Chapter 36 — A Birth and a Death

Saturday, the 7th of February, and the day was no different than any other dreary winter's day. Anna had endured a difficult night with the pregnancy, but she was convinced that the baby wasn't due until sometime in the coming week, and she urged me to go and play chess and for me not to wait around for something that wasn't going to happen. I reluctantly left around midday, and I made my way to town, and then on to Bradford where the game was being played. I reckoned that if Anna did, by chance, go into labour, I was only half an hour or so away and that was fine.

I rang at regular intervals, and at six, when I'd finished my game, I made a last call from Bradford. Alma, the babysitter, answered. 'Anna's gone into hospital, Karl, into Jimmy's. Angie took her down there nearly an hour ago. You'd better go straight there.'

I quickly made my way to the train station and from there to St James' Hospital. When I arrived, Anna was surprisingly chirpy, and she sat up in bed. Although she was in labour, she reckoned the baby wouldn't be due for a few more hours yet. We chatted as the evening wore on into the night and the night into the morning of the next day, and that was when Alex was born. He was a healthy little lad with a gutsy, little cry, flailing his arms around the bed, as if to protest at how rude we were to bring him into this world.

I stayed for a few more hours before Anna suggested I go back home and get a few hours’ sleep and come back later in the afternoon with Rebecca. I left the hospital on the Sunday, 34 years old and a father for the first time, unless some woman from the past disputes that fact.

Anna returned home from hospital and we named the lad Alex. I still had a few months of the PGCE, and throughout most of mid-week still lived at 255, as Wakefield and Westborough were near to there. Anna suggested it best to see through the course before making any commitment.

On Wednesday, my dad came down to 255 and asked when Anna was bringing his grandson over, as he hadn't yet seen him, and I told him we'd come up to his bungalow on the Saturday, so that he and Susan, his partner, could see him. Susan saw Alex, but my dad never did.

It was Thursday, and I was in the bath at Anna's when the phone rang downstairs. I heard the door open and Anna shouted, 'Karl, your Mick is on the phone, and he wants to talk to you.'

'I'm in the bath still. Tell him to ring back, or I'll ring him when I get out.'

'He wants to speak to you now.'

I remember complaining coming down the steps, but my mood changed when I saw the look on Anna's face. I took the phone and heard our Mick say, 'Karl, Dad's dead.'

I took a taxi to Belle Isle and to the small bungalow where Susan and my dad lived. Susan was sat on the settee, her face reddened with tears, and unable to get up. 'He's on the bed if you want to say goodbye.'

I made my way to the little bedroom, and there was Dad, lying across the bed, with one leg hanging out of it, as though he had been struggling to get up. He'd suffered a fatal heart attack. He'd had a couple before, but this one wasn't to be denied. I can only ever remember kissing the face of my father when I was a child, and you felt that stubble as he'd rub his cheek against yours. I'd forgotten the memory on that night, but when I kissed his face again after all those years, I felt the same stubble as I had as a kid. I then left the room.

In the space of barely a few days, I became a father and lost a father. I pitied Alf never saw little Alex, as he would have loved him.

A few days later I was in town with Anna collecting both a death certificate for Dad and a birth certificate for Alex. In the Registry Office, the woman asked if Alex would like a second name, and since I didn't have one, I replied, 'No.'

Anna intervened, and she suggested having Alf, as a mark of respect to my dad. And so it came to pass that Alex came to have a second name.

Anna went to meet her sister to do some shopping when we got out, and I'd arranged to meet the Doctor, and under his suggestion, 'wet the baby's head', so to speak, which in the Doctor's language was an excuse to get pissed.

'Did you pick up the Death Certificate as well?' he asked.

'Yes.'

'And the Birth Certificate?'

'Yes.'

The Doctor leant very studiously over his pint of bitter and thought deeply over those bits of contrary papers.