A Short History of Falling Read online

  I could see that Gill was enjoying her work more and that people respected her in ways they hadn’t before and that the fewer coats she wore the more people respected her and wanted to spend time with her. She had an independence that surprised me. I was both interested in it and surprised by it. And I didn’t know if I would be good enough for this person or that I ever had been.

  I’m glad I cared enough to be frightened in this moment and I now see it’s not always the right thing to wait for those pedestrians who fail to notice that the lights at the crossing have turned green. This must be the point when marriages fail in so many different and sad little ways. And even though it was painful for me, I think I owe Gill a lot for these changes she made in her life and for the opportunity they also gave me. Because I never intended to take advantage or take for granted, but I suppose these things happen slowly or are even there at conception.

  I saw the truth approaching the kerb on the other side of the road and that is all I did – I saw her, and recognized what it was, and that it was crossing the road away from me. I kept going and tried to keep up, because that’s as much as I could manage at the time. I didn’t turn left on my own to go down Anerley Road or Crystal Palace Parade because I didn’t want to lose her; I wanted to follow her. I think it was the excitement of it. That really was the thing – the excitement of another person.

  *

  I know the gods are not against Gill, even though she feels they are. There are some gods from the 1963 movie of Jason and the Argonauts – indolent gods in togas, with someone in the background playing the lyre – and these gods may be against her but not the other ones.

  Gill took us to Portugal and she carried us back. And that’s quite a thing for a parent and a carer, without a viable mother and father of their own, to be both the mind and the muscle of a family, without the feeling that it’s ever possible to stop or let go.

  And for someone who gave up her career for this, and then got punished with a husband who is sick and dying, and with the sky falling on her head most days, and a lot of shit and wee to clear up, I know it all seems really bad, which it is. It’s probably worse than it seems, or will be. The gods may end up proving to be even more capricious, and the shit and wee even more copious, which I realize is not the most reassuring thing for me to say.

  It’s not necessary to be strong. I suppose people just live through things, which is what I see. And I don’t even know if it will get better; it might get worse! But at some point the sun has to stream down on the carnage and make pretty patterns in the glistening pools of evaporating pee. In this moment I know Gill will feel like peace and that bits of this will feel funny enough to properly laugh at.

  Mooto Nuney Disease

  I came into the room late with my wheelchair whirring and could see that a friend was holding Tom by his ankles over the sofa. My son was making a happy version of the sound that lobsters are supposed to make when they’re dropped into boiling water.

  I know that one day there may be other important men in Tom and Jimmy’s life and it’s hard not knowing if these relationships will be OK. I just have to trust that they will be, which is another way of letting go and knowing that it’s never possible to have control; not really. It’s a useful kind of knowledge to have finally arrived at – to let go of something I never really had hold of.

  For three years, until Tom was four, Gill worked full time as a teacher and I worked the weekends. I was at home with Tom, and so the history of our lives is closely bound together. I was a mother to my boy, and a father too. I was a kind of mother to Gill as well and I had confidence in what the three of us could be. I was the architect of our young family, and later that role became Gill’s. She just couldn’t be this person at the beginning. Confidence moves around and I realize now that I’ve had distinct periods of it in my life that began with the year of briefly knowing God in a very intimate way and is ending with the discovery of dying. Between these two was the excitement and the power I felt in the early years of writing plays, and the years that I’m reflecting on now, in which I looked after my son and our young family.

  But now I’m more detached: I’m almost Scrooge returning to a life in which he never existed or Jimmy Stewart’s character in It’s a Wonderful Life. So that walking in to see a friend playing with Tom makes me feel like I’m not quite here and that I’m dreaming of a different time. It’s a dream of something and is painful in a way I have begun to accept. Gill sometimes nudges Tom to acknowledge me or say goodnight to me, and there was a period a few weeks ago when he seemed resistant to this. Our lives are stressful and I think Tom was feeling a little insecure at school, so perhaps he was crowding out other relationships to get as much as possible from his mummy. This meant that days went by in which I could say something and he appeared not to hear me, or that he would walk by me as if I was invisible and I would cup my heart carefully like it was raspberry jelly.

  Some time went by in this vein, and I could feel my confidence slipping, but then one morning, and I don’t know why, Tom climbed up on to my bed and nestled his face into the pit of my shoulder. I didn’t want to move and I think I even slowed down my breathing. Then he moved and I thought this moment was lost but he was turning to lie with his chest on mine and the side of his face pressed flat on to my sternum, so that his arms draped over the sides of my body. I continued to look at the ceiling because, most of all, I didn’t want anything to change; except that I moved my hand in one gentle stroke of the back of his hair, down to the nape of his neck, and kept my hand on his shoulder blade until he got up, about twenty seconds later.

  I’ve fallen on hard times – that’s what this is – and I’ve become adept at extracting pleasure from less. It’s the experience of poverty, and a child who might receive something frugal at Christmas but feels more joy than most. So my life as a parent can be exquisite in ways it could never be before. I know what these moments are and I hope I’m ready for them, whenever they might come.

  *

  Gill and Tom had formed themselves into a rolling ball of feet and hair because I had wanted the black bits from between Tom’s toes to sprinkle on my scrambled eggs. But it didn’t work and Tom finished the manoeuvre sitting on the back of Gill’s head with a very wide grin.

  Children are like ivy, the way they reach into you and wrap around you, asking questions with their bodies and finding routes through. Part of my learning that love is something physical was learnt in moments with Tom when he was young and I cared for him. I’m describing something physical that other parents know but which I discovered as if it were a hidden kingdom. So that the world could churn around and jostle and bobble uncontrollably for my young son, and I found that all this discombobulation could be stilled if we sat together and I spread my large open hand on Tom’s chest and held it there whilst his heart settled those few inches away from the warmth of my palm. Or that it was sometimes necessary to twirl Tom like a baton around my neck or use him like a wheelbarrow or roll him up like sushi in a duvet. Just to be big with my arms and chest and back and let him know that this great frame of mine was moving in his life to be with him and to keep him warm and safe.

  This knowledge is now locked away, as I look out at the physical world of these people I love. It won’t be my children’s memory of me, just an artefact glimpsed in photos and the odd film – something they will one day interpret. Disappearing like this is a way of letting go of ego and that’s a calm feeling; it makes me feel like a slightly better person, in a way that I would otherwise never have achieved. I see who Tom and Jimmy are and now think more broadly about what their lives will be – the large canvas of their future welfare, with its many clean white spaces. Many of the decisions I now make, or make with Gill, are about a time that should have involved me but now won’t. I like ending my life in this way, as a parent – and I like the small contribution it now makes to repairing a life that has long been insecure and, in part, vain or self-absorbed.

  I’m looking over
and Gill is there with her body and her face pushed down into the duvet as Tom sits smiling on top of her head. I’m watching this, knowing he’s not alone and that at least one of us can remind and reassure that love is physical and real and always there for him. And my place in all of this is becoming smaller, historic and just the right size of important.

  *

  I was wrapped in yellow and orange blankets at the edge of the yard, shrieking like a tiny broken accordion. It’s January and I only go outside once or twice a week. A lot is involved in getting me ready for outdoors and I never want to put Gill through the rigmarole.

  I was giving Tom advice on how to improve his jumping technique on his scooter and this was quite a ridiculous situation, with my citrus appearance and a straining voice, like I was on stage as a failing drag act and everyone in the audience was just talking amongst themselves.

  But Tom was taking my instruction extremely seriously and I was reminded of the times we used to go swimming in Forest Hill and how rotund and unlikely the very excellent swimming coach had seemed. It didn’t appear to matter that I was wrapped up like oranges and lemons in my wheelchair, or my fractious castrato, because I had successfully managed to impart a small piece of information that had enabled him to achieve the scooter elevation he’d been looking for.

  I suppose this was a little like those genre of movies best known through the Rocky franchise, in which the coach is some kind of misfit outcast who eventually comes good. Because this was once routine and normal, but now it’s much more special than that. It’s a moment of coming good and these are precious to me.

  *

  In his early life, Tom and I existed side by side, so that we made up our days together. In the mornings we’d look out at London, over bowls of porridge. In the foreground parakeets perched in the sycamores and someone’s pigeons would swirl and circle over the nearby gardens. And from here, London spread out, as if the land were a vast map unfurled from the kitchen table. It was quiet at the top of our building, with only the clinking noises of breakfast and the frequent high-pitched sounds of a very young boy.

  It amazes me to think I had this time with my son and that I had this opportunity. Just a dad and his young son, and I think I eased something in me by noticing and listening to him, so that just being aware of my interest felt like a different story in my life.

  There’s a lot of identifying that goes on for Tom. A lot of time spent layering knowledge and building up information. He figures out the world in this way – knowledge built upon knowledge – and I have travelled alongside him, navigating a social sea, observing children and play and patterns glistening in the spectral waters. Each day we were Darwin in the New World, taking out our notebooks, stepping out into the parks and the playgrounds – identifying and naming all the strange figures and shapes and permutations that moved in his life. If the three-year-old Tom saw a red spade attached to the end of an arm in a sandpit, we would work this out together, exploring the ways he might operate to become the person holding the red spade in this situation. Or if another child removed a green car from its appointed place in the design of his play, we’d examine the steps needed for the next time something essential was unexpectedly removed from his life.

  But what now? What of the end of things? What of death, with our notebooks and our sense of wonder?

  *

  Tom must have been four when a starling flew into our loft through one of the tiny holes between the rafters. We heard its soft thudding, as it flew around up there – losing feathers, bruising itself, breaking little limbs. It had stopped by the time I had climbed through the hatch, and Tom was down below with his hands clutching the sides of the ladder and his mouth dropped open at the chin.

  Back on the landing, I had the starling cupped inside my hand and the only movement came from the ruffling of chest feathers as they pushed against the fatty part of my index finger. I showed Tom briefly and then set off down the stairs, on my own, but by the time I reached the road the tiny pulsing in the starling’s chest had stopped and it lay sideways on my hand. I didn’t bury him. It was Thursday and the wheelie bin was full of rubbish, so I set his speckled feathers down upon a black and shiny plastic bin bag and closed the lid.

  Tom was standing on the landing when I came back up and I told the story of what had happened, with something like the fanfare of the Wright brothers’ maiden flight. I had moved through to the bathroom sink to wash my hands, and Tom had followed. As I scrubbed away with soap, I saw him as a reflection in the cabinet mirror, listening intently to my description of how this bird would now be flying overhead with his friends. I don’t know what we did next but we dispersed. I think I closed the loft hatch and peeled some onions and maybe, through the kitchen window, stood and watched the parakeets. And then, a little while later, I heard another different sound. I went into Tom’s room and there he was beneath the window, next to the cardboard space rocket we had made the week before, sobbing and sniffling into his lap.

  *

  In the early days, when it was just a limp, and even with Tom’s neck craned up towards me, I knew enough, or had learnt enough, to say that my leg wouldn’t be getting any better. And that’s a hard thing to say to a pair of soft blue opioid eyes. Far easier to tap for a vein and say yes to biking together when the days get longer, or to swims off the river beaches that dot the mountainsides of central Portugal. To not say yes is a particular kind of arid route taken at a fork, one that offers perfect views of an alternative route descending into soft fluffy clouds or liquid pools the colour of translucent green sweetie wrappers.

  I wonder how hard it is for a very young mind to comprehend that a body won’t get better, and whether it is any harder or easier for an older mind. I don’t think it registered with Tom when I then started responding that it wouldn’t just not get better but that it would also get worse. We existed in the present tense, and even when I started having to use a walking stick – then graduated to a pair of crutches – for Tom I remained just exactly what I was: a dad who couldn’t take him swimming over the summer because of a bad leg.

  A month or two went by, and we had returned to the UK to live. I decided to give Tom the name for my condition and used my new expertise as an opportunity to explain the relationship between the brain and voluntary movement. I heard him trying the words out loud and, even though it came out as mooto nuney disease, the term sounded so much more serious and frightening than it ever had before. And I just wanted to take that language back. It felt like such a serious mistake to ever have imparted such language to someone so little, who I love this much.

  However hard these experiences were with Tom, I was also able to draw on the medical expertise of the doctors from his imaginary island, and from those doctors working within its larger teaching hospitals on the smaller adjacent island. In the fifth year of Tom’s life, Gill and I learnt a lot about these islands and came to understand that Tom and Jimmy’s night-times were not spent asleep but on expediting their responsibilities as both mayoralty and chief engineers for these two island states. For quite some time, Tom was able to update me about the superior medical services on the islands and the advances that were curing limps in all their forms. Alongside this, engineers were constantly developing a wide range of off-road and flying wheelchairs that were making the experience of disability a lot more functional for people in my predicament.

  But as time went on, and it became so clearly more than just a leg problem, and when I started moving so much less and doing so much less, I got the impression that innovation had declined on these islands – or that I was diseased to such an extent that even these highly skilled island engineers considered my condition beyond help. It’s only possible to be a daddy with a bad leg for a limited amount of time. The present tense can only continue for a period of six months or so because, after this time, I realized I was existing within the apart tense, or in some kind of tense in which people or ideas languish until they are forgotten or disappear completely.
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  It’s so easy to think that children don’t know about death, even though they walk by spiders’ webs all the time and see small things perishing. Things end all the time and yet people like me feel the need to lie to their children that a little bird isn’t dying, when everyone knows otherwise. So many children see death around them every day, but I imagine they’re capable of managing this information far more effectively than most adults, so that they can live alongside the knowledge of death whilst laughing at a fart or rolling a disused tyre down a hill for fun.

  It was about two months ago, in our tiny cottage here, that Tom asked me if he was going to die one day. He had been crying in his bed and then came down to be with me, nestling himself on the blanket that was on my lap. And for that moment I’m grateful to that starling – and feel bad that I buried him in a wheelie bin – because I could see that my little son just needed to know that I was capable of being honest with him.

  ‘What do you think?’ I said.

  ‘I think I will’ was his reply.

  ‘Yes, that’s right,’ I said. ‘All of us die. It’s part of life.’

  Then I pulled the sides of the blanket in around him, and he quietly sobbed in this warm cocoon. And I thought of all the many children in the world, experiencing much harder lives than ours, who cannot be protected from this truth. And how the idea of death is part of Tom’s life now. This boy I could feel in my arms, knowing inside that his father will die. The microscopic idea of it – expanding its cellular life – slowly becoming something that will be visible in his mind at exactly the point at which he needs it to be.