T. Pears

Blue

He knew he’d died at three o’clock in the afternoon of Wednesday, July the 27^th, 1988, the moment he woke up in the room that he’d come to hate. He hadn’t left it for two months now, and he was wearily familiar not only with every object — the thermometer in a glass beside the lamp and the heavy chest of drawers and the dark, forbidding wardrobe — also with the quality of light and shadow in the room according to what time of day it was; with the way the room expanded and contracted as the ceiling joists shrank at night and swelled during the day; and how sound changed at different times so that in the morning his voice was dulled and barely reached the door but in the dark the room became an echo chamber, his daughter’s name, ‘Joan’, rebounding off the walls and returning to him from many different directions.

He was familiar with all these things but none of them interested him, as he declined in the starched sheets, propped up against a backrest of awkward, misshapen pillows that his daughter regularly thumped and plumped up with a ritualised but desolate enthusiasm, as if doing with them what she wished she could do for her father. He’d gradually lost his huge rustic appetite until it had become a torment to swallow even the soups and junkets she prepared in the liquidiser, and he lost weight with inexorable logic until the robust farmer was a skinny wraith whose ribs were showing for the first time in fifty years.

The pain moved around his body like a poacher in the night searching for a vulnerable deer in the pinewoods. It had first attacked him in his heel, reappeared in his neck, then after a six-month respite erupted from deep cover in his back, to roam up and down his spine with sporadic, intense malevolence. He knew (and so did everyone else) that it had to be lung cancer, since he’d smoked forty untipped cigarettes a day since the age of fifteen; so why the hell didn’t it just eat up his lungs and have done with it?

The pain was what had wrecked him. Joseph had always thought he was impervious to pain and his grandson, Michael, had grown up in awe of his grandfather’s disdain of both the occasional accident and the regular discomfort that beset the life of a farmer. When he gashed his hand or banged his head he only bothered to use his handkerchief if the blood was making too much of a mess of everything. And when they’d unclogged the field drains the previous February, while Mike was whimpering like a child from the cold his grandfather thrust his arms into icy mud as if oblivious of reality.

But this pain was different: it gripped him in its teeth like a primitive dog, and there was neither escape nor end to its torture. He felt nauseous. He fantasized heating up a kitchen knife and cutting out whole inflicted chunks of his own flesh, that that might bring relief — but he couldn’t even reach the stairs. Dr. Buckle prescribed ever-changing drugs of increasing dosage, until the pain was dulled and so were all his senses and he found himself withdrawing into a small space where there was no sense and no sensation, only a vague disgust with the faint remaining evidence of a world he’d once inhabited with force and command.

Joseph Howard knew he’d died at three o’clock in the afternoon when he woke from an inconclusive nap and he looked around the room with a sharpness of vision that made his mind collapse backwards through the years, because he’d refused to wear spectacles and hadn’t seen the world as clearly as this since his fortieth birthday. He could read the hands of the alarm clock without holding it three inches in front of his face, he could make out each stem and petal in the blue floral wallpaper, and the edges of things were miraculous in their definition, lifting away from each other and occupying their own precise space instead of merging into a dull stew of objects.

He pricked up his ears and heard a voice outside calling, and although it was too far away for him to make out the actual words he could recognise, beyond any doubt, the tone and inflection of his grandson, Mike. And even more remarkably, when another man’s voice answered, from even further away, he knew that that was old Freemantle’s grandson, Tom.

It was then that he realised, too, that the pain had gone. His whole body ached with something similar to the symptoms of flu, as if his body had been punched in his sleep; but it was such a contrast to the agony of these last months that he felt on top of the world. He got out of bed and stood up, and the blood drained from his head and made him feel faint and dizzy, so he sat back down to get his balance. Yet it was actually pleasurable to come so close to fainting, woozy and lost. It made him recall the one time he had ever fainted, as a beansprouting adolescent in the farmyard, the world suddenly losing its anchorage and drifting deliriously out of control.

Joseph had finished dressing and was trying his shoelaces, with an infant’s concentration and pleasure, when his daughter came into the room carrying a mug of weak tea. “Father!” she cried. “What on earth does you think you’re doing?” She rushed around the side of the bed but he took no notice of her until he’d finished, and then he sat up and looked her in the eyes and said: “Joan, I feels better and I’m getting up.” Then his smile disappeared and he studied her face with a scrutiny that she found unnerving, taking in the crow’s-feet and the puffiness around her eyes and the small lines at each side of her mouth, and he said: “You’re a good girl, Joan.”

He knew he’d died but he didn’t care. He found his stick behind the door and went for a walk into the village. He could feel his blood flow thin through his veins and his left hip no longer troubled him. He passed two or three people on his way to the shop and they returned his cheerful greeting with manifest surprise and a certain awkwardness. The shop bell rang and Elsie came through from the kitchen. Her large owl’s eyes widened behind her thick pebble-specs, and then narrowed. “Does Joan know you’s out, Joseph?” she demanded suspiciously. “She was only in yere just now.”

“Don’t worry about me, Elsie,” he replied, “I never felt better. Only I wants some fags. I’ve not had a smoke in ages.”

Elsie looked away, embarrassed. “I haven’t got none of your sort in, Joseph. You’s the only one what smoked that brand.” She reached over to the shelves. “You could try some of this, they says ‘tis a strong one.”

“I’m not bothered, I’ll take a packet of they,” he smiled. She handed them to him hurriedly and he felt in his pockets. “Damn it,” he said, “I’ve come out without any money. You know how much I hates credit, but can I send the lad down later on?”

“Course you can, bay,” she said without looking at him. “You git on, now.”

As he turned to leave, he said: “I might even bring it myself.”

Dr. Buckle appeared the next day and took the temperature and checked his pulse and listened to the sounds of his insides through the dangling stethoscope. Then he declared, in a voice of scientific indifference: “It’s an impressive respite, Joseph. But you’re still weak. Don’t overdo it.”

He wanted to get straight back out on the farm, but Joan told Mike she’d hold him responsible if Joseph picked up so much as an ear of corn, so he left his grandfather behind in the yard. Joseph wandered around the garden and poked about in the sheds. It was a hot day, the sun rose high in a blue sky and he wiped the sweat from his neck and forehead. Sparrows swooped in and out of the eaves, a throstle sang from one of the apple trees, and when he saw a magpie in the first field he knew without any doubt that he’d see another, and sure enough there it was over by the hedge.

A ladybird landed on the back of his hand. At first the tiny creature appeared strange, only for being so distinct in his cleansed vision, but then he observed that its markings were red dots on a black shell instead of the usual other way round. He didn’t think he’d ever seen one like that before, but he might well have and never been struck by it. There must be a name for it, he thought: an inverted ladybird, perhaps; a topsy-turvy. He lifted his hand and blew, and the tiny insect opened its wings and flew away.

During the months of his miserable decline Joan had climbed uncomplaining up the stairs many times a day to make him comfortable, to help him on to the bedpan and carry it off to the bathroom, to rub cream into his dry skin, eventually to spoon food into his mouth. His recovery must have meant a great easing of her burden and he was frankly glad that she let him occupy himself now without interruption. Midway through the afternoon he became aware of a curious, pleasing sensation somewhere inside him and then he realised with surprise what it was: hunger. He marched into the kitchen.

“You’ll not believe this, girl, but I’ve got myself an appetite all of a sudden.” She didn’t look at him directly but fussed around in the fridge and said at the same time: “Sit down, I’ll knock ‘e a sandwich.”

Joseph planted himself at the table and laid his cigarettes and matches on its grainy surface. He could remember his own father making it, after a huge old beech tree had come down in an April gale. He could remember the sweet smell of the shavings as his father sawed and planed in the far shed, and he could remember the way his father kept nails between his moist lips.

Joan set a plate of sliced-white-bread sandwiches in front of him and murmured that she was off shopping, as she departed from the room. He watched her through the window disappear down the lane and then he closed his eyes, the better to appreciate the texture of mushy bread and coarse ham, and to savour the sharp distraction of mustard, contradicted by granules of sugar.

That evening after supper Joseph suggested a game of draughts with Mike, and they played for the first time since Mike was a child and Joseph had taught him, after the boy’s father had left. They played half a dozen games, all of which Mike spent hunched over the board uneasily, never once looking up at his grandfather, who won every game.

That night Joseph slept for eight hours solid, untroubled by the morbid, drugged dreams of those last months, and he woke fully rested. He lay and listened to the chickens squawking and to house martins scurrying. He yawned and stretched, slowly, his knotty old muscles elastic again, and he relished their pleasure.

As he got dressed he saw his older grandson, John, who always came home late and left early, drive off to work in Exeter. Joseph went downstairs. The kitchen was empty. He heard the tractor ignition and stepped outside; he called but Mike didn’t turn around, as the tractor coughed and rattled into the lane. He came back in and called his daughter, but there was no reply, so he made himself a mug of strong tea and wondered whether there was any secret to making toast. And he assumed there must be because he burnt it, but he ate it anyway and enjoyed the taste of charcoaled bread beneath the butter and home-made, thick-rind marmalade. Then he took his cap and went outside.

He knew he’d died because he felt so light and so at ease. It occurred to him that that evening he should challenge Mike to an arm-wrestle, and he laughed out loud at the idea. He tried to look at the sun and it made his eyes water. He walked through the lower fields. The wheat was high and brittle. He bit some grains and let the dry nutty flavour linger on his tongue and he wondered who first discovered how to make flour, and then bread. He entered the pasture where the dairy herd was grazing and passed among his Friesian cows, patting their flanks. He rolled up his sleeves and held out his arms, and the braver among them licked his skin for its salt with their rough wet tongues, though still like all the others eyeing him with dull expression of fear and reproach. He wondered whether they forgave him for his life’s labour of exploitation and butchery, and he realised how much he loved this farm, these animals, this rich and crooked valley.

Joseph walked into the village. As he began climbing Broad Lane he realised he’d left his walking stick behind, but he also realised that he didn’t need it: he was striding forward, with his bow legs and his slightly inturned toes; his tendons and sinews and leathery veins felt invincible, and he wiped the healthy sweat from his face without pausing. For the first time in he didn’t know how long, he thought of his wife, whom he once used to walk to Doddiscombleigh to, and then court during long walks in Haldon Forest, where, while the Second World War raged far away from them, they made urgent love in the shadows of the pines on a scratchy bed of cones and needles, dry twigs crackling as they moved. But he found that, in truth, he was thinking less of her than of himself — walking, much walking in his life; he could carry on walking now and he needn’t ever stop, he felt so strong, he felt he could walk the length of the Teign Valley and back again.

Joseph looked around as he walked, peering over hedges and through gates, but there wasn’t a soul around. When he got up to the phone box he thought he saw a child running along the lane in the distance, but he wasn’t sure. He sat down on the bench at the top of the Brown. The improvised goalposts stood quiet and forlorn. An absurd television image leapt perfectly remembered out of his memory, of the majestic black French defender Marius Tresor lunging into a breathtakingly insane tackle during the 1982 World Cup semi-final.

Joseph felt some tiny drops of rain fall on his hands: he looked up and the sky was a clear, unblemished blue. He wondered whether they were the prickles of pins and needles and he lifted his hands and shook them, and ran them down over his face. The world was silent and empty. He knew he’d died three days earlier at three o’clock in the afternoon, and he leaned forward with his head in his hands and wept.

When he heard the church bell tolling he wiped his eyes with his damp sweaty handkerchief, which made his eyes sting, and walked up past the almshouses and then the village hall where he’d once gone to school, and he walked through the lych-gate into graveyard. Twenty yards away they were lowering the coffin into the ground and the Rector read from his Bible but Joseph couldn’t hear him. Then the Rector, still reading, picked up a handful of soil and threw it into the grave and then he did hear, faintly, granules scattering across the lid of the coffin.

He knew everyone there: Granny Sims, for twenty years his fellow churchwarden; Douglas Westcott; old Freemantle and some of his fragmented family; Martin the retired hedge layer; Elsie and Stuart from the shop.

As to his own family, in front of the various cousins and nieces and nephews, John held his mother Joan’s arm, while Mike looked like he ought to sit down, because he was leaning a little too much of his weary weight against his girlfriend, whose name Joseph never could remember.

He looked across the graveyard at them and for the first time since his death Joseph felt a sudden upsurge of anger. It swelled inside him, pure and physical: a rage of bile, while his heart pumped hot blood through his veins. Volcanic anger. Anger so strong he thought he might burst.

He closed his eyes, clinched his fists and gritted his teeth. And then he shouted out: “Why did you not show me this world before, you bastard!” as he lifted his eyes to the wide blue sky, and felt himself light and rising.

1. Consider the exposition of the short story (the time, the place, the main characters.)

2. State the forms of presentations employed in the story. What type of narration does the author resort to?

3. Through whose point of view are the events of the three days of the story proper related?

4. Will you regard the narrator as reliable or unreliable?

5. Define the genre of the story. Does the personality of the narrator help you to do it?

6. What is the central idea of the story related through such an unusual point of view?

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