The Family Tree (35 page)

He inserted the bolt and then loaded the rifle clumsily with the chosen rounds. ‘Could be, but this is better . . . less mess,'

‘Are you absolutely sure?' She had to be certain, really certain
.

‘I've never been surer of anything.' He leant the rifle carefully by his leg
and stared at her, demanding eye contact. ‘If I wait any longer, I won't be able to stay here. You know that. And I'll still be in bloody agony. I can't breathe, can't eat, can't keep anything down. It's a done deal. And I'll tell you something for nothing, love, I've had a gutful.'

She tried desperately to think of something that could steal a few more precious moments, rescue a semblance of normalcy. But there was nothing left. ‘Do you want me to stay?' Please say no, please, please, please
.

‘No!' His horror was automatic and she was washed with relief, and a strange sense of comfort that he could still be protective. Even now
.

‘I love you.' She couldn't think of anything else to say, so she moved across to his bed and sat beside him. They hugged, and she could smell his illness and his desperation, but most of all she could sense an overwhelming feeling of regret, threaded with relief. But maybe that was just hers
.

He broke off the embrace first, probably not because he wanted to but because it was simply too painful for him to remain in one position for long. He looked at the phone. ‘D'you reckon I should ring Angie?'

She stood up, surprised at the question, and by a flash of jealousy. ‘Well, I suppose if you want to. It's up to you.'

‘Nah,' he shrugged. ‘Just tell her . . . you know.'

She nodded. ‘I know.'

He reached out suddenly and clasped her hand with a firm grip that made his knuckles stand out as the flesh folded in around. ‘Love you . . . and thanks.'

She left the room and walked down the passageway and into the kitchen. There she stood at the window and gazed blindly through the net curtains. Long minutes passed and she began counting under her breath. Five, four, three, two, one . . . she could hear the occasional car on the road outside and it seemed a world away
.

As the minutes ticked by, she started to panic, drumming her fingers painfully against the countertop. Maybe he was having second thoughts. Maybe he was even hoping that she would stop him, take control, call it off – and unless she went back in now, right now, he would be forced to go through with it to save face. Maybe he desperately wanted someone, anyone, HER, to call his bluff, take the rifle, confiscate all knives, forbid
him to do anything. Maybe her grand sacrifice was nothing more than a grand betrayal
.

She had just turned away from the window when the rifle shot cracked across the silence, leaving behind an echo that belied its finality. It was almost immediately accompanied by a thin, high wail so full of pain that she thought she would vomit just from hearing it. She didn't pause to think, just raced back through the house and into the bedroom. Then she came to a shuddering halt as she took in the scene before her
.

The wail had stopped and, on the bed, her father lay full-length with the rifle on his stomach, his hands clutching the trigger guard and the barrel just short of his mouth as if it had popped out with the recoil. And his mouth . . . it gaped and glistened with the sheen of blood while his eyes stared at the ceiling. Until, that is, he realised she was there and then they suddenly, swiftly, swivelled around to meet her own and she realised at once that they were conveying an urgent, desperate message. He was just as horrified, horrified at her entry, horrified at her presence, he was telling her, beseeching her, screaming at her to get out, get out, for God's sake don't look at me like this, GET OUT!

She got out. She ran back to the kitchen where she froze, her hands clenched in desperation. They had stuffed it up. She needed to call an ambulance. He would be a vegetable, brain-damaged, worse off than before. She needed someone to tell her what do to. Somebody. Anybody. Sam
.

After about five minutes of mind-numbing indecision, she forced herself to walk slowly, quietly back up the passageway, but stopped short of entering the bedroom. She never, never, wanted to see those eyes again. And that was when she realised she could still hear his breathing. Big, strong gulps for breath, desperately gasping, rasping, agonised labouring, frantic inhalations. Oh god, why couldn't he just die?

She leant with her back against the doorframe, put her hands over her ears, and slowly slid down until she was squatting on the floor. Silently screaming, shouting, pleading, begging, until her head was thick with noise. And there she stayed, rocking backwards and forwards, for what seemed like hours before she forced herself into stillness and took her hands away from her ears. Then all she could hear was someone muttering ‘Oh god, oh
god, oh god', over and over and over again. Moments later she realised that the litany was hers, and the breathing had stopped
.

Afterwards, when she checked the little carriage clock, she realised that it had taken him fifteen minutes to die. For her, it would always feel like time froze and yet stretched simultaneously. Somehow. Even when she registered that she could no longer hear the ragged breathing, it was a long while before she could enter the room. And when she did, she moved very slowly. She saw her paternal grandparents endlessly gazing at each other, she saw her father's medi-alert lying nearby and she saw a full cup of cold tea that he must have attempted earlier in the day. She saw his dressing-gown folded at the end of the bed, she saw his yellowed dentures placed neatly next to the glass of water – and she saw him
.

In all the months that have passed since that day, this is the image that has remained clear. It requires a deliberate effort to picture her father as the man he once was, to see him at work or at play, a grandchild on a knee, or a meal before him. Yet it requires no effort to remember how he looked at the end. Like an indestructible photograph – a hideous moment carved in time. His final gift to her. That she need only close her eyes in order to see him again, and again, and again
.

The peripherals are slightly blurred, but he himself is quite clear, striped pyjamas shrouded by a floral bedspread, lying flat on his back, with his legs looking rather longer than they should. His hands are no longer clutching at the rifle but have fallen away and lie limply, one at his side and the other on his concave belly. The rifle itself lies snugly along the length of his body, with the muzzle now innocently pointing at the wall behind. But these are incidentals, and it is always the face that compels. His neck is slightly arched and his head is tilted back so that it is necessary to take another step forward in order to see the expression – and it is awful. Forever frozen in a last paroxysm of agony, silently screaming for eternity. Yet totally vacant. The spirit has fled, the vessel depleted. Tabula rasa. His mouth still gapes but is now black and cavernous. And his eyes . . . they are already dull and marbled, no longer accusing, they now just stare blindly at the ceiling
.

But he was right, there's hardly any mess
.

A
pril slid past with pleasant, incremental speed. The uncommonly hot March was forgotten as the weather bowed to the inevitable and wholeheartedly embraced the congenial vagaries of autumn. This meant mild, steadily cooler temperatures and an occasional wind that stripped the trees and gusted annoyingly at night.

Whilst finishing her father's story hadn't brought Kate definitive closure, where a clear line is drawn between then and now, it had been a surprisingly agile leap in the right direction. Rather than feeling merely drained, she felt
purged
, and there was a world of difference. Alongside this was a sense of personal achievement, having finally written
something
, and a huge sense of relief that the chronicle now existed somewhere else other than inside her head. That gave it a life of its own, which was no longer dependent on her for survival, and the subsequent distance brought an objectivity that was liberating in itself.

Kate developed the habit of reading it each evening, just before going to bed. Initially she treated this as a matter of professional pride, a desire to polish the story to perfection before passing it to Angie. But she also accepted that the gesture had an undercurrent of masochism; and a reluctance to actually finish and let go. Imperceptibly, however, this all changed. With nightly readings, the words that scrolled down the screen gradually became so familiar that she developed a sort of
cathartic desensitisation, which enabled her to crawl into bed afterwards and simply dismiss the story from her mind.

Towards the end of April, Kate even faced the fact that the narrative required no more polishing. So she printed out five sheets of A4 paper and slid them into a large envelope marked with Angie's name. But it certainly wasn't the sum of her creativity that month. Rather, and much to her surprise, her father's story had almost immediately heralded a surge of productivity. It was as if the act of forcing herself to actually
write
, for more than just an hour or so, had reawakened something despite the subject matter. Something with an insatiable appetite that craved more, and would not be content with five pages that few people would ever read.

And this time she had no problem coming up with an idea.

Kate had always expected that these six months, for her, would be full of change and growth and, hopefully, new directions. But she never anticipated that her mother would accompany her on the ride. Much of what she had taken for granted about the woman had been exposed as a façade, created by her father himself. Possibly, Kate now realised, for his sake as much as for his daughter. But simply replacing the idealistic image with a less appealing reality was too simplistic, and too unfair on the long-ago child who had endured such a horrid home life. A home life that may well have governed her later choices, as well as having fashioned the exterior that had so alienated others. Liveliness notwithstanding.

And Kate felt she owed her something. Not a true biography, where everything was laid bare, but a framework of fact wrapped around a fluid centre of fiction. Fashioned out of imagination and compassion. Giving the gentlest of closure to a woman who had been dead for many years, and who had deserved much more than life had offered. Furthermore, it seemed
right
that, having given so much to her father, she should offer this to her mother.

And once she started writing, Kate wondered why it had taken so long. Why on earth she had ever contemplated writing about Angie's mother when her own had been waiting in the wings, crying out for recognition. She didn't bother with any further research, just starting with
Rose as a child and letting her own inventiveness fill in the gaps. After a rather unsteady beginning, the words began to flow and the story soon took on a life of its own. Demanding her attention like a greedy child, taking all she could give and then crying out for more whenever she turned away.

It left time for very little else during those weeks, so that she surfaced only occasionally to touch base with those around. Like Angie, who was soon to take a few months off before leaving for England in September. Which meant that Shelley and Jacob would be taking over the shop at the end of May, with the added advantage of having their aunt around for a while if they ran into any difficulties.

With this Kate slowly realised that she had made one major mistake in her story about her father. Her remembrance of his face at the end had not been his final gift, not even close. Instead, he kept on giving. To Angie, with her trip overseas; to Melissa, who would have her mother's company; to Shelley and Jacob, with a new career; and to her. Especially to her. Amongst everything else, he had given her this journey that had culminated in her writing again. Rediscovering a lost love that had lain dormant for so long. And she knew, instinctively, that she would never let it go again. So Kate erased those lines from his story and then reprinted the whole. And this time she sealed the envelope before placing it by the laptop on her desk.

But there was one glaring absence within her life – Sam. And while Kate was grateful for the occasional visits and phone calls from her children, and being kept up to date, these also served to highlight the fact that she had not been home since her father's house had been demolished. At first she continued to maintain her anger with a religious righteousness. But as she moved from her father's story towards her mother's, the orb began to show signs of fragility. Slowly at first, with hairline cracks spider-webbing the surface, but building in momentum until, at last, it imploded.

She still felt, strongly, that Sam had lacked sensitivity in the way he had handled the demolition. But she also saw that he had been backed into a corner. As the builder in the family, he had been given the
accountability for the entire development and then everybody else had virtually backed away. Leaving him to juggle reality and the demands of a work force with the conflicting expectations of those who had charged him with the task. If he had done a less than perfect job, then the responsibility was not his alone and never should have been.

Besides, the time for her to state objections had been last year, when they met to discuss what to do with the house and land. But at the time she had remained mostly silent, instead expecting those around her, and Sam in particular, to pick up on her brittle body language and interpret it. When this hadn't happened, she had simply retreated into the role of the martyr. And the feelings of resentment and bitterness had been a perfect cohort for the overwhelming grief from both her father's death and the dreadful manner of his dying.

But there had been no particular moment when all this had suddenly become clear; rather it had been a slow series of realisations, so it was mid-April before the thought of a visit home had even started to appeal. And by then it was too late.