Paradise News Page 3

  “Oh, dear!”

  “She’s dying,” said Mr Walsh grimly.

  The young women were silenced. They dropped their eyes, and seemed to shrink and cringe inside their gay athletic attire. Bernard felt embarrassed and almost guilty, as if he and his father had committed some error of taste, or broken a taboo. There was, after all, something incongruous, even indecent, about using a package holiday to visit a dying relative.

  2

  THE SUMMONS HAD come a week ago, in the early hours of Friday morning, at about five o’clock. Bernard didn’t have a private phone in his room at the College, because he couldn’t afford it, so the caretaker on night duty had taken the call and, construing it as urgent, had woken him up and led him downstairs to the student phone in the lobby. He stood there in his pyjamas and dressing-gown, bare feet chilled by the tiled floor (he had been too fuddled to find his slippers), his head encased in a sound-absorbent cowl covered with a palimpsest of scribbled phone numbers, and heard a hoarse, worn, woman’s voice, an American drawl with a stratum of London Irish underneath.

  “Hi, this is Ursula.”

  “Who?”

  “Your aunt Ursula.”

  “Good Lord!”

  “Remember me? The black sheep of the family. Or should I say, you?”

  “Me?”

  “No, not you. Ee-doubleyou-ee. Ewe.”

  “Oh, yes, I see. But I’m also considered a bit of a black sheep nowadays.”

  “Yeah, I heard about that … Listen, what time is it in England?”

  “About five in the morning.”

  “In the morning! God, I’m sorry, I did my arithmetic all wrong. Did I waken you?”

  “It doesn’t matter. Where are you?”

  “In Honolulu. In the Geyser Hospital.”

  “Are you ill, then?”

  “Am I ill? That’s an understatement, Bernard. They cut me open, took one look and sewed me up again.”

  “Oh, dear, I’m sorry.” How feeble and inadequate his words sounded. “That’s terrible,” he said. “Is there nothing they can –”

  “Zilch. I’ve had this pain for some time, I thought it was backache, I’ve always had a back problem, but it wasn’t. It’s cancer.”

  “Oh dear,” he said again.

  “Malignant melanoma, to be precise. It starts as a kind of mole. I didn’t think anything of it. As you get old, you develop all kinds of blemishes. When I finally had it checked out they operated the same day, but it was too late. I’ve developed secondaries.”

  As he listened, Bernard was trying to work out how old Ursula would be. The last time he had seen her, she had been a young woman – his glamorous, obscurely disgraced American aunt, with a wedding-ring but no husband, who had visited his parents some time in the early fifties, when he himself was a schoolboy, bringing boxes of American candies with her under the impression that sweets were still rationed in England (not that they weren’t very welcome in that pinched and frugal household). He had a memory-picture of her in the back garden at home: in a full-skirted, puff-sleeved dress of red polka-dots on a white ground, with glistening bright red nails and lips, and bouncy, shoulder-length blonde hair which his mother had darkly declared to be “dyed”. She must be about seventy now, he decided.

  Ursula’s train of thought seemed to have taken the same direction. “It’s strange talking to you, Bernard. Would you believe, the last time I saw you, you were still in short pants?”

  “Yes,” said Bernard, “it is strange. Why did you never come back?”

  “It’s a long story. And a helluva long trip, but that wasn’t the reason. How’s your father?”

  “He’s fine, as far as I know. I don’t see him very often, to tell you the truth. Relations between us are rather strained.”

  “We’re a great family for that. If you ever write the family history, that’s what you can call it: Strained Relations.”

  Bernard laughed, feeling a surge of admiration and affection for this brave old girl, jesting in the shadow of death.

  “You are a writer, aren’t you?” she said.

  “Just a few boring articles in theological journals. Not a real writer.”

  “Look, tell Jack how I am, will you, Bernard?”

  “Of course.”

  “I didn’t trust myself to call him. I didn’t know if I could handle it.”

  “He’ll be very upset.”

  “Will he?” She sounded wistful.

  “Of course … Is there really no treatment?”

  “They offered me chemotherapy, but when I asked my oncologist what the chances of a cure were he said, no cure, a remission, maybe a few months. I said no thanks, I’d rather die with my own hair on.”

  “You’re very brave,” said Bernard, selfishly aware of his own trivial discomfort, rubbing each of his icy feet in turn against the calf of the other leg.

  “No I’m not, Bernard. I’m scared to death. To death, ha! You find yourself making these sick jokes all the time without meaning to. Tell Jack I want to see him.”

  “What?” said Bernard, not sure he had heard correctly.

  “I want to see my brother before I die.”

  “Well, I don’t know …” he said. He did know: his father wouldn’t contemplate such a journey for a moment.

  “I could help him with the fare.”

  “It’s not just the expense. Daddy’s getting on. And he’s never been one for travelling. He’s never even been up in an aeroplane.”

  “God, really?”

  “I don’t think he’s up to flying halfway round the world. Is there no chance of your coming over here to … to …” He didn’t want to say, to die, though that was what he meant. “To convalesce?” he concluded lamely.

  “Are you kidding? I can’t even go home to my apartment. Yesterday I fell over trying to get to the bathroom on my own. Fractured my arm.”

  Bernard did his best to communicate his dismay and commiseration.

  “It was nothing much. I’m so full of painkillers it didn’t even hurt. But I’m pretty weak. They’re talking about putting me into a nursing home. I need to sort out the apartment, all my things …” Her voice faded, either because of the telephone connection or her weakness.

  “Haven’t you got some friends who can help you?”

  “Oh, sure, I’ve got friends, mostly old ladies like me. They’re not a lot of use. They’re scared to look at me when they come to the hospital. They spend all the time arranging my flowers. Anyway, it’s not the same as family.”

  “No, it’s not.”

  “Tell Jack I’ve gone back to the Church. And I don’t mean just this week. It’s some years now.”

  “All right, I will.”

  “He should be pleased about that. It might persuade him to come out here.”

  “Aunt Ursula,” said Bernard. “I’ll come, if you like.”

  “You’ll come to Honolulu? Really? When?”

  “As soon as I can arrange it. Next week, perhaps.”

  There was a silence on the line, and when Ursula spoke again her voice sounded throatier than ever. “That’s very generous of you, Bernard. To drop all your plans at a moment’s notice –”

  “I don’t have any plans,” he said. “It’s the long vac. I’ve nothing to do until late September.”

  “Aren’t you going someplace, for a vacation?”

  “No,” said Bernard. “I can’t afford it.”

  “I’ll pay your air fare,” said Ursula.

  “I’m afraid you’ll have to, Aunt Ursula. My job is only part-time, and I haven’t got any savings.”

  “Shop around, see if you can get one of those charter deals.”

  This advice, though sensible, surprised Bernard slightly. There had always been a tradition in the family that Ursula was well-off, untroubled by the petty economies that confined their own lives. It was part of her legend – the GI bride who had spurned family ties and religious allegiance to pursue a life of materialistic self-indulgence in Ameri
ca. But people often became parsimonious in old age.

  “I’ll do my best,” he promised. “I’m not very experienced in these matters.”

  “You can stay in my apartment. That’ll save money. Maybe you’ll enjoy it, huh?” she said. “I live right in the middle of Waikiki.”

  “I’m not very good at enjoying myself,” said Bernard. “I’m coming out to see you, Ursula, to do what I can to help.”

  “Well, I really appreciate that, Bernard. I’d like to have seen Jack, but you’re the next best thing.”

  Bernard found a scrap of paper in his dressing-gown pocket and wrote down the phone number of the hospital with a pencil stub that dangled on a string above the telephone. He promised to ring Ursula again when he had made his travel arrangements. “By the way,” he said, “how did you know my phone number?”

  “I got it from Information,” she said. “I knew the name of the college, from your sister Teresa.”

  Another surprise. “I didn’t know you were in touch with Tess.”

  “We exchange Christmas cards. She usually scribbles a bit of family news on the back.”

  “Does she know you’re ill?”

  “I called her first, to tell you the truth. But there was no answer.”

  “They’re probably away on holiday.”

  “Well, I’m glad I reached you instead, Bernard,” said Ursula. “I guess it was providential. I don’t think Teresa would have dropped everything to come out here.”

  “No,” said Bernard. “She has her hands full.”

  Bernard went back to bed, but not to sleep. His mind was too busy with questions, memories and speculations about Ursula, and the journey to which he had impulsively committed himself. Its occasion was a melancholy one, and he was far from certain what comfort or practical assistance he could bring to his aunt. Nevertheless he felt a kind of excitement, even exhilaration, stirring the normally sluggish stream of his consciousness. To fly halfway round the world at a few days’ notice was an adventure, whatever the occasion; it would be “a change”, as people said – indeed, it would be hard to think of a more dramatic alteration of the dull rhythm of his present existence. And then – Hawaii! Honolulu! Waikiki! The syllables resonated in his head with associations of glamorous and exotic pleasures. He thought of palm trees and white sands and curling surf and dusky smiling maidens in grass skirts. And with that last image there came unbidden into his mind a memory-picture of Daphne, when he first saw her huge, unfettered, naked breasts, in the bedroom of the rooming-house in Henfield Cross, great white zeppelins of flesh, tipped with dark circles like targets, that swung heavily as she turned smiling to face him. It was a spectacle for which forty years of celibacy had left him quite unprepared, and he had flinched and looked away – the first of many failures in their brief relationship. When he looked back, she had covered herself, and her smile had vanished.

  He had made a resolution not to think of Daphne any more, but the mind was a capricious and undisciplined creature. You couldn’t always keep it on a lead, and it was for ever dashing off into the undergrowth of the past, digging up some decayed bone of memory, and bringing it back, with tail wagging, to lay it at your feet. As dawn outlined the oblong of curtained window in his room, he struggled to efface the image of Daphne’s pendulous breasts, swinging to and fro like bells tolling the doom of their relationship, by focusing on his forthcoming journey.

  He switched on his bedside lamp and fetched an atlas from the bookcase, where it rested horizontally above his collection of poetry. The Pacific Ocean covered two pages, an expanse of blue so vast that even Australia looked no more than a large island in the south-west corner. The Hawaiian islands were tiny dots clustered together near the seam between the pages: Kauai, Molokai, Oahu (with the name of Honolulu flying from it like a banner), Maui, and Hawaii – the only one big enough to allow a spot of green colouring. The blue of the ocean was traversed by wavering dotted lines that traced the routes of the early explorers. Drake seemed to have just missed the Hawaiian archipelago when he sailed round the world in 1578–80, but Captain Cook’s voyage of 1776 had passed right through it. Indeed, a legend in minute typeface stated, “Capt. Cook killed in Hawaii, 14 Feb. 1779,” which was news to Bernard. Staring at the great blue bowl of the Pacific, held in the green, curving arms of Asia and the Americas, he realized that he knew very little at all about the history and geography of this side of the globe. His education, his work, his whole life and outlook, had been imprinted with the shape of a much smaller and more populous sea, the Mediterranean. How far had the early growth of Christianity depended on the assumption of believers that they lived at the “centre of the world”? Discuss, he appended wryly to his thought, conscious of slipping into examiner’s idiom. But why not? It would get the Asians and the Africans on the Diploma course going. He wrote a draft question in the notebook he kept to hand for jotting down such ideas. On another page he wrote down a list of things to be done:

  Travel Agent: flights, fares

  Bank (travellers cheques)

  Passport valid? Visa reqd?

  Daddy.

  After breakfast, which he took in the nearly empty refectory (a group of Nigerian Pentecostalists chattered animatedly over their teacups in the sunniest corner of the room, while at the other end a lugubrious Lutheran from Weimar spooned yoghourt into a hole in his beard and read the latest issue of Theologicum), Bernard took a bus to the local shopping centre and went into the first travel agency he came to. The windows and walls of the shop were plastered with brightly coloured posters depicting tanned young people in skimpy bathing costumes and paroxysms of pleasure, fondling each other on beaches or jumping up and down in the sea or clinging to gaudily rigged sailboards. There was a blackboard on the counter with holidays listed like items on a restaurant menu: “Palma 14 days £242. Benidorm 7 days £175. Corfu 14 days £298.” While he waited to be served, Bernard glanced through a heap of brochures. They seemed extraordinarily repetitive: page after page of bays, beaches, couples, windsurfers, high-rise hotels and swimming-pools. Majorca looked the same as Corfu and Crete looked the same as Tunisia. It made the Mediterranean seem the centre of the world in a way the early Christians could not have foreseen. Like so much else, the popular concept of “holiday” seemed to have mutated in his lifetime. The word still for him evoked plastic macs and wet shingle and cold grey rollers at Hastings where they used to go year after year when he was a child, and Mrs Humphreys’ limp Spam salads in the dark and slightly mildewed back dining-room of the boarding house just behind the seafront. Later, a holiday for himself might mean deputizing for some rural p.p. in the summer vacation, or attending a conference in Rome, or accompanying a pilgrimage to the Holy Land – something improving, improvised, or subsidized. This idea of ordering a fortnight’s standardized bliss from a printed catalogue was strange to him, though he could see the convenience of it, and the prices seemed very reasonable.

  “Next,” said a young man behind the counter whose suit seemed much too big for him, since its shoulders had slipped down to somewhere near his elbows. Bernard sat up on a high seat like a bar stool.

  “I want to go to Hawaii,” he said. “Honolulu. As soon as possible.” The request sounded so out of character to his own ears that he had to stifle a giggle.

  The young man, perhaps jaded by requests for Benidorm and Corfu, glanced at him with a flicker of interest and reached under the counter for a brochure.

  “Not for a holiday,” Bernard said quickly. “It’s family business. I just want a cheap flight.”

  “How long d’you want to stay?”

  “I don’t really know,” said Bernard, who had not given any thought to this question. “I suppose two or three weeks.”

  The young man tapped on his computer keyboard with badly bitten fingers. The standard economy air fare proved to be frighteningly expensive, and there were no Apex fares available for the next two weeks. “I might be able to get you a package for about the same price as the Apex,�
� said the young man. “Last-minute cancellation or something. Travelwise do one, but their computer’s down at the moment. Leave it with me.”

  He walked back to the College. It was a fine day, but the walk was not particularly pleasant because of the heavy traffic on the main road, mainly lorries going to and from the huge car factory sprawled on the outskirts of the city a few miles away. Double-decker transporters, loaded with so many cars that they looked like mobile motorway pile-ups, ground up the hill in low gear, hissing with their air-brakes and stirring the gritty dust in the gutters with their exhaust smoke. Bernard thought of damp sea breezes and the whisper of surf with pleasurable anticipation.

  Fortunately, St John’s College was set well back from the main road, in its own grounds. It was one of a cluster of theological colleges that had been founded in the late nineteenth century, or early in the twentieth, to train Free Church ministers. The colleges had adjusted to the decline in their constituency and to the more ecumenical spirit of modern times by opening their doors to all denominations, indeed all faiths, and to laypeople as well as to clerics. There were courses in comparative religion and inter-faith relations, and centres for the study of Judaism, Islam and Hinduism, as well as courses on every aspect of Christianity. The students included inner-city social workers, foreign missionaries, native clerics from the Third World, old-age pensioners and unemployed graduates from the local community. In fact almost anybody could study almost anything that could be brought under the umbrella of religion at one or other of the colleges: there were degrees or diplomas in pastoral studies, biblical studies, liturgical studies, missionary studies and theological studies. There were courses in existentialism, phenomenology and faith, situational ethics, the theory and practice of charism, early Christian heresies, feminist theology, black theology, negative theology, hermeneutics, homiletics, church management, ecclesiastical architecture, sacred dance, and many other things. It sometimes seemed to Bernard that the South Rummidge Colleges, as they were collectively known, constituted a kind of religious supermarket, and had both the advantages and the drawbacks of such outlets. It was wonderfully accommodating, had space enough to display all the wares for which there was a demand, and carried a wide variety of brands. On its shelves you could find everything you needed, conveniently stored and attractively packaged. But the very ease of the shopping process brought with it the risk of a certain satiety, a certain boredom. If there was so much choice, perhaps nothing mattered very much. Still, he was not disposed to complain. There weren’t many jobs for sceptical theologians, and St John’s College had given him one. It was only part-time, admittedly, but he had hopes that it might eventually become full-time, and meanwhile they allowed him to live in one of the student rooms in the College, which saved him a lot of trouble and expense.