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Andrews UK - Scott Tierney

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71 pages

English

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Forced into spending the day with one another while their wife and respective mother undergoes a procedure, a father and son become reacquainted after a period of disjunction. As the day progress and the proverbial scabs are picked, each man comes to understand a little more about the other.And, in the process, a great deal more about themselves...

Informations

Publié par	Andrews UK
Date de parution	12 juillet 2019
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781789821383
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0200€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

Kin
A day in the lives of a father and son – and everything else in-between
Scott Tierney

First published in 2019 by
Acorn Books
www.acornbooks.co.uk
Acorn Books is an imprint of
Andrews UK Limited
www.andrewsuk.com
Copyright © 2019 Scott Tierney
The right of Scott Tierney to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. Any person who does so may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

One
For a second time, the father whispered his final culminating words into the ear of his beloved wife.
He absorbed her. Captured her for posterity.
She looked up to the ceiling – the pillow supporting her head was rough, inexpensive, and smelt of disinfectant.
All the same, she stroked the gold signet ring on the old man’s little finger...
He clasped her hands and tenderly kissed each individual knuckle, taking care not to dislodge the cannula bandaged tightly around her wrist.
All crows feet and lolly stick teeth, he produced one of his winning smiles.
His better smiles.
Leaning across the bed, he asked that she hurry back.
“We’ll still be here.” he assured, adjusting the lay of her hair across the pillow – soft and delicate, as dear as gold.
“Right outside, waiting for you.
“Then, when you’re ready, we’ll take the car home.
“All three of us.”
The wife smiled – but didn’t reply.
Nothing further was said...
The surrounding curtains parted.
There came a tap on the father’s elbow.
He didn’t turn around.
Not just yet.
Nonetheless, the porters moved in and took hold of the bed...
The father stepped aside. Made way. He blew his wife a kiss over the porter’s shoulders.
She didn’t see it.
In one practised manoeuvre the bed was rotated from the ward and rolled down the adjoining corridor, the wheels quivering and squeaking like abandoned hatchlings.
Surgeons in battle dress arrived alongside the bed, comparing notes and procedures and jokes. Nurses soon joined at the flanks.
The father followed a few paces behind, watching his wife intently – he noticed that each time she passed under the glare of a ceiling light, she winced...
A nurse beside the bed prescribed comment on the typical weather, a proverbial comfort blanket.
Yet the wife kept her eyes closed. Bit her lip.
Her bare hands fidgeted on her belly.
They’d asked her to remove all her jewellery beforehand...
The train gathered momentum – schedule rather than emergency. Onwards past windows streaked with the summer morning’s unseasonal rain.
Empty beds lined the walls of the corridor. On the corner of one bed a middle-aged man was perched, loitering, toying with his phone.
Noticing the train pass, he stood and caught up to it.
Hurriedly, he said something to the wife.
She smiled. Replied. Before the man was asked to step aside, she kissed his chin.
The father didn’t catch what either said...
At the end of the corridor awaited a set of blue double-doors, each with a frosted window and a strip of dented metal across the bottom third.
With a bang, the head of the bed was driven between them, forcing the doors apart.
The wife flinched.
The doors swung closed.
The father could go no further.
He was faintly breathless.
“Did your mother seem in good spirits to you?” he asked the middle aged man across the corridor.
“Comfortable. Considering.” he replied in a Mancunian drawl, joining his father at his side.
He wiped the lipstick from his chin.
“Content, I’d guess.”
The father glanced to his son, the red stain.
“And what reason would she have not to be.”
As it wasn’t deemed a question, the son didn’t provide an answer...
With a final scroll, he slipped his phone into the pocket of his leather jacket, then coughed.
Behind the doors, blinds were drawn across glass.
A genuine question from the father:
“Did you give the nurses your number, so they can contact us the moment anything happens?”
The son was still coughing.
“The right number?” the father added.
“Yeah.”
“None of the usual cock-up?”
“No.”
“You’re sure?”
“‘For fuc—”
The son held his tongue.
They were in public...
“I gave them the number, Pops. They’ll reach out if they have to.”
The father exhaled through his nose. He was still looking at the blue doors.
That glass.
Those blinds...
Against the corridor wall was a bench – little more than four sheets of cheap green plastic with holes in the legs. The father sat himself down, leant back, hands clasped between knees.
Set between framed watercolour paintings, a clock ticked on the opposite wall. The old man compared his watch to it.
Quarter to nine. Correct.
Rain pit-a-patted at the windows like fingernails on a headmaster’s desk.
The son yawned...
“I’m going for a puff.” he muttered, pulling a damp box of cigarettes from his pocket and thrusting a long one between his lips.
As he spoke, the cigarette wagged.
“You’ll still be here?”
Adjusting his glasses, the father looked up to the information board on the wall.
“There’s a cafeteria along the way.” he observed, ensuring the son had taken note.
“Alright. Meet you there.”
“Perhaps I’ll join you.” the father suggested, moving to rise.
Yet the son was already half way down the corridor...
The father sat back down. He folded his arms and looked off into the distance.
Long before he was outside, the son had already lit his first cigarette of the day.

Two
It was the height of summer – yet the rain fell in buckets.
Rivers. Lakes.
The dumping of a fucking ocean...
As cold a rain as only a Northern rain. That frigid, scentless, inescapable torrent which plummets in streaks. Which pelts every surface like bottles hurled against stage – the sound reminiscent of far gone applause.
In this weather, no one ventured out without good reason.
Not unless it was absolutely necessary.
Hospitals were the exception.
As was family...
Leaning under the hospital entrance’s brick canopy, the son watched an ambulance pull up outside A&E, tyres skidding.
The rear doors burst open – a child on a stretcher was spat out, followed by its mother.
As the paramedics wheeled the patient inside, the mother took off her coat and used it to shield her child from the rain.
By the time she’d reached the doors, she was soaked through.
The son could see her breasts through her blouse...
He drew on his cigarette.
Shivered.
Stamped his feet.
This morning’s visitor’s to the hospital looked regrettable – scuttling from cars, checking their watches, shaking dry their umbrellas as they ducked into the foyer.
More went in than came out, the son noted:
One half of an elderly couple.
A wife minus a husband.
A newborn in the arms of a single parent...
The son’s eyes glazed over...
A lodging cough awoke him like a slap – such was the surprise, he almost fumbled his fag.
He finished what remained and trod it into the ground, twisting it to paste.
Checking the time on his phone, he considered going back inside and joining his father.
He’d be waiting.
“He hates to be kept waiting...”
But it had only been a few minutes.
Barely five.
If that...
Fuck it – the son lit another cigarette.
No harm. He had the whole day.
Besides, no one else under the canopy seemed compelled to return...
The smokers – a mass of raincoats huddled together like grey penguins. Patients and relatives and taxi drivers and staff – on breaks and taking breaks from the harsh realities of life.
They coughed together. Wheezed together. Shared one-another’s fumes.
Yet no one conversed – not a word.
Everyone understood the unspoken rule, the silent law:
Privacy.
No one had come out here to make friends or congress or chew over the turmoil of their day-to-day existence with like-minded strangers.
They came only to smoke.
To escape.
For five precious minutes.
And then, one by one, they would gradually return to what awaited them...
But not just yet.
One more cigarette would make no difference.
“One for luck.” the son muttered to himself, his breath a mixture of condensation and smoke.
“One for the road...”
The son leant closer to the wall – James Dean of the North, Matalan Morrissey.
He shivered. Coughed. He wrapped the collar of his leather jacket tight around his throat, pinning it in place with his chin.
Between puffs he blew on his hands as though the chill could be dispelled like dust.
Balls deep into his forties and still he hadn’t learnt to dress suitably...
Dress fashionably? He liked to think so. And he liked to think that others thought so, too.
He scrubbed up well.
For his age.
For the mileage.
But not for this rain...
It got everywhere: under his bracelets and in-between the laces of his neon trainers and across the print of his distressed t-shirt and into every crevice exemplified by his skinny jeans, causing the denim to stick to his