The Spider Truces Part 29

"I think I might have made a mistake, dear boy."

"The moment you find a place you love, you'll feel differently."

"I'm sure you're right ..." Denny said unconvincingly.

Chrissie arrived with a parcel for her dad.

"They're not presents, they're homework," she told him.

Beneath the brown wrapping paper, Denny O'Rourke found The Times Atlas of the World and books ent.i.tled The Art of Independent Travel, Great Train Journeys of the World, Fodor's Guide to New Zealand and a Jiffy's Container Shipping brochure, in which were listed cargo ships that offered berths for civilians.

"How marvellous!" he said.

"Inspired idea," Ellis muttered to his sister.

She winked at him proudly.

Denny positioned a table and chair at the kitchen window, facing the walnut trees. He set the atlas and travel books out on it, along with a pencil and notebook. He opened the window to a refreshing breeze, played his music a little louder than the sound of the road, and began to read.

Ellis spent the spring preoccupied by the number of months that were ama.s.sing since he'd had s.e.x. He could think of no one in his current routine who would want to sleep with him. The suburbs seemed to drain away the potential for romance or l.u.s.t, and for anything else for that matter. He was bored. What he really wanted and needed was to work for Milek but that would mean asking for Chrissie's help and, right now, he didn't want to ask her for anything. Something had changed between the two of them. The tenderness had gone from her, unable to cohabit with her ambition. She was businesslike in all things and injected compet.i.tiveness into situations where none need exist. Ellis hoped it was a temporary change in her and that things would return to how they used to be, but in the meantime he was bewildered by her need to belittle him.

Denny had viewed four small houses in four different villages but none of them was right. The villages were too enclosed and the houses lightless. He missed the cottage. He missed the way in which his village had allowed the sky in, right up to the doorstep. He loathed the suburbs that surrounded him. He sat in the living room and the afternoon clouded over without his noticing. He rocked gently back and forth, his arms folded across his stomach. He took the phone up to his bedroom and shut the door before calling the doctor and making an appointment for the next day. He went to bed soon after eight o'clock. Ellis brought him in a gla.s.s of water and put it beside his bed.

"I've never done this before," Ellis said.

"What's that?"

"Looked after you when you're ill."

"I'm not ill, just a little off-colour." Denny smiled to back up his claim.

Ellis retreated to the door. "What sort of off-colour?"

"Just a tummy ache, that's all."

17.

The week was slow and empty. Ellis noted with wry admiration his dad's ability to navigate clear of the word 'tumour' throughout it. When the time finally came, he drove Denny to the hospital. Chrissie couldn't. She had what she called "wall-to-wall meetings" all day.

Father and son were synchronised bravado. They wore identical smiles and the unruffled body language of the Invincibles and they 'oohed' and 'aahed' at the same houses in Country Life magazine. But, in Denny's room, where hotel luxuries and medical equipment made a strange marriage, Ellis felt things change when Denny asked at what time the next day his son should collect him. The consultant looked amused, initially, then appalled.

"Are you aware of the scale of this procedure, Mr O'Rourke?"

Ellis watched the warm, confident smile evaporate from his father's face and realised that Denny had not begun to grasp the enormity of the impending a.s.sault on his body.

"This is surgery many people make a full recovery from but you are having a significant portion of your bowel removed this evening. It is major surgery. You are not going to be going home tomorrow. You are not going to be going home the morning after that, not for a couple of weeks."

"Why ever not?" Denny was stunned.

The consultant spelt it out. "Because you will be in a great deal of discomfort."

Ellis was shocked less by the seriousness of their outing than by the discovery that his dad didn't keep the unpalatable truths of life at arm's length just from his children but from himself also.

"Do you want me to take you through any other details?" the consultant asked.

"No thanks," Ellis said. "Send in someone funnier."

Chrissie seemed more indignant than upset that evening.

"All of a sudden we're talking about a tumour. You told me it was just a lump and they'd whip it out."

Denny placated her. "Well, it is a lump ... and, chances are, whipping it out will do the trick."

"Chances! I want to know for sure!"

"Yes, dear girl, me too."

"Think of it like this," Ellis began, making his sister squirm at the prospect of taking his counsel. "It's great that the GP noticed this lump and it's great that Dad kept up his health insurance from work and it's great that Dad's in here so quickly and by tomorrow it will have been cut out. I mean, that's what happens, this is the reality of people finding out they've got stomach cancer and having it successfully removed."

"Don't say cancer, Ellis," Chrissie said.

"Thank G.o.d it's in my stomach," Denny said, "where there's loads to spare and they can just cut it all out. If this was on my lungs or liver ..."

"You'd be f.u.c.ked!" Ellis said, trying to lighten things up.

Chrissie smiled, despite herself.

"OK," she retreated, "but don't use the word cancer."

They sat awkwardly and quietly, mulling this over.

"Isn't that going to be quite difficult?" Denny asked.

"What?" Chrissie said.

"Not using the word cancer."

"We've got to be able to talk about it," Ellis said.

"OK," Chrissie said, "but why don't we choose a different word for the c-a-n-c-e-r? We could say TB."

Denny was confused. "TB? As in tuberculosis?"

"Yes. It's quick, medical and easy to remember."

The room went quiet.

"I thought," Denny said diplomatically, "the idea would be to replace c-a-n-c-e-r with something a little lighter."

"Indeed," Ellis agreed.

"Oh," Chrissie said, confused. "OK, if you like. For me though, anything other than c-a-n-c-e-r is an improvement. That's why I went for something catchy but still relevant."

"How is TB relevant?" Ellis asked.

"'Cos you 'get it' and Dad's also 'got' something."

These days, Ellis and Denny found it difficult to know when Chrissie was being ironic and when she was being earnest.

"How about ..." Ellis said, gazing at the ceiling.

All three of them thought hard.

"The disease," Chrissie suggested.

"Again," her dad said, "a bit dark."

"You mind cancer but you don't mind 'disease'?" Ellis asked.

"Don't say cancer, Ellis. The 'thing'?"

"Too vague," Denny said. "We'll come a cropper the first time we are having a conversation about the c-a-n-c-e-r and also happen to mention a thing. All of a sudden, we'll have two 'things' in the conversation and we won't know what we're talking about."

"We just call it your condition," Ellis suggested.

"No, sounds like I've got a rash."

"We could name it ..." Chrissie said. "Geoff or Scottie or something."

"Girls have to name everything!" Ellis protested. "You give your cars names for G.o.d's sake!"

Denny climbed out of bed and took a seat in the high-backed armchair by the window.

"We'll call it my headache," he said. "Today, I've got a headache and tomorrow, my headache will be gone."

Denny was pleased with this and Chrissie seemed to like it, too. They settled into a comfortable quiet. But Ellis, seeing that there was still an hour to kill before surgery, decided he wasn't finished.

"But what if tomorrow you really do have a headache, which is quite possible considering what you'll have been through?"

"I think I'm getting one now," Denny sighed.

Chrissie despaired. "Oh, call it sodding cancer then, I don't care."

"Cancer it is!" Denny said.

"When all is said and done, cancer has that ring of accuracy to it," Ellis said.

"I'm actually growing to like it," Chrissie agreed.

Denny sighed contentedly and looked out of the window.

"You're a pair of idiots," he muttered.

Ellis and his sister watched the steam rise off their plates of food until the steam had gone. Ellis sc.r.a.ped the food into the bin. The phone rang at ten minutes to nine. Chrissie darted to it ruthlessly. Ellis felt his heartbeat quicken and the blood and enzymes and chemicals pumping out of control. Chrissie slammed the phone down and grabbed Ellis into an embrace.

"It's gone very well," she told him.

It was late and the hospital was quiet, like a hotel on the moon, and the corridors seemed to smell of Fry's Peppermint Cream. Chrissie hurried ahead and was already at Denny's bedside when Ellis walked in. She felt her father's forehead and glanced up at her brother in the doorway.

"He's sleeping," she smiled, a tear rolling down her cheek.

Ellis smiled stiffly at her, resisted the urge to say "No s.h.i.t" and ushered himself and his anger out of the room. He sat in the corridor on a soft chair, leaning over a coffee table. He stared at a column of magazines which were fanned out to reveal the t.i.tles. He rocked a little, back and forth, held his fingers across his lips and breathed heavily through his nose. All of these mannerisms belonged to his father, as if Denny had lent them to Ellis whilst he hadn't the energy to be himself in such detail. Ellis looked through the open door of his dad's room at the high-backed chair Denny had sat in earlier. He hummed to himself to contain the anger he felt at someone reducing his father to what he had just seen lying in the bed. Once, when he was thirteen, on a Sat.u.r.day afternoon in winter, Ellis had taken a cup of a tea to his dad after they had been working in the garden. He found him sound asleep on his bed, his hands clasped together behind his head and his mouth open. He looked helpless. Lifeless. Ellis had wondered then if this was how his dad would look when he died. It was how he looked now.

He returned to the room, pulled a chair up to the bed and stroked his dad's left forearm. It was unchanged, still powerful and cobra-wide at its most muscular point. It was the rest of him that had been lessened. He could feel his dad's pulse and it dawned on him that he understood perfectly the task ahead. The body that he could feel functioning beneath the pressure of his fingers was the vessel his dad had been given to live in. They simply needed to protect, service, and correct this vessel and his dad would always be with them. It was uncomplicated. It was achievable. They had cut out the bad bit. They could always cut out other bad bits if necessary. It wasn't really his dad that was ill, it was just his body. And it was only his body that looked different for now. He was inside this lifeless sh.e.l.l, lying dormant whilst they repaired him. Tomorrow, he'd come back to them. Tomorrow, he'd be waiting for them when they arrived. Tomorrow, he'd come out to play. Ellis looked at his sister.

"You're right." He smiled, feeling great love for her. "He's just sleeping."

The phone rang at seven the next morning. Ellis heard it in his sleep, ignored it, then remembered everything and leapt out of bed. He threw himself downstairs in panic but Chrissie beat him to the phone.

"Who is it?" she demanded. Then her face softened. "Oh! Hi," she chirped. "You are thoughtful to call, Ree." She put her hand over the mouthpiece and a.s.sured Ellis it wasn't the hospital.

"For f.u.c.k's sake!" Ellis hissed. He stormed into the kitchen.

"I'm going to call you back, Ree." Chrissie hung up and found Ellis filling the kettle. She waited for him to be empty-handed, then wrapped her arms around him.

"I'm sorry, Ellie. That was a horrible start to the day for you."

He freed his arms and then wrapped them around her. He could no longer remember what it had been like to be smaller than her.

"Who the h.e.l.l is Ree?" he murmured.

"Henry. He's a banker."

"Daft time of day to use the telephone."

"He's got a penthouse overlooking the Thames."

This sounded instantly ludicrous to both of them.

"Relevance?" Ellis asked.

Chrissie shook her head. "Don't know why I said it."