“Now, Cathy,” Keith said, “some of the staff and residents are going to perform a few items for you. They’ve all been practicing hard, and this will be better than a floor show in Las Vegas! First, Barney, with a bit of Shakespeare.”

  When Keith sat down, David whispered to him, “Have you ever been to Las Vegas?”

  “Never, mate. Wish I had.”

  Barney Colas recited the sonnet, Let me not to the marriage of true minds Admit impediments. Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds. Barney had worked hard, and found words that David could recall from the darkness. The audience enjoyed hearing the poem. It touched well known chords, like the songs David played, or a famous hymn, and as with many of those tunes and hymns, seemed to reach for the unattainable.

  Two members of staff, Maggie and Paula, sang a duet, Now is the Hour, which David found sad. But the audience hummed, and swayed lightheartedly through the song. Mark Demeter restored hearty laughter with a conjuring trick that went wrong. About to show that he could retrieve, from the shuffled pack, a card that his audience knew, but he ostensibly did not, he fumbled and dropped the pack on the floor. The whistling and the stamping of feet was fierce. Mark gave up, thrusting his fist high above his head, like a footballer who has scored a goal.

  David sat down at the piano, and everybody joined in a loud sing-song: Pack Up Your Troubles, Tavern in the Town, When Irish Eyes are Smiling and Coming Round the Mountain. When David had been through his repertoire, he played a compact disc of Queen’s ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ on the old stereo system. As the last words of the melody, Nothing really matters to me, were sung in Freddie Mercury’s pure, imperative voice, Cathy’s eyes glistened, and she struggled as if to speak.

  In the lull, Keith appeared with Poppy.

  “Now quiet everybody! Too much noise, and we’ll have Helmut down here, and I’ll get hell,” he said in a loud voice. “We’re going to have a group photo.”

  Cathy was wheeled out from behind the table, into the centre of the floor. Poppy sat on her hind quarters beside Cathy, seeming to understand the need for calm, although her tail never stopped beating the floor. The residents and staff gathered behind Cathy, all grins, and paper hats askew. Keith wise-cracked with everybody as he took the shots. Then Keith led Poppy toward the door, pushing through those residents who wanted to touch Poppy as though she was a talisman.

  “Now we’re going to have a dance, to end Cathy’s party,” Rose said, as care assistants moved some of the tables out of the way.

  Dancing was a regular event at Denby Hall, enjoyed by almost every resident, and the staff. Cathy, accompanied by Rose, took her place on the floor ahead of everybody else. David seated himself at the piano again, and pounded out his flawed versions of favourites like Goodnight Irene and Home on the Range. Everybody else was dancing in pairs, trios, foursomes or alone. Some pushed a wheelchair-bound resident from behind, some leaned over the front of the chair, resting their arms on the armrests, moving the chair in time to the music.

  After twenty minutes, David was sweating and tired. He switched on the stereo for those who were left, and took Cathy upstairs in the lift. The presents, and the card, were in two bulging plastic bags, hooked over the handles of the wheelchair.

  In her room, Cathy refused a Freddie Mercury recording.

  “Do you want me to go?”

  Cathy made a ‘no’ noise, and David sat on the bed for a while, his hand on hers. Cathy was wide awake, staring ahead, occasionally turning her head to him, and then away. In profile, with her hair drawn back, tied at the crown, and plaited, she looked regal as the shadows deepened in the room. Churning clouds were overhead, and it was going to shower. Before them, tumbled on the bed, were the presents, and the farewell card. The card was covered in scribbled drawings, verses, and short comments, as well as signatures. It had a big red heart, with a red ribbon, glued on the front.

  David left Cathy after more than half an hour, and found Rose. He said he thought Cathy looked ill.

  “I’m not surprised, after what she had today,” Rose said.

  Rose and David went to Cathy’s room. She was calm. Rose took her pulse.

  “You’re fine, aren’t you darling? You’ve had a lovely, lovely party,” Rose said.

  “She’s not fine,” David said.

  “Bit of indigestion. I think she’s all right, but I’ll get Dr Floor,” Rose said, frowning at David.

  Dr Floor arrived half an hour later. He felt Cathy’s pulse, and took her blood pressure.

  “Probably excitement. The party. Blood pressure’s a bit high. Bed now. I’ll see her in the morning.”

  After the care assistants had washed Cathy, and put her to bed, David went to her room. She was lying on her back, with her eyes open. The high sides of the bed were up – a safety precaution – so she was lying in a padded box. He asked her whether she wanted him to sit with her a while, and she indicated, yes. She refused any music. David stayed until it was dark, and she closed her eyes.

  29

  The night after the party, David could not sleep. He had eaten too much cream cake. For him, the party was not a joyful event, although he had taken a leading part. He had tried to give the appearance of enjoying himself. He wanted Cathy to have a cheery send-off, but it was marred by his own feeling of impending loss. And his concern about the pain the move would inflict upon Cathy. Keith’s image of the sixth floor cell remained in his mind.

  One touch of brightness, now that the tussle over Poppy had been resolved, was the possibility of a visit to London to see Cathy. He was determined that he would manage this somehow. He was fairly sure Cathy understood his plan, but she was unmoved. And he found Cathy’s attitude towards leaving unnerving. The proposal had turned her to stone. These thoughts, and the indigestion, kept him awake.

  David heard the sounds of a disturbance down the corridor about two am, low cries and calls of consternation, possibly from staff. The night shift care assistants were climbing the stairs on the thin carpet, and the lift clattered. A vehicle scrunched on the drive. He had not drawn the blinds, and the windows were spotted with rain. A green coloured light, flashing from the vehicle outside, lit the globules of rain on the glass, and blazed on the wall of his room. He got out of bed, and looked down from the window. It was the emergency doctor’s car.

  He went to the door of his room. He saw a huddle of people, cases of equipment, and a stretcher at the end of the corridor. He could not tell for certain, but a kind of gnawing inside told him that the huddle was around Cathy’s room.

  He pulled on his dressing gown, and waited in his own doorway, listening, for a long time. People were still in the corridor, but very quiet. He wanted to go down there, and see for himself, but he feared to do so. He would be sent back to bed very sharply if he was seen by staff. Eventually, the people ebbed away taking their stretchers and bags with them, and only the usual night lights remained on in the empty corridor.

  Now he ventured down the corridor. Yes, he could see as he approached, that the door of Cathy’s room was open, and the light on. He looked in. Maggie was sitting in a chair by the bed where Cathy lay. The side panels had been removed. Maggie sensed him, and looked up.

  “Gawd y’ frightened me, David. What y’aboot at this hour!”

  “Cathy?”

  “Och, the pur wee thing’s gone.”

  They both looked at what David had first thought was a sleeping figure. It was Cathy, on her back, the bedclothes smoothed over her arms and chest, her head visible, and surrounded by the wild rush of hair that had been released from her hair band. Her eyes were closed. The tension and worry, which had pitted her face since she had been told she would be moved, was gone. Her skin was shiny, smooth, and almost transparent.

  “She looks… peaceful,” he said.

  “Yes, she was peaceful. She never really became conscious, as far as we know. She struggled a little, and then gave up.”

  “Can I stay a while?”

  “You shouldn’t really, David… I know she was your friend.”

  David sat down in a chair next to Maggie. He felt a deep blow, but no shock or surprise. His plan to see Cathy in London was really a fantasy. What had happened tonight had started weeks or months ago, when the initiative to move Cathy was only an idea. The idea had swelled into the gradual ordering of events by many people. The idea gained substance, and force, always moving forward, and coming to the inevitable conclusion. There was no surprise. Only the heavy weight of the arrival of what was expected. David was a bystander who could see it all. Perhaps he was the only one who had a glimpse of the possibility that Cathy would not allow herself to be moved, and could not be moved, from Denby Hall.

  The regime of ‘no choice’ was over.

  Ian, the night supervisor, loomed out of the shadows behind him. “What are you doing here, young David?”

  “Just…sitting.”

  “I think you should come back to your room with me. Maybe I can give you something to make you sleep.”

  “I don’t want to sleep,” David said, following Ian up the corridor, back to his room.

  Ian turned in the doorway “OK, but don’t think too much. Cathy was very ill.”

  David lay back on his pillow, and heard another vehicle arrive, lights flashing on the bedroom wall, voices, then the rumble of the elevator and more muted voices in the corridor.

  His thought about Cathy was that at last the final brick had been placed in the wall of the cell around her; she was in perfect, soft darkness, and she didn’t really mind.

  In the morning, David was awake long before breakfast. He put on his dressing gown, waited until the corridor was clear of staff, and went back to Cathy’s room. The door was closed.

  He opened the door. The empty bed had been stripped to the mattress. The bedclothes had been removed. The dresser was clear. The wardrobe, with the doors hanging open, empty. The drawings, and cards, and notes, and coloured strings, and bells, that had been stuck on, or hung from the walls, had been taken down, except one home-made tinsel star near the door. The little bottles of lotion and perfume, useless gifts, which clustered on her shower-room shelf, had been removed with her toilet articles.

  All Cathy’s possessions were in three black plastic bags, leaning against the wall with her television set and radio-CD player beside them. David opened the black bags, and looked inside. Two were crammed with clothes.

  In the other bag were the photographs of her family. Desmond, his son and daughter, the nephews and nieces who were never seen, the dead parents, with the faded postcards, all jumbled about, facing each other, and facing away from each other, in the darkness of the bag. Words written to a Cathy who couldn’t read them, images of people and events that were, now that she was gone, meaningless.

  He saw the ragged bundle of love letters, packed into the dark clutter. He thought of the passion behind the blurred handwriting, in a foreign language, which had come across the Atlantic Ocean, and perhaps been returned by a gentle young woman. A couple had faded away, across miles of implacable ocean. Now only a bundle of paper, in a black bag.

  Keith caught David in the act, as he was rushing past the open door.

  “Whoa, David! Ian put it in the book that you were here last night. She’s gone, man, but at least she had her party.”

  “Do not resuscitate,” David said.

  “That was Cathy’s choice.”

  “She had no choice.”

  “Whaddya mean?” Keith said, cuttingly.

  David wanted to speak, but he couldn’t find suitable words. He wanted to say that Cathy had been unhappy about Do not resuscitate, but the forces ‘out there’ were irresistible. David wasn’t sure Keith would understand, well meaning as he was.

  “What… happened?”

  “A stroke. Now you go back to your room, get dressed, and go down to breakfast.”

  David stood still. He could see in the wall mirror, that his plump cheeks were pale, and the usual tiny lines of good nature, which gathered around his mouth and eyes, had gone. He met Keith’s wide-open, receptive gaze with silence.

  “OK, David. Stay here if you want. What the hell is breakfast anyway? We have one every day of our lives.”

  30

  David didn’t know what happened about Cathy’s funeral, but he assumed Desmond arranged it privately. However, Rose, who had never attended church in all the time that David had known her, decided that a memorial service should be held at St Giles in Ponsonby Road. Rose said that Cathy had been with them at one moment, and gone the next, and there had to be what she called a ‘closure.’

  “I mean,” she said, “we all expected to see Cathy at breakfast the night after her party, and she wasn’t there. It’s unfinished business. Just gone, pfffft, leaving no trace.”

  This seemed to be a powerful argument with Helmut, the staff, and most of the residents, although Mark, John and David were confused about what a closure was, and whether one was necessary. However, they were in accord that the service would be an agreeable outing. It would be good to hear a tribute to Cathy. It did not seem to David to be an insuperable obstacle that Cathy, at least in her later months, had not liked going to St Giles.

  Desmond readily agreed to play the principal role, and invitations were sent out to members of the family, and a scattering of people who had known Cathy at the Hall, volunteers, patients’ representatives, ex-care assistants and therapists. Rose had a particular feeling for Cathy, and she worked with dedication on the project. Rose had lost a husband to heart failure, and a daughter to cancer. She was beyond family illness now, in the clear water of other people’s illnesses, ignoring her own painful hip, and varicose veins.

  Desmond called in at the Hall to see Rose about the preparations, and made a point of finding David. They talked in the garden. Desmond, in good humour, said that death had a way of inveigling relations and acquaintances out of their hiding places. True to his comment, the response to the invitations was surprisingly complete. Cathy’s brother and sister accepted with a sprinkling of nephews and nieces, as did Cathy’s stepchildren, Mike and Sandra, and a host of people who had known Cathy before they left Denby Hall.

  Desmond suggested to David that as he was Cathy’s best friend, he might like to play the piano or say a few words. Desmond said he would arrange for a piano to be available. At first, David refused, scared of performing before such an audience, but when he had an opportunity to think it over, he decided he should do it for Cathy. Desmond also mentioned that he had felt obliged, purely as a matter of form, to ask Cathy’s brother and sister if they wanted to play a part and, after some sniffing, Simon had accepted.

  “What a bloody nerve!” Desmond said. “That’s where politeness gets you.”

  Desmond had a deep and unconcealed resentment of Simon and Denise, but he had, at least, the comfort that he had managed to exclude them from Cathy’s will – a step that Cathy had described to David as “a small act of vindictiveness, which Desmond considered necessary, and which I hadn’t the strength to resist.”

  David was troubled by Desmond’s observation about death. He saw people coming out of dark cracks, and corners, people who had largely ignored Cathy over recent years. Why should they want to go to the memorial service? He couldn’t understand it.

  On the day, all but the skeleton staff at Denby Hall, and the few patients who were totally immobile, attended. It was a happy event. The old hymns were belted out by the organist, and the congregation sang joyfully. St. Giles, full of flowers, let in some rays of sunshine through its grimy leadlight windows, and seemed to perk up. At Desmond’s request, the vicar played the role of master of ceremonies only.

  Desmond was a smooth and effortless speaker, who delivered his words with careful inflections, and without a note. He gave a warm eulogy of Cathy’s achievements, from leading lady in HMS Pinafore as a schoolgirl, head prefect of the Troon Academy, scholar at Edinburgh University, volunteer worker in the Amazon, community worker in London, to accomplished amateur landscape painter, musician and singer.

  When he referred touchingly to the woman he loved, David thought Desmond meant the talented person, who had slipped away almost unnoticed many years before, rather than the silent Egyptian princess, who had recently been sealed in her cell. Cathy would, of course, have said that there was no talented person who slipped away years ago; that Desmond’s words were just so many images of her ‘self ’ in the eyes of others, a bundle of fleeting impressions, an imaginary snapshot.

  For David’s item, he went to the microphone, without having thought through what he might say. Whenever he had tried to prepare himself in the preceding days, his mind had slewed away from the subject as too depressing.

  “Cathy was my best friend, and I want to play something for her,” was all he managed.

  At least these words came without hesitation, and he went to the piano, and played We’ll Meet Again. As he played, some classical embellishments came back to him. The song disturbed the audience. Some people sang in an undertone, some sobbed. It seemed to take a long time before the effect of the song had passed away, and the service could continue.

  At the same time, David couldn’t see how their spirits could meet again, but the thought that they might was pleasing to him, and everybody else in the church. You never want to say goodbye, and the song held out a possibility that you didn’t have to.

  Cathy’s brother stepped up to the podium looking compact in his dark suit, green light flashing on his rimless spectacles. He spoke of a childhood by the sea at Brancaster, with his two sisters; fancy dress parties; their adventures in an old sailing boat on the Norfolk Broads, and picnics with jam sandwiches, in the orchard at the bottom of the garden.

  The service ended with a thunderous rendering of Blake’s And did those feet in ancient time.

 

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