glimpse into the head of a child with a chronic disease, who has to find a way to live her short life to the full. She works out a philosophy for living from the books she reads and from the wildlife and nature around her. Because she is not able to be active any more, she becomes an observer. She watches birds and insects, badgers and cats.

My son Nathan died in
1985
, aged
24
, a week after a heart and lung transplant. He had a rare congenital heart defect – pulmonary atresia – the lack of a pulmonary artery.

Gussie isn’t my son. She’s an amalgamation of several people – my daughter, my grand-daughter, my son and me – and she is mostly herself, an odd, funny, bookish child, eccentric and thoughtful – a one off, as Nathan was.

My son knew that even with a successful transplant, in those days he would only have had a few more years. But he was so happy to have been given that chance.

I think that is why I write about Gussie – to make people see the importance of being an organ donor.

Please be an Organ Donor.’

www.organdonor.gov

Here is a taster of the first three chapters.

The unexamined life is a life not worth living
–
SOCRATES

ALISTAIR SWERVES TO
miss a huge heap of something in the middle of the road. It’s
3
a.m
.
, the dead of night, the end of the year.

‘What the…?’

Mum stirs in the front passenger seat. ‘There’s another.’

‘What is it?’

‘Looks like elephant shit,’ I say.

Alistair winds down the window. Mum says, ‘Smells like elephant shit.’

Around the bend we come across them. Trunk to tail, the troupe tiptoe silently through the sleeping London street.

‘A circus?’

‘It’s lucky to see elephants,’ I say. I need all the luck I can get. I am on my way to have a heart and lung transplant.

Intensive Therapy Unit

MY FIRST THOUGHTS
on waking are – Where are my cats? I feel no pain but I do have tubes coming out of every orifice, plus one or two new holes in my chest and other places. My throat is sore and I can’t talk. Mummy is here wearing a hospital gown and surgical mask, though I can still see her tears, and Daddy looks anxiously through the glass door. He can’t come in because he has bugs up his nose.

It’s several days since the transplant. I am pretty drugged up and sleep a lot but everything went well, according to my cardiac surgeon. I have lots of nurses. Someone watches me all the time. It’s like having slaves. They turn me, wash me, change my dressings, take my temperature and blood pressure about a million times a day. There are machines all around me, monitoring all my bodily functions. I have catheters and bags of liquids going in and out of me, but I am now breathing without mechanical assistance. Various drugs are being fed into my veins. I feel sleepy but contented, not worried. The physiotherapist comes to make me cough. She calls me Gorgeous Gussie. She makes me laugh and it hurts.

Daddy strokes my hand. His nose germs have gone. There’s a canula taped onto the back of my hand. He keeps forgetting and knocking it. It stings. I glare at him and he apologises.

Thoughts flutter in my head and out again like a flock of pigeons rising from earth in a panicked bunch, like tickertape: loose sheets of paper snatched by the breeze.

Alistair cannot come into the Intensive Therapy unit, even though he’s a doctor, because he isn’t related. He waves through the window at me, blows kisses and gives the thumbs up sign.

I sleep and I am in a ball of pain. I am everyone who has lived, who is living now, who is going to live, and we are all in pain and this ball of pain is God. I am God. And the pain is everlasting. But with all my strength and power I force the pain into millions of parts, millions of people sharing the ball of pain, and I force the pain into a flat line of time – past, present and future. I am God, and God is everyone, and we all share the pain.

I open my eyes and see nurses, my invention, sharing my pain.

Was it a nightmare? It seems too real; I am still God, I am still in pain, but the pain is less, fading. There is a dreadful stench, like a dead elephant. I dare not close my eyes because I am terrified. It’s then that I remember, I’ve had this dream before. It is only a dream.

Room 3, B Ward

When I can talk again, I ask my nurse, Katy, if she is real. She laughs.