Cafe Soleil

Episode 3

 

It was the weekend now and thirty or so motorcycles roared past the café up the hill to the beach.  He could just see them – all in black leather, some really overweight, reliving their heyday – sad grey ponytails flapping in the wind.  Why did they have need of so much noise?  He supposed it was the masculine sense of power throbbing between their legs combined with the speed that made them feel invincible.  He hoped they weren’t going to clog up the café later with their helmets and swagger.  Not much chance of that, they weren’t the coffee drinking types anyway.

The divers were also getting ready, squirming into wetsuits that had trouble accommodating their ample middles and trying to balance those heavy tanks on their backs at the same time. It seemed like so much effort to dive to an ancient wreck. He’d seen the boats coming in to shore and bobbing on the waves as the divers clambered aboard.  It seemed to take them ages, impeded by their gigantic flippers, masks and the heavy weight on their backs.

Then there were the extrovert Middle Eastern types with their gold chains and their “Hey mate…” loud but inoffensive in their souped up jalopies or really flash SUVs - generally just out to have a good time, coming up to the Coast with their botoxed girlfriends, who were more intent on shopping the boutiques than actually swimming or surfing.

He was due at the hospital again tonight and he was dreading it.  No change meant no change.  The only bright thing in his day might be a visit from Susannah.  He didn’t like to ask who the well-dressed man was, and he was scared to ask her out on a date.  A date? He must be out of his mind.  Why would someone like her be interested in him? He was never the athlete or the brainy type either and it was a miracle Judy had ever seen any potential in him.  She was fit, watched what she ate. Who’d have thought she’d die before him? It wasn’t fair. Now they’d never be like those impossibly youthful and tanned looking sixty-something couples laughing on the deck of an enormous boat the cruise lines advertised.  At least he had a good Public Service job and looked forward to an easy if unremarkable retirement.  But a drunk driver put paid to all that, and now he spent his days working like a Trojan and his nights keeping vigil over a ghost.

                                                                        ***

 

The automatic doors opened wide as if to swallow him and he started walking down the hall.  The place was terrifyingly clean, and smelled like a cross between antiseptic and air freshener.  He passed rooms where old men and women moaned and cried.  Sometimes they were completely silent, all tidied up in pristine sheets and blankets – laid out like corpses.  He wondered whether anyone ever came to visit them.  The Filipina night nurse on a Tuesday always gave him a beatific smile – and once told him how she worked sixty hours a week to send money home to her family.  He couldn’t imagine the dedication and sacrifice that took.  She was on duty tonight.

“Hi Darryl”

“How is he?”

“He’s doing fine.  We just give him his night feed.  He is resting OK.  You can go in now.”

“Thanks”

Mark seemed to just be sleeping peacefully. Darryl stroked his hand and sat down by the bed.  He usually sang silly children’s songs to while away the time.  Sometimes it was Pop goes the Weasel or some other song – anything to try to wake up that inert grey matter inside his skull.  Anything to fire up more neurons, to get some sort of reaction,  Creatively arranging his finances, he had managed to get Mark a private room – and it was costing an arm and a leg, but it didn’t matter.  He wouldn’t want to foist his out of tune tenor on any of the other patients – even if they were gaga.  So he sang,   He’d heard miraculous stories of people waking up from comas after months and still believed that it might happen.  He hadn’t been asked to pull the plug yet – that wasn’t exactly what they called it – but that’s what it meant.  

He didn’t want to remember that time when one of the new nursing aides had left the feeding tube in and Mark choked on his own vomit.  Come to think of it, she was Vietnamese and didn’t know how to explain what had happened to the ambos.  A close call.  He’d survived that episode and kept a close watch on the staff now – as much as you could when you weren’t there all day.

The diminished form with the still vibrant red hair under the covers was really a ghost.  And how did you communicate with a ghost?  Darryl had been a sort of Catholic in his youth – everyone was something – Catholic or Protestant mostly – in those days you never heard of Buddhists or Muslims and people would never admit to being agnostics or atheists – you had to have something to belong to – even then kids would tease you depending on which side of the religious fence you were on. Catholics went for drama in a big way with incense and those ghastly bloody figures nailed to crosses.  Proddies somehow seemed more genteel – arranging flowers in church and baking cakes. His Mum always covered her head when she went to Mass although she didn’t understand the Latin, and fingered rosary beads and sometimes cooked for the priest.  

Darryl had tried to believe, had tried to hope.  His God had deserted him.  There was now a void where before at least there was ritual and habit.  He eventually began to realise his prayers were falling on deaf ears.  Or maybe he wasn’t praying hard enough? What was he now?  He was just a man and this was just his son. 

                                                            ***