Glass (2 page)

3

A Death in the Family

The week that my mother died was eventful for many reasons. Dad had his last day at work, and after decades on the road, I think he was secretly looking forward to staying in one place for a bit. It was my twenty-second birthday. Max had just got a job, which was a massive step for him. Though no one ever officially discriminated against him, he would always receive a carefully worded letter describing a ‘more able candidate' or someone whose CV ‘better reflected the qualifications they were looking for'. That was the thing about discrimination that was never mentioned: it was the passive option, the coward's way out.
You don't have any legs? Well, we do have stairs … Although in the interests of fairness, looking at your CV, I think we can find a more able candidate
. One company even had the gall to tell him that the position had already been filled, while they continued to advertise the vacancy.

So the circle of life continued: Max was gainfully employed and my dad was given a crystal whisky tumbler and a bottle of Laphroaig for his long service to the company. It has always amazed me, looking back, how easily trivial events make an impact on people's lives. If I'd told him, at the start of that week, that he'd soon discard the tumbler in favour of drinking straight from the bottle, he probably would have replied that he didn't often drink whisky, and point to the novelty gift on the wall, which had appeared one Christmas under the tree, with no named sender or addressee. It was mocked up to look like a fire alarm. It said
IN CASE OF EMERGENCY, BREAK GLASS
. Behind the little clear plastic barrier, there was a minibar-sized bottle of whisky. ‘That's been there for, what, nine years,' he'd have said.

My parents were fussing around the kitchen, having just returned from an anniversary break to Rotterdam. Mum was getting some lunch together and Dad was fiddling with the new DAB radio that he'd bought.

‘Can you pass the red pepper, Günter?' asked Mum.

‘Yes of course.'

What is this button?
signed Dad.

That's to save the channel as a favourite
, signed Max.

‘Try one of these,' my mum said.

And this one?
signed Dad.

‘What is it?' I asked.

That's to switch back to FM,
signed Max.

‘It's a Dutch waffle,' said my mum. ‘Try it.' I bit into it. ‘It's mostly syrup. Don't eat them all, we've got lunch ready in half an hour.'

‘Ishhamazhin,' I said through a mouthful. ‘Whatshitcall?'

‘Stroopwafel.
⁵
I tell you what though, those Dutch, they never eat any veg. I didn't see a carrot the whole time we were there. They won't touch a vegetable unless it's pickled.'

‘Sounds like German food,' I said.

She rubbed my back affectionately. Mum was always a touchy-feely person, which I miss. Dad's more of a get-drunk-and-punch-a-wall person now.

We all sat down for lunch and passed each other dishes, and we all ate healthily, and the food was delicious in a way that I took for granted at the time. It never occurred to me that cooking might go wrong, because Mum made it look easy.

‘Shall we all go out for a celebratory dinner tonight?' asked Mum, as she cut up a spinach and ricotta filo pastry. She put down the spatula.
Celebrate? Max has a job now, Günter is turning twenty-two and your father's finally going to have a rest.

‘I told you I don't mind working,' said Dad irritably. ‘I've been working all my life, another year won't kill me.'

‘It's not your choice to make, dear. You're getting older, you have to retire. Simple as that.'

Me and Günter will help
, signed Max.
Well I will, and Günter can when he finds a job.
Ha! He never lifted a finger round the house. Mum did everything for him, washed his clothes, practically bathed him. He lived off her guilt. I had always tried to tell her that Max's deafness wasn't her fault. She was convinced that it was something she'd eaten during her pregnancy, but I told her it wasn't that simple. I'd even printed out a page from Wikipedia to show her the week before but she had refused to read it.

‘What's the point in reading it if some idiot can come along and write any old rubbish?' she'd asked.

‘It's not like that, Mum. The people who write this thing, they're participating in something higher, they're idealists. There's an article on basically anything that's ever existed.'

She didn't say anything, but I could tell she was impressed.

Later that night, after we had decided to go out for a meal at the Seafood and Steakhouse, she picked up the conversation again.

‘So this encyclopaedia.'

‘Wikipedia.'

‘Yes. Can you learn about any topic on there?'

‘You can learn about pretty well anything, I suppose.'

‘You should brush up, then. One day, someone's going to ask you about Napoleon or, or, trigonometry, and you're going to feel very silly.'

I stared at the menu guiltily. The three men in the family ordered steak, and Mum went for seabass. We all shared a bottle of wine, since it was a special occasion, and we held our glasses silently to the centre of the table. A waiter arrived, carrying four plates using only two arms.

‘Who ordered the steak tartare?'

Did he say T-A-R-T-A-R-E?
signed Max to Mum.

Yes
, I signed. ‘It's my brother's.'

The waiter looked at Max nervously.

‘I wish I could learn sign language,' he said as he put the plate down.

‘Is there a court injunction preventing you?' asked my mum with an encouraging smile.

‘And who ordered the seabass?' he cut in.

‘That would be me,' she replied.

‘There you are. And two steak frites.'

He gave a perfunctory smile and made a hasty getaway.

We ate, and Max talked about all the things he wanted to buy with his new salary.

Because I'm retiring
, signed Dad gracelessly,
I might try painting
.

Max and I both stifled a laugh, Max making his small glottal noises, and Mum coughed on a mouthful of seabass.

But you've never liked art. You always used to say that art was for people who didn't have jobs
, I signed.

But I don't have a job
, signed Dad.
It might be good. I need to stay busy or I get glum.

Mum was still coughing on her food, and threw back a mouthful of water.

‘You okay my love?' asked Dad. ‘Pat on the back?'

Mum shook her head. Her eyes were filling up.

Bread,
she signed.

The waiter was studiously ignoring our table so I got up and asked for some bread, as Dad tried to pat her on the back. She put her hand into her mouth, which was the moment that I realised something must really be wrong. My mother always had impeccable manners. She winced. Then she tried to drink more water, but couldn't. Around us, everyone chatted amicably, murmuring and knocking sonorous cutlery together. Mum had closed her lips but her mouth looked unnatural, like she was harbouring a golf ball. She rooted around in her handbag, pushed her plate away and emptied the handbag's contents onto the tabletop, finding a compact mirror. She opened her mouth again to inspect, but by now she was quite red in the face. I stood up and cleared my throat.

‘Is there a doctor in the building?' I said loudly, not knowing quite where to look.

‘Günter …' began my dad, who hated to make a fuss.

‘She's choking!' I hissed.

One woman in the corner had wiped her mouth with a napkin and excused herself from the woman that she was dining with. She had a dark bob and almond eyes. Everybody was looking at us, though they pretended to continue their discussions.

The doctor led Mum off to the bathroom, picking up tweezers from the spilled contents of the handbag on the table. We shifted in our chairs. Max prodded at his yolk, which burst and dribbled down the side of the mince, pooling at the bottom and mingling with the blood.

‘I should go and check on her,' I said.

‘She's in the ladies',' Dad replied.

Max grinned at me.
Don't let it stop you
.

This isn't funny
, I signed back.

It's only a fish bone
, he replied.

All I could think was whether Mum's last word would be
Bread
.

She came back out, eventually, and insisted that the doctor join us for a glass of wine. The doctor, in turn, insisted that she couldn't leave her friend alone, so her friend joined us, and we spent an awkward twenty minutes trying to make conversation, with Max looking at the time on his phone and asking me to translate the odd comment that he couldn't catch.

The next morning, I brought her a cup of tea but she didn't drink it. She made throaty noises with each inhalation and I didn't know what to do, other than to phone for an ambulance. As we sat waiting in the lounge, a small bird flew into the patio doors, its beak hitting the window like a hailstone. It dropped to the floor and remained there. Our elderly cat appeared and began to inspect it for vital signs with its paw.

The paramedics wanted to take her to hospital, so I sat in the ambulance with her. She gave me a wan smile.

‘I'll be fine,' she whispered.

‘Of course you will,' I said.

We hit a little bump.

‘I didn't bring any make-up,' she whispered, as if it was the only thing on her mind.

‘It's okay. We'll be out in no time.' I squeezed her hand. It felt horrible, lying to each other like this. I wanted to say something true.

They didn't think that she was in immediate danger, so she sat up in a bed amongst many others and waited for the doctor to come round to her. I asked if there was anything she wanted. I hated hospitals. I was hoping she wanted something outside.

‘You know what I would love?' she rasped, smiling like a dame at a ball, ‘A glass of water.'

There were only useless little cones at the water cooler down the corridor, so I went into several wards and asked around until a kindly nurse offered to get me one from the staff kitchen. She brought it to me full past the brim, so at first it looked empty. The water level was above the top of the glass, held together only by a strange physics. I took a sip and carried it back to my mother's ward slowly and carefully. As I reached Mum's place, I found her looking a little off colour, her skin shining like a waxwork. The index finger on her right hand was extended, as if pointing outside – at the sun, perhaps, or the window. I put the water down and opened the window to let the air in.

She beckoned me with her hand, and I came over to sit on the side of the bed. Her eyes were red and full. She said nothing, but she looked so sad, as if she'd witnessed a tragedy she didn't want to share. I looked for a way to comfort her. She shook her head very softly. That was her answer:
no, Günter. I am not. I won't. It won't
. Now I didn't want the truth. I wanted her to tell me a sweet lie. I wanted the truth to be different. She held up her thumb, forefinger and little finger. The little finger:
I.
The thumb and forefinger:
L.
The thumb and little finger:
Y.
She leant back against the pillow and put two hands over her chest.
Love
. Suffocation. I put my hand up to her mouth and nose. She had stopped breathing.

I pushed the emergency help button.

No one came in five seconds. Her hand was burning hot. I said, ‘Excuse me,' to the corridor. No one came in ten. She looked like she was stuck halfway up a mountain. Someone ran in after fifteen seconds. She looked strangely at peace. A crowd had formed by thirty. They wheeled her away to a new room where I wasn't allowed. This wasn't something we could share. This wasn't somewhere I could follow.

And here, at the heart of the crisis, I was alone. Everyone else was busy. I was not. I was the only person here who knew my mother, but these things don't matter in the end.

My dad arrived soon after, having followed the ambulance, and Max followed straight from work. I sipped at the water and looked out the open window.

When I think of Mum in hospital, I picture the sparrow flying into our patio doors. It is that moment that my mind has replayed many hundreds of times, and the cat nudging it as it lay there, the little bird already unconscious, incapable of safeguarding its dignity. I suppose, if my father has always assured me that life isn't romantic, my mother inadvertently taught me that death is no better. It stops you in your tracks like an invisible wall. From a very acute angle, you can see it coming, but most people find it catches them full pelt.

4

The Plain Dealer

Avon College for Boys is one of those schools that no one wants to talk about after they've left. I suppose I'll have to. But no one really enjoys their schooldays, do they? If you were supposed to enjoy it, they wouldn't make the uniforms grey. It was a big school, which made it easy to blend in, or would have, if I hadn't had my early growth spurt. I'm 5'10” now, but I was already 5'8” by the time I was twelve, and the sixth-tallest in the year when we lined up for gym class. I'm sure I would have been the tallest except that I was born in August, so I was young for my year. They say that during puberty you grow up, then out; it was widely believed that I had already completed both stages of development, though as it would later prove I had yet to finish growing out.

You might think this ensured I was left well alone, but bullies do not, in my experience, pick on the smallest prey. They might reinforce the hierarchy every now and then, but there is no honour in felling a sapling. On the contrary, bullies most like to fight with someone impressive looking but ineffectual. One also has to bear in mind Tall Man Syndrome: having lower blood pressure, and not needing to vocally assert themselves, tall people are more laid back.
⁶

The fact of my height, coupled with my refusal to behave antisocially, combined to make me a conspicuous target amongst my peers. Although I had pointed out many times that my name was Günter, pronounced with the same phonetics as Oompa-Loompa, many insisted on calling me Gunter, to rhyme with Munter. I was sometimes alternatively addressed as Gunther, or Munter Arse, and over time my year group settled on the contraction Munt. Later, some of the worst boys substituted the first letter again, but I'd rather not dwell on that.

Karl Baggett was one particularly obnoxious classmate. He spent all his time with the football players and the rough kids but, lacking any particular skill which would have made him ‘cool', chose to specialise in sadism.
⁷
He was in all my classes except English, Music and Science, and he would always sit directly behind me. I could go into some detail about the reasons I know he was disturbed, but to pick an example at random: he once stapled the webbing between his thumb and index finger during a maths exam, with the only apparent intention of putting off Tom, who was sat next to him, and who was scared of blood. In every lesson, he would prod me in the back, put things down the back of my shirt, flick ink on my shirt, and make it impossible for me to take in any of what was going on. The pleasure he took in sitting behind me would always outweigh the attraction of sitting with anyone he'd have wanted to call a friend, to the extent that against both of our wills, we became known as a sort of double act (‘Where are Munt and Karl going to sit?').

It is impossible to overstate the ability of idiots to think they have won an argument. Almost every day, we would run through a version of,

‘Munt. Munt. Hey, Munt.' A prod in my back.

‘Munt.'

‘What? I'm trying to listen.'

‘Teacher's pet.'

‘What do you want?'

‘Günter, pay attention please.' This from whoever happened to be standing, oblivious, by the whiteboard.

‘Do you love your dad?'

‘Of course I do.'

‘GAY.'

‘That's not what gay means.'

‘Pretty sure it is.'

‘Being gay is when two men want to have sex with each other.'

‘Oh my god, you're like an
expert
on gays. Did you do a gay degree?'

Very occasionally – on a good day – I'd get a brief glimpse into the cankered swamp that bore him.

‘Do you love your mum?' (Karl was not an innovator.)

‘Yes, very much.'

‘Motherf—'

‘Don't you love yours?'

‘No, she's a bitch.'

‘Well, what about your dad?'

‘He doesn't want to live with us when he gets out.'

And so I couldn't even hate my own torturer, but only feel a great sadness for the world that had made him this way.

Things got worse when Max joined Avon. Everyone except Karl was kind and inquisitive about Max's deafness, whereas Karl was just inquisitive, particularly when it came to Max's vocalisation. There followed some unpleasantness during which both Max's ego and Karl's testicles were bruised. As the older brother, I was apparently supposed to have leapt to Max's aid, but, as I tried to explain, he didn't need it. He told me it was a matter of principle, he felt betrayed, and there wasn't much I could say to that. The damage had been done. It was around that time that Max stopped speaking out loud in my presence.

My grades didn't improve, either. By the time of my mock GCSE exams, I was barely scraping by. In English, my marked paper had lots of question marks on it, with the comment,
try to be clear about what you're saying
. In Double Science, my papers were a mix of ticks and crosses.
Use the approved wording
, and,
it's not enough to know the answer: show your working
. Music was fine in theory, but there was no way to backdate keyboard practice, and my performances brought my average down. Karl put paid to my chances of success in other subjects.

Mum wanted me to get into college, and go to university. Dad thought it best that I ‘start earning' since, by the time I had paid off university debt, I would be a ‘middle-aged loner still living with his mum'. Max helpfully suggested that the latter would happen in either case. As it turned out, I got an A, two Bs, a C, five Ds and an F, meaning that I didn't qualify for college, so, if only by default, I took my dad's advice and joined the working world.

There was an advert in the
Salisbury Plain Dealer
for milkmen: ‘cheerful, reliable, early to bed and early (3am) to rise'. Thankfully qualifications weren't mentioned at all in my interview with Mickey, the operations manager, who looked like an oversized, milk-fed baby. While I was too young to drive, I would work in the depot, stacking bottles on each of the floats to match the orders that had been requested on the system, and then after a year I could get my licence and drive my own float.
⁸

I would come home from work about the same time the rest of my family got up. As I was to learn, I had entered a dying trade. You see, milk lasts much longer than it used to, so people can buy lots at the supermarket and keep it all week and half of the next. And then there's long-life – don't get me started on long-life.

But it was a good job while it lasted and did, at least, avoid the doldrums of a nine to five. I would get up while everyone was sleeping and walk to the depot, past drunks trading poorly aimed haymakers over their stilettoed princesses, the peal of war cries rising even as sirens burst through the stale air.
⁹
I would arrive at the depot crunching over broken glass, sober as a drudge and dressed in my white coat. I'd take my float and drive my figure of eight round the neighbourhood, picking up empties and delivering bottles of creamy white cow-juice, capped with red foil. The silence was impeccable at around six. The sun would rise pink or orange like a furnace. Sometimes there were squirrels, or foxes, or woodpeckers.

I felt a certain smugness that I had seen so much of a day before the other residents had even mastered consciousness. I'm not one of these people who snaps awake at six every morning, while others dream of stretching out the morning as they fumble for the snooze. I am by nature a late riser, a lover of sleep. For me, the only thing worse than having to wake up would be not waking up. I have known what it is to doze like a cat through a summer's day and out the other side, woken only by my mother for the family dinner. And so, to wake so early, to have out-flanked even the early risers, was satisfaction enough. There were small pleasures, too, and each day I might find a little joy in the way an empty bottle trapped the first pink light of dawn, or the symphony of willows in wind.

I continued on in that job for some years, only realising I'd come out the other side of adolescence when I discovered, one evening, that I couldn't lie down properly in the bath. Suddenly, arbitrarily, it had been decided that I was now a Responsible Adult. At twenty-one, I couldn't just buy alcohol; I could sell it. I could adopt a child, and then drive it around in an HGV, such was the trust conferred on me by society.

As I towelled myself, dressed, went to the kitchen and hugged my mum, I saw that we were Russian dolls
¹⁰
that didn't fit any more. I was no longer a solid little offspring, but a big, hollow shell of my own.

The four of us sat at our kitchen table for dinner, munching while my mother soliloquised on her latest obsession (… Thomas Hardy, Norse mythology, Buddhism …), or tried to teach us new words. My parents had a tacit pact whereby Dad was allowed to stuff food into his mouth for precisely as long as her lesson lasted, at which point Mum would stand abruptly and sweep the plate out from under his fork. Over the years, this had turned Dad into an incredibly efficient eater.

As luck would have it, the subject of today's homily was Employment. We were having lasagne, Dad's favourite. He removed the top layer of pasta, scraped all the remaining béchamel away, grimaced, and shovelled a forkful of mince into his mouth. He really loved Mum's lasagne.

‘Do you want a glass of wine?' asked Mum, hovering.

‘God no,' said Dad, smothering his mince in Worcestershire sauce. ‘Can't drink on a weekday. I'll never get up.'

‘Oh, come on, live a little. You're retiring, you should enjoy yourself.'

‘It's bloody boring. I want to be out there making a bit of money.'

There's more to life than making money
, signed Mum to everyone as she sat down.
Why don't you sign up for a course?
she asked Dad.
Learn something? We should all keep learning, throughout life.

People don't take courses any more,
I signed.
If you need to know something, you can just google it.

But learning opens doors
, she signed back.
If you had more qualifications you might be able to get a different job.

What's wrong with my job?
I asked.

Nothing's wrong with it,
she signed,
but it gives you options. Learning makes your world bigger. There are two ways to change the world. Go out there and make it better, or change the way you think about it. Knowledge gives you the option to do both.

You can talk,
I signed.
Even I've got more qualifications than you.

Mum looked wounded. Max pushed mince around his plate, looking down, which was like putting his hands over his ears.

‘We can all imagine a better life for ourselves,' Mum said judiciously, her voice wavering ever so slightly. ‘And you're capable of so much more.'

I flushed with shame and pride. No one other than my mother had ever really believed that I was capable of anything. I secretly nursed the idea that I might be an undiscovered genius, and sometimes googled ‘Einstein's school report'
¹¹
to cheer myself up, but I got on better with ideas than I did with people, and it is rarely left up to ideas to decide whether you're a serial underachiever.

‘Don't go giving the boy ideas, Mathilda,' said Dad. ‘He's hardly a bloody rocket scientist, is he?'

‘Very supportive, Arthur, thank you.' She turned to me as Max looked up. ‘Günter, you can do anything you set your mind to.'

Yeah
, signed Max,
You're a regular superhero. Charmless, half-blind and fat
.

Clark Kent has glasses
, I signed.

They're a cover. He can see through walls, you dick.

I walked into that one.

When someone you love dies, the first thing you have to think about is paperwork. You may have recently concluded that all human endeavour is no more than a way to keep our hands busy until we, too, die, our life destined to wink only briefly in a cold and unobservant universe. But the first thing you are asked to do is to ignore all that, and to help out with some good old-fashioned box ticking (‘Mathilda. With an H. Glass. 2 February 1955. Salisbury. I'm her son. About ten days. Yes, I was there with her.')

Max's new employers said that, since he was new, he was only allowed to take a day off for the funeral as annual leave, so he couldn't help much with the arrangements. Everything happened in a kind of sleepwalk, fumbling along and saying the same things you would say if she was dead: yes, it's a terrible loss; hydrangeas were her favourite, but we might ask people to donate money to a charity. Dad sleepwalked more than me. Overnight, he became a wandering, forgetful shade. He didn't know when he had last eaten, or what day of the week it was.

During this time, others also referred casually to ‘what she would have wanted', as if she had granted her approval over our every decision in advance. But Mum was full of surprises. I think she might have been amused by the idea that anyone in the family, least of all my father, had any inkling of her preferences. I suspect the whisky fire alarm was a typical misfire, and that Mum was so bewildered to receive it that Dad refused to own up to such an obviously poor pairing of wife and gift. I'm not saying we didn't love her and sometimes also pleasantly surprise her, but after witnessing Mum's brave face for twenty-two consecutive Christmases, all I know is she didn't like bath salts.

I wandered the streets around Salisbury a lot around this time.
¹²
I would often go and stare at the cathedral and think about how long it had been there. I would think about why people liked to see an old building, and whether all anyone really wanted was to weave themselves into the story of the world. Salisbury Cathedral:
¹³
now that was a big part of the story. People could try and be important for a day, like celebrities or politicians, or they could try and ingratiate themselves with the story by spending time with things that lasted, like vicars or academics. It was a question of how to find your place in the ecosystem.