War Baby grew up into Big Sis.
I salute the sun
The Sunny Bank sheltered housing complex lies in a quiet cul-de-sac on the southern outskirts of Cambridge. It is a low-rise modern purpose-built development of forty-six flats and bungalows set in a large well-maintained garden, with lawns, mature trees, rose beds, and even a resident owl. There is a communal lounge where residents can watch television (Father grimaces), attend coffee mornings (“But I prefer apple juice!”) and take part in other activities from ballroom dancing (“Ah, but you should see how Millochka could dance!”) to yoga (“Aha!”). It is owned by a charitable trust, and let out at nonprofit rents to those lucky enough to make it to the top of the waiting-list. The warden, Beverley, a middle-aged widow with a bouffant of bleached hair, a throaty laugh, and an enormous bosom, seems in many ways like an older and more benign version of Valentina. Maybe this is why Sunny Bank is Father’s first choice of sheltered housing.
“I will go here,” he insists. “Nowhere else.”
There is of course a waiting-list, and Beverley, who has taken quite a shine to Father, tells me that the best way is to get a doctor’s letter-or better still more than one. Doctor Figges is pleased to write. Sheltered housing is just what he needs, she says. She describes my father’s frailty, the distance he has to walk into the village to get his shopping, the problems he has in maintaining the house and garden, his arthritis and dizzy spells. The letter is sympathetic, personal, moving. But is it enough? Who else can I approach? On impulse, I write to the psychiatrist at the Peterborough District Hospital. A week or so later comes a letter in reply, to whom it may concern. In the psychiatrist’s opinion Mr Mayevskyj is of sound mind, with no evidence of dementia, and is well able to look after himself, but the doctor is concerned that ‘living in isolation without regular social contact may cause his mental condition to deteriorate’. In his opinion, ‘a structured social environment with non-intrusive supervision would allow Mr Mayevskyj to live independently for many more years’.
The letter does the trick for the sheltered housing waiting-list, but it leaves me disappointed. Where is the talkative Nietzsche-admiring non-paranoid philosopher and his mouthy many-years-junior wife? Does the psychiatrist remember the consultation that my father described to me in such detail, or was his letter simply a formulaic response to a routine question, compiled from a brief glance through the notes by bis secretary? Maybe he is keeping to strict guidelines about patient confidentiality, or he is so busy that all his patients become just one blur. Maybe he sees so many crazy people that Father doesn’t even register on the scale. Maybe he knows, but doesn’t want to say. I want to ring him up and ask him-I want to ask him the question that has smouldered unformulated in the pit of my mind for as long as I can remember: is my father…normal?
No. Leave it alone. What good will it do?
A short time before Christmas, Vera and I spend a few days up at the house together, clearing it out, preparing it to be put on the market in spring. There is so much to look through, clean up, throw out, that we don’t have much time to talk in the intimate way I had hoped for. At night, I sleep in the top bunk, while Vera sleeps in Valentina’s old room.
Vera is skilled at dealing with solicitors, estate agents, builders. I let her get on with it. She leaves me to dispose of the cars, find new homes for the cats and sort out the things Father says he will need in his new life (all his tools, for a start, not forgetting the clamps, a good steel tape measure, and some kitchen utensils, sharp knives, and of course he must keep his books, and the photographs, for now he has finished the tractor book he is thinking of writing his memoirs, and his record player, and the records, yes, and the leather flying helmet, and Mother’s sewing machine for he has plans to convert it to run on electricity using the motor from the electrical can-opener left behind by Valentina, which was never much good by the way, and the gearbox of the Francis Barnett, which is wrapped in an oiled cloth in a toolbox at the back of the garage, and maybe a few clothes) and what will fit into his tiny flat (not a lot).
Working together like this, I realise that Vera and I have developed a different kind of intimacy, based not on talking but on practicalities-we have learned to be partners. Everything that needed to be said has been said, and now we can just get on with our lives. Well, not quite everything.
One afternoon, when the sun is low but bright, we take time off to walk to the cemetery to visit Mother’s grave. We have cut the last of the roses from her garden-the amazing white Icebergs, that bloom right into the winter-and some evergreen foliage, and arranged them in an earthenware vase by the headstone. We sit on the bench under the bare cherry tree and look out over the wide hedgeless fields to the horizon.
“Vera, there’s one more thing we need to sort out. It’s about the money.” My palms are sweating, but I keep my voice steady.
“Oh, don’t worry, I’ve found a high-interest bank account, and we can set up a direct debit to go straight to the housing association to cover the rent and other expenses. We can both be signatories.”
“No, not that. Mother’s money. The money she left in her will.”
“Well, why don’t we just add it to that account?”
“OK.”
And that is that.
“And the locket-I don’t mind if you keep the locket, Vera. Mother gave it to you.”
Before Father takes up residence at Sunny Bank, I give him a little pep talk.
“Now, Pappa, you must try to fit in with the other residents. Do you understand? In your own flat you can do what you like, but when you are with the others, you must try to behave in a normal way. You don’t want them to think you’re crazy, do you?”
“Tak tak,” mutters Pappa crossly.
Mike thinks I am fussing too much, but he doesn’t know what I know-he doesn’t know what it is to be the one that’s different, the one that stands out, the one that everyone else sniggers about behind their back. For good measure, I take away Father’s home-made paisley-extended nightshirt and buy him a normal pair of pyjamas.
On Christmas Eve, in the morning, Mike and I go to visit Father at Sunny Bank. We knock on the door, but he doesn’t answer, so we go in anyway. “Hallo, Pappa!”
We find him crouching down on all fours, completely naked, on a mat which he lias placed in the centre of the floor in front of the window. Fortunately his flat is not overlooked. All the furniture has been pushed up against the walls.
“Pappa, what…?”
“Sshh!” He holds a finger up to his lips.
Next, still crouching, he stretches out one skinny leg towards the back of the mat, then the other, and lowers himself down until he is lying on his stomach on the mat. He rests there for a moment, panting a little. The skin of his shrunken buttocks hangs loose, pearly white, almost translucent. Now he pushes himself up off the floor with his forearms, staggers to his feet and folds his hands palms together, eyes closed, as if in prayer. Then he pulls himself up to his full crooked height and stretches both arms out, reaching as high as he can into the air, breathes deeply, and turns towards us in all his shrivelled, aged, joyful nakedness.
“You see what I have learned yesterday?”
He raises his arms once more, draws a deep breath. “I salute the sun!”
Marina Lewycka
