Page 111 of The Flowers of Bay C
Him and Brian and Violet and Barbara are a blur of colour as they bend into cupboards and drawers, tugging towels and jumpers off their chairs, clearing their over bed tables of two weeks and more’s worth of detritus. They pack up this part of their lives in just a few minutes. Barbara is quavery and weepy, whether about Jodie or going back to the home I am not sure. Maybe it is a mixture of everything. Maybe all her emotions have crowded into one great big river of tears and she can’t stop it. I know that because I feel a little bit like that too.
Our goodbyes are too quick and without great drama, even from Violet. I remember the day she came in, when this bay and this bed space was disgusting and so was everything and everyone else, and how as she leaves now her mouth is just a little less twisted up than it was then.
Jake looks at her and Brian, framed in the entrance to the bay, and says, ‘Hashtag Briolet, modelling the latest must-have spacewalk jackets in his and hers versions.’
That’s something Jodie would have said. I can almost hear the echo of her voice whispering through the bay.
‘Keep in touch,’ Kat says.
Violet nods, then stops in the doorway, looking back at us, as if she is hovering on the edge of the possibility of saying more. I want to get up, to go over and hug her, but Brian pulls at her arm. As they leave I hear Brian mutter to her, ‘It’s disgusting, how long they took to get you discharged. Been waiting round all day.’
‘It’s a disgrace,’ Violet says, and then she is gone.
Barbara waves to us as she is pushed out of the door to the bay, wrapped in blankets and wearing her maroon fluffy slippers, a smile toying with her mouth. We wave back, and then she is gone too.
???
In evening visiting I am not expecting anyone. Jake left earlier, after hugging me more tightly than usual and telling me that he could not wait for me to come home tomorrow, so we could be together again in our little flat. He would cook for me, he said. Not sloppy macaroni cheese, please, I said.
I lie back on my bed and close my eyes. I am weary and wounded and I just want to sleep and then go home. My cannula stings at my arm and I shift it to try and ease the burning but it doesn’t work and I know they will have to change it one last time.
‘Penny.’
The voice is familiar. Gentle with tenderness.
Dad.
It is the first time he has come to see me in hospital in years. I look around, searching for Mum, but she isn’t there, of course. Just Dad. He looks old and tired, like the years have waged a battle and then won. The lines on his face cut so deeply they look like they have been carved out, as if a sculptor has taken a knife to his flesh. I remember him young and glorious, in Africa on safari with me, lying under great starry skies and pointing out the different constellations. I remember him before the cares of the world got too much and before I became the burden that ruined his life.
‘Dad,’ I say.
He shifts from foot to foot, his hands jiggling by his side as if he doesn’t know what to do with them.
‘It’s… nice to see you.’ All I want is for him to come and sit with me, to throw his arms around me, so that I can cry into his chest like I did as a little girl, so the tears I’ve locked up for so long can have a safe place to fall on, so he can make everything better.
‘I saw you in theMail,’ he says.
‘You still reading that rag?’ I bite my lip and wish I could take the insult back. My politics have never lined up with my parents’,and there have been too many arguments that have opened the wound until it is too gaping to mend.
But he smiles softly. ‘I wanted to say…’
He stops. Scratches his beard.
‘It’s just that… I’m proud of you, Penny.’
I stare up at him. His faded grey eyes are troubled.
Proud?
He never told me that he was proud of me. Not in years, at least. Maybe when I was small, when I was doing well at school, when everything about me looked a little bit hopeful and as if I might be something useful in life. But it was Karen they were always proud of, in the end. I was the one who they just had to put up with.
He swallows over his bobbing Adam’s apple. ‘I… it’s just your mum, well, she’s very overpowering, isn’t she? She hasn’t made it easy for me, to be a good father.’
I rub my forehead. ‘You can’t blame her for that, Dad. You are your own man.’
He purses his lips and then nods.
‘I know she wasn’t easy, though.’
