Inside Grandad (10 page)

Oh, selkie … !

Perhaps it was the thought of her—not the selkie who'd come to the ward just now, unless she was the same one that had popped her head out of the water when they'd been fishing down at the harbor almost a month ago—but for an instant he was back there, with Grandad beside him, fishing for mackerel….

"Grandad!"

"Eh?"

"This is the wrong way. It's no use just telling your hand to do something. You've got to try and imagine it doing something—something it really knows how to do, something it does without you even thinking about it. What about a pendulum cast from the harbor wall? You remember when you were teaching me, showing me how…. Let's try and do that."

"Sorry, boy … no use … tired …"

He was, too. Gavin could feel his exhaustion, his hopelessness, but he had to go on.

"Please, Grandad! Listen. It's really important. If I let go of you I'll be stuck here, and I'll never get back. And someone's going to find us like this. Mum will be coming any moment, and she'll call the nurses and they'll make me let go so they
can put me on the other bed, and I'll be here forever. Don't you see? Please, Grandad! I know you can do it. Just once. Please!"

No answer. The red mist roaring up, the thuds. Gavin fighting, forgetting everything except that he mustn't drown in the mist, melt away, be lost forever, but still in the dreary struggle whispering to Grandad, groping with fingers he didn't have for the touch of an imagined hand, and still holding it in his own as the mist faded and thinned … And then Grandad's whisper. A whisper weary beyond belief, with long pauses every few words. But still, somehow, changed.

"Sorry about that… Lost it for a bit…. Tired, boy … Got to get you out of here…. Casting a line worth a go … before I lose it again …"

"That's great, Grandad! We can do it. I know we can do it! What about that time I asked you how far you can send a line if you want to? And Tacky Steward was watching and he tried to beat you and got his line caught in a davit behind him."

Grandad actually chuckled at the memory.

"Tell me what you're doing, like you did then," Gavin suggested. "We're on the harbor wall. You've been teaching me. I got it right three times running. Tacky Steward's watching. Remember? Ready?

"How far can you cast if you really want to, Grandad?"

"Show you. Trick is, don't try too hard. Bit more line out, maybe—not too much. That'll do. Rod back, easy now—it's all in the rhythm…."

Grandad had a beautiful cast. He seemed to do it absolutely without thinking—the rod angled back over his shoulder, the
rod tip twitching to the movement of his hands, just enough to make the length of weighted line that hung from it start to swing like a pendulum, out, in, out, in, farther and farther each twitch until… He didn't need to look behind him, his hands knew by the feel of the rod the exact moment when the line had swung to the right point, and then
whoosh!
the rod sweeping forward, hurling the weight upward and outward so that it was moving far faster than the rod tip and then, as the rod slowed and stopped, the weight whistling on, pulling the line off the reel in a long, clean arc over the water, and finally falling with a little splash right out across the harbor.

There were angling societies that ran competitions how far people could cast. An expert with the right kit could do several hundred yards. Grandad could have done that too if he'd practiced, but he wasn't interested. He just wanted to catch fish.

Now, in his mind, Gavin whispered the words with him as he poured himself into the remembered moment, making it vivid, solid, seen and felt, the squeals of the gulls heard, the harbor smells in his nostrils, the faint salt taste of spray on his lips—and stronger, realer than any of those, the weight and feel of the rod in his hands, the twist of the right wrist that kept the line true as it went it whistling forward,
whoosh! …

A jolt.

Darkness.

Falling.

Grandad's amazed whisper.

"Done it, boy! Got your hand!"

Voices—real voices, heard with real ears.

"… found him like this. I think he's just fainted. He did it before, in casualty, when we first brought his grandfather in."

That was Mum. Then Veronique …

"Is all right, Mrs. Robinson. I just put him on the other bed, then I fetch Doctor."

"Hold tight, Grandadi I've got to goi Hold
tight!"

"Do
my best."

Mum again.

"Wait. They're holding hands. I'll just … No, I can't … They're too …You'll have to put him down. It isn't just Gavin holding on to Grandad. They're both doing it."

"But no—is not possible. Let me see…. Yes, you are right. Wait. I fetch Sister…."

"I've got to go now, Grandad. I think, if you help me … Can you still feel your arm?"

"Maybe. Something there."

Yes, and now Gavin could feel it too, shadowy, uncertain but
something
, something really there in the utter nothingness. …

"Just keep thinking about it, and I'll … Good-bye, Grandad. I'm going.
…"

"Bye,
boy
…"

And now Gavin was floating away through the darkness. Fainter and fainter came the roar of Grandad's blood, the slow thud of his heart. It was like being swept along a pitch-black tunnel, where he could almost sense the walls brushing close by, and kept trying to duck because he was about to bash into something solid in the darkness ahead…. Mum's voice.

"No! Please leave him! Something's happening! He's moving! Just leave him! You don't know what you're doing!"

(Good old Mum!)

And then, sudden and shocking as the lights being switched on in the tunnel, pain.

Pain in his right hand, his own hand, real. Grandad's strong, workman's grip, almost crushing his fingers.

And then all of himself, all the real Gavin, with the hummock of Grandad's body beneath his own chest, the feel of bedclothes against his own left cheek, his own legs dangling down to the floor, their two hands still clasped tight, Mum holding his own other hand, her voice in his own ears …

"Gavin. Gavin. Are you all right, darling? Take it easy…."

"I'm all right," he croaked. "Just… Wait."

He pulled his hand out of hers and eased himself half up. Propping himself on the bed, he staggered along beside it until he was leaning over Grandad's pillow.

"It's all right, Grandad," he gasped. "I'm out. I'm standing by your bed. You can let go now."

Grandad made a grunting sound. Slowly the iron grip eased, the fingers straightened. But the room seemed to be getting darker. The bed was swaying about. Someone—Veronique?— was saying something. She sounded surprised.

Not enough. He needed a clear signal. Something Lena could tell the consultant.

"Grandad! Don't go away! I'm here. Now … Ready? Touch your nose."

A pause. A tiny spasm. Jerkily, with huge effort, Grandad's
forearm rose from the bedclothes, hovered while the trembling fingers straightened, and his hand lowered itself to fumble around his face, find his mustache, and settle onto his nose. Below his strange, clipped mustache his lips twitched. This time Gavin fainted for real.

hen Gavin unfainted he knew exactly what was going on. He couldn't have been out long. He was still in the ward. They'd just put him on the other bed and covered him up with something. Veronique was explaining to someone, Sister, probably, what had happened. He kept his eyes shut because he wasn't going to tell anyone about the selkie, or being inside Grandad, and he needed to listen so that he could think what to say.

"… is no doubt. It is not Gavin holding. Mr. Robinson is holding Gavin's hand. The grip is strong. With one hand I cannot break it. Then I fetch you and you see how Gavin tells him, Let go, and he lets go. He tells him, Touch your nose. He does it."

"That's right," said Mum. "Gavin had obviously got through to his grandfather somehow, but the whole thing's been an appalling strain for him, he's been putting so much into it— we've been seriously worried how hard he was taking it—and it was too much for him when it suddenly happened, and he passed out."

At that point Gavin opened his eyes and muttered, "Where am I? What's happening?" the way you're supposed to.

"Darling!" said Mum. "It's all right. No, don't try and get up. You're in Grandad's ward. You just fainted, like you did last time. You'll be all right in a moment."

"I talked to Grandad," he muttered.

"Yes, I know. We saw you. That's wonderful. It's amazing. How did you do it?"

He let his voice grow a bit stronger.

"I don't know. I was just talking to him—about fishing down at the harbor—casting—and I was holding his hand—felt it sort of move—as if he was thinking about casting, you know— so I sort of guessed—he could hear me—told him to hold my hand, and—and …"

He closed his eyes and lay back. It was only half fake—he felt tireder than he'd ever felt in his life, but happy with it, amazingly, extraordinarily happy. With the selkie's help he'd got through! He'd talked to Grandad! If he'd had any strength at all he'd have wanted to dance and sing.

"Take it easy, darling. Don't try and do anything. You can stay here as long as you like."

"Doctor'll be wanting to keep him in for observation, most likely," said Sister.

"No! Mum, please …"

He started to push himself up, but collapsed. Mum was great.

"Take it easy," she said. "Of course you can go home if you want to. You just need a bit of a rest."

"I think, perhaps, Mrs. Robinson, when the doctor—"

"Of course, if there's a good medical reason why he should stay in I won't object, provided that nothing's done to him without my express permission. But if it's only another faint he'll be much better off where he wants to be. I'll talk to the doctor."

(Good old Mum! Getting it right. Knowing just what to do and say when it mattered. Like not letting them pull his hand
away from Grandad's before he was safely out. As soon as he got her alone he was going to give her a really juicy hug.)

"I'm all right," he said firmly. "I really am. It's my fault. I didn't have any lunch."

"Well, that wasn't very bright of you," said Mum, relaxing. "I'll just see he has something in his stomach before I take him home, Sister, and then he'll be fine, don't you think? I'd like to be off as soon as we can manage, so I can tell my mother-in-law the news…."

It was still, clear evening as they drove back to Stonehaven, all gold and pink in the sunset. It was as if the whole world felt the way Gavin felt, just like it had on the filthy wet evening when they'd brought Grandad to the hospital and Gavin had dropped the pizza. Things were going to be all right.

He wasn't going to tell anyone what had happened—if it
had
happened. There were two ways of looking at it. Either it could have been a dream—he'd been starting to faint and he'd hallucinated the selkie and everything else just at the moment when Grandad had broken through whatever had been holding him back—maybe it had been Gavin suddenly thumping down across his body that had made that happen. Could be.

Or else the selkie had been real, and somehow he and Grandad had got involved with her, giving her the mackerel and talking to her the way he had, and then again just before Grandad had had his stroke. He didn't think she'd caused the stroke—she was touchy, maybe, and mischievous, but she wasn't that mean. Or that powerful. She couldn't change stuff in the real, bricks-and-concrete world. What she could do was
change stuff in your mind if she could get through to you, change how you saw and felt things— "cast a glamour," they call it in the fantasy games.

The stroke had been due to happen anyway, Donald had said. And it had happened just as Grandad and Gavin had somehow got her attention—summoned her, sort of—by talking about the selkies. So now she was involved, but there wasn't any way she could help Grandad, not directly. All she could do was help Gavin, get him somewhere where she could cast a glamour on him, change him, so that he could get through to Grandad. She'd given him a bit of a nudge every time he'd sort-of summoned her again by talking to Grandad about the selkies. But that still hadn't been enough. He'd still been too much tied in to the real world, hospitals and meals and school and all that. She'd needed him looser, freer … crazier.

Crazy enough to think it might make a difference if he gave her
Selkie.

Loose enough to get out of his own body and into Grandad.

Well, maybe. He wouldn't ever know, not for sure. Anyway, it'd be much easier if everyone else thought he'd just fainted from lack of food and the shock of Grandad grabbing on to his hand. It didn't matter what had really happened. He could just go on privately believing that maybe it had been the selkie who'd done it, and not having to argue about it and everyone humoring him and saying inside themselves, Poor Gavin, no wonder he's a wee bit crazy after what he's been through.

He wasn't, not any longer. In fact he felt that the selkie—if there was a selkie—had maybe done something for him, just as
she had for Grandad. He'd learned stuff, started to understand stuff, during that awful time inside Grandad, feeling how he felt, remembering bits and pieces out of his long life—stuff about time, and living through it, and growing older, and, in the end, dying. Of course he'd known all along that that's what happens to people, but he'd never really felt it, understood about it, believed deep down it was going to happen to anyone he cared about, even old Dodgem. He did now.

So things were going to be all right. They weren't going to be fairy-tale all right—that doesn't happen—but Grandad was going to be Grandad again, however ill he was, there, inside his body, knowing what was happening, even if he could only mumble about it. He might get almost completely well in the end. Probably it would be less than that. But with luck one sunny morning next spring Gavin was going to take him down to the harbor in his wheelchair, and they'd settle into their usual spot on the harbor wall, and Gavin would take Grandad's light rod and cast a line for him, and put the rod into his hands, and they'd fish for mackerel together. That would still be pretty good, after everything that had happened. Perhaps it would be even less than that, and Grandad would never get out of his bed again, and then after a few more months he would slip quietly away into death. But Gavin would still have something. He would have been able, before that, to hold Grandad's hand and know that Grandad could hear him and understand, even if he could only mumble in answer, so that when the time came they could say good-bye. Gavin would miss him dreadfully, and be miserable for a long time after. But in the end it would be all right, because he would still have
Grandad sort of inside him, a presence, a memory he could always go back to, whenever he needed.

But suppose he hadn't got through. Suppose Grandad had stayed sleeping, deep in his endless nightmare, and then died still not understanding what had happened to him. In that case all Gavin would have had was a loss, a dark, cold hole inside himself, that nothing would ever fill or heal for the rest of his days. Thanks to the selkie, it wasn't going to be like that now.

They got home almost an hour earlier than usual.

"How are you feeling, darling?" said Mum as they got out of the car. "Do you want to go and lie down for a bit?"

"I'm fine, Mum. I really am. I feel great. I want to dance and sing. No I don't—I want to get myself really hungry for supper, so what I'll do is take Dodgem down to the beach."

"Oh, darling! Don't you think—"

"Please, Mum. You go in and tell Gran, so she can ring up all her friends. Look, I'll take my mobile, and if I feel tired I'll call you and you can come and pick us up. I promise. Please!"

He flung his arms round her and gave her her hug. She hugged him back, and then took him by the arms and looked at him, smiling. He was a bit surprised to realize that he'd really meant that hug, and that actually he was very fond of her. It isn't the sort of thing you often think about, but she'd been wonderful all along, letting him get on with his craziness, though she must have been worried sick about it, just that once telling him he couldn't go to the hospital every day—and she'd been dead right about that too—knowing he'd had to work it through for himself, not nagging him at all.

"You're a funny boy," she said. "After all these years I still don't really know where I am with you. Oh, all right. Off you go. Don't be more than an hour."

"Can you send out for a pizza, please? The one with the anchovies?"

"I'd better get the big one."

The tide was about halfway in, with a big moon just rising. He left Dodgem nosing into sea wrack and crunched down across the shingle and the gritty, shell-strewn sand until he reached the gently lapping waves. For a while he simply stood there gazing at the moon, not thinking but feeling, letting his sense of relief and thankfulness and happiness flood up through him and fill him to the brim. The evening breeze, from the cooler sea onto the sun-warmed land, blew gently in his face.

Without thinking about it he knew he was on the edge of things, between sea and shore, between night and day, between Grandad's life and Grandad's death, between his own world and the selkie's. This was the right moment, the right place. They would never come again.

He raised his hands and spread them in front of him.

"Thank you," he whispered. "Thank you very much."

He waited a long while, hoping the selkie would appear, but knowing she almost certainly wouldn't. He just needed something more, he didn't know what, but something to tell him it was truly over. Nothing happened. He'd said he'd be back in an hour. With a sigh he turned away and started up the beach. Ahead of him Dodgem lifted his nose out of a mess of sea
wrack and stood staring out to sea with strips of seaweed dangling either side of his muzzle. He barked. He was pretty well blind to anything more than a few yards off, but automatically Gavin turned to see what he was looking at.

Now, from this slightly higher viewpoint, though it had hardly begun to get dark, he could see the pale moon-path across the ripples. There was something there, right in the middle of it. The selkie, after all? No, that wasn't how seals moved, and it was too far out of the water.

Next moment he knew what it was.

He turned and walked a few paces farther up the shore to a dry rock, where he sat down and took off his shoes and socks. He went back and waded into the water.

The breeze brought
Selkie
smoothly to him, sailing like a dream.