had never been in hospital before,’ she continued, ‘apart from when he had pneumonia as a child. He was very upset by the whole experience. He felt no one cared and he insisted he wanted to go home. Clearly it was out of the question for him to go to his house – Mum couldn’t have coped, so I made the offer for them both to come here, which they accepted. Ray,’ Evelyn said, looking directly at him and her eyes misting, ‘Dad won’t be returning to hospital, nor to his home. He has come here so he can have peace and quiet among his loved ones at the end.’
‘But I don’t understand,’ her father said abruptly. ‘You said Dad responded to the antibiotics, so why shouldn’t he make a full recovery?’
Evelyn paused and glanced at Mandy, almost for support. ‘His body is slowly shutting down. He’s tired, Ray. He’s had a long life and a good one, and now it’s coming to its natural end. I don’t know how else to put it, Ray, but Dad is dying.’
There was silence. Mandy looked from Evelyn to her father, who was clearly as shocked as she was. He had gone very pale and was absently wringing his hands in his lap. Presumably Evelyn had had time to come to terms with the seriousness of Grandpa’s condition while they had not. ‘Has the doctor said this?’ he asked at length.
‘Not in so many words,’ Evelyn said gently, ‘but it will be obvious when you see him.’
‘I’d like to see him now, please,’ he said, standing. ‘And I think we should leave the prognosis to the doctor.’
Mandy felt embarrassed by her father’s curtness and hoped Evelyn appreciated it was a result of the shock of hearing how poorly his father was, and didn’t take it personally.
‘I’ll take you to him now,’ Evelyn said evenly, also standing. ‘We’ve converted the study into a sick room. Mum sits with him for most of the day.’ She hesitated and looked again to Mandy for support. ‘Be prepared to see a big change in him. He’s lost a lot of weight.’
‘Why? Isn’t he eating?’ her father asked as they crossed the sitting room. Mandy knew he hadn’t really grasped the implications of what Evelyn had told them.
‘He takes a little water sometimes,’ Evelyn said. ‘But even that is getting less. He’s sleeping more and more. My hope is that in the end he’ll just fall into a deep sleep from which he won’t wake.’
Mandy felt her pulse quicken as she followed her aunt and father along the hallway at the rear of the house. When her father had said Grandpa had taken a turn for the worse she hadn’t for a moment thought he could be dying, only that he was ill. She was struggling to take in what Evelyn had told them; she could see her father was too. They walked in silence down the wood-panelled hall, which, like the reception hall and the other rooms they passed, seemed vaguely familiar. Evelyn stopped outside a closed door on their right and, giving a brief knock, eased it open. ‘All right, Mum?’ she said, poking her head round. ‘Ray and Mandy are here.’
They followed her in. Gran was sitting beside a single bed, a little away from the wall, where Grandpa lay on his back asleep. ‘Don’t get up,’ her father said as Gran began struggling on to her walking frame to greet them. He went over and, kissing her cheek, helped her back down. Mandy saw his face crumple as he looked at the bed.
‘He’s asleep,’ Gran said protectively, her voice small and uneven. ‘He’s very poorly. I’m so pleased you’ve both come.’
Her father nodded but couldn’t say anything.
Mandy kissed Gran, hugging her thin shoulders, and then looked at Grandpa. She could have wept. It was only three weeks since she’d last seen him and although he was in his eighties he’d been fit and well. He’d taken her on a tour of his garden and had proudly shown her the spring bulbs and the forsythia which was about to flower. Now he lay on his back propped on a mountain of pillows, his previous ruddy complexion waxen and his cheeks hollow. His jaw had relaxed in sleep and his mouth hung open as his head lolled to one side. His right arm, thin and wasted, jutted from the sheet and Gran held his hand. It was pitiful how quickly someone of his age could deteriorate, Mandy thought. She looked at her father and saw her own pain reflected.
‘The nurse has just left,’ Gran said, her voice slight. ‘He’ll sleep for a while now. It tires him out being messed around with.’
‘The nurse was washing him, Mum,’ Evelyn qualified. ‘Not messing him around.’
‘It’s all the same to him,’ Gran returned smartly, ever protective of her husband of fifty-nine years.
They fell silent and all that could be heard for some moments was Grandpa’s heavy and laboured breathing. Mandy looked at her father, who was standing beside Gran, one hand resting reassuringly on her shoulder. She saw his creased brow and the pain in his eyes, and knew he was as shocked as she was by Grandpa’s physical decline. And perhaps, Mandy thought, he saw his own end reflected in his father, for they had been very much alike in stature and temperament, until now. Mandy looked at the outline of Grandpa’s wasted body beneath the sheets and could see none of her father’s strong and muscular frame, nor his pride and dignity. As she watched saliva ran from the corner of Grandpa’s mouth and dribbled on to the pillow. Evelyn took a tissue from the box on the desk and wiped the corner of his mouth. ‘There, there, that’s better,’ she soothed, as though tending a baby. Mandy cringed inwardly.
She looked at her father. ‘Why don’t you sit down, Dad?’ she asked softly.
He nodded. Evelyn took the chair from the desk and set it next to Gran beside the bed. ‘I’ll leave you to chat with Mum,’ she said, ‘while I go to the kitchen to see Mrs Saunders about lunch. I take it you will be staying for lunch?’
The mention of lunch in the sick room where Grandpa lay so ill seemed grotesquely out of place, but again Mandy supposed Evelyn had had time to adjust in the five days since she’d brought Grandpa home from hospital, and of course they had to eat.
Mandy looked at her father, who gave a vague shrug.
‘Yes, please,’ she said.
Evelyn nodded and, straightening the sheets on the bed, went out of the study, closing the door behind her.
Mandy hovered for a moment at the end of the bed, unsure of what to do or say, and then sat in one of the two brown leather armchairs at the other end of the room. It was a large study, big enough to retain the armchairs, desk, coffee table, filing cabinet, and a free-standing bookshelf even with the addition of the two single beds. Grandpa was in the bed in front of her while Gran’s nightdress lay neatly folded on the pillow of the other bed, which was against the opposite wall. Her grandparents had lived in a bungalow for as long as she could remember and Mandy knew that although Gran could still manage stairs with her arthritis it was a struggle. Mandy had no idea what the study had looked like before the furniture had been arranged to accommodate the beds, nor did she have any recollection of ever having been in it. But that was hardly surprising, she told herself, for Sarah and she wouldn’t have been encouraged to play in the study, and in all likelihood had probably been banned from it.
Mandy looked at her father and Gran sitting beside the bed watching Grandpa. All that could be heard was the sound of Grandpa’s laboured breathing, the breaths deeper than normal breaths, with more time in between; exaggerated,
