8
Rain and cloud at first but drier and brighter conditions developing
I TRY TO observe, keep alert, so I don’t end up like Les, cabbaged in an armchair, fuses blown. The front door slams, quakes the house. I lean towards the window, catch sight of Ned’s bony arse vaulting our gate. He is athletic for a knobhead. How is it a deaf man who never checks for oncoming traffic is still alive? He is wearing one of Mum’s deerstalker hats and his trackies hang low on his hips. Some old dear will die of shock. An offensive weapon, that’s what he is. I should open the window and shoot him. He’s quick, though. You’ve got to wonder what he’s running from. No good asking.
It occurs to me that if I go blind we will be the three hear-no speak-no see-no-evil monkeys. As it is, I am the only one with a plan. I am no saint but I am twenty-first century. I can hoover the house, including the stairs, in two and a half minutes flat with the tube attachment, I timed it.
I do ask myself, Lee, what are you doing? I could walk away and never come back. Granted, I could put my foot down. But I would always wonder. This way I know, I don’t have to think on, worry, fret. They are here under my feet, getting on my nerves, costing a fortune.
Lee and I have an understanding, she used to say. Lee is my soldier.
That day we stood, me and Ned in the field; she must’ve been cremated ten weeks or more. We’d waited for decent weather. He carried her casket, her name was on the plaque. We stood at the edge of the field waiting for the right moment. I wore my red tie. Ned had fastened the top button of his shirt. I read out the prayer. I liked the bit, risen with healing in his wings, but the rest went over our heads. Ned watched my lips to listen. His hair blew in his eyes. As the clouds shifted I did it. I couldn’t tell if it was the right moment but the light breaking seemed like a signal. The sun was weak but it warmed our necks. Her ashes blew on to our jackets, up our sleeves. We were sixteen and eighteen but Ned knelt down like a little kid. I saw her ashes in his hair. Clinging, I thought. I waited. By the time he stood up the gap in the clouds had closed over.
*
OUR DAD WAS a plant operator, he specialised in static tower cranes and mobile elevated work platforms. He worked his way up, he used to joke he’d made it to the top of his profession.
He accepted a job in Dalkeith, Midlothian, as plant and maintenance manager, and he came back less and less until he never came back at all. Me and Ned imagined he must have met someone. We decided she was blonde, a dancer we reckoned: Candy, Sheryl. Something like that.
The cranes suited him, our mum said. Alone up there among the clouds where no one could reach him. He spread his wings, stepped off, floated away.
Lester had no skyward leanings. Never mind what might have been, could have been, never was. Les was as plain as the nose on your face. He took us on day trips: model railways, garden centres, car boot sales. We ate pasties, visited the gift shop. He sang along to Bruce Springsteen in his Ford Mondeo. He made her happy. We kept our opinions to ourselves.
I have wondered if our dad is still alive, swinging among the clouds in a crane cab. She was the only one who could’ve found out. I have an inkling he is still with us. He must wonder what has happened to his sons, Lee Paul and Ned Joseph. Here we are, Dad. He said to me once, At the end of the day, Lee, you come back down to earth, no matter how high you go.
*
I REMEMBER ALL our roadkill trophies from back when. Hard won they were. We had to position ourselves very carefully to make a play for the smashed pheasant. It was lying by the central reservation, torn like a puppet. I count Ned down for the oncoming traffic. He takes his time. Typical. Reckons himself the expert now. Like this is a useful expertise. Like it’ll be his career, scraping up dead things.
He waves at me. Gog! Look at me!
I wave. I jump up and down. Cars are coming. She’ll kill me if. Hurry up then. For f*cks. Come on! Now!
*
WE TOOK OURSELVES out when she was bad, when she was weepy. Take our minds off. Get some fresh air. The doctors, the mastectomy, the chemotherapy, had all worked then failed. She made a new plan. She was in charge of plans in those days. We all agreed the new plan would work a treat, even Les. The new plan involved a new approach. To help us all understand it there were leaflets offering advice, information, facts.
I took money from her purse. Me and Ned bought sandwiches and crisps at the garage. I read a leaflet while we ate the crisps.
The single most important key to surviving advanced CANCER is working with an expert who knows fighting advanced cancer is like fighting a raging house fire! You cannot fight it with 5 or 6 garden hoses. You need firemen!
Lester was her fireman. Day and night down the pole. Peeling, chopping, dicing, grinding the juicer. He drove her to a place for doses of intravenous vitamin C, a place for intravenous vitamin B17. A clinic where they plugged her in, like Frankenstein’s monster, to a Frequency Generator. Les read the leaflet. I read the leaflet. Ned read the leaflet. Electromedicine produces miraculous results! You can’t argue with that. A machine that turns cancer cells to normal cells. When used with a water ionizer, it says, the process allows clusters of water to get inside cancer cells, detoxifying dead microbes and the toxins they create. Result. Impressive. Ned steals one of my crisps. I kick him.
The vast majority of alternative CANCER treatments out there are garden hoses. We will supply you with the fire hoses you need for both home and clinical treatment. Survival means acquiring 3 things!! (1) At least 1 fire hose. (2) Several garden hoses. (3) An expert to work with patient and/or caregiver.
You can’t take it all in, it’s too scientific. We take extra copies of the leaflet to read at home. We walk home the long way. I used to prefer to get home after dark, after she’d fallen asleep. If we were lucky we would hear the owl hooting, just like when we were little kids, same old, as if nothing had changed.