Escape from Shangri-La

My mother had been interrupted in full flow, but she was only momentarily taken aback. ‘Popsicle it is then,’ she said, and she bustled me out of the kitchen. ‘I’ll look out some of Arthur’s clothes for you,’ I heard her telling him as I went up the stairs. ‘They’ll be a bit on the large side, I shouldn’t wonder. We’ll have those wet things of yours dry in a jiffy.’ She was talking to him as if she’d known him for years, as if he was one of the family.

I was thinking about that as I ran the bath, but it wasn’t until I was fetching the towel from the airing cupboard that it began to sink in, that I began to understand what all this really meant. Until then I had believed it, but I hadn’t felt it. I had a new grandfather. Out of nowhere I had a new grandfather! A flush of sudden joy surged through me. As I watched him coming slowly up the stairs, hauling himself up by the banisters, all I wanted to do was to throw my arms round his neck and hug him. I waited until he reached the top, and then I did it. He looked a bit bewildered. I’d taken him by surprise but I think he was pleased all the same.

‘Do you have a loofah, Cessie?’ he asked me. ‘I don’t have baths very often. Bit difficult where I live. Bit cramped. Never enough water either. But when I do have a bath I always have my loofah.’

‘What’s that?’ I asked.

‘It’s a sort of backscrubber. Reaches the parts you can’t reach otherwise.’

‘I don’t think we’ve got one,’ I laughed. ‘But you can have a duck, if you want. I’ve got a yellow plastic one called Patsy. Had it ever since I was little.’

‘What more could a fellow want?’ He smiled at me as I handed him the towel. ‘Tell you what, Cessie, why don’t you give us a tune on that fiddle of yours, eh? Same tune you were playing when I was out in the street. I liked that. I liked that a lot. You could do me a sort of serenade in the bath.’

So, with my bedroom door open, I serenaded him with Handel’s Largo. I could hear him humming away and splashing next door in the bathroom. I was playing so well, I was so wrapped up in it, that at first I didn’t notice my mother standing at the door of my room. I could tell she’d been listening for some time. When I stopped playing she said, ‘You play so well, Cessie. When you mean it, you play so well.’ She came over and sat down on my bed. ‘I don’t know what it is. I don’t feel right in myself,’ she said. ‘Shock, I suppose. I can’t explain it. It’s like someone’s just walked over my grave.’ I sat down beside her. She seemed to want me to. ‘It is him, you know,’ she went on. ‘I can see your dad in his face, in his gestures. You can’t fake that.’ She was hugging herself. ‘Maybe I’m frightened, Cessie.’

‘Of him?’

‘No, of course not. Of what might happen when your dad gets back. I don’t understand. I just don’t know what to make of it. I mean he’ll talk occasionally about his mum, and, very occasionally, about his stepfather too. But in all the time I’ve known him I don’t think he’s ever said a single word to me about his real dad. It’s as if he never existed, like he was almost a non-person. Perhaps I should have asked, but I always felt it was . . . well . . . like forbidden territory, almost as if there was something to hide, something he didn’t want to remember. I don’t know, I don’t know; but what I do know is that any minute now your dad’s going to walk in this house, and I’m going to have to tell him his father’s here. It’s going to be a big surprise, but I’m not sure what kind of surprise, that’s all.’

‘I’ll tell him, if you like,’ I said. I didn’t make the offer just to help her out. I offered because I wanted to be quite sure I was there when he was told, that this wouldn’t be one of those private, important things they went out into the garden to discuss earnestly. Popsicle may be my father’s father, but when all was said and done, he was my grandfather not theirs.

My mother put her hand on mine. ‘We’ll do it together, shall we?’

That was the moment we heard the front door open, and then slam. My father always slammed the door. It was part of his homecoming ritual. He’d toss the car keys next.

‘Anyone home?’ We heard the car keys land on the hall table. He was walking into the kitchen. ‘Anyone home?’

I don’t know who was squeezing whose hand the harder as we walked together along the landing past the bathroom door. We went down the stairs side by side, holding hands, and into the kitchen, holding hands. My father had his back to us. He was by the sink pouring himself a can of beer. He turned round and took a couple of deep swigs. I had never noticed how big his ears were, but I noticed now. I had to smile in spite of myself. My mother was right. You could see Popsicle in him. He was younger of course, and without the long, yellow hair, but they were so alike.

He smothered a burp and patted his chest. ‘Pardon me,’ he said. ‘Throat’s as dry as a bone.’

‘It’s all that talking you do,’ my mother said, clearing her throat nervously.

‘What’s up?’ He was looking at us, from one to the other. We looked back. ‘Nothing the matter, is there? You all right, Cessie?’ I looked away.

My mother began clearing the table, busily. She wasn’t a very convincing actress. ‘So,’ she said, ‘so you won’t be wanting a cup of tea then, not after a beer.’

My father was looking down at the kitchen table. He was counting the mugs, I was sure of it. ‘Seems like tea’s over and done with anyway. You been having a party, have you?’ I smiled weakly. I could think of nothing to say.

‘Cessie’s done her violin practice.’ My mother was prattling now. ‘And I have to say that she’s playing the Largo quite beautifully.’ She was bent over the table, wiping it down, but with far too much enthusiasm. As I watched her I could see she was never going to be able to bring herself even to look at him, let alone to break the news. I was bursting to tell him, but I didn’t know how to begin. I couldn’t find the words. I couldn’t just blurt it out, could I? I couldn’t say: ‘Your long lost father’s come back to see you. He’s upstairs having a bath, with Patsy.’

I was still trying to work out how to tell him, when we heard the bathroom door open, and slow, heavy footfalls coming down the stairs.

‘Who’s that?’ My father had put down his beer. He knew now for sure that there was some sort of conspiracy going on.

‘Are you in there? Are you in the kitchen?’ Popsicle was talking all the time as he came down the stairs, as he came across the hallway towards the kitchen. ‘The clothes are fine. Jacket’s bit big in the sleeve. I may look like a right old scarecrow, but at least I’m a clean old scarecrow now, and warm too. Warmed right through, I am. Best bath I’ve had in years. And it’s been a very long time, I can tell you, since I had a bath with a duck. Friendly sort of a duck too, never leaves you alone. Always nibbling at something.’

The kitchen door opened. My father looked at his father. My grandfather looked at his son.

3 BARNARDO’S BOYS

POPSICLE SHUFFLED FORWARD, HESITANTLY, offering his hand as he came, but my father didn’t take it, not at first. Even when he did, it was obvious to me that he had little idea whose hand he was shaking. But he knew he should know. He wanted help. He needed someone to tell him who this was. So I told him.

‘He’s your dad.’ I said it straight out. It seemed the only way.

‘You don’t recognise me, do you, Arthur?’ Popsicle held on to my father’s hand for a moment longer. ‘Why should you? Been fifty years, near enough. Last time I saw you was in Bradwell, in the village. You were catching a bus across the road from the church, a green bus, I remember that. You and your mum were off to live in Maldon, just down the coast. You were looking out the back window and you were waving. Never saw you again after that, nor your mum.’

Still my father said nothing. He seemed to be in some kind of a trance, incapable of movement, incapable of speech. I had never seen him like this and it frightened me.

My mother was trying to explain. ‘He heard you on the radio, Arthur,’ she said. ‘And then he went to the radio station. He saw your picture on the wall. Recognised you right away, didn’t you, Popsicle?’

‘Bradwell-on-Sea?’ My father spoke at last.

Popsicle nodded. ‘Remember the house, do you, Arthur? Down by the quay, next to the Green Man. Good pub that. Too good.’

My father said nothing more. The silence was becoming long and awkward. I suppose I had been anticipating a joyous reunion, huge hugs, tears even. I certainly hadn’t expected this. My father was usually so spontaneous. This wasn’t like him at all.

‘Maybe I shouldn’t have come, Arthur,’ said Popsicle at last. ‘Not without warning you anyway. I should have written a letter perhaps. That would’ve been better. Well, maybe I’d better be off then.’ And he turned away towards the door.

‘You’ll do no such thing,’ said my mother firmly. She had Popsicle by the arm now. ‘No one’s going anywhere. If this man is who he says he is, then there’s more than just the two of you involved in this. There’s Cessie and there’s me.’ She sat Popsicle down on a kitchen chair, none too gently. Then she stood behind him, hands on his shoulders, facing my father.

‘Well, Arthur, we need to know. Is this your father, or isn’t it?’

My father took his time before replying. ‘Yes.’ He spoke softly, so softly I could hardly hear him. ‘I remember the bus. The window was steamed up and I had to rub a hole in it to see him. I wasn’t waving, not exactly.’

‘Maybe Cessie and I should just leave you both alone for a while. There’ll be a fair bit you want to talk about, I shouldn’t wonder. We’ll make ourselves scarce. Come along, Cessie.’

I was reluctant to go, but it looked as if I had no choice. I was being ushered out of the door when my father called us back.

‘Don’t go,’ he said, and he said it in such a way that I knew he needed us.

My mother was the life and soul of that first gathering around the kitchen table. She brought out the sloe gin. ‘Only for very special occasions, very special people,’ she said, opening the bottle. ‘Five years old. Should be perfect. Not every day a father turns up out of the blue.’

‘Nor a grandfather,’ I added. I was allowed a taste, but that was all. Popsicle emptied his glass in one gulp and declared that it was ‘beautiful’. My father was watching him, scrutinising him all the while, but it was a long time before he said anything.

‘I went back, you know.’ My father spoke up suddenly. He was looking into his glass. He still hadn’t touched a drop.

‘Back where?’ Popsicle asked.

‘Bradwell. To our house.’

‘What for?’

‘I went looking for you. After Mum died, I ran off. But you weren’t there. I asked in the pub, but you’d gone, years before, they said.’

‘She’s dead, Arthur? Your mum’s dead?’

‘A long time ago,’ said my father.

‘I never knew, Arthur. Honest to God, I never knew.’ His face seemed suddenly very sunken and exhausted. ‘When? How?’

‘I was ten. Boating accident. They were both drowned, her and Bill. No one knows what happened, not really. They looked for you. Well, they told me they did anyway, but no one could find you. They packed me off to a home, a children’s home. Nothing else they could do, I suppose. That’s when I ran off back to Bradwell. They caught me of course. Brought me back. A Dr Barnardo’s place it was, by the sea. Wasn’t home exactly, but it wasn’t too bad.’ He took a sip of sloe gin, and then, looking directly across the table at Popsicle, he went on: ‘Do you know what I’d do sometimes? Summer evenings, I’d sit on the brick wall by the gate and wait for you. I really thought that one day you’d come back and take me away. I was sure of it.’

Popsicle seemed suddenly breathless. He clutched at the table for support. ‘You all right?’ my mother asked, crouching down beside him.

‘I’m fine, fine,’ said Popsicle.

‘Sure?’

Popsicle put a hand to his neck. ‘There’s a thing,’ he said. ‘Be funny if it weren’t so sad. Runs in the family. Father and son, both of us Barnardo’s boys. There’s a thing, there’s a thing.’

Without any warning at all he slumped forward off the chair. His head smashed against the corner of the table and hit the floor at my feet with a sickening, hollow crack. There was blood at once.

I had always longed to be in an ambulance on an emergency dash to hospital. When I’d twisted my ankle I’d gone by car and there had been no drama at all, no excitement. But with Popsicle it was the real thing. The ambulance arrived at the house, lights flashing, sirens wailing. Green-overalled paramedics came dashing into the house. They were struggling to save a life under my very eyes.

As he lay there, crumpled on the kitchen floor, all the colour drained from his face, Popsicle looked very dead. I couldn’t detect any sign of breathing. And there was so much blood. The paramedics felt him, listened to him, injected him and put a mask on his face. They told us again and again not to worry, that everything would be all right.

They stretchered him out to the waiting ambulance, where the radio was crackling with messages, and around which a dozen or more of our neighbours were gathered. Mandy Bethel was there, Shirley Watson’s scandal-mongering sidekick from school, so I knew the news would be all over the estate in no time. Mr Goldsmith from next door was there too. And Mrs Martin from across the road, who’d hardly even spoken to me before, put her arm round my shoulder and asked me who it was that was ill. ‘My grandfather,’ I said, and I said it very proudly, and very loudly too, so that everyone should hear.

Then we all climbed into the ambulance with him and we were driven away at speed, sirens wailing. I only wished they hadn’t closed the doors, because I should have liked to have seen their faces for a little longer, especially Mandy Bethel’s. I felt suddenly very important, very much at the centre of things.

It was only when I was inside the ambulance and looking down at Popsicle, deathly white under the scarlet of the blanket, that I realised this was not a performance at all. Suddenly it was serious and I could think only that I didn’t want Popsicle to die. I didn’t say prayers all that often, only when I really needed to. I needed to now, badly. I had just found myself a grandfather, or he had found me, and I did not want to lose him. So I sat in the ambulance and prayed, with my eyes closed tight. My mother thought I was crying and hugged me to her. That was when she began blaming herself.

‘Maybe it was the bath,’ she said. ‘Maybe I shouldn’t have made him have a bath. Maybe we should have warmed him up more slowly.’ And later: ‘He was soaked to the skin, he was shivering. And I just left him sitting there, all that time, in those wet things.’

‘It wasn’t you,’ said my father. ‘It was me. I shouldn’t have told him about Mum, not straight out like that. I didn’t think.’

We sat in casualty at St Margaret’s until the early hours of the morning. When I’d come before with my ankle it had been busy, full of interesting injuries. This time there was hardly anyone there to distract me. I tried not to think of Popsicle. I kept picturing him lying there under a white sheet not breathing, not moving. I flicked through all the Hello! magazines, all the National Geographics and the Readers Digests I could find, but I was quite unable to concentrate on any of them. My mother and father both sat grey-faced, like stony statues, and didn’t speak to each other, nor to me.

We hadn’t had supper and I was hungry. I begged some change off my mother and fed the vending machine. There wasn’t much to choose from. I had a meal of Coca Cola, chocolate biscuits and two packets of cheese and onion crisps. I was feeling a bit queasy by the time the doctor finally came to see us.

She was a lot younger than I thought doctors could ever be. She wore jeans and a T-shirt under her white coat, and twiddled her dangling stethoscope around her fingers as if it was a necklace. She smiled an encouraging smile at me, and I knew then that the news was going to be good news. Popsicle was not going to die after all. I wasn’t going to lose him. I felt like whooping with joy, but I couldn’t, not in a hospital.

‘How is he?’ my mother asked.

‘Stable. We think he’s had a stroke, a mild stroke. We’d like to keep him in for a while under observation. We’ll do some tests. All being well, he can go back home in a couple of weeks or so. He’ll need a bit of looking after. He lives with you, does he?’

‘Not really,’ said my father. ‘Not exactly.’

My mother looked at him meaningfully.

‘Well,’ my father went on, ‘perhaps he does. For the moment anyway.’

The doctor was looking from one to the other in some bewilderment. ‘I’m afraid he does seem to have lost some movement in his right side. But given time that should right itself. For a man of his age I’d say he has a very strong constitution. He’s very fit. But there is one other thing. He’s got a very nasty head wound – fractured his skull in two places. We won’t know the extent of the damage – if any – for a while yet. Another reason for keeping a good eye on him.’

‘Can we see him?’ I asked.

Her bleeper went off. ‘No peace for the wicked,’ she said. ‘The nurse will show you the way.’ I watched her walk off down the corridor and decided that if I didn’t end up as a concert violinist, or a round-the-world singlehanded yachtswoman, then I’d be a doctor like her – maybe.

Popsicle was lying in a bed surrounded by a fearsome array of monitors and drips. There was a tube in his nose and another in his arm. His hair was gold against the white of the pillows. There was a wide strip of plaster across his forehead, and a dark grey bruise round his eye. He wasn’t a pretty sight, but at least the dreadful pallor had gone. He was asleep and breathing deeply, regularly, his mouth wide open. He must have sensed we were there. His eyes opened. For some moments he looked from one to the other of us. He didn’t seem to know who we were.

‘Not angryla,’ he murmured, looking around him. He was more than bewildered, he was frightened, and agitated too. ‘Not angryla.’ He wasn’t making much sense.

‘It’s me,’ I said. ‘Cessie. It’s all right. You had an accident. You’re in hospital. It’s all right.’ At that he seemed to calm down, and a sudden smile came over his face.

He knew us. He knew me. He beckoned me closer. I bent over him. I was so close I could feel his breath on my cheek. ‘See what happens if you eat too many chocolate digestives.’

‘It was the sloe gin,’ I said, and he managed a smile.

My mother was beside me and taking his hand. ‘You’ve had a bit of a turn,’ she said. She was speaking slowly, deliberately and loudly too, as if he were deaf. ‘The doctor says you’ll be right as rain. We’ll come and see you tomorrow, shall we?’ Popsicle lifted his hand and touched his forehead. ‘You clunked your head, when you fell. You’ll have a bit of a shiner too, a black eye. You’ll be all right, Popsicle, you’ll be fine.’

Popsicle was looking up at my father, trying to lift his head, trying to say something to him. ‘Popsicle. You remember, Arthur? It’s what you used to call me when you were little. D’you remember?’

‘Yes,’ said my father.

‘And you had big ears in those days too,’

‘Did I?’

‘And you still have,’ Popsicle chuckled just once, and then drifted off to sleep. My father stood there looking down at him. He reached down, took Popsicle’s hand and laid it tenderly on the sheet. His hands so wrinkled, so ancient.

‘Let’s go home,’ he said, and he turned on his heel and walked out of the ward without another word.

By the time we got home there wasn’t much of the night left, but I spent what there was quite unable to sleep. I kept going over and over in my mind everything that had happened that day. I knew as I lay there in bed that my ordinary life was over, that from now on everything was going to be extraordinary. Popsicle had come out of nowhere, out of the blue, to be my grandfather; and nothing and no one would or could ever be the same again.

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