Beyond the Arch Page 2

  ‘I think Andrew’s got it right,’ said Ann. She turned to Sue, ‘These men do nothing but dream from the security of their own homes. Peter cannot even say what he might do if the world were his oyster.’

  ‘I find it difficult to imagine why you would want to change,’ said Blanche. ‘Solicitor, lecturer, accountant. Aren’t you satisfied with the lives you have?’

  It looked once more as if Andrew might rise but Peter forestalled him by saying, ‘Perhaps you’re right, and that is why we sit and talk interminably but never leave the comfort of our centrally-heated caves.’

  ‘I guess you’re right,’ said Andrew.

  ‘I think we should go at this point,’ said Sue, ‘particularly if these two are travelling to Newcastle tomorrow.’

  * * *

  Peter went across to Ann after their guests had left and put his arms around her. ‘I think it was quite brave of you to be as open as you were.’

  ‘Well, in a way it was an act of confession. It was something which I should have shared more freely with you before now and it’s certainly something that I should have acted on. I do feel guilty. I’ve been away from Mum and Dad for so long. And I’m nervous about tomorrow. It’s a long time since I’ve been home.’

  ‘I know, but I’m coming too – and I shall be interested to see Newcastle again and to meet your family.’

  Later, while they were clearing up, Ann turned to him. ‘Thinking about Andrew’s challenge, would you really want to head off in another direction?’

  ‘Perhaps. I’ve always thought that I might go away and write, but this is probably no more than the idle pipe dream of a man trapped in the hinterland between youth and middle age.’

  ‘Surely that is something you could do in the evenings or at weekends?’

  ‘I’m sure that’s true, but we are too comfortable now and I’m not certain that I have either the energy or the drive to do that. I also don’t know if I have the talent. I, or anyone, would need to be strongly motivated and single-minded to change career at my age. One would probably have to adapt to a reduced standard of living, accept the middle-class astonishment of friends and after all that, very possibly, discover that one did not have the ability to cut the mustard in a parallel life. It’s only too easy to have fantasies of a different, more stimulating, more exciting life in another environment and assume that this would ineluctably lead to an expansion of one’s mind and a broadening of one’s horizons. The reality is almost certainly different and more mundane. Sadly, it’s too hard for most of us to relinquish deliberately and consciously our small achievements, our material acquisitions and a lifestyle to which most members of the great British bourgeoisie aspire.’

  ‘Don’t use that terrible phrase.’

  Peter laughed. ‘Sorry – “I only do it to annoy because I know it teases” to misquote the duchess in Alice in Wonderland. Ultimately, I find the thought of a group of men in their mid-thirties kicking over the traces and adopting Bohemian lifestyles unutterably comic. I cannot take my own fantasies very seriously and neither should you. I find it equally difficult to view my current life at work and at home without seeing certain absurdities in our pretensions and vanities. Perhaps we should go to bed as we have to leave early tomorrow, before there is any risk of my starting to believe what I say!’

  Ann looked at him for some time. ‘There are some times when I really don’t understand you.’

  ‘Well, that would make a good line to deliver to some bimbo! My wife simply doesn’t understand me!’

  ‘Oh, for God‘s sake, be serious! I don’t know how you can be so flippant at times and yet take so much of your job so seriously.’

  ‘I’ll tell you all about it some other time, but now to bed.’

  2

  ‘We used to travel a lot by train after the war when I was a kid,’ said Peter. ‘The first thing I would do in the compartments in the old third-class carriages was to walk round and look at the five pictures above the seats. The only view I can remember now was that one, perhaps because it was there more often than any other.’ Peter indicated the view from the Durham viaduct of the cathedral and the blackened massif of the Norman castle on the promontory surrounded on three sides by the river. ‘The view’s better in the sun,’ he said. They took in the sight through relentless rain.

  ‘You might well have known that view better than I did. I’d never even been to Durham until an uncle took me there for a day when I was fifteen.’

  They travelled on in silence and shortly they were passing through Gateshead. ‘Does this feel like a homecoming?’

  ‘No, too much has changed.’

  ‘What has changed?’

  ‘Almost everything. I have, and just look at the city. I was told that when Queen Victoria passed through on her rail journeys to Balmoral, she always instructed John Brown to lower the blinds so she wouldn’t have to see the dirty little houses by the river. Newcastle has changed though,’ she added as they crossed the Tyne and gazed at the new pallid concrete structures rising behind the old buildings on the Quayside. Already some of the newer buildings were starting to exhibit stains resulting from inadequate drainage of roofs and the grime produced by the industrial and domestic effluent of a thousand chimneys. Paradoxically, some of the older buildings looked startlingly clean following recent sandblasting.

  Peter looked across at Ann, uncertain of her reactions. This journey was opening a window into a hidden part of her life which he had never known except through the occasional light-hearted anecdote. Her confession the previous evening had been uncharacteristic. Previously, probing on his part had always been rebuffed or evaded gently but firmly. He had often felt uneasy that such a major element of her history remained closed to him. The ready acceptance of his offer to accompany her would impart a glimpse of that past.

  They pulled into the station. They reserved a room at the Station Hotel and then hired a taxi to take them to Ann’s parents’ flat. She leaned forward to the driver. ‘Will you take us out along Scotswood Road, and then turn up to cross over Elswick Road and along Hartington Road to the Westgate Road?’

  ‘That’s an odd way to Cowgate, but still if that’s what you want.’ The cabbie shrugged his shoulders.

  She turned to Peter. ‘I’ll show you where they lived before they were re-housed – where we all lived when Jenny and I were kids. Good God, look at the flats!’ Much of that part of the city was changing out of all recognition. Many of the rows of small brick houses stacked tightly together on the steep northern bank of the Tyne had gone. Tower blocks stood at regular intervals, some decorated by fading coloured panels. They were separated by areas of scrubby turf littered with half bricks, broken glass and the rusting skeletons of abandoned vehicles. ‘I don’t believe it! Is this really Scotswood Road?’

  ‘Yes. Sometime since you were here then?’ asked the driver.

  ‘Eight years.’

  ‘You’ll see some changes then.’

  ‘I’ll show you where we lived. I just need to get my bearings. It’s so changed but it must have been somewhere near here.’ The car swung up the hill and crossed Elswick Road, where much of the old industrial era city could be seen, and then into Hartington Road. Ann pointed. ‘That was our house and behind is where we played in the back lanes.’

  Peter had known from his earlier visit to the city that it must have been in such an area that Ann had grown up and that it represented an ineradicable element of her background. It had been the hard and ambitious edge of her personality which had driven her to leave totally and irrevocably. She had suppressed her Geordie accent and severed all links other than those with her closest family, and even those had become very limited.

  They left the small terraces and travelled through a more affluent residential area to reach a new apartment block which had the immutable uniformity and style of a municipal development. Ann’s parents’ flat was on the
third floor. Her mother was short and thin almost to the point of being cadaveric in appearance. Her breathing was clearly audible and she had to purse her lips to exhale. Despite the warmth of the day she was wearing a hand-knitted cardigan which might have been the same one she had been wearing the day that Ann had left many years before.

  She looked at her daughter for a few moments. ‘You’re a grand lass now but it’s been a long time.’

  Ann choked and said, ‘Yes, I know. This is Peter.’

  Peter leaned forward and kissed the old woman gently – ‘I am sorry we’ve not met before.’

  Ann squeezed her husband’s arm. It was clear that he had touched the right note. ‘I’m so sorry that I’ve not been back before but life has always seemed to be so busy.’

  ‘I’m sorry too, but come on in. You’ll be wanting a cup of tea. Your Dad’s not too good. They say it’s his heart and you know he’s always had a weak chest. He’s in the General Hospital, that’s what they call it now, the old Wingrove. We can go up and see him shortly.’

  ‘Where’s Jenny?’

  ‘She’s out. She’ll be back soon.’

  ‘Things have changed, haven’t they?’

  ‘In every way. It’s been a long time. It’s nearly four years since you married, isn’t it? I was sorry you got married so quickly. I should have liked to have seen London again. I’ve only been there twice. The first time was on our honeymoon when we had a weekend in London. We’ve been in this flat for three years now. It’s much warmer than the old house but folks are not so neighbourly as they were.’

  ‘When was the last time you saw London, Mrs Robson?’ asked Peter.

  ‘I went when Ann’s Dad went up for the cup final. My sister looked after Ann and Jenny for the weekend. That was nearly fifteen years ago and, please, do call me Peg.’

  ‘Perhaps you’ll come back sometime and stay with us.’

  ‘Aye, if I’m asked.’

  ‘You will be.’

  ‘Perhaps we should go up to the hospital,’ suggested Ann. ‘Peter can get us a taxi.’

  ‘Oh no,’ said her mother. ‘He would have to go out to a call box and most of the time they’re broken. The rain has stopped. The bus will do.’

  * * *

  They left the bus a hundred yards from the hospital. Peter took Peggy’s arm. Ann lingered behind absorbing the contrasting sights of the city in the pale evening sun. The silent, shuttered suburban shops provided a backdrop to the glittering stream of vehicles returning from various Saturday afternoon amusements in the countryside to the west. She appeared spellbound by the sights, sounds and smells; part forgotten, part suppressed and part remembered. Bright new illuminated signs shone out from the older stone buildings contrasting with newer structures brashly rendered in contrasting colours. She stopped to gaze at the large brick building opposite the hospital which exhibited the various phases of its evolution from cinema to dance hall to bingo palace. It was like looking through a kaleidoscope turned through a small angle – sufficient to distort and add colour to the older patterns without destroying their fundamental entity. They approached a building on the hospital site which had neither changed nor improved with time, a relic of the old Poor Law hospital. The haphazard and untidy array of buildings stretching across the site from road to cemetery appeared unwelcoming and cold.

  The ward came as no real surprise to Ann. It was depressingly similar to the one which she had visited unwillingly and repeatedly as a child after her grandfather had suffered a stroke. Her mother led them to her father’s bed. He was asleep. She could see he had gained a great deal of weight. He lay propped up on four pillows breathing stertorously, a cyanotic tongue protruding from his suffused and plethoric face. They sat around the bed and waited, speaking occasionally in subdued voices.

  ‘What do the doctors say about him?’ asked Ann quietly.

  ‘I’m not sure but the sister says that he’s not too good.’

  ‘But haven’t you spoken to the doctor?’

  ‘Oh no, he always looks much too busy. The sister tells me everything.’

  ‘Well, I think we should talk to the doctor. You never know what might be happening. You come with me, Peter.’

  They made their way to the small ward office to ask if they might have a word with the doctor. They found the house physician in the sister’s office drinking coffee and were shown into a small room set aside for relatives. They sat facing the young doctor.

  ‘You must be Mr Robson’s daughter. He has told me a lot about you.’

  ‘Why is that?’ asked Ann quickly and defensively.

  ‘No particular reason, he just likes to talk. He was obviously a very sociable man. But he is very ill now. He’s had chest problems for many years, as you know, and these have begun to affect his heart. He’s now in heart failure. He’s getting all the treatment we can give him and that makes him somewhat more comfortable but this is doing no more than delaying the progression of the heart failure.’

  ‘But there must be something else you can do. You can’t just sit there and do nothing.’

  ‘We’re not doing nothing. We’re doing all we can and we are making your father comfortable.’

  ‘Perhaps you should have another opinion, a private opinion.’

  ‘We could, of course, if you wished, but I would suggest that no private opinion would be of any greater value than the medical attention which your father already has from Dr Tunstall, the consultant, and the rest of us. Sadly, this is all too common a clinical situation.’

  ‘But neither you nor any consultant can always be right.’

  ‘No, of course not. We’re not God, but that’s also the reason that we must sometimes acknowledge that the remedy for some conditions is beyond our competence or that of anyone else and beyond the reach of modern medicine.’

  ‘I must do something,’ said Ann suddenly, sounding small and helpless. ‘Surely I could arrange a private room for him?’

  ‘You could, but frankly I don’t think he would appreciate that. He enjoys the company of others in the ward and you would deny him much of that if he were to be on his own. Can I gently suggest that now you’re here you give him some of your time and, if you are able to do so, delay your return to London for a few days?’

  ‘I suppose you’re right, but I should have liked to do something – well thank you,’ she said a little curtly and left to return to the ward.

  Peter lingered for a moment to say, ‘Thank you for what you are doing. It is appreciated. She’s upset. She’s not seen her father for a long time.’

  ‘I understand – but I do know from talking to him that he would welcome it if your wife could stay in the north-east for a little longer and visit him each day. I believe there’s a lot of catching up to do.’

  They returned to the ward and re-joined Ann’s mother who was holding her husband’s hand. He had just awakened and looked up with considerable pleasure as they approached.

  ‘I’d not known that you were coming back after so long. Peg just told me.’ Even short periods of conversation were made difficult by the old man’s breathlessness and he was now wheezing audibly. ‘Come and tell me about your life. There must be a lot to hear.’

  ‘First tell me how you are, Dad.’

  ‘Getting worse. These hospitals, they’re a bloody death trap.’ He grinned. ‘Don’t fret – at my age it’s a way of life in a manner of speaking. I want to hear all about you and Peter. As you can see, it’s easier for me to listen than talk.’

  Ann visibly relaxed, kissed her father and introduced Peter. Then, with a spontaneity that had been absent from her conversation earlier, she described the life she had been leading in London since obtaining her English degree at Royal Holloway College. Peter was surprised at the ease with which she was able to describe her career in simple and direct terms – the appointment as an archivist and researcher
at the BBC and then the recent move to London Weekend Television as a production assistant with some public relations responsibilities. Her descriptions of some of the work and her portrayals of some of the celebrities and the over-inflated egos with which she had to deal entertained her parents. It helped establish a rapport with her mother which previously had been absent. It also provided some compensation for her failure to translate her belated filial concern into action which she felt had been frustrated by the young doctor. The small group around the bed was surprisingly animated by contrast with the other family groups dutifully performing the melancholy rites of hospital visiting in almost complete and reverential silence.

  They returned to the flat to be greeted by Jenny. Ann’s sister was her junior by seven years. She was taller than Ann with long straight fair hair which might have been described as ash blonde but which she referred to as pale mouse. The slim face was decorated by a pair of gold wire-rimmed spectacles which might have portrayed a degree of solemnity but any such impression was totally undermined by the persistent laughter which emanated from her lips. She had once stayed in their London flat for a week. Her improvidence had nearly driven her highly organised older sister to despair but her sense of the comic had struck a chord with Peter. Jenny had been a postgraduate student in English in Newcastle and had submitted her master’s thesis a few weeks earlier. Her future career was uncertain.