Chapter 6
BECKETT
After caring for Marvin a couple of times a week since Tanya left, Sonali point-blank refused to come on Sunday, even for a few hours.
‘It’s a holy day of rest, my friend.’
‘You told me you’re not religious any more.’
‘Well, I’m beginning to see the light after spending yesterday with your grandfather. When he accused me of “feeling him up” when I tried to mop up the coffee he’d tipped down his shirt, I suddenly felt the urge to pray I didn’t face a sexual harassment investigation.’
‘Is he getting worse?’
Sonali carefully folded the tea towel in her hand before looking up at him. ‘Yes.’
Beckett could only nod. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t noticed himself, but hearing it from a professional felt like a punch in the abs.
‘You should take the day off, too. Try having some fun together while you still can.’
He gave a wry grimace. Gramps had never been fun, even before he’d got ill.
Well, that might not be true. He might have been the life and soul of the party, prior to the pain of losing his daughter, when everything became about trying to keep their tiny family afloat, and then eventually helping support Beckett through five years of medical school.
This included working well past the usual retirement age, barely scraping above minimum wage after being made redundant from his office job the day after his sixty-fifth birthday.
He’d endured gruelling cleaning shifts, unsafe working conditions in a factory, useless co-workers at the local petrol station and a vindictive boss at the corner shop.
He was probably too tired and miserable to remember fun existed.
Beckett knew how he felt.
‘Try taking him out.’ Sonali shrugged as if she hadn’t declared, after an aborted trip to the health centre two weeks ago, that from now on she would only be caring for Marvin within the home. ‘The fresh air will do you both some good.’
‘I hate fresh air!’ Marvin shouted from the living room. ‘And I don’t want any good.’
Imagining the effort it would take to persuade Gramps to leave the house made Beckett’s head hurt, but he’d made a commitment with Mary. He wasn’t going to let her down.
He ignored the tiny voice suggesting that Mary would be fine waiting a day or two, or even using a different taxi driver.
Beckett hadn’t hung out with anyone except Gramps for longer than he cared to think about.
He wasn’t ashamed about looking forward to seeing her and Bob again.
Besides, Sonali was right. He should try to do more with Gramps.
The thought that this would include taking him to a church made him laugh out loud for the first time in longer than he could remember.
* * *
‘I’m not going,’ Gramps said for the hundredth time since Beckett had started trying to wrestle shoes onto his grandfather’s feet fifteen teeth-grinding minutes earlier. ‘I told you I’m too tired. You go out.’
‘Come on,’ Beckett said, kneeling on the living-room floor, holding one shoe. The other one had been hurled somewhere behind the sofa. ‘You haven’t been anywhere apart from the surgery in weeks. Remember the doctor said it would help you feel better, if you managed to get out of the house?’
‘I don’t care what that brain-dead doctor said!
’ Gramps tipped up a bony chin, covered in straggles of white stubble, but the tremor in his voice was painful to hear.
‘All he’s interested in is filling in his stupid forms. Prodding at me and talking to me like I’m a child.
I’m a grown man, and I’ll decide what I do! ’
‘We’re going to see a friend of mine.’ Beckett picked up Gramps’ foot, massaging the arch a couple of times before slowly, gently, sliding on the fabric loafer.
‘You don’t have any friends.’ He sniffed.
Beckett paused. Was Gramps simply making a jibe, or was he more perceptive than he’d appreciated?
‘This one has just had a baby.’
That caught the older man’s attention. Gramps had always loved babies.
‘Is it yours?’
‘No.’ Beckett took the opportunity while Gramps was distracted to look behind the sofa, pulling the shoe out from where it had wedged itself against the radiator. ‘I would have told you if you were a great-grandad.’
‘Good. I don’t trust that Rebecca. She’s far too nice.
All smiles and everything’s “so lovely, Marvin,”.
’ Gramps put on a high voice with an Essex accent that was an alarmingly accurate imitation of Beckett’s ex-fiancée.
‘I don’t trust a woman who won’t speak her mind.
How can you deal with problems if you’re pretending there aren’t any?
Besides, she’d make an unbearable mother.
Boring us with endless photos and bragging about every little thing.
I don’t know how you can stand the thought of spending the rest of your life with her. ’
‘We aren’t going to see Rebecca.’ It wasn’t the first time Gramps had expressed his disdain for Rebecca since a stroke had decimated his inhibitions.
However, the confusion was fairly new. Beckett would have to ask about it at Gramps’ next hospital appointment, in a few weeks.
It terrified him, because he knew what the likely answer would be.
‘I said I don’t want to go.’ Gramps jerked his foot away as Beckett had just about wriggled the other shoe on. ‘Why won’t you people ever leave me in peace?’
A merciless forty minutes later, Beckett helped Gramps out to the car, strapped him in, turned on a podcast about the First World War so he’d be too distracted to try to climb out while they were moving, and set off.
For the millionth time in the past few days, he wondered whether taking care of a baby could be any harder than this.
* * *
‘Who is she?’ Gramps scowled. Usually, he struggled to get himself out of the car, but he was like one of those Weeping Angels from Doctor Who . The second Beckett had turned his back, the older man had somehow managed to clamber out and hobble after him. ‘Her face is grey. Has she got a parasite?’
Mary’s eyebrows shot up into her fringe, but to Beckett’s relief she appeared more amused than offended as she stood in the doorway holding the baby.
‘I’m Mary,’ she said. ‘And this is Bob. He’s doing a good job of draining me of all energy and nutrients, but I don’t think most parasites look this cute when they burp, so I’m going with a baby.’
‘I like babies.’ Marvin held out his hands, wobbling like a Bobblehead. ‘I want to hold him.’
‘No, Gramps,’ Beckett said, taking his arm. ‘Bob and Mary are coming in the car with us. He needs to ride in his baby seat.’
‘Here.’ Before he could stop her, Mary handed her tiny, helpless baby to his confused, aggressive, frail old grandfather. ‘Have a quick cuddle while I grab my coat.’
Beckett didn’t breathe for the full two minutes it took Mary to get her coat, boots and hat on, and fetch the car seat.
‘Chill out, Beckett.’ She threw him an amused glance. ‘Didn’t medical school teach you that babies are made of muscle, bone and a never-ending stream of poo, not glass? He won’t break.’
Beckett dared not tell her that, a few hours ago, the man now holding the most precious person in the universe had needed help eating breakfast. He did have to admit that his grandfather looked happier inspecting Bob’s fingers than he’d seen him in months.
‘I like babies,’ he repeated, watching Mary place Bob into his seat, then squeezing past her to do up the straps.
‘I wanted lots of children. Only my witch-wife ran off with a van of hippies when Margo was still small. I didn’t have the time or energy to think about another woman until my girl was grown.
Then after she got cancer, I had another baby to look after.
The married RAF rat had scarpered as soon as he heard she was pregnant.
’ He stood back, scowling at Beckett, as if it were his fault his dad was a cheating rat and his mum had passed away.
Then Gramps made one of those comments that caught Beckett so off guard it rendered him speechless.
‘It got us through the grief, having each other to take care of. It was an honour, to raise my grandson on Margo’s behalf.
Young Beckett is worth a dozen other babies I never got to have.
I’ve messed up a lot of different jobs in my time.
But not this one. This one made all the others worth it. Your mother would be proud.’
Beckett had to blink back tears as he undid the knot Gramps had tied with the car-seat straps and clicked them in properly.
Not because his grandfather had said something nice.
All those years it was only the two of them, he’d consistently conveyed how much his grandson meant.
No, it was because of all the times he couldn’t say it any more, thanks to the damage in his brain.
Because, Beckett realised with a jolt, he missed who his grandfather had been with an ache that made it hard to breathe.
‘Sorry about Gramps,’ he said, waiting in the doorway when Mary nipped back into the house to fetch a carrier bag of nappy things because he’d not thought about buying her a changing bag, and it seemed as if she’d not got around to it, either.
‘I wouldn’t have brought him, only with Tanya quitting… ’
‘Is that what people call it around here?’ Mary squinted at him. ‘Quitting? It makes it sound as if she worked for you.’
‘She did work for me,’ Beckett said, eyebrows furrowing as he automatically took the bag off her. ‘What would you call it?’
‘I think you’d better explain, because I’d call it moving out, or breaking up with you.
Ending the relationship. A good old-fashioned dumping.
But I’ve no frame of reference for someone who sees being your girlfriend, wife, whatever, as work.
And what about Sonali? Is this a bigamist, weird-religious-sect thing? ’
Beckett stopped dead halfway to the car.
‘Tanya was Gramps’ carer. She had enough of me coming back late. Sonali, our stand-in carer who’s been filling in, has a day off today. They’re both married.’ He grimaced. ‘And decades older than me.’
Mary looked at him, her mouth gaping, cheeks flushed. After a drawn-out few seconds, she hurried over to the car.
‘Okay, so I thought you seeing me writhing about honking like a dying goose was as bad as it could get, but now I’m genuinely mortified. My only excuse is being so tired my mouth has held a referendum and chosen independence from my brain.’
‘I don’t know whether it’s worse that you thought I was in a bigamist cult or paying women to be in a relationship with me.’
Beckett stopped then, and grinned.
‘What?’ Mary peered at him suspiciously.
‘You did sound like a goose.’