Webbed Feet

It’s pouring. The road curves down deeper into Cornwall leaving the last of the sunlight behind and opening up a wet, miserable drive ahead of me. My nose is streaming, a salty trail from nostril to lip. I lift one hand off the steering wheel and wipe, drop it back. The movement takes forever, like I’ve got lead fingernails. Everything is taking forever right now.

I let my other hand slide down the wheel to the stereo, feel out the dial, turn it towards me. Sue Lawley’s voice trickles out of my one functioning speaker. That helps. She’s talking about space. Colin Pillinger is on and for a moment his dense Bristol accent lulls me into an empty trance. No thoughts, just drawn out vowels under a heavy sky; my wheels spinning through sheets of water on the road. But it’s aliens he’s talking about; alien life, the possibility of alien life on Mars. Which brings me back to reality. To today. To Grandad and his webbed feet.

When I was a kid they’d joke with me about them all the time. I even used to sneak a peak, every Saturday lunch, when he would take his shoes off. I’d squish my nose down into my pappy tuna mayonnaise sandwich to angle one eyeball under the table, but his thick brown socks obscured them from view. I think he knew I was looking though, because he’d always give them a rippling wiggle.

It wasn’t long before the story lost its magic. He was no banished merman, just a machine engineer from Cardiff, with a hearty belly laugh and a fondness for stilton soup. I’d never even thought about his toes as a grown up, until today, today in the hospital, today when I saw them for real. Poking out from under the pale blue blanket where Rosemary had been applying Vaseline to stop his heels chafing on the sheets. Webbed feet.

The flaps of skin lay bunched up like curtains, but you could see if he stretched his feet; if he had been able to stretch his feet, the toes would be properly joined, like a frog. Once I had seen them it was difficult to think about anything else. I had tried though. Put my bag down on the floor and sat on the chair pushed up to the side of the bed, waiting for me to fill it. I lifted his hand and put mine under it, rubbing my thumb across his knuckles. His eyes were all milky and faded but I was sure recognition flickered across them. I squeezed his hand tight, half expecting a ‘Who’s this, by Jove’ to rumble out from his lips. Though they looked too sore and chapped for talking.

Dad was leaning on the end of the bed, his hands gripping the rail between the sterile spray and Grandad’s chart. His body was hunched over, head hanging low. Everything about him was curving inwards, protecting the core. It felt like I shouldn’t have been looking at him, so I looked over at Rosemary instead, then at Sarah. They were both staring at their hands; just listening to the silence. Silence only punctured by Grandad’s breathing, shallow and skittish.

I wondered what the skin felt like, between his toes. It had looked like crepe paper – crinkled and fragile – like one tug would tear it. Not much help in the water, crepe paper; his feet would just dissolve.

Maybe he was a banished merman, I mean, he had always loved the sea. He got me wet when I was just a few months old, splashing in the shallows at Port Wrinkle, when he was visiting from Wales. I’ve seen the pictures. Mum was horrified apparently. I was giggling. He used to boast about his swims over tea; toast with handmade blackberry jam. ‘Three times a week for 40 years, Ellie, that’s how to do it.’ Right up until the accident he was doing that, taking a hot sauna first, followed by a shuddering jump into the deep end. Dad used to give him hell, a man with two heart attacks on his record. He just used to laugh and flex his chest, eyes sparkling.

He had an uncanny knack with fish too, now I think about it. Seemed to know where they were when we took the boat out, showing me how to reel a line of lures before sniffing in the air then turning port, or starboard, to track them down. We’d hit whole shoals; mackerel writhing and flipping on the line as he hauled them in six at a time. Which left Grandad with his work cut out, ripping them off the hooks to leave them gasping in the bucket on deck while I squirmed behind my hands in the cabin.

When Dad had finally broken the silence his voice was dry and chalky – almost too quiet to hear. He asked me to take Rosemary to the canteen. She hadn’t eaten since yesterday. She needed company. I didn’t want to go, but Sarah looked up at me, eyes full and pleading, so I did. We walked slowly down corridors that smelled of illness masked with Dettol masked with air freshener. We picked up machine coffee and rubbery bacon sandwiches, chose a stained table by the window. Sat.

I was supposed to be talking, but I didn’t know what to say. I thought about mentioning the toes then decided against it. Too trivial. But we’d said everything else already. Over the last two weeks, it had all been said, then said again. It was my job to talk, just like it had been Rosemary’s job to swab Grandad’s mouth with water when he got thirsty, or read National Geographics to him until his eyes closed. Then wait, until he opened them again.

What a horrible day, was all I could think of.

Still it looks like it’s brightening in the west.

I could have kicked myself for that. It just slipped out.

Rosemary looked down at the sandwich, picked it up, the crust curling away from the fatty bacon, then turned it over, put it back down. A faint smile creased into the corners of her mouth.

“Hmm. Just like Dad says.”

Perhaps she would have wanted to talk about the webbed feet after all.

The canteen incident got my back on track. I pushed Grandad’s toes to the back of my mind and tried to concentrate on the job I had been called there to do. Not that I was any good at it. I got Dad a can of Coke from the machine, cracked it open, forced it into his hand. Caffeine will help, pick you up. Sarah’s eyes darted again and Dad put the can down. Bad for the blood sugar, he smiled. I should have thought of that. I smiled back. Brave face, come on now. Don’t be selfish.

We talked about Lizzie and Chicago to start with, then about Mike and his work, but it kept coming back to Grandad. They showed me how he’d devised exercises to keep his muscles active. Looking at him then, I couldn’t imagine any part of him being strong enough to move. His pyjamas swallowed him; a sick child drowning deep in blue blankets. It was all I could do not choke on tearful laughter as Dad flicked and twisted a little plastic remote whirring the hospital bed slowly up, then slowly down, up, down, up, down, at Grandad’s instruction.

--

The rain is getting heavier. Splodges hitting and spreading faster than my blades can wipe. Colin Pillinger has moved on to Beagle II now, how he wrote his plan for the voyage to Mars on the back of a beer mat. How in the 1960s he had transported valuable, rare lunar rocks in an old suitcase, rattling on a bus from London to Bristol. It’s not aliens anymore. No elastic train of thought bouncing me to webbed feet. I’m safe.

Colin’s tales of adventure muddled with a surprising passion for heavy metal have pulled me back. I turn up the volume. As his voice stretches long and lilting, the ache in my jaw releases and the risk of a watery breakdown on the A38 drains away.

Tonight the radio wraps me in a bubble of sound, to protect me from the pain which will penetrate tomorrow; morning or lunchtime or afternoon - whenever the phone rings, thick and heavy, with Dad’s strained voice at the other end of the line.