Let Go My Hand Read online

  Before he met my mother, my grandparents’ pride in my father was as deep and resonant as it was unspoken. Dad was one of those Catholic-school boys, who somehow dodged the paedophile priests and allied endless hard work to a formidable intelligence. He excelled in every exam he ever sat. All the way up. And up. Until, eventually, he became the Director of Studies in English Literature at University College London. (Hence his three sons tending that way.) He still believes the English language to be our greatest gift to the world. Not modern democracy, nor the railways, nor the Web, nor Newton, nor Keynes, nor Darwin, nor the NHS, or whatever else some people think England is, was, made, invented – but the language itself; its reach, its subtlety, its poetry. He would go farther and say that literature, because it uses language, provides us with the raw material with which to think – as the other non-linguistic arts do not. Many a long motorway haul, he would find an opportunity to remind me that language is ‘the defining, the redeeming and the pre-eminent characteristic of human beings’. And he’ll tell you straight: the English language is the greatest language of all.

  Now I’m not totally sure how many other languages he actually knows – some bad German, some good French – but you never met a man more committed to his credo. We used to trek all over the country so that he could give talks on the ‘nature of deception’ in Shakespeare or the ‘nature of constancy’ in John Donne. Or he’d drive me to these muddy-assed literary festivals to judge poetry prizes. I’ve never tried it, but if we were to say to him, ‘Dad, nobody gives a shit’ – then he’d say straight back, ‘I do.’

  Our house is near enough a private library. You won’t see that in a few years’ time, I suppose. Physical books, I mean. Shelves. Spines. Dad himself has written several books – including his career-defining one on literary theory. Not that anyone reads that kind of stuff any more – except maybe students – although I didn’t notice any of my friends bothering when I was at college. In fact, maybe I’m the only person who has read Dad’s ‘big’ book in the last ten years and I didn’t really get into it that much; I was just taking in the words like one of those whales that swallows the entire sea and then spits it all out again and hopes that something nutritious got stuck in the baleen. Apart from Mum, I should say, who read it again before she died – underlining sentences with a pen. So that’s two of us. I don’t know about Ralph or Jack – it’s a good question. The only one of Dad’s books I could say that I ever enjoyed is his one on the Shakespeare sonnets – which I can pick up and put down and then pick up again without getting lost, or confused, or feeling like I need to check into a monastery in order to focus on it properly. Then again, like everybody else these days, I’m suffering from acute mental eczema and I can’t concentrate on anything for more than twenty seconds.

  To tell the truth, there’s not a subject on Earth that Dad isn’t interested in. Everything from the Higgs boson to the forgotten stations on the Tube, via J. S. Bach, J. M. W. Turner and what happened to the Neanderthals; he’s read about it, thought about it, got a view. Mum once said it’s his curiosity that she married. And she was right. It kind of rubs off on you. You feel like everything is interesting whenever you are with him because he’s more or less into everything – except golf, any kind of reality TV and religious people. Mum used to say that he was a ‘one-man testament to education and self-reliance’. (She always called him Laurence.) And that’s true too: besides or beneath the self-importance and the vanity, Dad has something powerful and honest in him – a streak of something that you know can never be bought or sold or traduced. And I think it cost him a few times in his life. He never got to be a professor, for example. But here’s the strange thing. Whatever this quality is, I’ve noticed Dad finds it almost impossible to deploy with his own family. Sure, he can be Mr Disarmingly Direct and Open with almost everyone . . . except his children, except the two women he has loved.

  Most of all, Dad is hard to disagree with. He has this moral intensity that makes you feel like you’re not just wrong but bad. Which is not to say he doesn’t like to debate. In other ways, he’s the most engaged guy you are ever going to meet. He wants to have a conversation – all the time, with everyone and anyone, about anything and everything. Maybe that’s the main thing about him: he vehemently wants to have a conversation.

  Something rare though: my father genuinely loved my mother. Mad about her. Not always the case with marriages, I’ve noticed. He doesn’t talk about it now because those were the years of trauma with Ralph and Jack but once – when Mum was dying and I was being devious with Dad – I asked him how they met. And he said he was in New York for some off-the-scale pointless academic conference and he went out one night on his own ‘to listen to the new literature’ and ‘to get away from all these frauds talking about Jane Austen and Post bloody Modernism’. He said that he saw her doing a poetry reading and that he just knew: that it was as sudden as it was certain. That’s what he said.

  We came to the decision to drive some time back in the faltering spring, one Saturday lunchtime, at a cafe called Clowns in a forgotten square in south London not so far from the river. We were too early. And the place was empty save for an old guy behind the counter wearing an apron and reading the sport in Italian with the expression of a man who had yet to come across anything that might suggest a fundamental rethink. The walls were covered with these huge pictures and drawings of clown faces – sinister, joking, garish. There were clown postcards pinned up by the till. A clown mirror in which to better establish your own reflection. Clown mugs. The whole thing caught me off guard. And I remember sitting down at this table at the back while all around these death-white eyes in black heart-shaped patches looked on aghast and these livid red mouths silently laughed at us.

  Ten minutes later, I was trying to eat an unlikely pasty with a side order of shredded carrots while Dad carved his way through this goat’s cheese quiche, oblivious; he always eats one-handed, cutting with the edge of his fork when he’s not waving it around to make his many points.

  ‘How many times have I flown?’

  ‘I don’t know, Dad. About five hundred.’

  ‘But not once more than I had to. I hate it, Lou.’

  ‘I know you hate it. I was there for quite a few of those flights. You were very clear about hating it.’

  ‘It’s not the flying.’

  I’ve noticed that when people say ‘it’s not the’, it usually means ‘it is the’. I kept on trying to eat and thought a bit about the difference between grating and shredding.

  ‘It’s just – I hate the attitude of the security people.’

  ‘That’s mainly JFK, Dad. And it’s understandable.’

  ‘They remind me of the Nazis.’

  ‘How many Nazis have you known?’

  Dad separated another section of the base of his quiche with the fork. The strange thing is he doesn’t do anything with the left hand that he’s freed up by not using his knife. Instead, he holds the edge of the table tightly like he’s expecting an earthquake or something.

  ‘You put thick people in uniform and that’s what you get – revenge. The revenge of the conceitedly thick.’

  ‘The conceitedly thick?’

  ‘Yes. It’s as if they’re trying to tell you that “a-ha!” being thick might have appeared to be embarrassing when we were all at school and they were still coming bottom of every test the government could devise to mask the truth – but actually thickness has its privileges, its benefits, its long game, and now who’s laughing?’

  ‘The Nazis.’

  ‘Don’t pretend you like them, Lou. I’m telling you: they think they’re some kind of thick master race – and, no, they don’t see that as a paradox.’

  ‘Are we Jewish now?’

  ‘They think they’re saving the Fatherland from disaster every time they say: “Sorry, sir, no liquids.”’

  ‘Don’t go through with liquids.’

  He pointed with his fork. ‘I tell you what, Lou – the terro
rists have won. That’s what I think every time I go to an airport. Imagine the billions of human hours that they’ve stolen from the rest of us. Billions and billions of hours of our lives – now devoted to getting undressed in front of overweight security monsters just so that they can have a rummage of your tackle.’

  ‘So I guess we can’t fly . . .’

  He ate some of his quiche. Now we were coming to it.

  ‘I’m going to drive. I want to drive.’

  ‘But you can’t drive any more, Dad.’

  ‘That’s why Doug is going to drive me.’

  ‘Dad.’

  ‘He has agreed.’

  ‘Dad, Doug—’

  ‘What about Doug?’

  ‘You’ve only known him for . . . like, five years or whatever.’

  ‘Don’t say “like”.’

  ‘Doug is a mechanic.’

  ‘That’s your objection?’

  ‘Of course it’s not my objection. I’m just saying Doug is . . . Doug is a guy you met on a Roman dig or whatever—’

  ‘Lower Palaeolithic dig, Lou, long, long before the Romans.’

  ‘Right. But because he happens to live a couple of streets away and he’s fixed the house and whatever, doesn’t mean—’

  ‘Doug comes round a lot. We’ve been to three or four digs together.’

  ‘So just because he’s driven you to look at some early hominid rubbish dumps – he’s the man to drive you to Dignitas?’

  ‘The point is that I’m used to being driven by him. He knows me well.’

  ‘Dad, don’t deliberately not understand what I’m saying.’

  ‘Sorry. Whatever I’m doing, Lou, it is not deliberate.’

  ‘Subconsciously.’

  ‘You can’t be subconsciously deliberate.’

  ‘You’re still doing it.’

  I breathed in. I breathed out.

  ‘I’m not saying Doug isn’t a good person. But I can’t let Doug drive you.’ I looked up and forced myself to face him. ‘I have to do it.’

  He paused. ‘And I can’t ask you to do that.’

  ‘I know you can’t. And I’m not going to do it because you’re asking. I’m going to drive you there because I want to do it.’

  ‘But I don’t want to put you through it, Lou.’

  ‘You’re not putting me through it. The situation is. The disease is. But let’s not pretend that Doug is a good option.’

  ‘I’m not pretending anything. I can’t—’

  ‘Dad. Think. What am I supposed to do? Wave you off and then just shut the door and sit down for a beer in front of the match in an empty house – the same house that I’ve lived in all my life with you and Mum?’

  That struck home.

  ‘Jack is going to say goodbye in London,’ Dad said. ‘That’s what he wants.’

  ‘You know that’s not true. Jack doesn’t want you to do this at all. He’s totally against it. You know that. Jesus.’

  Dad went still.

  ‘Let’s try to stay with what is real,’ I said. ‘Jack is refusing to come because he doesn’t want to encourage even the idea. And he doesn’t think you’re serious and he doesn’t think—’

  ‘I am serious.’

  ‘I know that, for Christ’s sake. But Jack . . . Whatever. Anyway, let’s not pretend Jack wants to “say goodbye” in London. Christ, I hate that phrase.’

  ‘I suppose I’d thought you could meet me in Zurich. Synchronize your flights with Ralph.’

  ‘Synchronize my flights with Ralph?’

  ‘As in get there at—’

  ‘But Ralph is the least reliable human being of all time. I mean we can’t even—’

  ‘Meet him at the hotel.’

  ‘Dad, for fuck’s sake.’

  ‘Lou.’

  ‘Sorry – I’m sorry – but the flight-times and the meetings are really not the issue here. This is going to be the worst day of my life whatever.’

  ‘No it’s not. No.’ His eyes began to glass. He is always at his weakest and most vulnerable whenever I put him in my shoes. All his certainty and his will to live – his will to die – seems to leave him and whatever pain and tremor the disease brings rush forward into his face. For this reason, I try not to do it to him. But the thing is that our feeling for one another is continually creating this insane reversal: whenever I think of being him, I want to assert his absolute right to die; whenever he thinks of being me, he wants to carry on living.

  ‘Lou. We’ve talked about this. And if you—’

  ‘We have. Over and over and over. Intellectually, we have reasoned our way to a standstill.’

  ‘Not a standstill – a decision.’

  ‘Dad.’

  ‘And every step – every step – we can change our minds. Right until I’m in that room . . . I never want to be doing anything – for even a second – that you don’t agree with . . . The minute you’re not—’

  ‘Dad, I don’t want to talk about it all again now. Not here.’ There was suddenly nowhere to look but at a room full of clowns. ‘I’m just saying you can’t fly. Doug is not driving you – he’ll probably be charged with murder apart from anything else . . .’ I bit my lip. ‘We’re preparing everything. Isn’t that the whole deal? That we can plan. That we’re as ready as we can be? That we control the thing?’ I fought myself a moment; my voice is always wanting to rise on me. ‘I’m saying someone has to drive you and—’

  ‘Doug.’

  ‘—given that Mum is dead and it’s not going to be Ralph or Jack, then it has to be me.’ I made myself smile. ‘I want to drive you. Doug is no part of this. I’ll be fine.’

  Now there was water in his eyes that he couldn’t blink back. ‘I can’t ask you to do that.’

  ‘I know you can’t. And I know you’re not. I’m doing it because I want to do it.’

  Two of the side effects are what the PDFs call ‘Watery Eyes’ and ‘Emotional Lability’. The former is due to ‘slackness in the muscles of the face that may result in the normal lubrication of the eyes overflowing’. And the latter is a term they use to describe the problem of ‘emotional responses being affected, leading to laughing or crying involuntarily’; though ‘it is important to remember that these behavioural changes have a physical cause’.

  ‘Then Jack has to come,’ Dad says, quietly.

  ‘Yes, Dad. Jack has to come.’

  But Jack had said he wasn’t going to come. Because Jack was in some kind of monumental and principled denial roughly equivalent to my father’s monumental and principled avowal. And because Jack did not think my father was serious. And neither, in his way, did Ralph. They suspected him of manipulating the situation – manipulating them. I told them, of course, that his seriousness was as serious as the illness, which was as serious as it was possible to be. But they always came back: yes – but do you think he’s actually going to go through with it – do you?

  ‘I’ll speak to Jack again,’ I said. ‘Of course he has to come.’

  EVERYTHING AFFECTS EVERYONE

  On the ferry, I’m queuing for fuck knows what. I look across the lounge at Dad. He is sat in an uncomfortable chair reading by the window. We’ve travelled all over Europe – Dad and I – and, sure, maybe his ‘special relationship’ (Mum’s phrase) with me is because of the animosity with Ralph and Jack but all the same . . . All the same, looking at him over there – reading, always reading – it’s as though I can feel my heart’s fist uncurling and reaching out towards him like those Michelangelo fingers he took me to see one time in the Vatican when I was too young to care or notice and only wanted ice cream. Now, though, I wish that he’d turn round – I don’t know why – just so that we can look at each other. I want him to do that expression he did when I was a boy and we were watching TV and some politician was serving up the shit – the way that he’d turn from the screen and look over with his eyes as if to say, ‘What the bloody hell is happening here, Lou, and what are these people talking about?’

  ‘
The queue is too long,’ I say.

  Dad looks up. He’s been engrossed and hasn’t seen me walk back to him.

  ‘It’s making me suicidal,’ I add.

  He winces like he’s long suspected I am out where the buses don’t run and shuts the book he has been reading.

  ‘Do you want to stay here?’ I ask.

  Squalls of consumption are gathering around us. He almost answers me – why not? – but maybe he senses that I’m suffering and so instead he says: ‘No, let’s go on deck and get some air.’

  ‘It’s back that way I think – past Duty Free.’

  ‘OK. We’ll take our time.’ He eases himself up. ‘I thought Duty Free had been abolished.’

  ‘It’s not really Duty Free any more, Dad. They only call it that – to make people carry on doing whatever they were doing before.’

  He’s on his feet with his stick and ready to go. ‘But without the freedom from duty?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Great. Well, we can stock up on essential fragrances on the way past.’

  I’ve been looking forward to this – and dreading it. We always head out on deck; it’s another of our summer-holiday rituals – maybe some kind of parody of being sailors that only we find funny. Or something to do with fresh air and a way of physically marking the distance a holiday opens up on your regular life. There goes the familiar coast. Here comes the unknown. But now I’m worried about Dad walking because the boat is starting to roll a little.

  And, sure enough, by the time we get to the Duty Free, I can sense that he is anxious – though he isn’t showing it. His left foot is dragging. But it’s not as bad as it has been. Or maybe he’s somehow forcing control back. There’s a plastic wall with a rail that he’s using. He’s actually smiling but underneath I can tell it’s killing him – the effort of this walk and the fact that walking itself should have come to this. I don’t know whether to go towards him or keep going on my own.