Book at Bedtime

Barrie Shore

Description

On a cold December Sunday, book-seller Jack Carter struggles through the ritual of making breakfast for his wife Eva, whose dementia confines her body to her bed and her mind to a world of its own. Jack is an old man failing to cope with the modern world. He wages a constant battle with Margaret, Eva's carer, and tries to fend off Dodie, Eva's bossy best friend, who has decided that Jack too is losing his marbles and the time has come for the two of them to go into a home. Jack's wandering mind makes frequent journeys to the past. Among the ghosts he conjures are his sexually repressed, religiously obsessed mother, and his friend and mentor, Bob Pride, whose own past is closely linked with Oscar Wilde. The gaps in Jack's memories and day-dreams are filled by Eva, and gradually their story unfolds. It's the love story of a couple married for nearly sixty years whose complete failure to communicate is hidden behind an apparently shared love of books.But there is also The Great Man, a famous local writer who chooses this day to come and call. Comical and acerbic, he pushes Jack to confront the past, until the truth finally emerges.

Informations

• Publié par: Troubador Publishing Ltd
• Date de parution: 28 juin 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781800468221
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

Copyright © 2021 Barrie Shore

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.

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ISBN 9781800468221

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Matador® is an imprint of Troubador Publishing Ltd

To the many carers I have known,
with admiration and gratitude.


Contents
PROLOGUE
JACK
EVA
JACK AND EVA
EVA
IN THE END


PROLOGUE
It began with a portrait.
W.B. Yeats, by Augustus John.
And a woman in blue with an elegant hat, who said, ‘He looks a bit raffish, wouldn’t you say?’
And a man dressed up in his second best suit, clutching a bunch of primroses in his hand, who said, ‘I beg your pardon, are you talking to me?’
Or was it before that?
Did it start with the letter from Oliver Brande?
‘Darling Jack, do come and see us, we so long to meet you at last…’
Or the Great Man. What about him?
So back and back, to a father dead of drink and despair, to a mother consumed with religious ferocity, to a bookshop, a lady man and a Saturday boy, a school gymnasium, an undersized chair…
And the war.
The war.
And whatever way it all began, how did it come to end like this?


JACK
castlebridge
Sunday, 3rd December, 2006
An old man sleeps in his chair, snoring and whistling as old men will, chin on chest, book in hand. Not a comfortable chair, or an easy one. It’s split at the seams, worn to the web on either arm, springs sagging down to the floor. But this is the chair in which his father used to sit, and the old man is happy to sit in it too, as if some paternal warmth remains in it to solace him.
The old man has been reading by the light of the lamp on the bedside cabinet, but his book has fallen to his knee, glasses slipped to the end of his nose, chin resting on chest, chest rising and falling gently with every breath. His breathing is slow and steady, seeming to harmonise with the grandfather clock out on the landing that ticks tiredly but dependably on, till it takes rest for a moment, gathering strength for the preliminary clunk and wheeze it makes two minutes before striking the hour. The old man jerks awake from the middle of a dream: of his father riding the dray cart, singing a shanty, old Nell’s ears pricking forward as she trots unerringly back to the brewery. And Jack, boy Jack, sitting between his father’s knees, twitching the reins, crowing with delight.
The old man’s yawn is wide and loud with a chuckle in it as he remembers the dream. He finishes the yawn with a smack of his lips, rescues his glasses and tucks them into his dressing gown pocket; clenches and unclenches his fists, rubs the fingers of each hand, chafing them back to life and warmth. The book slips from his knee to the floor and he bends with a grunt to retrieve it, marks his page with a faded ribbon that his wife once used to tie up her hair, and strokes the cover. The book is an old friend, a collection of poetry given to him as a boy by the Great Man. Its dark green leather is bleached by time, the bright gilt at the edges worn away by his affectionate thumb.
He turns his head as a small sound comes from the cot beside him. An old woman is lying there, propped up on the pillows, gazing at the wall. Her eyes move slowly from left to right as if she is reading, and she smiles from time to time as if she’s amused; then frowns a little, perhaps with displeasure, perhaps in pain.
‘Good morning, my sweetheart.’
There’s no reply, there never is. But he still says good morning each morning, just in case.
The man is John William Carter, known as Jack, a shopkeeper by trade but not by choice. The woman is Eva, his wife of nearly sixty years, who lives in a private world of her own that’s long gone beyond his reach, no matter how hard he tries to follow her.
The grandfather clock out on the landing starts to strike. Six o’clock, three minutes slow. And he remembers that it’s Sunday, the one day when he doesn’t open the shop. Long Sunday, stretching its hours into eternity.
Eva makes another small sound, a low sort of hum without a tune. Jack lays his book on the bedside cabinet and struggles to his feet, pauses a moment to rub his knee then shuffles to the end of the cot and leans on the rail looking down at his wife. She has grown pale and thin, like a plant buried too long under a stone; her skin is ivory smooth, all the old lines that he used to love faded away along with her memory; and her hair, that once glorious swoop that had made him catch his breath in wonder, is a jagged white bob in need of a wash.
But Jack doesn’t see the old woman with the blank face and greasy hair who plucks the duvet and smiles at the wall. He sees the young woman in blue with the elegant hat whom he met in London soon after the war.
london
Friday, 14th March, 1947
‘Earth has not anything to show more fair:
Dull would he be who…’
Wait a minute, he was on the wrong bridge. That was Westminster, this was Waterloo. And the view was anything but fair.
Blackened warehouses jutting from either bank like broken teeth; chimneys belching foul smoke into fouler air; a row of cranes, swinging their necks like a stand of giraffes. Above them, the air was raucous with noise, thick with the stink of carbon, and the river below didn’t glide at his own sweet will, but ran fast and high after the interminable winter and spring floods, turbid with mud, polluted with oil.
And the traffic of the river: a dredger resting at anchor, reddened with rust, black with silt; barge after barge, flat and filthy, hoisting cargo onto crowded wharves. Ferryboats lurching, lighters chugging; a police launch bouncing out from under the bridge, klaxon screaming, sending miniature tides to either bank. Only the dome of St Paul’s, rising triumphant amid the shatterings of war, provided a symbol of hope. London was undefeated and would rise again.
As Jack gazed down at the turbulent water, he thought of the slow splendour of the river at Castlebridge with its lazy rowing boats, chattering waterfowl, solitary fishermen, and he was suddenly sick for home. Till a familiar sound rang out through the din of the river, the pounding feet, the thundering traffic, and he looked about, wondering for an absurd moment where the wireless could be. And then he saw it: Big Ben on a distant bridge booming the time. Nine o’clock.
Six hours before his appointment this afternoon. Six hours to do as he pleased. And he knew exactly where he was going.
He’d never been to London before, but he’d studied the route in the A to Z for weeks until he knew it by heart, and he set off with cheerful step and confident heart, reached the end of the bridge, turned left into the Strand and slowed to a dawdle as he passed places he’d heard of but never thought to see. The Savoy Theatre where the opera played; Simpson’s, home to his beloved chess; Stanley Gibbons… oh, vision of boyhood! Great Uncle Silas and his collection of stamps, the dusty albums that his father had treasured, the exotic tales he’d told of piratical seas and faraway lands. Then on past buildings entirely new to him: hotels, theatres, a department store, everything bigger, grander, more intimidating than the yellowing, mellowing stone that was Castlebridge.
He crossed the street at Charing Cross, dodging trams, trolley buses, taxis, and went into Trafalgar Square… through swoops of pigeons, disturbing sparrows pecking at his feet… past the great lions, vast and still, the fountains splashing… Lord Nelson, chalky with birdlime… a man with a monkey and a box camera… an old woman selling monkey nuts… a crocodile of schoolboys with bony knees chattering up the steps to the National Gallery… St Martin’s Church… a pavement artist… and on to the heavy entrance, where he stopped and looked up, with a lift of his heart, at the blackened slabs of Portland stone, the busts of Carlyle, Stanhope, McCauley set in roundels, wreathed in garlands… every stone and cornice as familiar to him as his own front door but which he’d never dreamt he would breach.
The National Portrait Gallery.
And a flower stall.
‘Lovely daffs, shilling the bunch… get your fresh prims now, tuppence the twist.’ A man with an empty sleeve and a whining voice who spotted a softie and moved in for the kill with an obsequious leer. ‘Go on, guv, give ’em to your girl.’
He spent an hour and more in the gallery, walking from room to room, hat in one hand, primroses in the other like a propitiatory offering to the gallery staff whom he dared not approach, so intimidating was the lift of their chins, so superior the length of their noses. And stopped at last in front of a portrait. A portrait in pencil and wash: W.B. Yeats by Augustus John.
And heard her voice for the very first time.
‘He looks a bit raffish, wouldn’t you say?’
He turned to look at the woman beside him. She was dressed in blue, with an elegant hat on the side of her head, its wide brim obscuring her face. He wondered vaguely how she kept it in place