A Short Walk from Harrods (28 page)

‘He didn't. Until six o'clock this morning. You can speak all right? That's good.'

‘How did you get here?'

‘Mark [her son] drove me up. I came right away.'

‘I really didn't want anyone worried. Until things were sorted out …'

‘Thank God Tote did call. It's in all the papers. I'd have
died
if I'd read it.'

I tried, I remember, to struggle up. Failed. Fury, bewilderment, even rage couldn't get my body to behave. ‘It
can't
be. No one knows. Dr Hunt, Tote, Maude, me – no one else.'

She named the paper. Huge headline: ‘DIRK WILL NEVER WALK AGAIN?' – something like that.

‘One of the nurses was reading it. She was livid. Just come
on duty and they're all hanging round the front door asking questions. Journalist people.'

‘But
no one
knows! Unless the ambulancemen …'

‘I've told the children, and our brother, I'll call Lally as soon as I get back. I'd better go now, they said two minutes. I've been two minutes, and I love you very much, and you'll just be fine. Gareth and Maude – is that her name? – are at your house now with Tote, so there's nothing to worry about.' She leant down and kissed me and I heard her shoes squeak away across the polished rubber of the floor.

I don't remember much about the first few days. I just lay about. People came and stuck thermometers down my throat, prodded things in my leg from time to time, went away again. I really didn't care. It was difficult, I found, to collect my thoughts. My head felt rather like a suitcase suddenly spilled in the street, things scattered everywhere. Unconnected, unlinked. Useless as they lay. I was unafraid, uncaring.

The first moment of clear thought that came drifting into the mess, the first tangible object from the scattered suitcase as it were, was the clear knowledge that I'd never now be able to return to France. Whatever the outcome of anything else might be (would be, truthfully), I was stuck. If I ever walked again I'd have to start out all over, and I couldn't do that on the hill, or anywhere else. The past had been severed by the fall downstairs. There was no going back. Period. End. Finish. Done.

I didn't think that there was enough, or indeed any, energy left to begin again from scratch, and I didn't very much care. I lay still and silent in my little grey room. Flowers began to
arrive, letters, cables, cards. People had read the papers, someone said it was news on the BBC. Big deal.

The house in Kensington was running smoothly: Gareth (and indeed Maude) had taken control. Gareth got hold of Rupert and his wife Jacquie, to break off their first holiday in months to buttle and cook. I supposed that they all slept somewhere? In sleeping-bags all over the sitting-room? I knew he'd moved into my room.

Forwood came every day: weary, gaunt, valiant, refusing to start the Japanese course of pills until I was out. But when, I wondered,
would
I be out? Something rather odd had happened in my head. I suddenly didn't give a damn. My glass was empty. Not full, or half full. Dry. Clear. A void. I am not, and I never have been, a man prone to despair. It's not my thing at all. I had always faintly disapproved of those who did give in to it and crumpled. I always thought that one should fight it, beat it, deny it. And I was not in despair now. I know despair, I have been witness to it, seen the mark it has made on others, comforted those who suffered from it, but I have never felt it to be any part of my bodily, or for that matter, mental make-up. I managed to play characters in films, in the theatre, who were riven by despair simply because I had observed it closely, but had never given way to it. Therefore my judgement was clear, objective, uncluttered and I could replay it in a role convincingly. I don't really know where this all came from: something in childhood had forged a sort of strength … and my father's words, which always so alarmed, even distressed, strangers – ‘We are not expected to fail in this family' – were a continual echo in my head.
Others
might fail, they could do what they wished, but I could not.

And yet, lying there in the shadowy grey room, it might
seem that I was just about to break the rule. That I was about to give up and let go of the reins of my life. Easy to do. Everything was well taken care of around me, there was no possible future ahead, as far as I could see. I had, I felt, done all that I could do, and now this was the way it would finish. I would just sleep to death. Painless, smooth, perfectly comfortable. I had absolutely no intention of going on with the fag-end of my life as a cripple. The fact that feeling had gradually returned to my hand and right arm didn't much mollify me. It made bed-life a little easier, but my leg was still a log. Introspection is what this was all about, and there was a mass of dead time in which to indulge in it, especially at night after we had been, as they said, ‘put down' for sleep. One was undisturbed: a face might peer fleetingly at the little glass panel in the door, check that one was not on the floor or raving mad, and disappear. But the thoughts wouldn't go so fast. They grew darker with the night. And although despair never reached me,
hopelessness
did – a different thing.

In the blackest pit of night, that weary time about three o'clock, I rang my bell for the booster sleeping-pill which usually got me through until the morning. On swift and silent feet the pretty young night nurse was beside me, with a small paper cup containing the pill. She set it on the bedside table, out of reach; sat easily on the end of my bed, hands folded in her lap. Had I had a good day? People been to see me? I'd heard, of course, about the disaster at King's Cross underground station? They still weren't certain how many had perished. She used the word with pleasure, rolling it round her lips, making it sound rather like the rubber in a hot-water bottle or a bicycle tyre.
Perished.
Not merely dead. I had watched it on the television. It was
dreadful, really appalling, but could I have my pill? I'd been awake for hours. She said it was right beside me, so I tried to reach for it with my now-active right arm, as she showed not the least inclination to assist me – testing me, I reckoned – but couldn't reach it. Can't reach it, she said? Well, get out of bed, it's only a step away. I was patient, explained that I couldn't walk. She knew that? Yes, oh yes, she said, she
did
know that. She also knew that I was behaving bloody badly. What on earth did she mean? Behaving bloody badly? Behaving disgracefully, a spoiled brat. Because you've been faced with a little set-back which you feel you can't lick. So you're giving up. You have no guts! You can walk if you want to. You can relearn easily, it's a
mild
stroke you had. You have speech, your arm works, right? How you
dare
throw it all up now, I don't know! You've given so many people such pleasure for so many years – you still can, you still
owe
it to them. You can't just throw in the towel and say, ‘Enough!' I really thought you had a little more guts than that!

In my shamed silence she reached for the paper cup, handed it to me, and I took the pill and got wheeled down to physiotherapy the next morning, where an excessively bright, jolly female wrestler began to teach me how to walk in a complicated game which entailed the use of a great many walking-sticks spread along the floor. But I started up again. And I never stopped.

Some time ago the same nurse sent me a card to explain, and hoped that she ‘hadn't gone too far? Trying to say to patients what will be helpful is difficult. Sometimes you get it right, sometimes you don't. I very much wanted to get it right for you …' She has my eternal gratitude. God knows, she got it right for me.

About three weeks later I was considered fit enough to relinquish my bed to a more deserving case, and got smuggled out by a secret door to avoid the ever-lurking photographers hiding behind parked cars. I managed to walk, almost on my own, to Ron and his car and then to the National Film Theatre, where some film of mine was being shown, and managed, without help, to walk on to the stage before a full house and confound the press. It was a very pleasant feeling, and one that I never again dared to lose.

In Kensington my brother Gareth had organized the house as he might have organized a frigate. My bed had been lugged down to Forwood's room, a mini-ward had been created, which made things easier for Jacquie, who took temperatures (of us both: Forwood was slowly becoming weaker) and brought up trays. She had been a SRN before marriage, so she knew the job. I managed to hop about from bed to bathroom, but did not yet attempt the stairs. I was determined now to become mobile. Forwood's pale, haggard face forced me. He had finally started the Japanese pills. We waited with patience to see if they might have some effect. He was not bed-ridden, and managed to haul himself down to the sitting-room or the kitchen (miles down below in the basement) for meals.

One evening, when everyone was having supper and I forked listlessly through a congealing bowl of pasta which Rupert had brought to my bed, I suddenly set everything aside, dressed, as best I could, hanging on to the bedpost with one hand, pulling things over my head, determined to go down to the kitchen and show them just what I was made of. I'd bump down on my backside, however long it took, and get to my feet at the kitchen door. Surprise! Surprise!
What
a clever fellow!

Well, I did all that: inched down – it took hours – and reached the closed door into the kitchen. Pulled myself up by the banister rail. Stood teetering, and composing myself for my grand entrance. Vague muffled voices came from the table, chink of cutlery, a tap running, a chair dragged across the tiled floor, a burst of laughter and then, just as I was about to launch myself into the room: ‘ …
can't leave the family all on their own much longer
…' I stopped. The tap was turned off. ‘…
It's a bit hard on that bloody floor every night
…' A saucepan was scraped busily. ‘…
Of course, until you can manage again, we could try and get you into a decent place. Residential
…' I stood frozen. ‘
I know of a jolly nice place outside Henley. Lawns down to the river … Expensive, but very good, you could have your own furniture
…' I turned away from the door as Jacquie's voice called out happily, ‘
Anyone want some more Parmesan?'

I got up the stairs rather more quickly than I got down. Never eavesdrop on other people's conversation: you may just hear the truth. The next morning I was up, shaved, dressed, and hauled myself down the stairs into the sitting-room. Everyone was surprised and delighted. Patted my head. The clever dog had learned his tricks. A few days later Maude sent a faintly fey lady over to start work on my leg. She'd cure me in a ‘couple of weeks', she said, pressing folded hands hard on the top of my head. Did I not feel the hot electrical flow emanating from her into me? All I could truthfully feel were a pair of clammy little hands squashing my skull as if it was a grapefruit. Hot indeed they were, healing not at all. I needed something a bit more than simple faith now that I had managed to pick up the reins.

*

There was a Christmas and I had bronchitis again. Jacquie brought over a small tree, insisted on decorating it, and covered it in flashing lights which wouldn't stop winking unless the plug was removed. There was the sudden surge of spring. Birds were singing in the gardens opposite, there were daffodils in pots on people's windowsills. Kathleen Tynan found me a splendid lady, Mrs Pink, who came across the Park with a box of electrical things which slowly began to bring my slightly withered leg back into use. Clumsily, uneasily, but at last I managed one day to walk unaided to the end of the street; later,
much
later, limped to the Indian shop on the corner for boil-in-the-bag things; eventually I was able to get as far as High Street, Kensington, and all the glittering magic and mysteries of Boots and Marks and Spencer's. I had a working household again – wobbly, uncertain, easily stalled, but managing, at last, for itself.

The Japanese pills didn't seem to have much effect really. Warning lights went on. Making tea one day for Frank and George, who were installing bookcases, Forwood poured the milk into the teapot and spooned the tea into the kettle. It got sorted out; we all laughed. But it wasn't comfortable.

‘Have you got the soup on?'

He was reading and didn't look up when he said, ‘Yes. Probably boiling away by now. Better lower the gas.'

I went down and saw it was on the stove. But not boiling. There was no gas. The sealed tins lay in an empty saucepan.

It was too difficult now for him to carry things up from the kitchen. So he had to have his tea every day, as normal, at five, sitting at the round table. I got him a cake of some kind from the French baker at the corner. It was important for me to use my leg as much as possible. I sat with him for
company while he got his mug up to his lips, tried, and usually succeeded, in eating some of his cake.

One day I was filling a jar with water at the sink. My back was to him and he said, ‘If things don't work just as Peter Wrigley said, about pain, I mean, you'd help me out? Wouldn't you?'

I assured him that I would and put the jar of freesias on the table. ‘It's lunatic to think like that. You haven't given the pills time, really.'

He was silently unconvinced. I crushed the little cardboard box the cake had been carried in, stuck it into the pedal-bin. ‘The stuff you would need', he said, carefully pressing a shaking finger on some crumbs on the table, ‘is in my tartan washbag. Patrick gave them to me. Ages ago. Just make certain they haven't got stale. I've had them ages.'

I was busy doing something, trying to be brisk, dragging about as if there was a definite point to what I was doing. ‘You are talking rubbish. I know it's going to work. In my bones.'