Remedy is None. William McIlvanney

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СКАЧАТЬ was really directed against himself, he realized. It was not so much that he blamed John as that he had sought to divert any blame from himself, and now he admitted to himself that he was in part to blame. He was the one who had been content to stay in Glasgow and concern himself almost exclusively with his own problems and his own life. John and Elizabeth had been here, knowing and worrying about his father, and trying to look after him. What right had he to blame anyone?

      ‘An’ anyway,’ John went on superfluously, ‘it’s all happened so quick. Ah mean, ma feyther got the X-ray, and then they had him in for observation fur a wee while, and then they just sent him hame tae dee. There wis nuthin’ else fur it. They said it wis too late. Ah think ma feyther musta been nursin’ this fur a long time, Charlie, without tellin’ anybody.’

      ‘Ah know, John,’ Charlie said. ‘It’s just somethin’ ye canny get tae believe all at once.’

      Elizabeth was still sitting staring into the fire, clutching her handkerchief in a wet ball. Charlie stood looking at her, and in the firelight tiny filaments of vein scarred the whites of her eyes.

      ‘Ye better go up noo, Charlie,’ John said. ‘The doctor said he would be back in this efternin tae give ’im the morphine. He might no’ come out it again. This might be the last time he talks. He might be in any time now.’

      Charlie nodded. He felt like some sort of prodigal son. Well, he was here now, anyway. A trifle late, it was true. But he was here. He went up the stairs slowly, over the worn flowers of the carpet, and he was thinking that his father would never step on them again. Each step seemed to settle in a slough of reluctance to face what was ahead.

      ‘Charlie?’

      Charlie stopped as if trying to locate where the voice had come from. It seemed to dirl from a distance further than the room above him. The door was open, but he knew he wouldn’t see his father until he was in the room, because of the position of the bed behind the door. He went on up and stood still a moment at the door. In the wardrobe mirror he could see the outline of his father’s legs beneath the covers and one hand laid waxen on the counterpane. It looked as fine as filigree. Illness must have sculpted long and patiently at the flesh to make anything as pale and fragile for aesthetic death. It lay motionless, as if life had already left it.

      ‘Is that you, Charlie?’

      The voice drifted thin as smoke from the room.

      ‘Aye, Feyther. It’s me,’ he said, and went in.

      Nothing could have prepared Charlie for this. In his youth his father had made a fetish of fitness because, being little more than literate, he carried most of his assets in his body, a body made hard by the pits and pick-and-shovel labouring through many years before he was smitten by the dream to be his own boss, to ‘branch out’ on his own. It had taken little more than a month of sickness to make a mockery of sinew and muscle and reassert the bone so that the hard muscular form Charlie had said cheerio to now lay skeletal, barely giving shape to the sweat-stained pyjamas, protruding sticks of wrist that even those frail hands seemed too heavy for. The face was a sharp miniature of what it had been, dominated by the eyes, hollowly dark, like twin tunnels to nothing.

      ‘Hullo, son,’ and a smile came like a scar across his face.

      ‘Hullo, Feyther,’ and Charlie carved a careful answering smile of his own.

      His father was laboriously pretending to feel no pain, pursing his lips. There was a chair beside the bed with a newspaper lying on it. ‘Tragedy in a Tenement’, Charlie noticed before he sat down.

      ‘Is everythin’ a’ right at the university, Charlie?’

      ‘Aye, Feyther, it’s fine,’ Charlie said, wondering what difference that made to anything.

      It occurred to Charlie that it might be difficult to find things to talk about. What did you say to someone who was dying? Everything he could think of was double-edged, and did not mean for his father what it meant for him. But his father solved the problem by easing himself up in bed, ready to talk. He obviously had something he was very anxious to say. Charlie saw that he was excused cliches. This was to be a monologue.

      ‘Ah didny send for ye. Sooner, Charlie,’ his father said, pain punctuating his breath at random. ‘Ah knew ye wis busy at the studyin’. An’ Ah didny want. Tae gie’ ye any more worry than Ah had tae.’

      ‘Aw, Feyther,’ Charlie said. What did he think, anyway, that he rated lower than class examinations? That he had to die out of term time, organize his death to suit the syllabus?

      ‘Naw, Charlie, Ah didny want tae do that. But Ah don’t ken how much time Ah have now. An’ Ah wanted to see ye.’

      ‘Ah, mebbe ye’ve some time yet, Feyther,’ Charlie said, the sight of his father denying the words as he said them.

      ‘Naw, son, naw. Ah ken. An’ Ah’ve had a long time to think. Lyin’ here. A long time.’ Pain suddenly prompted him to hurry. ‘You keep an eye to Elizabeth, son, will ye? She’s a good lassie an’ Harry’s a nice boy. She’ll be all right. She’s mature now. A sensible lassie for her age. She’s had to be, God bless her. Takin’ a mither’s place before she was a woman. Doin’ two jobs. She’s made a good job of herself. She’ll be all right. As long as you’re there just to look after her a wee bit. John’s got his ain family now, ye see.’ Pride flickered for a moment in his eyes, the ghost of an emotion. ‘He’s got his wife an’ son to look after now. God bless them.’

      He paused, fighting the pain. It was harrowing to watch him, a man numbering his children in his will. All he had to give them were blessings.

      ‘An’ yersel’, Charlie. Now. Ah want ye to keep in. At the university. It’ll no’ be easy. Ah know. It’s no thanks to me if ye do make it. Fur it’s little. Ah can leave ye. But listen, Charlie. In the jacket of ma blue suit. In the wardrobe. Fifty pounds. Inside the lining o’ the sleeve. It’ll be a help. An’, Charlie. The funeral’s all covered. By the insurance. There’ll be no expense whatsoever from that. There’ll maybe be somethin’ left over.’

      It was all arranged. His death was to cause them as little inconvenience as possible.

      ‘Feyther,’ Charlie said. ‘We’ll be all right. Don’t worry about that.’

      ‘An’, Charlie. In the inside pocket of the jacket. A key. To ma lock-up down at Fore Street. There’s a lotta metal there. Mick an’ me stripped it off old gas-masks. Ye’ll get a few pounds for that. But Mick. He’s got to get his share of it. He helped me. The key’s in the inside pocket.’

      Charlie looked down at his hands. Why was he so concerned with money at this time? The key to the lock-up. It was like a macabre mockery of a fairy-tale – the legendary treasure told of by a dying man. A few bits of metal. He was apportioning his worldly goods. Everyone was to get his share, even Mick, the model-lodging ne’er-do-weel who had played Sancho Panza to his father’s Quixotic dreams of financial success.

      ‘It’s no’ much, Charlie. But it’ll help to tide ye over just now. Ye must stick it. At the university. Ye’ve got to, Charlie. Ye’re no’ goin’ to be like me. A nobody. You’ll make a success of your life. You’ll be different from me, son. You’ll be different.’

      ‘Ah don’t want to be different from you, Feyther,’ Charlie said. He couldn’t believe that his father was saying that. Why was he speaking like this? ‘What is there to be different about?’

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