Goldsmiths - University of London

Patrick could not concentrate on the print. His eyes were watery with sadness, and he worried that he might not be able to stop himself from crying. Someone passing in the corridor might see him and his tears. He would be humiliated. He hoped that no other passengers would join him. The train was not very full, and it was a Friday, so it was likely there would be many more leaving Strasbourg than travelling to the city. He stood up to put his book in a pocket inside his camel cashmere overcoat, which lay folded on a shelf above the seating. He stretched his long neck and pulled his shoulders back and forth.

He sat down and stared out the window as the train was passing through a series of hamlets with washing hanging up in yards. He wondered if there were chickens wandering underneath the flapping laundry. There were vineyards not far in the distance, and the sun was shining.

He thought of his wife, Belinda, and her slim sprawled limbs in bed yesterday morning with the sheets just covering her up to her waist. Her body was more angular now that it was starting to waste away. He recalled the sensation of caressing her dark hair still not streaked with grey as his was, touching her eye lids and the skin beneath her broad eyebrows and her high cheekbones. And he remembered her years and years ago, dancing at The Court, where he had first met her, backstage after a performance. She was wearing a white leotard and white tights, and she was perspiring. She looked in the mirror every few seconds to check that she was removing all her make up. She was so welcoming when her brother, a friend of Hopton's from Cambridge, introduced them, and she wasn't embarrassed to be what Patrick thought of as exposed.

She was not like the other girls from the families with whom his kin mingled, the ones obsessed with country sports who cooked bland chicken casseroles and soggy apple tarts for nearly raucous supper parties and expected to be mentioned in society gossip columns. They mocked him for reading poetry, just like his father always had, ever since he found Patrick reading poems about the Great War while perched on a low lying branch of a knotted tree when he was 11. He was appalled by his son's interest in Sassoon and Owen's verse. Britain was again at war; was Patrick's interest reverence for the treasonous?

At Cambridge, there were few girls and although they never would have mocked him for reading verse, they all seemed too clinical to really enjoy poetry – such clever ice blocks. So he thought they were equally as vacuous as the supper party gals. In the company of these shallow women he felt isolated.

He went to watch all the performances of Les Chats and after the last one he asked Belinda out to dinner at a new French restaurant near the theatre where he had dined the night before to make sure it would be just right. He had rehearsed asking Belinda out while he was shaving. He could make a fool of himself if he didn't; he might stammer and beads of sweat might appear on his forehead. And although he was referred to as handsome because he was tall and lean faced and always dressed as what was considered 'well', he did not feel handsome.

She too loved poetry and she too loved Robert Frost. For his birthday that year she choreographed a dance expressing Frost's ‘The Road Not Taken’. She donned a charcoal grey, heavy woollen shawl and bowler hat and imitated Charlie Chaplin, tottering with his stick, as if to show she was a dour, faceless civil servant who always took the safe line, the well trodden path. To illustrate 'the road not taken' she then secured, with a homemade, make believe emerald brooch, a silk purple shawl around her shoulders. Her movements were expansive. She beckoned to him at the end of the piece, while she fondled the colourful and soft material. They were in the draughty drawing room of the country house where he grew up, and the floorboards creaked when she danced.

Edward and his father walked across the bridge nearest the railway station towards the city centre, strolling through side streets rather than along the wider avenues. Ed knew his map well. It was a long walk in the cold, but both men enjoyed walking in cities; it was the way to become acquainted with them. Patrick had only visited Strasbourg twice, once when Edward was thinking of doing his PhD at the university and then when he and Belinda and Ed had motored slowly down through France in August two months ago to help Ed move the 'awkward' items, his typewriter and radio and stereo.

He had forgotten how pretty the old town was with its timber-framed houses with wooden galleries overlooking the river Ill, and he was awed by the city's political importance even though it was a regional crossroad rather than a great metropolis. He would like to come at Christmas time when they say the city is particularly enchanting. But then he might be lonely. When he was a young man, he never imagined he would one day have a physicist for a son who would do research at Strasbourg's revered university.

Patrick's stomach was rumbling. Edward directed them to a small restaurant in the old town that he knew well. There was ample space between the tables, so they wouldn't feel cramped or easily overheard when they talked. There were others, on their own, office workers who would eat very little in the evenings, as they lived alone and would always live alone, and they had little appetite for cooking. It was warm inside.

After they ordered the wine and chose the menu, they exchanged what seemed like pleasantries but which would have perhaps a month before spawned good conversation, and then they stopped speaking. Edward couldn't recall there ever having been a moment of embarrassed silence passing between them, until now.

Eventually, Ed volunteered, 'Something's wrong, Dad.' He wanted to coax his father into bringing up what had to be said in person.

Patrick nodded and clenched his fists on the red tablecloth, pushing a thick slice of bread towards Ed accidentally.

And then Patrick began to cry. The tears he'd stored so admirably while on the train appeared. He covered his face with his hands and then reached into his sleeve for his handkerchief. He wiped his nose and his face and his palms. Being with Ed sheltered him from feeling ashamed.

'I'm so sorry. God, help me, I'm so sorry.' Patrick clasped his hands and put them back on the table.

Edward squeezed his father's hands. The elderly waiter brought the pâté and more bread.

'It's Mummy. I feel it.'

'I didn't want to talk on the 'phone. I wanted to see you.'

'I'm glad you're here, I really am.'

'Thanks.' Patrick looked down at the table and then lifted his eyes to rest upon his son's kind face. 'Thank you.'

'The tests? They're OK? Or ...?'

Patrick bit his lips.

'Dad? The tests – OK? Tell me.'

'Yes. They're ...'

'OK? No?'

'Yes.'

'Oh, so it'll be all right? You're just naturally worried.'

'No, no, Ed; it's not OK. That's it.'

'That's it.'

'It's not the sort from which one recovers. It's not manageable. That's it.'

'Come on, Dad. What's 'it'? Don't keep 'itting' about. You sure, really sure?'

'We've been through it all. There're no miracle cures. One day but now, no.'

'So 'it' is ... cancer?'

Patrick's eyes said 'yes'.

'Damn it, damn it. Damn it.' Ed shook his hands in the air.

'She says what most upsets her is that we won't grow old together.' Patrick paused and swallowed. 'She's terrified of the treatment, the drugs, not knowing how her mind and body will react. Will she look ugly? She's petrified of dying, well, like all of us. Are people really dead when they're in the coffin? If they're cremated, do they feel the flames? Is death final? That's what she talks about when we can't sleep.'

And then Patrick chuckled. 'She says she won't buy any more expensive clothes because she won't be wearing them for long. She wasn't being morbid when she said this, not at all. She was teasing me a little actually because I tease her about being a spendthrift when she buys something really smart. I never mean it; she knows I don't.'

'I know. We'll make these months really special for her.'

'I'm lucky. I've been able to love someone so much. I'm lucky our paths crossed, that we travelled together.'

When they were ready to settle the bill, the waiter brought them each a glass of cognac, on the house, he explained; and he patted Patrick's shoulders to comfort but not to pity.

For the rest of the afternoon Patrick and Edward didn't speak of Belinda. They walked through the medieval streets and visited the cathedral and the museums in the Palais de Rohan, if only because they were very cold. They talked a little about Ed's research and the likelihood of his returning to Cambridge to lecture. Maybe one day he would return to Strasbourg as a visiting scientist. Patrick said he did not know how an enchanting dancer and boring crusty banker could have ever inspired Ed's interest in physics.

It started to snow lightly, to grow dark. They found a bar and had more brandy. They went to a busy, noisy restaurant for supper. Patrick didn't wish to dine anywhere luxurious and 'highly recommended', where he might encounter a friend or acquaintance or indeed a client. He dreaded that he might be tempted to talk about his anguish, blubber like a baby.

Edward walked his father all the way back to the railway station. The rhythm of their pace relieved the men of the tension they felt in light of the future. The biting pain of the cold numbed their anguish.

'How about if I come home next weekend?'

Patrick blushed. 'Well, would, could, you wait just a little, so we can be alone ... I want you to see her, be with her, but I just need ... well, you know.'

'It's OK, Dad.'

Ed was touched that his father could still be in love, not just loving. He determined that he would come home for a while before Christmas. Maybe he could bring his girlfriend, Christine. He wanted his mother to meet her.

Ed hastened his step home. His limbs ached from the cold and the walking. He wanted to lie on his bed and think of his mother, and eventually he would sleep, while his father remained awake on the train.