You Don't Have to Say You Love Me

hat are you getting the missus for Valentine's, then, Barry?" 

Jason was standing in the doorway to the warehouse office with the other young lad.  The latter, emboldened by what he took to be cheek on Jason's part, sniggered.  "You gonna give 'er one, then, Barry?" 

Jason glared at his companion.  "No need to be rude."  

He looked back to Barry.  "Sorry, I didn't mean nothing by it.  It's just that it's Valentine's tomorrow an' at, and, you know, me and Sharon, I'm taking her out for a Thai.  They give all the girls a red rose and that sort of thing." 

"Sure, son.  You have a good time." 

Barry looked the two youths up and down, taking in their low-slung jeans, baggy crutch nearly down to their knees and their expensive trainers.  Jason was pulling up his hood.  The other boy's callow face was already half-unseen.  Jason was a good lad, a bit rough around the edges, but in time, he'd shape up all right.  Barry sould see the potential in him.  If there were two things he had learned in his three score years, it was that appearances do matter and that at the same time, you should never judge by appearances.  Book and covers. 

"You get off now," he said. 

"Coming down the George?"  

"Maybe later, son, maybe later."  Barry knew he would not be.  He would tidy up here, do a bit of shopping at the all-night deli and get off home. 

"You go on ahead." 

Jason said, "Only they've got some nice cards down the road.  I got one with a big padded heart." 

The other boy was tugging at Jason's sleeve.  "Well, whatever.  See ya."

The boys left.  Barry felt the weighty silence in the office.

__ 

alentine's Day.  He had never given it a thought.  How long had he and Pat been together?  He'd lost count of the years.  He would have to find out when Dusty Springfield was first in the charts, that would give him an idea. 

Time had done strange things since Pat had been laid up.  There was always so much to sort out: appointments, time off, scans, tests, more appointments, more time off, test results; diagnoses, prognoses; scares, crises, midnight emergencies; washing, cleaning, toileting, bathing, more washing; lifting; hopes, fears, remissions and submissions.  Then there were the things to check before he left in the morning: making sure Pat has within reach tissues, drinks, pills, bowl, bedpan, notebook and pencil, mobile and TV remote control.  There was shopping for what Pat could eat, not shopping for what Pat couldn't eat, or keep down, and the all the everyday little things for himself, like getting to work and maintaining a semblance of normal life. Barry had not washed his hair for a fortnight.  There was so much to remember: is this the day for the Macmillan Nurse?  If he phones, will he wake Pat up?  If there is no answer, is Pat asleep – or dead? 

'You keep your head down, Barry me lad, and just get on with it,' he sighed.  Something in his throat signalled that he had caught another cold, the second since the New Year.  

The firm had been good to him.  Pat's trouble over the years had meant that Barry was now the sole breadwinner.  Good though the NHS was, there were so many extras to pay for, far more than benefits and allowances covered.  And what a hassle that had been!  Forms, phone calls, interviews, more forms.  The DWP hadn't believed him when he had totted up the list of equipment they needed: the ramps, the hoist, the bathroom gear, the extra rails upstairs and downstairs and in my lady's chamber. 

They had decided that Pat would die at home.  They took out joint membership of Exit.  Together, they had pored over the literature.  Barry had been shocked to discover how simple it was to 'do it'.  They had agreed, through gritted teeth, that, one day, Pat would decide and Barry would leave for work that morning having said goodbye for the final time.  

Now Pat was disappearing before his very eyes: skin paper-thin, gaunt, bony headed; and defeated, which was how Barry felt, too, defeated by so much watching, listening, worrying, pitying, resenting, hating.  Was there room for love? 

Barry looked at the clock.  Pat would need turning at seven. He phoned to say he'd be home by then.  Since the trouble had spread to the larynx, they had had to be innovative in communicating.  The numbness in Pat's fingers, a side effect of the chemotherapy, transformed texting into fumbling, garbled nonsense, tears and a deepened sense of uselessness.  They had settled on learning Morse code, for which Pat permanently wore a metal thimble, tapping on the mobile. 

Dash, dot, dot: 'D.' Then dash, dash, dash: 'O', spelling out, 'DONT B LATE.  C VIDEO.'  On Saturday, Barry had taken home a pile of musty fifty-pence video cassettes from the Oxfam shop.  He could feel his patience being tested, again.

__

he morning mail was on the hall table.  That was unusual.  Suzy, the Macmillan Nurse had not been due that day.   

'Damn!  And I forgot the valentine card!' 

Barry used to leave that sort of thing to Pat: remembering birthdays, anniversaries, presents.  He looked around the living room.  No, Pat's little touches had been missing for some time now: no dusting done, no natty vase of flowers and the one surviving spider plant was spindly, wilting and grey.  Barry addressed it now, "I know how you feel.''  

He looked up the stairs.  No, he'd put the kettle on first.  For himself. 

'And don't sit down until you've done the necessary, otherwise you'll never get up again.'  Did he say that aloud? 

Somebody had tidied the kitchen, washed up.  Where had all those encrusted pots and pans and cereal bowls gone?  What was the smell?  Vim or something.  How embarrassing! 

'Christ, that bin was more than full when I left this morning.'

The cooker was gleaming, as was the sink.  He had assumed the tea stains were indelible.  It was a little like the old days, when Pat ran the home. 

He checked the Macmillan message board by the clock.  'Tues.  See upstairs. S.' 

Now he was irritable.  'I can't do a full day's work and then do all this!  She's showing me up!' 

He threw his coat onto the kitchen table, took a deep breath, counted to three and began to clamber the stairs.  Eleven, twelve, thirteen.  At the top, he waited for the aromas reminiscent of ammonia and ripe Camembert to offend his nostrils, but this evening something overlay it.  There was an unidentifiable sweetness in the air, it seemed familiar.  

His mind was racing.  'Oh, Christ!' he thought, 'Pat's died.  That nurse's been sorting things out, sorting Pat out.  No!  Without letting me know!' He remembered once hearing that when a saint died, they smelled of flowers.  'Some saint, eh?'  Then guilt clasped his chest.  'You miserable bugger!' 

Pat's door was ajar as usual.  Barry put on his merry voice and called, "Hi.  Be in in a minute."

He delayed going in for fear of what he might find, or not find, and entered what had become his own room.  The switch clicked and lit nothing.  The bulb had died days before.  In the yellow glow from the landing, Barry stepped over his piles of clothes, to the bedside lamp. 

The impact hit him hard.  Rising in glory from the debris on his bedside table, were roses.  Red roses.  Deep red roses.  Two, four… a dozen.  Most were in bud and in the folds of the petals, the red was so deep he could see black.  The texture was velvet.  A dozen red roses!  In his room.  For him!  The jade vase must have been retrieved from the dust in the cupboard under the stairs.  Now it was gleaming, and leaning against it was a large pink envelope.  Barry's name was in Suzy's hand.  The Macmillan Nurse.  He recognized her writing from the kitchen message board. 

'Oh no.  Please no!'  He looked over his shoulder at the bedroom door.  'As if life isn't complicated enough!  And she's been in here!'  He was aware now of how stale and unpleasant his bedroom had become.  

He sank onto the edge of the spare room bed, envelope in hand.  He stared at the roses.  They were beautiful.  

"Well!" 

He tore at the paper as quietly as he could, prepared himself and, head half-turned away, squinting, read, in Suzy's handwriting, the words, 'Be my valentine.' 

Underneath that, was Pat's shaky signature, 'Patrick.' 

Barry stood up and cried aloud, "Pat!  You silly old fart!"

__ 

s he entered Pat's room, he identified the sweet aroma: it was the after-shave Pat was wearing when they first met: Barry discovered later and to his consternation that it was an expensive one, too.   

The bed was empty and neat.  Pat was sitting in the bedside chair, where he had not sat for weeks.  He was wearing his silk Chinese dressing gown, was freshly shaved and his hair had been smartly cut.  He almost resembled his healthy self. 

"What an old queen you are!" 

Pat grinned.  Then, biting his lower lip in concentration and effort, he raised his hand a little, pointing the outsize geriatric remote control towards the foot of the bed, at the television and VCR.  Barry turned to look at the screen.  There was a flicker, a brief snowstorm and then, in blue-tinged monochrome, Dusty Springfield appeared.  There were the long black eyelashes, the backcombed peroxide hair, the psychedelic mini and those white knee-length boots – Dusty, in all her lesbian loveliness.

You don't have to say you love me, just be close at hand.  You don't have to stay for ever, I will understand.

Barry looked back to Pat.  He was looking up into Barry's face, mouthing the words, 

Believe me, believe me - ee.  You don't have to say you love me...

Barry found himself kneeling by his lover, clasping his hand.  He lowered his head onto Pat's lap.  From deep, deep down in Barry's gut, from some vast interior space, he felt a painful shift.  It jolted up to his chest and stuck there.  Then another internal movement displaced the first, pushing a knot the size of his fist upwards to his narrow throat and out into the air and light.  He gave one great sob. 

The guilt.  The loss. 

He could feel Pat's free hand on the back of his head.  Pat was tapping in Morse: dot, dot.  That's 'I'.  Then dot, dash, dot, dot: 'L'.  Then U, V and U.  'I LUV U.' 

__

he funeral was a fortnight later on the last day of the month.  Barry, dazed, placed a dozen roses on Pat's coffin. 

It was a slight comfort, but a comfort nevertheless, that young Jason was among the mourners.  As Barry was about to climb into the limousine, surrounded by friends from Lighthouse (but no relations from either family), young Jason put his arm around Barry's shoulder and said, "I'm sorry, Barry.  I didn't know.  I'm sorry." 

"Not in a million years," Barry told the chauffeur, "when I was a teenager, would I have been seen putting my arm round an old queer.  That's progress, eh?  There's hope yet."

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