So my Dad's condition didn't seem life-threatening, and the next morning Adrian dropped us off at the hospital and went off to buy supplies for maintenance work at the rental houses. As I walked onto the ward, I realised it had been a mistake to bring the children. Dad's face was contorted in pain.
'I can't stand it,' he was saying, 'I feels terrible. I don't know vot to do. I had a terrible night. I didn't sleep all night. I've been in agony viz pain.'
Avril started crying. 'Opa's in pain!' And Tom's face went grey.
'Right, you two, out onto the corridor now!' I ordered. 'Opa will be fine.'
As I took them out, Dad called out to them, 'You can have ten pounds each!'
'Ten pounds!' they both clapped their hands.
I rang Adrian. He was already in B & Q about half an hour's drive from the hospital.
'You have to fetch the kids now. My Dad's gone really bad and the kids can't stay.'
'Okay, I'll be as quick as I can,' he replied.
In the meantime, I kept them in the corridor and popped in to reassure him every few minutes, desperate for Adrian to arrive and take the children.
Thus began a difficult ten days. The doctors declared it unsafe for him to drink and he literally felt like he was dying of thirst. I was allowed to dab water on his tongue with a swab, but his throat was permanently dry.
The day after I arrived, my brother Michael came from Brighton. My sister couldn't get a flight from Germany until the following day, Friday, but my brother who lived in Scotland was dragging his heels. In the end, I had to get the consultant to say loudly, from his position by the nurse's station, while I was on the 'phone to Christopher, 'Yes, tell your brother he must come now as it's very urgent.' This was the Friday morning and even then Christopher rang again at 3pm asking if he should still definitely get the night train.
'Well you've only got one father and he's seriously ill, so yes,' I said, exasperated with my favourite brother (one of the unquestionably 'good' people in my family).
Adrian and I had had a meeting with the consultant on the Friday morning. I was about to rip into him as we'd had a meeting arranged the day before and Adrian had rushed to the hospital specifically for it only to be told the man was too busy to see us.
'He's no more important than the rest of us,' Adrian fumed. He didn't have a high opinion of consultants having had a run-in with one when his mother had been in hospital (a nurse had pointed out the consultant on the other side of the ward and suggested it would be a good time to ask him about his mother. Adrian had therefore gone up to him only for him to say in a superior tone, 'Well I'll have to see her first, won't I, before I can say how she's doing!' Adrian had responded, with an equally outraged tone: 'What? She's been here for days, and you haven't seen her yet?'). So we were on red alert to deal with an arrogant, obnoxious toff.
'The thing is,' he said, 'it is important that we know what your wishes are. If your father's heart were to stop, which is quite possible, it wouldn't be like you see on "Casualty." It's a very aggressive procedure to get it going again and there's a high likelihood of severe brain damage. This would mean your father could survive with a truly abysmal quality of life and high dependency. Would you or he want this?'
'I'd have to ask him that,' I replied. 'My father isn't one of those people who say they'd hate to be dependent on others. He wouldn't necessarily care. He's quite thick-skinned. And he loves life. He'll want to cling on to it.'
So the consultant, Adrian and I went to Dad's bedside and the consultant explained the situation.
'Rebecca and Christopher can make the decision,' Dad said.
'Oh thanks Dad,' I said, and I actually laughed.
Michael was standing silently a few metres away the whole time. He knew he didn't have a say (he'd been rotten to Dad over the years; in his late teens he'd even threatened him with a machete Christopher had brought back from Africa). But he did take some pride in the way he'd been wetting Dad's forehead with a flannel (he had the most terrific headache and felt like his head was on fire). But then he'd go and spoil it by saying, 'Hey, Dad, I'm off to the Pendragon tonight. I'll have a few ice-cold beers for you.' I thought that was mental cruelty.
Of course he had been a terrible bully to me as well during my childhood, so it wasn't easy being in the same room as him; my sister had been his deputy bully.
Neither of them had any power over me now.
'Thank God there's no money to fight over,' I said to Adrian. 'Can you imagine that?'
The only money Dad had he was leaving to me; this was the remains of the few thousand I'd given him over the previous year and my siblings didn't know he had it. I thought of King Lear. Had Dad had any money, my sister would have made a good Goneril-Regan combo to my Cordelia and lied and charmed and wormed her way into his affections (she'd always been good at that). But luckily she didn't know there was any money (and it wouldn't have been enough to tempt her anyway).
To see the end result of all the work on the casa, take a look at the house now:
http://www.homeaway.co.uk/p86636
And also another of our completed projects:
http://www.homeaway.co.uk/p475271