It’s becoming increasingly apparent that Silas is unwell again. He is breathless and pale, tires easily and complains of swollen ankles and palpitations.
‘I think it’s come back,’ he tells us, leafing through his health bible. It is a new one, which Eric gave him for Christmas since the old one was falling to pieces. It was not something Eric wanted to buy, since he had had more than enough of the last one, but he had to agree that Silas would only fret without what he sees as an essential aid to living. The new book is big and shiny and up-to-date, illustrated with the kinds of photographs that most people would do a great deal to avoid, and Silas loves it.
‘Look.’ Silas jabs a finger at a diagram of a heart valve. ‘That’s what it’s supposed to look like. I think mine must be shot to pieces.’
‘But you don’t know what your heart looks like,’ I object. ‘How can you possibly tell?’
‘I can feel it.’ Silas places a hand on his chest. ‘It’s fibrillating again. The valve just isn’t working properly. Look, Ruth.’ He shows me a picture of a non-functioning valve. ‘That’s what’s happened to it. I think I’m in mild heart failure.’
He goes on the explain about “mitral regurgitation” and “oedema” and says that this almost certainly means he should have an operation.
‘Anyone would think you wanted an operation,’ I object. ‘No-one wants operations.’
‘Well, of course I don’t actually want one,’ Silas says, just a little too cheerfully. ‘But if I have to have one, then so be it.’
‘You should see the doctor anyway,’ Eric says. ‘You need a thorough check-up.’
‘All in good time, all in good time,’ Silas says, opening his book again. ‘I want to make quite sure I know all the facts before I start seeing doctors again.’
‘But the doctor will know all the facts. You don’t have to,’ I object.
Silas regards me gravely over the top of his spectacles.
‘You can’t be too sure,’ he says. ‘And it’s my body. I think I should be the one to decide what to do with it.’
Since none of us can argue with that, we have to leave Silas to get on with it, but I know that poor Eric is terribly worried, and I feel for him. In matters of his own health, Silas, usually the most thoughtful of men, can be very inconsiderate, for surely he, more than any of us, should understand how Eric is feeling.
‘You must be awfully worried,’ I say to Eric, when we are alone together.
‘Of course I am. But what can I do?’ He is currently preoccupied with the subject of koala bears and eucalyptus, and for once I’m grateful for Eric’s Ark, because at least it’s something to help keep his mind off his brother. ‘He’s so stubborn. It would be easier if he didn’t enjoy all this so much. He’s having a wonderful time with that bloody book of his. I wish I’d never given it to him. It only encourages him.’
‘He would have bought it for himself anyway,’ I remind him. ‘You know what Silas is like.’
‘True.’ Eric puts down his pen. ‘Did you know that the koala bear is a marsupial? Isn’t that interesting?’
The following day, Silas collapses at the lunch table. As we once again await the arrival of the ambulance, Eric curses himself for not doing something sooner. It should never have come to this, he says wretchedly. We should have bundled him into the car and shipped him off to the doctor with or without his permission. If anything happens to Silas, he tells us, he will never forgive himself. Mum, too, feels responsible; even I feel responsible. In fact, it seems to me that everyone feels responsible except the patient, who is lying serenely on the kitchen floor issuing instructions through lips the colour of damsons.
‘Don’t talk, Silas,’ Eric tells him, ‘You’re just tiring yourself out.’
‘Take — my — pulse,’ whispers Silas.
I take his pulse. I can barely feel anything, and what I can feel is thin and thready and very irregular.
‘What — is — it?’
‘Difficult to tell. A bit irregular.’
Silas nods. ‘As — I — thought.’ He smiles, and I find myself actually feeling angry with him. How could he? How could he be so cheerful when everyone else is so worried? Doesn’t he spare a thought for Eric? For Mum? Apparently not. Silas is doing what he does best; he is Being Ill. And don’t we all enjoy doing what we do best?
In hospital, Silas has all the tests he had last time, and is fully vindicated. His mitral valve has become virtually useless, and he needs a new one.
‘There,’ he says, sitting up in bed and talking through a plastic oxygen mask. ‘I was right all along.’
‘So you were,’ says Eric, who is by now paler than Silas.
‘They say they’re going to operate as soon as possible,’ Silas tells us. ‘I’m not sure what kind of valve they’re giving me. Apparently the organic ones are very good, but the metal ones last longer.’ I notice that his bible has managed to get into the hospital with him, and sits proudly on his bedside locker beside a bowl of fruit and the stuffed frog, which Silas considers to be his finest work. The nurses do not like the frog, and the words “bacteria” and “cross-infection” have been mentioned, but no-one has had the heart to remove it. ‘They can sometimes repair valves, but mine has gone too far.’ He pauses for breath. ‘I — told — you — so,’ he adds, ‘only the other day. Didn’t I tell you,’ he pauses again, panting through the steady hiss of oxygen, ‘it was shot to pieces?’
Silas’s operation is scheduled for the following week. We are told that if it is left any longer, there is a risk of his condition deteriorating so much that he will be unfit to undergo surgery at all. In the meantime, he has further tests, and is given drugs to “stabilise his condition”. He looks terribly ill, but remains in good spirits, enjoying all the attention and making notes on everything pertaining to his illness and its treatment. As for the rest of us, we have been warned that Silas is a very sick man, and that while his chances are good, we must take into consideration that he is no longer young. While I think we have all managed to work this out for ourselves, it is not comforting to have it spelt out by someone in the know. Sometimes I wish that the medical profession would keep their more disappointing thoughts to themselves.
Poor Eric is beside himself with worry, and is unable to concentrate on anything, and Mum isn’t much better. I also feel very sorry for Kent, who having only recently discovered that he has two fathers, is now having to come to terms with the fact that he may end up with just one (and a broken one at that, for who can imagine Eric without Silas?). Dad, on the other hand, is coming into his own, and while his offers of leading us all in prayer are politely declined, his support is very welcome. He makes telephone calls, does shopping, and drives people to the hospital to visit Silas. He even feeds the chickens. While I’m sure he does all this with the best of intentions, I also feel it must help to take his mind off recalcitrant insurers and unreliable plumbers, for work on the house is only just getting started, and my father is not a patient man.
The day of Silas’s operation is one of those extraordinary January days when spring decides to put in a fleeting, tantalising appearance; a brief reminder that winter isn’t here to stay, and that whatever else is happening, there’s light at the end of the seasonal tunnel. There are snowdrops in the garden, and the first hints of birdsong, the sky is a pale, washed blue, and the air is fresh and fragrant. As we drive to the hospital for our vigil (for it’s unthinkable that we should not be in the building while Silas has his operation), I think we’re probably all feeling the poignancy of the contrast between our own emotions and the beauty of the world outside.
I have always thought that waiting is one of the hardest things we have to do in life. Whether it’s waiting for exam results, or for the longed-for phone call from a lover, or even for something relatively unimportant like the arrival of a visitor, it seems to have a paralysing effect. I can never get down to anything when I’m waiting. It’s as though life is put on hold, and nothing can move forward until the thing which is awaited has happened and I am released once more into activity, whatever form that may take.
It’s like this today. Eric requested that Mum, Kent and I should accompany him to the hospital, and here we all are in the Relatives’ Room, which is bland and perhaps purposely characterless, with its pale walls and its fawn-upholstered chairs and its jug of plastic roses. Waiting. I can almost hear the time ticking by, although the clock on the wall makes no sound, and while there is plenty we could be saying, we all seem lost for words. There are magazines on the table, but none of us has touched them, and I have brought a book, but couldn’t think of reading it. I am praying to the God I don’t really believe in, Mum is almost certainly doing the same, Kent is standing by the window studying the distant view of the car park, and Eric is sitting on the edge of a chair, as though at any moment he may be required to leap up and do something. I have paid two visits to the coffee machine outside to purchase plastic cups of something warm and murky, and a nurse has popped in a couple of times to see if we’re okay. Otherwise, the silence ticks by virtually uninterrupted. I don’t think I have ever known time pass so slowly.
After two hours and fifty-five minutes (yes, I’ve been counting. I’m sure everyone’s been counting), a doctor arrives in blue theatre scrubs. I think we all immediately know that something is wrong.
‘Yes?’ Eric jumps to his feet. ‘How is he? What’s happened?’
Very carefully, the doctor closes the door behind him and turns to face us.
‘I’m afraid there’s been — a complication,’ he tells us.
‘A complication? What complication? How is he? What’s happened?’ Eric lets rip with a barrage of questions.
‘I’m afraid —’
‘Yes? Yes? Come on! Out with it! What has happened to Silas?’ Eric grabs hold of his sleeve. ‘Tell us. You have to tell us!’
‘I’m trying to tell you.’ Gently, the doctor disengages himself from Eric’s grip. ‘The operation itself went well, and the new valve is functioning nicely. But unfortunately your brother — he is your brother isn’t he? — suffered a haemorrhage during surgery. He lost a lot of blood very quickly, and while we replaced it as fast as we could, his blood pressure fell dangerously low. There is the possibility of —’
‘What? The possibility of what? What’s going to happen to him?’
‘The possibility — just the possibility — of brain damage.’
Time stops ticking. For a few moments, life itself seems to stand still. In these few moments I know that whatever happens, I shall never forget this day, this moment, this horrid little room, which seems suddenly redolent of all the grief, all the tragedies, all the bad news which has been released within its walls. I shall remember Eric’s mismatched socks, just visible beneath his trousers; the stain — coffee? — on the carpet, shaped rather like a map of Italy; the hideous roses, with their faded plastic petals; the single leafless sapling outside the window; the tiny vapour trail of a distant aeroplane across the ice-blue sky.
And the sound. The first sound which breaks the silence. The soft, heartbreaking sound of Eric weeping.