‘We’ll be along with the drinks trolley in a little while, sir.’
Ralph looked at the young man’s soft lips and the roll of flab around his middle. ‘I’m not very well – I’d be so grateful,’ he said, noting an expression of intransigence from this chubby pup in his tight uniform.
‘He’s suffering from cancer,’ whispered Nina, leaning across Ralph towards the flight attendant. ‘You look like a kind man. Please help him.’
Within minutes, he was sipping his Horse’s Neck from a plastic cup. ‘Thank you,’ he said to Nina, realising how dependent upon her he was, had always been, even if it had taken him forty years to admit it. She had prepared a whole bag with his medicines, including morphine capsules. ‘Will they give me marvellous visions?’ he’d asked the nurse. ‘Will it be like an opium den?’ The male nurse hadn’t laughed, but replied, deadpan, ‘It may make you a bit drowsy.’ He was a West African with a beautiful face and musical voice and he managed the delicate business of helping Ralph fill out the forms for whether or not to be resuscitated if he had a cardiac episode or worse.
‘It’s a better way to go, isn’t it?’ he asked the nurse. ‘A heart attack, I mean?’
The man placed his hand on Ralph’s. ‘You will find your way, Ralph.’ It felt like a benediction from the Pope.
The brandy was doing the trick and, as his muscles relaxed, he sank deeper into the seat. The rattling from the drinks trolley and slamming of metallic drawers reminded him of the hospital and he looked away towards the perfectly puffed clouds below in the expanse of unblighted blue. It was like a version of heaven – as if there should be chubby putti perched there, strumming harps, and, somewhere in the distance, the great old bearded man himself. He didn’t believe in an afterlife, and refused to admit that the concept held more attraction now than he’d ever imagined it might. However, it was hard not to dwell on the end; he was dreadfully afraid of extreme pain. The prospect of revealing his vulnerability in an uncontrolled manner was particularly appalling.
There had not yet been any talk of funerals with Nina, but he couldn’t help pondering over those he’d been to and creating a mental list for his own. A female choir singing a section from his Requiem was appealing, he thought, as tears welled at the image of himself inside a coffin, his children white-faced and weeping. Would Daphne be there? he wondered. After all that had happened in recent times, how would she feel? It was impossible to predict whether she would be sobbing in sackcloth and ashes or blithely untouched by his demise. Quite possibly veering between the two, he thought.
Once, when he’d gone to Barnabas Road, there’d been a Greenslay family drama. Daphne must have been about eleven – that evanescent tipping point at the cliff edge of adolescence. It turned out that the monkey, whatever its name was, had died. According to Ed, it had got a cough and, before they could even take it to the vet, dropped dead. They were preparing for the animal’s burial when Ralph arrived. He ascertained that his presence at the proceedings was welcome – a weight to balance the family’s instability, perhaps. Hugo (that was his name!) was curled stiff and pathetically small in a cardboard box, partially covered by his favourite, blue, baby blanket. Ed and Theo were digging a hole in the garden, which looked dank and unappealing, Ellie was assembling a little funerary wreath of ivy pulled from an outside wall, and Daphne was creating a large commemorative picture. Around Hugo’s name, she was sticking Victorian style cut-outs as you might see on old screens: flowers, hearts, cats with bows, feminine hands holding sentimental messages. Then she stuck feathers and leaves on to the collage, turning it suddenly strange and unsettling. He saw now that it was an early precursor to her current work with textiles.
He joined the sad ceremony and took his turn shovelling clumpy earth on to the makeshift coffin. Each person made a brief farewell. He said, ‘Rest in peace, dear Hugo, beloved monkey of the Greenslays, provocateur of the first order and devourer of grapes.’ The two adults smiled indulgently, but he recalled Daphne’s flash of fury at his light tone. She had adored the animal. They plodded back towards the kitchen door, the prospect of warmth welcome after the chilling damp of the riverside garden, but Daphne didn’t move. He watched her from the long kitchen table, where he sat drinking a glass of red wine given to him by Ed, despite it being only late morning. First, she placed her strange memorial card on the grave and sat down beside it on a muddy patch of wet grass. Ellie called once or twice to her daughter, but Daphne ignored her. Ralph saw her take a box of matches from her trousers and set light to the card. In an improvised mourning ritual, she rubbed her hands in the mix of earth and ashes and smeared them across her face. It was deeply shocking to see his feather-light sprite racked by raw grief.
After twenty minutes, she got up and walked inside, ignoring the adults and passing them erect and dignified, even if her face was pinched with cold and streaked in dirty grey. He was impressed by her poise. Now, he realised how young she was – a child. He preferred not to dwell on how he had gone to her room, after asking Ellie and Ed if he could ‘try to cheer her up’. They accepted the offer with gratitude, and he found Daphne prostrate on the floor, raging and sobbing, one eye on the flames that were flickering up the sides of her waste bin and threatening to set fire to the curtains.
‘Shit! Daff! What’s going on?’ He saw the desperation on her face and the danger that a child’s gesture could transform the situation into a grand tragedy. By the time he had ripped the blankets from her bed and thrown them over the bin, one curtain was alight. He pulled so hard at it that the pole and both curtains fell to the floor and then he stamped all over them until the fire was out. Acrid smoke filled the room and pieces of paper ash floated like black snow. Daphne watched as he opened the window and waited for the air to clear.
Neither of them spoke. What could he say in the face of this pain? He lay down beside her, put an arm across her back and, with his other hand, stroked her hair. The dark strands were still cool from being outside so long, with droplets of mist clinging to them. There was something about the magnificent passion of her reaction that he found entrancing. She was not crying any longer and he picked her up and placed her in his lap, rocking her like a baby. He felt elated, as though they had some mystical communion. If he was brutally honest, there was something mildly erotic about it too, but he didn’t act on it. How could he have allowed himself to do that? he wondered. He pictured his own darling Lucia at that age and shivered with revulsion. What was he thinking?
It was about half an hour before they both went downstairs and told Ed and Ellie what had happened. ‘A little accident,’ he explained bluffly. ‘Daff lit a candle for poor old Hugo and it fell into some paper in the bin. I’m afraid one curtain is a bit singed.’ They hadn’t overreacted. In fact, Daphne said they hadn’t even been to see the damage until the evening, and the next day Ellie and she had gone to Brick Lane and bought another orange sari to replace the burnt one.
Ralph knew that he’d enjoyed – no, exploited – the girl’s reckless tendency. Her aptitude for leaping from on high into unknown waters was part of what initially attracted him. As she grew older, she went too far. Diving into unfamiliar seas was careless and irresponsible if one didn’t take into account the possibility of rocks and monsters below the surface. He had kept away from her after she appeared to self-destruct, with the poisonous marriage to the Greek oligarch, the drugs, the undernourished limbs and nightmare eyes. She had become toxic – entirely different from the girl he had worshipped.