Four hours later we were hurrying across the station concourse, nausea rising, the taste of vermouth and paprika stale in my mouth. Albie’s constitution being stronger than mine, he took my elbow and helped me onto the train. Once out of Madrid we passed through the same terrain that I had flown across two days before, but I only glimpsed it through fluttering eyelids, sleeping all the way to the coast, waking to find that Albie had already booked a twin room in a large modern hotel right on the beach. ‘I’ve put it on your card. Hope you don’t mind.’ I did not mind.
164. barceloneta
The hotel was one of those up-to-date establishments that have barely changed since 2003 – modular furniture in beige leather, large-screen TVs and a great deal of bamboo.
‘Well. This is all very smart!’ I said, taking the left-hand bed.
‘You’re sure you don’t want your own room?’
‘In case you cramp my style? I think we’ll be okay.’ I stepped out onto the balcony: a view of the Mediterranean and, across a four-lane road, a beach that seemed as densely packed as any city shopping street.
‘So would you like to get something to eat, Dad? Or shall we go straight to the beach?’ He really was being extremely accommodating, unnaturally so, and I put this down to his telephone conversation with Connie the previous day. Look after your old dad. Be nice to him for a day or so, then send him home, that kind of thing. He was acting under strict instructions, and it would not last, but for the moment I decided to enjoy this new companionability. We were neither of us being our usual selves, and perhaps this was for the best. I rolled up my trouser legs, grabbed a towel from the bathroom and, in the hotel lobby’s gift shop, I purchased some trunks from the limited range, peach-toned Speedos two sizes too small, and we set out for the beach.
I have always found beaches to be uniquely hostile environments. Greasy and gritty, too bright to read, too hot and uncomfortable to sleep, the lack of shade frankly alarming, the lack of decent public toilets, too – unless of course you count the sea, as all too many swimmers do. On a crowded beach, even the bluest ocean takes on the quality of a stranger’s bathwater, and this really was a very crowded beach, the concrete and fumes and cranes overhead giving it the quality of an unusually lax building site. Young Barcelona was handsome, muscular, cocky and deeply tanned, and there were bare breasts, too, though both Albie and I made a very big deal about not making this a big deal. ‘It’s nothing like Walberswick, is it?’ I observed, all nonchalant as a group of barely-dressed girls settled nearby, and we both agreed that it was nothing like Walberswick.
The mutant trainers had been abandoned in Madrid and I was singularly lacking in beachwear, so I untied the laces of my brogues and performed the contortions required to pull on the offensive trunks beneath a towel, a fiddly procedure that recalled tying up the end of a balloon, then lay somewhat self-consciously on the hot sand. For all his enthusiasm for the sea, Albie seemed reluctant to swim, but the afternoon heat was like a salamander grill. I was becoming aware of my scalp’s vulnerability and when I could not bear it any longer, I sat, up sprayed my head with sunblock and said, ‘Egg, can I borrow your goggles?’
165. pelagia noctiluca
The water near the shore was cloudy with suntan lotion, greasy as the sink after a Sunday roast and dense with people standing still, bemused, hands on hips, as if trying to recall where they’d put their keys. Fish darted between our shins, but this close to the shore they were drab and unhealthy looking, scavengers feeding off God knows what. I waded out further, and as the coastal shelf deepened, the water cleared and turned a startling blue and I began to enjoy myself once more. I settled Albie’s goggles on my eyes and dived, and immediately the last of the previous night’s vermouth was washed away. I am a strong and confident swimmer and before long I was pretty much on my own, looking back towards the city, its radio towers and cranes and cable cars, and the hazy hills beyond. How strange to have stumbled, clambered and barged all over Europe and only now to have reached the ocean. From here Barcelona looked fine, handsome and modern, and I looked forward to exploring it with my son. Somewhere in that mass of bodies on the beach he was safe and well. The journey had reached its natural end and in two or three days’ time, I’d return to Connie and make my case, whatever that was. Don’t worry about it now. I closed my eyes, rolled onto my back and turned my face to the afternoon sun.
What happened next remains something of a blur, though I distinctly recall the shock of the first sting on the bridge of my foot, an extraordinarily painful sensation like being slashed with a blade. The cause should have been obvious, but my first idea was that I’d kicked against broken glass and it was only when I immersed my head in the water, saw the sand far, far below and all around me the pink and blue clouds of jellyfish – a swarm, there really was no other word – that I realised the trouble I was in. I tried to steady my breath and reassure myself that, if I took my time, it should be perfectly possible to pick my way through these mines and reach the shore. But had there really been so many? I inhaled, and sank beneath the water once again, and blurted out the air. It was as if I were the first witness to some alien invasion, a beach landing, and here I was far, far behind enemy lines, an impression underscored by a sharp pain in the small of my back like the blow of a whip. I reached around, felt something as soft as sodden paper tissue and then the sting of the whip once more, on my wrist this time. Bobbing up, I examined the wound, which was already raised in a lurid pink, the outline of the tentacles quite clearly branded on the skin. I swore and tried not to move but my stillness caused me to dip underwater once again, vertically, like a fisherman’s float, inhaling when I should have exhaled as I saw another of the vile creatures just inches from my face as if deliberately intimidating me. Absurdly, I punched it because nothing hurts a jellyfish more, nothing affronts their sense of dignity, than an underwater punch in the face. Escaping a sting, I pushed backwards and steadied myself, staying afloat by swirling my hands and feet in little circles. I scanned the surface of the ocean. The nearest swimmer was some fifty yards away, and as I watched he too yelped with pain and began to pound towards the shore, and I was alone.
I opened my mouth to shout. Perhaps I should call for help, but that word, ‘help’, stuck in my throat. It suddenly seemed like such a silly word. ‘Help!’ Who really cried for help? What a cliché! And what was ‘help’ in Spanish, anyway – or should it be Catalan? Would ‘aidez-moi!’ be any good? Did French people, drowning, feel silly shouting ‘aidez-moi!’ and even if someone was close enough to hear, how could they possibly help me, surrounded as I was? They would have to hoist me out by helicopter, a great gelatinous mass of these monsters dangling from my pale legs. ‘Sorry!’, that’s what I should shout. ‘Sorry! Sorry for being so bloody foolish!’
I looked to the shore, trying to find Albie there, but I was too far away, bobbing uselessly, the pain in my foot and back and arm refusing to fade and now I was underwater again, eyes squeezed tight this time, no longer wanting to know what was around me, and now another blow of the whip, on my shoulder this time and I thought, oh God, I’m going to die here, I’m going to drown, pass out with the toxic shock of innumerable stings and slip below the surface. I was sure that I’d die, surer than I’ve ever been, and then I laughed to myself, because it would be such a ridiculous death – would make the British papers, probably – and then I remembered my swimwear, uncomfortably close to flesh tone, and a 30-inch waist when they really should have been 34, 36 even, and I thought, please God, don’t let them find my dead body in these 30-inch bathers; I don’t want Connie to identify me in these children’s bathers. Yes, that’s my husband, but the bathers, they belong to someone else. Perhaps they’d have to bury me in them. ‘Oh, Christ,’ I said out loud, and laughed again, a spluttering laugh through a mouthful of seawater. ‘Oh, Christ, Connie, I’m sorry.’ Quite consciously I conjured up an image of her face, the one I always think of, taken from a photograph, which sounds sentimental I know, but I
think we are allowed to be sentimental at such times. So there it is. I thought of Connie, Albie too, our little family, I took another breath and swam with all my might towards the shore, attempting as best I could to skim across the surface of the water.
166. medusa, medusa
My exit from the ocean was even less elegant than my entrance, as I staggered ashore like some shipwreck victim, hunched on all fours in the shallows in the midst of someone’s volleyball game. In my panic I had misjudged my direction and had come to land one hundred yards or so from Albie, and there was no one there to help me to my feet or ask what was wrong. So while I knelt and caught my breath, the volleyball game resumed over my head.
When finally I felt that I could walk, I began to search for Albie. The sun was brutally hot as if focused through a magnifying glass. At least the water had been cooling; out in the open I felt grilled. Even the movement of air across the stings was painful, and neither was I alone in my distress. Now word had spread along the beach and I heard the word ‘medusa, medusa’ follow me as I searched for Albie once more.
I found him eventually, sound asleep.
‘Albie! Albie, wake up.’
‘Da-ad!’ he growled, shielding his eyes against the light. ‘What’s up?’
‘I got jumped. By some jellyfish.’
He sat up. ‘In the water?’
‘No, on the land. They took my keys and wallet.’
‘You’re shaking.’
‘Because it hurts, Albie, it really, really hurts.’
When he saw my discomfort, Albie sprang into action, immediately lunging for his phone and Googling ‘jellyfish sting’ while I sheltered beneath a towel, wincing at its contact with the stings.
‘I’m not going to have to wee on you, am I? Because that’d just be too Freudian and weird. That’s fifty years of therapy, right there.’
‘I think the urine thing is a myth.’
He referred to his phone. ‘It is! It is a myth! In fact, it says here you’ve got to just pick off any tentacles and stinging sacs and take a lot of painkillers. Where are you going?’
I pulled on my shirt wincing, an awful nausea creeping up on me. ‘I’m going to lie down in the room. I have some paracetamol in my bag.’
‘Okay, I’ll come with you.’
‘No, you stay here.’
‘I want to—’
‘Seriously, Albie, you have a nice time. I’m only going to sleep it off. Don’t swim. And what SP factor are you using, by the way?’
‘Factor eight.’
‘You’re insane. Look where the sun is! You need SPF30 at least.’
‘Dad, I think I’m old enough to decide—’
‘Here …’ I tossed him the lotion. ‘Don’t forget the tops of your ears. I’ll see you back at the hotel.’ With shoes and trousers in my hand, arms held out to the side, I picked my way through the crowd and stumbled back to the hotel.
I was inappropriately dressed for the crowded lobby, but did not care. By the time I reached my room, the nausea had increased, though the pain had eased somewhat and would soon seem almost negligible in comparison with the series of heart attacks that hit me in quick succession, like blows against my sternum from some mighty sledgehammer, the first swiping me to the floor and knocking all the breath from my body.
167. under the wardrobe
There’s an old twist in the horror stories that I secretly enjoyed as a child, where it’s revealed that the central character has been dead all along. I’ve seen this twist in films, too, and, quite apart from the assumptions it makes about consciousness and the afterlife, it has always struck me as a cheap trick. So I should say straight away that I did not die, nor was I invited to walk towards any white light.
The fact is, my son saved my life. Whether through guilt or concern, he had been unable to relax on the beach and so had followed on a few minutes behind, entering the room to find my feet protruding from between the two single beds. The pain had spread through my chest, into my arms, neck and jaw, and I was breathing with some difficulty, panicking too because, until Egg arrived, I saw no possibility of rescue and was obliged simply to lie there on the hardwood floor, pinned down as if by some immense old wardrobe, contemplating the ball of fluff beneath the bed, my son’s discarded socks and trainers and towels just beyond and then, miraculously, my son’s blessed filthy feet in the doorway.
‘Dad? What are you playing at?’
‘Come here, please, Albie.’
He clambered over the bed, looking down at me crammed unhappily against the bedside table, and I explained what I thought had happened. He did not Google ‘heart attack’. Instead he picked up the phone and called reception, adopting a sensible and clear tone that I had not heard before; admirably calm, just how I’d have done things. When he was sure that help was on its way, he stood astride me, wriggling his hands into my armpits and attempting to bring me into a sitting position. But I was wedged securely, too weak to assist, and so instead he squeezed in beside me on the floor between the beds and held my hand while we waited.
‘You see?’ he said, after a while. ‘I told you those trunks were too tight.’
I winced. ‘Don’t make me laugh, Albie.’
‘Are you in pain?’
‘Yes. Yes, I am.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Aspirin would help.’
‘Do we have any?’
‘We have paracetamol.’
‘Will that help, Dad?’
‘Don’t think so.’
‘Okay. Let’s just lie still, then.’
Some time passed, perhaps three, four minutes, and though I tried to remain calm I could not help considering that my own father had probably found himself in this position too, alone in that flat without anyone to lie there or make silly jokes. Without anyone? Without me. ‘His heart basically exploded,’ the doctor had said with inappropriate relish. I felt another spasm in my chest and winced.
‘You okay?’
‘I’m fine.’
‘Keep breathing, Dad.’
‘I intend to.’
Time passed, but barely.
‘What happens if you lose consciousness?’
‘Perhaps we should talk about something else, Egg.’
‘Sorry.’
‘If I lose consciousness, that will be cardiac arrest. You’ll have to do CPR.’
‘The kiss-of-life thing?’
‘I think so.’
‘Oh, Christ. Don’t lose consciousness, will you?’
‘I’m trying hard not to.’
‘Good.’
‘Do you know how to do CPR, Egg?’
‘No. I’ll Google it. Perhaps I should do that now.’
I laughed again. If anything was going to kill me, it would be the sight of Albie desperately reading up on CPR. ‘No. Just lie here with me. I’m going to be fine. This is all going to be fine.’ Albie exhaled slowly, squeezed my hand and rubbed my knuckles with his thumb. A shame, I thought, to regain this intimacy at such a cost.
‘Albie—’
‘Dad, you shouldn’t really talk, you know.’
‘I know—’
‘It’s all going to be fine.’
‘I know, but if I’m not fine. If I’m not …’
Some people, I imagine, would have welcomed this opportunity to make some definitive, final statement to the world, and various formulations ran through my head. But they all seemed rather fraught and melodramatic, and so instead we lay there, still and silent, wedged between the beds, holding hands and waiting for the ambulance to arrive.
168. ataque al corazón
I can’t speak highly enough of the Spanish health system. The paramedics were no-nonsense and rather ‘macho’ in a reassuring way, and I was scooped up in their hairy arms and taken a short distance to the local hospital where, after tests and X-rays and the administering of blood-thinning medication, it was explained by a Dr Yolanda Jimenez, in good, clear English, that I would be subject to an operation. Immed
iately I imagined the buzzing of surgical saws and my rib-cage being cracked open like a lobster shell, but the doctor explained that the procedure would be much more localised than that. A tube would be inserted into my thigh under local anaesthetic, passing, somewhat improbably, all the way up into my heart, allowing the artery to be widened and a stent to be left in its place. I pictured pipe-cleaners, dental floss, an unravelled wire coat hanger. The operation would take place the next morning.
‘Well, that doesn’t sound so bad,’ I said cheerily after the doctor had left. In truth, I did not relish the prospect of a catheter being inserted into my thigh and probing its way past my internal organs, but I did not want Albie to worry. ‘If they go too far, presumably it comes out of my ear!’ I said and he forced a smile.