A - Chapter One

Comfort and Happiness

1
An inch-thick finger of wood props the window open and a scowling wind
upsets the net curtains as the first light of day intrudes.

This is the calm.

My father is sleeping.

I have watched over him now for a year or more and each night is the
same. He puts off going to sleep for the longest possible time, will
not even so much as glance toward the bed until his eyelids are swollen
with the body's need for rest. And yet, even then - even as he slips
beneath the sheets and closes his eyes to the dark - even then, peace
eludes him. For a period he will wriggle and shift, uneasy among the
blankets and pillows. With a niche carved, his body settles into a
comfortable nook but still - this will not betoken a sure drift into
somnolence. As the body eases so the mind begins: conjuring images of
me and my mother asleep alongside him, our hands and the smell
generated from our bodies and our warmth flooding his nostrils, and an
ache like toothache but situated in his heart and lungs shifts his body
from one side of the bed to the other. For a long time he struggles to
prise other thoughts, more recent memories, loose from the damp earth
but - he never succeeds. Each night my father cries softly into his
pillow, and the tears soften the otherwise rugged descent into sleep
and so - and so - sleep comes.

But sleep is no friend. My father's dreams gather about his bed
clutching nail-bitter wood, bastinadoes and scantling with which to
strike and hobble. He spends the better part of each night kicking and
lashing wildly beneath the bedclothes, a man in the dark struggling to
identify his opponents. You will hear him. He says my mother's name,
whines like a patient in need of anaesthetic. He is Dorothy's farmhouse
and sleep is the twister spinning up through the bed, leaving
devastation in its wake and shaking the waking world to its very
foundations. The glass of water and the knife on the plate with the
cracker crumbs left on the bedside table hum with an ice-floe
vibration.

I am daily harrowed, watching my father sleep.

At some point the night gives way to day and the nightmares submit to a
resigned void during which there is calm. With the intrusion of the
aforesaid scowling wind, he is calm. There is little movement, precious
sound. Watch him draw the long easy breath through his nose. See the
same breath used and observe the way in which it skulks clear of his
mouth.

This is all the peace my father has. The hour seized between dawn and
wakefulness.

But the night is far from over, and perhaps the worst is still to come.
Step nearer. Tilt your head roughly forty-five degrees and hover as
close to the pillow as you can without disturbing him. Take a moment to
observe the filaments of silver streaking his hair. My father is
thirty-one. He has eyes and a nose and a mouth like other men. He
sleeps in a t-shirt because he is self-conscious, even as he sleeps
alone. You would not say he is good-looking, but neither would you call
him ugly. My father is plain, quiet, timid, gentle, lost.

Now watch. Two sudden short breaths through his nose. Is he going to
sneeze? No. His eyelids twitch and a hand appears from beneath the
sheets to rub his nose, two fingers like a child's gun move to the left
and the right and then withdraw. He is still sleeping. Don't mistake
me. It is the body we are watching, physical actions. We are watching
the body reassert itself. The legs stretch beneath the covers, the toes
indicate the far wall opposite. Don't be distracted, though. Focus your
attention upon the space between my father's eyebrows. At present there
is nothing but pale skin (although if you look close, much closer than
that, you will see the history of a line, the feint tense impression of
a crease).

Now. See the snap. Watch the vicious fold crack back like the matt
black slap of a belt on bare skin. The eyebrows push together like
sumos wrestling. Hear too the sudden whistle boil through clenched
teeth. Stand now, and draw back: watch my father bring his knees up to
his chest, look at the mouth opening as if with sudden pain - as if a
short and sharp knife has been inserted between two lower ribs and as
quickly withdrawn.

He is not yet awake, even now. Not fully awake. A few minutes will pass
before my father comes to himself, a few minutes during which all of
the cess and bile of the last so many months will bubble up, filling
the space attained during an hour or so of uninterrupted sleep.

He will shortly wake.

Before he does, let me tell you a story:

The sky when viewed through the blade left by the fold of the
curtains is the colour of the sea at night, is the water surrounding a
small rowboat adrift with the fish, lost under the moon. What light
there is -

is subdued, sedated, lethargic. The curtains are no longer
yellow, the walls are no longer bright, the toys that litter the floor
are indistinct, cruel abstract shadows and odd oblong edges. Television
noise and water boiling - the immersion heater from next door, their
bathroom is parallel with this room - intrude but there is nothing to
disturb.

See the cot below the window, watch the play of light and dark
along the bars, glimpse the still sleeping shape of the baby beneath
the blankets.

Now. Take a deep breath. Listen. Careful footsteps on the
stairs, trained to avoid the creaks and pitfalls of old wood. Hush, a
figure approaches. A shiver of bathroom light breaks across the
darkened child's room like a slab of cheese. The door is opened wide
enough to accept -

The child's father kneels in the doorway and listens. Each
night one or the other of them crouches here for the comfort of tiny
breaths. There is nothing. He hops like a broken-legged frog one step
forward, and leans in closer. Still nothing. The child's father stands
and takes two over-pronounced strides to the cot and again kneels
before reaching through to rest his palm flat against the little girl's
face.

Of course the face is cold.

Everything happens very quickly. His hand moves from her face
to her chest, where it rests for the count of five. He stands and
reaches over the cot, takes her face in his hands and - still, doesn't
want to wake her if she is sleeping, because she is only sleeping, she
is only sleeping.

The child's father is a ghost, no longer aware of his arms,
sick with his heart racing, painfully aware of the tongue in his
mouth.

He scoops her up, says her name loudly twice (his mouth
directly facing her slumping head) but there is nothing and - he is
running, with her held (his left arm around her waist, his right hand
holding her head), thinking - she is just cold, this is not happening,
she just needs warm and bright light - but the fear and the awful
sliced open pain is already there, skin spreading against
glass.

My father says my mother's name as he jangles down the stairs
and she is there at the foot saying what? and - in saying what? -
knows, and takes me. My father will never hold me again. But he doesn't
know yet. He stands in the living room watching my mother say the word
no over and over again, no drawn out to two and three syllables. She is
pacing backwards and forwards from one end of the couch to the other,
holding me as my father did. Everything will be alright. This is what
my father is telling himself. He knows she is a better parent. She will
fix everything. This is not what it appears to be. He is frozen,
repeating, doesn't react to her - why is she screaming now? - straight
away, fumbles with the telephone while she is opening the door to the
street - says (actually says) it's cold out there, don't take her out
there -

He is calling an ambulance while his wife is screaming in the
street. She is screaming and it is a sound he has never heard before.
My father can hear doors opening and other voices on the street but he
doesn't want to look. If he doesn't look, everything will be alright.
He is calling an ambulance and his wife is screaming in the street. She
doesn't even draw breath. She is a car alarm. His hands are shaking and
-

the tide is welling up in his nose and throat. He can hardly
breathe. How can she scream? What is she doing out there? There is a
woman's voice asking questions, which is good. He can answer questions.
Name. Address. Telephone number. Details to fill eternity with.
Anything to delay -

A voice outside says stop. Somebody says stop love. My mother
is running up and down in the street outside. The pitch of the
screaming changes, the jigger-jag swing shift of hiccups and burrs, the
snotty clanging ragged haemorrhage that is my mother crying and
screaming and sobbing and wailing.

The television is on and somehow this is the most awful
thing.

There are quickly more people and lights and soon there is an
ambulance and no siren and trained professionals and sedatives for my
mother who has been cut loose from my father - my father is vomiting on
his knees in a grid -

And life changes like a twig snapped over the
knee.

Overnight they are strangers that have stopped alongside each
other on the street, one of them perhaps asking the other for
directions. Only in the time it takes to ask and be answered, they have
lived together and married and almost raised a child. The evaporated
street frightens them, its sudden lifting striking them like the base
of a carbon black frying pan. They find themselves surrounded by books
and furniture and clothing and memories - memories more than anything
else. Where did all these fucking memories come from? How do I have
memories of you, stranger?

This was how she looked at him.

Her bitter look accused him. It was rape, what he had done.
The time they had spent together, the time they had spent becoming
strangers together, the time they had wasted loving each other enough
to make a child, all that time made useless.
Each of them was burned out. Each of them was a burned out husk, the
remains of a body, life after life has gone. Crucially, that burning -
the burning of everything that made each of them an individual - left
them strangers. It took what they were and left only grief and pain and
unfocused rage.
For a long time, they slept alongside each other. The death of the
child altered the way they were with each other. Where once she had
curved within the S of his body - the pair of them seen from above, an
ear covered by blankets - now they remained apart, exclamation points
on the left and right side of the bed. The middle of the bed became an
uncharted wilderness that neither dared broach. The space once
inhabited by their daughter, the space she sought as a refuge from bad
dreams. Each lay listening to the clock tick away the hours and minutes
of the night. Neither slept, or slept for very long. Occasionally, she
roused him, when exhaustion had proven so great he did sleep, accusing
him in her rebukes about his snoring, of not loving the baby enough to
stay awake throughout the rest of time.
What he intuited from her pinched stings: how could he sleep when sleep
was the enemy that had stolen their child? What he read in her face
provoked him beyond all countenance. He wanted to rage in the face of
her: I can sleep because in sleep I forget. I can sleep because sleep
is like death and I want to die. When the rage gripped him, his entire
soul crippled crisp upon the tip of a white hot soldering iron, he
could reduce everything down from abstract pain and complex grief and
civil mourning to nothing, to wanting to die. He never told her but
inside, over and over and over again: I want to die.
Sleep became a kind of admission. I am guilty. It was my fault. Take it
out on me. Accuse me. My grief is not great enough to keep me awake. I
am a terrible man. I am the worst father. I cannot pretend to attain
the lofty heights of true grieving.
He wanted to tell her. In his head, the words confused themselves. Was
he angry with her? Did he blame her? Did he blame himself? Did he hope
they would make it through this awful black tumour time? Or was it time
to walk away from all of the cancer shadows? Was it time to call this a
day? He wanted to tell her that her grief lacked honesty. He wanted to
tell her that she was phoney. He wanted to tell her that the thought of
his little girl weighed upon him throughout the magnified seconds of
every day. He wanted to tell her that he had never felt pain like this.
He wanted to tell her that what he was feeling was not pain, was so
beyond pain as to be psychic torture, as to require a new word (wanted
to tell her that this - the desire to find a word to express the sheer
scale of his pain - felt like vanity, felt like dishonesty, felt like
the exact thing that the silent voice in his head accused his wife
of).
He wanted love, more than anything else, then. He wanted each of them
to have the movie reconciliation. She would breakdown in the kitchen.
Perhaps she would stab him or throw a plate at his head, wounding him
in some obvious direct way, blood - actual blood (the blood their baby
never spilled) - coming between them. They would be standing in the
kitchen in the first direct sunlight of the day, neither of them having
slept, screaming, and suddenly the screaming would break (the
physicality of a tide turning), and they would weep. She would hold him
as he howled. He would hold her through her silence (because he
expected her final, great period of mourning to be a silent slab,
noble, ridiculous). It would not be over. It would never be over. But,
in that instant, each of them would recognise that they had crossed the
blistering desert and reached the other side. He wanted each of them to
reach the other side. He thought he wanted each of them to reach the
other side together, but he wasn't sure and that debate raged alongside
the greater debate of how you cope with the loss of a part of yourself
(a part that was greater than a limb, that combined the physicality of
an arm or a leg with - something else, some sentient part like memory
or taste).
The rest is like a pitched battle in the pocket of a wet overcoat. He
looks at her and he is confounded by the hate and the blame. She is a
fanatic. He looks at her and he is wiped clean like a classroom slate,
he looks at her and thinks who are you? Just who are you? How did I get
to know you? And she stares back with a face only the mother of a dead
baby could love and says just die, will you? Dig a hole in the ground,
lie down and suck the ploughed earth over your body and take a deep
breath. Take a deep breath, suck the earth up through your nose, take a
hunk of that dirt in your mouth and swallow, keep on eating until
you're full of dirt and you're made of dirt and dirt is your name and
dirt is all you remember. And I say fine, and she says good, and we
stand back-to-back walk ten paces and fire and it's as good as
over.
The foundations of the house, the ground beneath their feet, gave way.
Each faced the other, attempting to balance on ice, watching to see
what the other did, struggling to remain upright, hating the other,
wanting the other's help and advice. It was a game, chess with pieces
forged from shrapnel. They softly move together, they angrily draw
apart - and, in drawing apart, rage: how dare he / she / he / she / he
/ she. Each of them wanted to die. Each of them was desperate to
provoke the other enough to kill. She pulled books from shelves and
tore them in half. She smashed prints and frames and plates, her hair
loose, her eyes wild. He stood and watched her and didn't do anything.
My mother moved from room to room, pulling cushions from the couch in
the living room, yanking the curtains clear of the rail, the rail clear
of the wall, yanking stairwell carpet up, tearing wallpaper free,
breaking nails, leaving bloody streaks in her wake. Pans spill from
cupboards, cups ignite against whichever wall she is facing, the glass
kettle my father and I would watch boil over and over erupts, the
cutlery jangles like hard silver rain across the terracotta. Room to
room she goes, limitless destruction - whatever can be broken is
broken, whatever can be damaged is damaged. My father follows her,
understanding, always understanding, not speaking - until she starts to
cry and scream holding my mattress in her arms like a doll - and he
says I know and she -

You know? You know? You fucking know?

She stands and starts punching him with the heel of her hand, saying
you know, you know, over and over again, and he stands there,
attempting to restrain her at first but then not, letting it happen,
still - caught up in the idea that this can be fixed. He is seconds
ahead of her - sees her hitting his forehead and eyes and nose, sees
her alter her shape ever so slightly and increase speed, rapid
hardboiled fists slamming his chest as she caves, says his name, says
Billy - and he says Connie, Connie, please - only she doesn't stop, she
doesn't alter her shape, she doesn't cave - she only continues, you
know bending all out of shape, mouth prised wide open, teeth defined,
screaming as if it was his fault.

He says her name, then: says Connie, and attempts to take her
wrists and pull her to him, but it doesn't work because nothing works.
She only increases in volume and fury, slamming both hands as one into
each side of his head, pounding his shoulders and his chest, yelling
how she hates him, kicking him, pushing him from the room. Clear, she
tugs the door shut and locks it behind her - and then the wailing
begins. My father stands with a fist raised sideways against my bedroom
door, listening, riven. He is dumb to his body, can't feel the pain, is
not aware of the fact his nose is bleeding. He can only listen, he is a
listening thing, and all that exists for him in the world is the sound
of his wife - a sound that empties him: it is a horse stabbed in the
neck, it is a pig attempting to flee the men who would have its life,
it is the bones of all the anger and guilt and frustration and sorrows
of the world boiled up for soup.

This is the end. My mother kneeling on the floor by the cot,
rocking backwards and forwards with my duvet held to her face like a
mask, my father at the doorway looking for a way in but tired and
lonely and bereft. This is the end. My father leaves the house, with
the express intention of giving her some time and some room, hoping
they can still talk - can still fix this. He walks the streets until
long after dark, eventually returning to find she has gone - to her
mother's. There is an abbreviated note. She can't stand to see him, or
the house. She can't stand to see anything. She hates him. She says: I
hate you. I know it's not right. I know it's not your fault. But I hate
you all the same. She hates him for everything. He sits in the dark
holding the note until sleep swallows him, a small fish eaten by a big
fish eaten by a bigger fish.

They talk by phone. She says would it be okay if she came for
- a few things. Some clothes and some photographs. She says she wants -
he can hear her teeth clamp, can hear the sob swallowed - she wants the
Cat in the Hat. A few moments pass in which he doesn't speak because he
knows she has the receiver held between her knees. When she says is
that okay, he says yes. Whatever she needs. This is followed by another
longer pause, and he knows she has something else to ask. Go on, he
says. I -

I - can't see you. I don't want to see you. If we agree a
time, can you - not be there?

He wants to tell her - even if he was there, he would not be
there. But he doesn't speak. She says I'll be over at about 2. My dad
is driving me. He says okay. He wants to say Connie. He wants to say
Connie - and then he doesn't know. Questions that begin Can we / Is it
/ Do you well up and falter. He wants her to know him again. He wants
her to love him again. He wants them to -

But he doesn't speak and the weeks and the months pass and he
doesn't speak and she starts seeing somebody else and the house is put
up for sale and he loses his job and she starts divorce proceedings and
all my father does is watch and listen and accept. He gets up in the
morning. He cleans. He eats. He watches TV. He speaks on the telephone.
He makes himself scarce as prospective viewers are shown about the
house. He walks in the park a lot, day and night. He visits my grave
once a week to replace the flowers and clean the stone.

This is not a true story.

Rather, this is one of the ways in which my father imagines his
marriage will end. This is a daydream, nothing more. A sly possible
future he keeps coiled and cancerous in his belly.

As far as my father is concerned, the marriage is childless.