I’m dying for a cup of tea.
Friday, January 22nd, 2010I seem to remember it was the postman that started it all off.
Yes, that’s right. Sometime around 1996, I think.
I was relying more and more on mail order and Bobby (that’s my son) sending me things in little parcels.
I used to collect them. Not Bobby’s presents, you understand. ‘Sorry you were out’ notices, or whatever they’re called. From the Post Office. So they’d knock on Sheila’s door instead. Silly thing is, my next-door neighbour was eighty-five herself. She couldn’t get to the front door any quicker than I could. But she could manage to hobble up to the Post Office half a mile away to pick up my undelivered mail more easily than me. Women. They have more stamina, don’t they?
But anyway, then it stopped. Sheila had a bit of a problem with her leg – though at least she still had two of them. But when it all got a bit too much for her, Karen – Sheila’s daughter – suggested she went down and lived with her family in Cornwall.
Then Bobby found out I wasn’t getting his parcels. I tried to disguise it at first; thanks for the lovely present, I’d say. He got a bit suspicious after he sent me a box full of aspirins and some incontinence pants. Just what I needed, I told him, for that one. What, the tablets or the other things? he said. I don’t take tablets, never have done. So I said the other, not knowing what it was of course, and Bobby came round quick as a flash, announcing that he was going to arrange for me to see a specialist at the local county hospital. By the time I’d told him I didn’t suffer from incontinence at all the appointment was already ‘in the can’, as Bobby would say. Oh, dear – that expression is hardly appropriate under the circumstances, is it? So why did you send them, I said. And he went on about a little joke we apparently had when he was a teenager. Something about when I’m forty he was going to send me some rubber pants. I’d said make that eighty – I remember it now. But since then I’d forgotten. Till it happened. And when he came round the other week and saw the pile of ‘Sorry you were out’ cards he’d said, ‘I’m going to make you a big notice, on the word processor, saying Please be patient – elderly person needs time to come to the door’. And I’d expressed my fear of muggers and burglars taking advantage if they knew about my lack of speed in the old leg department. And that’s when he said, ‘You should live with me.’
Unlike Sheila, I didn’t go to his place – Bobby was going through a divorce. Still living with his wife. It would be too unsettling, he said. So I’d suggested he comes here. Kills two birds with one stone. ‘I’d like to kill her,’ he said. I’m not sure whether or not he went through with that threat because now I’m up here with the angels. But I haven’t seen his ex-wife knocking on Heaven’s door so he probably hasn’t got round to killing her yet. Oh, yes - and I’m dying for a cup of tea. When the receptionist called out the name of the late Leopold Turner it was Turner junior who walked swiftly toward the desk.
‘So you’re Mr. Turner, are you?’ she said, looking him up and down. ‘Well, you must let us in on your health secrets sometime. And then we can all retire from the Health Service.’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘I meant, Mr. Turner, that you don’t look anywhere near eighty-plus.’
‘I’m not. Eighty-two, I mean. I’m actually Leo’s son!’
Bobby returned to his seat and picked up a huge, wide carrier bag. The heads of the other patients in the waiting room followed it in unison as he placed it on the counter – expecting it, perhaps, to be a bomb.
The only person ignoring the package was the girl.
‘You can’t just swap appointments. It doesn’t work like that,’ she told him, the sneer in her voice making up for the lack of eye contact as she shared her disdain towards Bobby with her even younger and more sour-faced assistant.
‘I’m not,’ he said, putting his hand inside the bag. Then he pulled out a crude wooden leg. ‘There’s been a misunderstanding. I was under the impression that my father was suffering from… ‘ Bobby reduced his voice now to a rather intimate whisper. It was a hard thing to do when he knew the girl didn’t like him. ‘In-con-tin-ence,’ he mouthed, nearly showering her with saliva. ‘But he wasn’t. Suffering, that is. But he does need a new wooden leg. So I thought I’d keep the appointment and bring it in.’
‘We don’t do legs,’ said the girl, sounding like a waitress.
So much so that Bobby was moved to say, ‘Leg’s off, today, is it?’
Before he could pretend to ask for the Head Waiter she’d already replied.
‘It would certainly appear that way!’
Poor old Bobby. He always did his best for me, right up till the end. Beyond the end, actually. Wanted me to be buried with dignity in all my finery. Wanted me to have a replacement wooden leg. Kids have new ones all the time – they grow, see. But mine dates back to – well, Marilyn Monroe at least.
‘Look, Dad’, he’d said at the final minute, ‘If there’s anything I’ve neglected to do for you in all these years of being your son – well, you just name it, and I’ll do it’.
I think he meant fixing my car before I’d become too old to drive, taking me to Angora with his silly mistress and her dreadful kids (although that would’ve involved me in his divorce, so I’d said ‘no’ to that one). Bobby was even talking about trying to re-unite me with my old army friends on that web thingy. Good idea that one, I’d said when he’d originally offered it. He’d tried, and then found that they only go back to 1961.
So anyway, my last wish: I said, ‘Son, you know you’re always too busy to make your old man a cup of tea?’ And he just ran into the kitchen like a little boy and put the kettle on. Last thing I remember is the doctor rushing in and the tea on the mantelpiece, stone cold.
So I never did drink it. And now here I am, in this peaceful place they call Heaven. No impatient postmen, here. No bad drivers, nobody in a hurry.
And no tea.
The moment I arrived here, the angel on the cloud next to me asked if there was anything I wanted – that’s funny, really. You see, my last request on earth had become my first in Heaven. But when I told him I’d like a lovely Lapsang - or even just a Tetley - Gabriel just laughed. ‘Caffeine is very much frowned on here,’ he said, smiling.
And before you ask, no he couldn’t frown because he’s an angel.
‘Look, I’m not being funny,’ said the girl. She was. ‘But if your father wanted to change the nature of his appointment then he should have told us. On the phone, or turn up in person.’
Bobby pulled the leg out of the bag again and shook it in front of the girl’s face.
‘What, the whole of him?’ he asked, ludicrously.
‘The rest of him,’ said the girl, frowning so unattractively that Bobby thought she’d arrived straight from Hell.
I’m so lucky not to have gone to that other place. You can’t mention its name here, of course. Because if you do, legend has it that you bring this place into disrepute and then they send you there. Just so you can see what it’s like.
But I like this place too much. All my friends are here. Back on Earth, they were all dying – dropping, one-by-one like dominoes. But now I’ve got more friends here than I had at home. If ever there was a place that really deserves the title – what’s it called again? - Friends Reunited? If anywhere deserves that name then it’s Heaven. I’m missing Bobby, though…
Bobby Turner had given up arguing with the girl. Eventually he admitted, ‘My father is dead. That’s why he can’t be here in person. But the leg kept the appointment, didn’t it? So you’re not going to fine me, are you now?’
The receptionist had got her sullen assistant to tap something into her computer. Having cross-referenced, their records confirmed that Leopold was indeed dead. Then the two girls had acted speedily (well, as quickly as the Health Service is capable of, anyway).
When the two paramedics, or whatever they were, arrived at the house, Bobby’s mood matched the blackness of his mourning suit.
‘Doesn’t look right you two mooching around like undertakers. Not in those white coats.’
‘You mean you’re used to us rushing around, don’t you Sir?’ said the experienced looking one.
‘You’ve got it. White is busy-busy-quick-quick, as my mother used to say. Black is slow and reflective. So just do what you have to do and get out.’
‘Your mother’s dead, too, Sir?’
‘She died in a home. I’ve no idea what the ambulance men were wearing on that particular day because I was in my twenties then. Twenty-something is too young to deal with death. But I think Matron just scooped her straight out to the in-house cemetery and buried her next to the dog. Do you have to remove Pops today?’
‘Beginning to smell a bit,’ said the younger of the two ambulance men.
The older one gave his assistant a look that indicated he knew the young man hadn’t been listening to what the grieving son had been saying.
‘He means the cup,’ the older man explained. Then he turned to Bobby. ‘Hope you don’t mind me asking. You seem to have a little rose garden on your mantelpiece with exotic little bonsai trees and cards and things… it’s really quite elegant – a shrine, is it Sir? And then at the centrepiece of it all is a cup that has ‘Pops’ engraved on it and inside the cup is, well, it may have been tea once but now it’s a load of fungus and some horrible fluff.
I had Victor round the other night. We shared some memories of Shanghai and drank some cabbage water. ‘Is there any way I can make up for all that ribbing when you were alive?’ Vic said. ‘You know, when you were a raw recruit in 1940?’ And I replied that I was still missing Bobby but that I didn’t want the boss to end his life just yet, although it would be nice if you could have a word with Him. I got a black mark for that last bit; nearly went to that other place. What would be even nicer, I said, would be for Vic to go and get me a cup of tea but he just looked at me as if to say Have pigs got wings? And then I saw one - a winged pig, that is - flying over a neighbouring cloud.
Anyway, I still think about cups of tea. Every day.
I wonder what happened to the last one?
