suppress a shudder. “This whole place is filthy. Crawling with disease.”
A nurse approached to tell us that we could see the patient now and we got to our feet, my companion more swiftly than I. Mr. Jasper trotted into the ward and over to the prone figure of my father’s father with undisguised curiosity.
The old man’s eyes were closed, tubes emanated from pale nose and pale mouth, and he seemed weaker and more frail than ever. I couldn’t discern a pulse. I only had the word of his support machine that he was even alive at all. Though we had yet to exchange a word, I had seem more of Granddad in the past week than I had for years.
Jasper pulled out what looked like a complicated tuning fork and pointed it at the old bastard’s body. It beeped once, twice, three times, then made a drawn-out chittering sound.
I glared. “What are you doing?”
Jasper, intent on his obscure task, didn’t even meet my gaze. “I’m trying to ascertain if he really is in a coma.”
“Course he’s in a coma.”
“Your grandfather’s faked his own death at least twice before. He’s a master of disguise. In 1959 he penetrated Buckingham Palace in the company of an Armenian circus troupe disguised as a clown. From sixty-one to sixty-four he lived undetected as a gillie at Balmoral. In sixty-six he bankrupted the head of the House of Windsor’s Special Operations Unit in a high-stakes poker game at Monte Carlo. So I think he’s more than capable of feigning a stroke, don’t you?”
“Not Granddad,” I stuttered. “That doesn’t sound anything like my granddad.”
“Then you never knew him at all.” Jasper slipped the device back into his pocket. “But it’s real.” He sounded disappointed. “Probably the booze.” He gazed into the distance, a look of quiet respect on his face. When he spoke again, the effect was that of a humble supplicant offering prayers to his invisible deity. “I’m with him now, sir… I’m afraid it’s bad news… Please. Let’s not give up… Very well. Understood… I’ll tell him.” Briskly, he turned back to me. “We’ll see you tomorrow, Mr. Lamb.” He muttered something about enjoying the rest of my birthday and paced bad temperedly away.
“Is that it?” I shouted after him. “What happens now?”
But Jasper left without looking back, strutting onward toward whatever fresh drama awaited him, and soon the ward was quiet again.
At a loss about what to do next, I sank back into the chair and sat alone for a while, the old man’s hand clasped in mine. “Is it true?” I said. “Is any of it true?”
Desperate for conversation, I called up Mum.
“How’s Gibraltar?” I asked.
No sooner had I spoken than the nurse appeared and waved me out of the room, like a farmer’s wife shooing chickens away from the petunias. “No mobiles! Ruins equipment. No mobiles!”
Actually, Granddad’s machine had seemed completely unaffected, but, chastened and embarrassed, I did as I was told and took the conversation out into the corridor.
“It’s marvelous,” Mum was saying. “Just marvelous. Gordy’s been such a naughty boy. We’re in this wonderful hotel.” She broke off to speak to someone and I heard mention of my name. I imagined her rolling her eyes, deftly miming exasperation. Then she was back on the line. “How are you?”
“Fine,” I said, then (discreetly): “Got a promotion.”
“That’s wonderful.”
“I’m not a filing clerk anymore.”
“Good for you.”
“Never again.”
“Really, darling. That’s fab.”
“Mum?”
“Yes?”
“Granddad was middle-aged before he joined the BBC, wasn’t he? It was his second career. What did he do before that?”
“Before the Beeb?” She didn’t even try to keep the boredom from her voice. “Some sort of civil servant, I think. Nothing glamorous — though God knows he always acted like his shit smelt sweeter than ours. Why?”
“No reason.”
“I’ve got to go, darling. Gordy’s booked us a table somewhere. He’s looking frightfully cross and tapping his watch.”
“Mum?” I said. “I’ve been thinking a lot about Dad recently.”
An eternity of crackling. The vinyl pops and hisses of long distance.
“I’m sorry, darling, it’s a terrible line.”
“I said I’ve been thinking about Dad.”
“Got to dash. Gordy says the food’ll be fab.”
She hadn’t even remembered it was my birthday.
“Have a nice meal,” I muttered. “Have fun.”
“Bye-bye, darling.”
And then, a tiny acknowledgment that she had, after all, heard what I’d said. “Don’t brood, will you?”
The line went dead before I was able to reply.
I walked back into the ward and summoned up a contrite smile for the nurse. “You were right,” I said, once the apologies were done. “I think my granddad was in a war.”
“It always shows,” she murmured. For a moment, there was a chink of humanity, a dappling of sadness in her face before chilly and professional again, she walked away.
Heavy with half-formed fears and worries, I kissed the old man on the forehead and took my leave at last of that awful mausoleum.
In the long gray corridor which led to the exit, a red-headed man on crutches was clip-clopping ahead of me. I recognized his swaying frond of ginger hair.
“Hello there!”
He craned around to glare at me, his face puce and sweaty from his exertions. “Oh, it’s you.”
“Let you out quickly, haven’t they?”
“Turns out I’m fine.”
“You fell five stories.”
“Then I’m a bleeding miracle.” He grimaced down toward his crutches. “A limping one, anyway.”
“I’m just glad you’re OK.”
The ginger-haired man looked belligerently at me. “You still don’t get it, do you?”
I stared back, nonplussed. “I’m sorry?”
“The answer is yes.”
“What?”
“The answer is yes. For God’s sake. Have you got that?
“What was that about?” I asked, as much to myself as to him.
Taking no notice of me and mumbling a grab-bag of expletives, he made his way unsteadily over to a beaten-up Rover on the other side of the parking lot in which his unfortunate family was waiting and probably wondering why he couldn’t have fallen just that little bit harder.
When I got home to Tooting Bec and walked through to the sitting room, Abbey was there, wearing a little black dress, surrounded by balloons and smiling sheepishly. An unsuccessful-looking chocolate cake sat on the table, decorated by a single unlit candle.
“Happy birthday!” she said.
“This is unexpected. I don’t know what to say.”
“Sit down. I’ll get you a drink.”
