The Restoration of Otto Laird (32 page)

Otto nodded. Despite her wish not to alarm him, deeper fears were starting to emerge.

‘I'm worried about the future,' she said. ‘How you will both get by. Danny's coping well … outwardly at least. But then he's always been good at disguising his feelings.'

‘He learned from a master.'

Cynthia sought to keep him positive.

‘Don't be hard on yourself. You already have more than enough to deal with. Don't take the weight of the universe on your shoulders. You're a good father, Otto. We've raised a wonderful son. No time now for guilt or regrets.'

He squeezed her hand. She paused before speaking again.

‘Look out for each other, won't you?'

‘We will.'

‘I hope so.'

He glanced at her, perturbed.

‘It seems to be something that's worrying you. You said exactly the same thing to Daniel and me a few days ago.'

‘I understand the two of you so well, you see. I know how hard you find it to share your emotions.'

Another pause ensued. This was proving rather difficult. Cynthia pushed back the sudden wave of emotion to retain her poise.

‘There are other things we need to discuss. Financial things. Practical things. I should draw up a will. I've been avoiding it until now. Cowardly of me, really.'

‘Now who's being hard on themselves?'

‘Perhaps. But let's make the necessary arrangements. Soon – while there's time. I don't want to leave any loose threads for you to manage. Things will be tough enough without those.'

‘I'll make some calls.'

‘Thank you. I'm grateful. I realise that none of this is easy.'

*   *   *

The will was arranged in the next few weeks, along with the sale of the textiles firm. Such issues should have been deeply painful to address – in retrospect they were – but at the time Cynthia was so phlegmatic in her approach, so determined not to give in to the kind of maudlin sentimentality that might have swamped them completely and left them useless, that all conversations took place in a businesslike fashion, with the minimum of what she called ‘unnecessary fuss'.

The third operation took place in late July. As the doctors had warned, Cynthia did not bounce back this time. She regained consciousness, and could still speak with reasonable lucidity for a few weeks, but she was unable to leave her wheelchair, even to walk a few steps. As the days passed, her conversation became increasingly confused and eventually incoherent. Her vision was deserting her. When it became clear that the tumour was advancing rapidly, she was moved into a hospice in central London. Otto and Daniel were constantly at her side.

The room in the hospice was a hushed and twilit place. The nurses, quiet as ghosts, moved discreetly around the bed, administering drugs or changing drips as needed. They always smiled kindly, exchanging a few words with Cynthia, Otto and Daniel before drifting away to tend to patients in other rooms. Cynthia's parents travelled down twice from the Chilterns, but the frail health of her father made this a difficult undertaking. Instead, Otto telephoned them at home last thing each evening, keeping them updated on their daughter's condition. Meanwhile, he and Daniel sought to make her as comfortable as possible.

Each day they brought fresh flowers and placed them on her bedside table. Within two weeks of her arrival at the hospice, however, she could no longer see or acknowledge them. Her hearing outlasted her sight and speech. She remained responsive for a few more days. They played her favourite music on a tape recorder of Daniel's, placing the speaker a few inches from her ear. Even when she was no longer sentient, Otto sometimes thought he saw the trace of a smile; at the sound of a piece by Bach, for instance, or something by Thelonious Monk. Soon, however, even music could not reach her. All of her faculties had gone.

*   *   *

As they waited for the end, the sense of despair threatened to overwhelm them. Death hovered over Cynthia's comatose form like a physical presence.

There was a café, near the hospice, which became a place of respite for them.

‘You look terrible,' Daniel told his father, from across one of its tables.

‘You do, too,' Otto replied.

The café wasn't busy. It was the lull before the lunchtime surge. Before them, on the table, stood two plates of untouched food. Daniel, unshaven, his hair unwashed and tousled, had a wildness about his eyes those last few days. Otto looked somewhat less dishevelled: the signs of defeat were less obvious in him. He wore a clean white shirt and his hair was only moderately unkempt. Yet, as Daniel noted, there was a small red nick on the curve of his father's chin, where he had cut himself while shaving distractedly that morning.

Neither of them said much in the café, the pop music from the radio providing a welcome cover for their thoughts, but eventually Daniel felt compelled to speak.

‘I'm sinking, Dad. Completely. I'm not sure I can take much more of this.'

Otto prodded his food, sensing that Daniel needed him to say something; to release him from this terrible burden.

‘Daniel…' he said, pausing a moment, buying time to properly order his words. ‘Whatever it is you decide to do, I fully understand. It's an impossible situation. She no longer knows us. She no longer knows anything. It makes no difference, frankly, who is around her.'

Gratitude and tears filled Daniel's eyes. He held himself together enough to speak.

‘I think I'm going back to Cambridge. I'm so tired … I can't think straight. I don't know what I can do to help her.'

Hurt and compassion intermingled inside Otto as he found the right words to say to his son.

‘There's nothing more any of us can do. She's already gone. As Cynthia, I mean.'

Daniel nodded.

‘That's what I wanted to say. When her friends phone each evening at the house, asking me how she is, how I am, how you are, I no longer know what to say to them. It's gone beyond words now. She's wasted away completely. Yet still, somehow, it continues. It's horrendous.'

I must face this alone, Otto thought.

He tried to reassure Daniel.

‘I understand. It's better if you go. You can spend the next few days with your friends. They'll look after you, they seem a nice crowd. It isn't fair to expect you to go through any more.'

Daniel's head was bowed.

‘I feel terrible,' he said. ‘I'm so sorry…'

Otto's voice was gentle.

‘I'll call you. I'll let you know what's happening. Let you know when … you know … when it's finished.'

‘Thanks, Dad.'

Daniel's head turned away for a second. The music from the radio no longer covered their silence.

‘When do you plan to go back?'

‘This evening, I think. I'll catch the train at seven.'

‘That early? Of course. As you wish.'

Otto looked down at his plate. Daniel watched him, helpless.

‘I'll need to go back to the house,' he added, ‘to collect my things. I'll catch the tube up in a little while.'

Otto checked his watch.

‘Will you come back to the hospice, first? Or would you rather go immediately? I think it's probably time that I headed back there.'

‘I'll come. For half an hour or so. I'd like to spend a little time with Mum.'

Otto nodded.

‘Of course.'

‘I'm sorry, Dad.'

‘It's okay … it's okay. I understand.'

Otto's gaze was far away, his words sounded strained. He reached for his wallet and signalled to the waiter, but his actions seemed strangely mechanical. He no longer appeared to inhabit himself.

‘I understand,' he said again. ‘It's okay, Daniel. But please don't catch the Underground back and forth. You look tired. The trains will be busy. Let me arrange a taxi for you, at least.'

*   *   *

For the next few days, Otto remained at Cynthia's bedside, occasionally grabbing an hour or two's sleep on a mattress in a corner of the room. He talked to her often, although she couldn't hear him: about the past, about their lives, the experiences they had shared. He hoped, somehow, that it would ease her final hours, like the palliative drugs that flowed through her system. But the memories, as he expressed them, were increasingly confused.

‘I didn't tread on your toes,' he said. ‘Your puffball skirt was twirling. And then, at the party, all those years later, you wore that henna-dyed dress. You stroked your belly, with Daniel inside, as you chatted away to your friends. You didn't know you were doing it, of course. I'm sorry if I embarrassed you when I mentioned it that time. But it was unconscious, you see, that gesture of yours, and unconscious gestures are the ones that most reveal us … they're the ones that stay with those we leave behind…'

The next morning, Otto was woken by an unfamiliar rustling sound. Cynthia was in a state of agitation.

He jumped up from the mattress and called for a nurse.

‘What is it?' he asked her.

She went away quickly. When she returned, several colleagues were with her.

Cynthia died later that day, with Otto at her side. The final hours of disintegration were difficult. Her vacant body clung instinctively to life, refusing to release her from its hold. And yet, by the middle of the afternoon, all signs of struggle had ceased in her. She lay peaceful and still, her breathing increasingly shallow.

Otto held her hand through her final moments, his head lowered and his eyes closed. Her passing, when it came, was indistinguishable from what had gone before. One form of absence became another. Then, as he opened his eyes and looked once more into her ashen face, a voice from somewhere in the room told him it was over.

Afterwards, when he had recovered some strength, he telephoned Daniel and then Cynthia's parents. The words they exchanged were kind and gentle: they briefly discussed arrangements for the funeral. Leaving the hospice, he walked the streets aimlessly, finding himself near an entrance to Regent's Park. There, he sat for a while on a bench beside the boating lake. A chill breeze ruffled its surface. The first of the leaves were turning yellow. It was the blackberry-picking season, Otto realised.

Thirty

Signs greeted Otto on the doors of each lift:
COUNCIL ALERTED
–
REPAIR IMMINENT
.

‘Blast,' he said, looking around and waving his cane at nobody in particular.

Up to this point, he had been fortunate. Only one of the lifts had been out of action at any one time. This afternoon, all four of them had broken at once. Clearly the central pulley system had given up completely.

Just to be certain, he pushed some buttons and held his ear to the doors. No sound of mechanical activity could be heard inside the shaft.

‘
Scheiße,
' he added, not especially wishing to begin the journey up the central staircase. He stood around rather pointlessly for a moment, as though hoping for some alternative route to appear. There was not even a sign of any other residents with whom he could at least have shared his displeasure.

‘Fucking building,' he concluded, as a final insult to the empty hallway, before bracing himself and taking his first tentative steps on the stairs.

This was a nuisance. Otto felt tired, even a little disorientated. He was running late and in danger of missing his flight back to Geneva. If that were to happen, the phone call to Anika would not be one he would relish.

He regretted, now, having made the difficult journey to Bloomsbury. He could have chosen to visit any number of destinations that afternoon, perhaps taken a stroll along the Thames. Yet for some reason he had chosen to inflict that upon himself, and he no longer understood why. The trip had achieved nothing, beyond resurrecting some deeply painful memories, and it had left him feeling physically unwell into the bargain. The tube trains back had been packed and stifling. He couldn't get a seat and his spine had developed a painful twinge. During the walk up to Marlowe House from the station, his stomach had started to hurt once more.

Otto was at a loss to explain his behaviour.

It must be that maudlin streak again, the one that Cynthia warned me about. She would not have been happy about my choice of sightseeing today. The neurological hospital – what on earth was I thinking?

Just three flights up, with nine more to go, he was already feeling breathless. Resting his hand on the flaking yellow paint of the banister, he glanced above and saw the radiating spokes of the staircase, circling to the furthest reaches of his vision. High, high above him, they disappeared into the darkness near the top.

The air felt solemn and heavy. His footsteps echoed in the silence. He would like to rest, but was aware of how many things he still had to do. Use the lavatory, collect his case, make sure the gas was off and lock the door as he left. Oh, and he must remember to post the key back through the letterbox of his apartment. It seemed straightforward enough, but Otto was of an age when even the simplest actions could take him an eternity. Some hours, some days, were much slower than others. Clearly he wasn't up to speed today.

Glancing off to the left, he saw a series of narrow windows, running up the walls like arrow slits in a turret. As the sun broke free of a cloud, needle-thin points of light pierced the gloom.

Otto set off again, circling steadily in his ascent – one hand gripping the peeling banister while the other pressed the tip of his cane into the step above. He thought of their walking holiday in the Lake District, all those decades before. Travelling at a steeply sloping angle had seemed straightforward enough back then. Now it felt unnatural, as though he were asking his body to perform some task for which it was simply not designed. With irritation, he pictured himself just a few hours earlier. He remembered gazing up in self-satisfaction at the endless turns of the staircase. Poetic, he had called it then.