‘Good,’ I said. ‘Shall we go to the park?’ I was trying to be clear. I asked him if he understood. He did not look like he understood. After several minutes, he said, ‘My toe is wet.’ He hadn’t understood a thing. Or perhaps he was being difficult because I had disturbed his sleep.
‘OK,’ I said. ‘We don’t have to go anywhere, if you don’t want to. Let’s chat here.’ I paused. Then I said, ‘Tell me, do you remember when we first met, when I came to visit you, here in the hospital? Do you remember how I was in those days? And Father, what kind of state of mind was he in?’ I asked several more questions. Mr Rafferty waited for me to finish. Then he opened his mouth and spoke. But I couldn’t hear him clearly.
I looked up at the roof. It had started to snow. I saw shadows flitting across the glass, projected by the streetlamps.
After some time I said, ‘Mr Rafferty?’
I won’t narrate this duet in full. Suffice to say there were further misunderstandings. Perhaps my grandfather answered my questions, but I think not. I think he was being deliberately obtuse, since at one point he took his yellow goggles from his pocket and began to fiddle with the elastic. Did he think I was going to take him swimming? It must not be forgotten that all this time my ears were of more or less value as sense organs. And my mind kept returning to the flytraps. It was odd to think of vegetative matter eating insect-life. And it was even odder when one thought of Perry feeding them with sweepings from the window panes of his room. Could the old cripple’s plants not fend for themselves? Perhaps the air in the hothouse was not fit to sustain flies, and the plants, like zoo animals unable to hunt their prey, relied on human offerings.
Outside, in the hospital grounds, snow was falling silently. In each band of orange lamplight the flakes sifted gently down. We walked along the path by the perimeter wall. I had given up my quest to have Mr Rafferty help me with my history. He was intent on stepping in the snow, which was starting to settle. Now both his feet were wet. I put my hands in my skirt pockets. But for the noise of the traffic and the crunching underfoot, all was quiet. The graze on my grandfather’s upper lip had turned crimson. As we approached the front door, he stopped and said, ‘Is it both ears?’
‘Sorry?’
‘Are you deaf in both ears?’
I nodded, taken aback.
‘How long has it been going on?’
‘Well, it’s happened several times before.’
‘Have you seen a doctor?’
‘Not yet, no. Besides, I’m not deaf,’ I said sharply. ‘I have a very keen sense of hearing. It’s only that it is erratic … Bwha, it’s cold.’
‘Does it worry you?’ he asked.
In truth I was wretched, wandering in my thoughts, but I didn’t reply.
By the time we got to the front door of the institution the snow had started to fall in clusters of feathery flakes. Deepening blue drifts lay all over the grass. We stood with our backs to the door. I rubbed my hands together, and we huddled close. Mr Rafferty wanted to talk some more, but I wouldn’t allow it.
23. Father’s Madness and Death
It’s been over a week since my visit to Mr Rafferty. In that time I’ve done very little. Finally, however, I feel able to press on. What happened in the interim?
The snow continued to fall. In between periods of silence, the funeral chord continued to sound, and I was unable to recall my first months and years in Scotland. I wrapped myself in my patchwork blanket and lay on my mattress, which had been my father’s, but which I now think of as my own, staring at the skylight. Some mornings the condensation on the glass turned to ice, and my breath rose visibly. I cut the tips from a pair of gloves; together with a scarf from Mother’s trunk, they helped against the cold. As far as I could tell my hearing had not become worse. It had not grown more sensitive either. I was having trouble sleeping, the days seemed long, so I busied myself as best I could: I swept the floor, thought about tidying the attic, about throwing some of the clutter away. I went into Gullane and bought a supply of beans.
The nights seemed even longer than the days. I missed my grandfather. Now that I wore the fingerless gloves, my hands were warmer, and I managed to write a little. I was trying to recount my afternoon at the hothouse, but it was slow progress. One evening, sitting at my desk facing the screen, which was misted over, but which nevertheless smouldered a pale blue, I read over my work, then closed my computer. Progress? It was the contrary. In five days I’d succeeded in blackening only two pages. What is more, I could hardly connect what I’d written to my ordeal in the hothouse. My words seemed to describe another experience entirely.
That was last week. This morning when I got up, crossed to the skylight, with its smattering of snow and looked up at the sky, I saw the night was fine and clear and I saw the flakes pawing the glass. All was quiet, even the gulls; perhaps they’d fled to inland roosts. I climbed over the heap of junk to the wardrobe, where I keep the completed pages of my history, printed on sheets of unbound paper. I took them out and glanced over the first chapters. It was a mistake. Not even at the outset, when I’d asked myself some questions, and answered with deceit, was my history credible. I read on, past the questions and into the following chapters. I encountered the half-truths, elisions and embellishments. I threw down the pages in disgust. They scattered over the floor.
It was starting to get light. I wanted to sleep, but I was unable. I began to march over the strewn pages of my history, experiencing an immediate feeling of triumph, and I even chuckled to myself as my shoes dirtied the already blemished sheets. The sun was bright; no doubt reflecting off the snow, it produced a glare from the skylight. I gathered several handfuls of my history in order to tape them over the glass. Three or four layers and the glare was sufficiently diminished to resemble twilight. I bent down and picked up the remaining sheets, which I had forgotten to number, and stacked them haphazardly together. Scrabbling in the half-dark, I came across the pocket watch. I hadn’t even known I had lost it! Its glass front was cracked, the chain missing; added to the scratch on its underside, a series of marks obscured yet more of the inscription, which I read in the light on my computer:
Could not ________ move ____ this ____,
Not ________ passion ________ by spleen.
And _____________ power,
By _______ acts _________
I held it to my ear. Not a sound. I put the watch into my pocket and finished collecting the sheets. Finally I rose, returned my history to the wardrobe and sat at my desk. I glanced about the attic, saw nothing but the usual clutter of objects. I took a deep breath, rubbed my hands together, focused my mind on my ordeal in the hothouse and, all in a rush, managed to set it down on my computer.
That was a moment ago. Now I will turn my mind back to my first years in Scotland.
…
The dark two-storey house in Gullane was full of neglected rooms, vast sofas and cheap artificial plants. The noise of the sea was ever-present, as was the overbearingly loud ticking of the grandfather clock in the hall. Already, when we arrived from Nigeria, the house was in a state of neglect: rotten wood, threadbare curtains, carpets scuffed to brown matting, and everything covered in a dim greasy flour. The chairs with their green hide felt cold against my bottom, the leather torn, cracked, blackened. Also avian-soiled, since birds found their way into the house. With no one to chase them away, they acquired free reign of the space, flying like darts from room to room, perching on beams and pelmets and often, frighteningly, stunning themselves on the window panes.