A Spot Of Bother

48

Jean rang Brian. She said George hadn’t been feeling well and had come home. He asked whether it was serious. She said she thought not. And he was so relieved he didn’t ask any questions, for which she was very grateful indeed.

He’d been fast asleep on the sofa for the last five hours.

Was it serious? She had absolutely no idea what to think.

He’d turned up at nine thirty that morning with a gash on his head looking like he’d slept in a ditch.

She assumed something terrible had happened to him. But the only explanation he offered was that he’d stayed in a hotel. She asked why he hadn’t rung to stop her worrying but he wouldn’t answer. He’d obviously been drinking. She could smell the alcohol on him. She got quite cross at this point.

Then he said that he was dying and she realized he wasn’t well.

He explained that he had cancer. Except it wasn’t cancer. It was eczema. He insisted on showing her a rash on his hip. She actually started to wonder whether he was going mad.

She wanted to ring the doctor, but he was adamant that she do nothing of the kind. He explained that he had already been to the doctor. There was nothing more the doctor could say.

She rang Ottakar’s and the school office and said she’d be off work for a few days.

She rang David from the phone upstairs. He listened to the whole story and said, “Maybe it’s not so strange. Don’t you think about dying sometimes? Those nights when you wake up at three and can’t get back to sleep? And retiring does funny things to you. All that time on your hands…”

George began to stir round about teatime. She made him some cocoa and some toast and he seemed a little more human. She tried to get him to talk, but he made no more sense than he’d done first thing that morning. She could see that he found it painful discussing the subject so after a while she let it drop.

She told him to stay where he was and got him his favorite books and music. He seemed tired, mostly. An hour or so later she made their supper and brought it through so they could eat it together on the coffee table in front of the television. He ate everything and asked for another codeine and they watched a David Attenborough program about monkeys.

Her panic began to recede.

It was like turning the clock back thirty years. Jamie with his glandular fever. Katie with her broken ankle. Tomato soup and toast soldiers. Watching Crown Court together. Doctor Dolittle and The Swiss Family Robinson.

The next day George announced that he was going to retire to the bedroom. He took the television upstairs and installed himself in bed, and to tell the truth Jean was a bit sad.

She popped in every half an hour or so to check that he was OK, but he seemed quite self-sufficient. Which was one of the things that she’d always admired about him. He never moaned about being ill. Never thought he should be the center of attention. Just retreated to his basket, like a poorly dog, and curled up until he was ready to chase sticks again.

By the evening he told her that he would be fine on his own so she went into town the following morning and sold books for four hours and met Ursula for lunch. She started telling her what was happening, then realized that she couldn’t really explain without talking about the cancer and the eczema and the fear of dying and the alcohol and cut on the head, and she didn’t want to make him seem crazy, so she said he’d canceled the Cornwall trip on account of a nasty tummy bug, and Ursula told her all about the joys of staying in Dublin with your daughter and her four children while her builder husband was ripping out the bathroom.