Nobody Had Given Him a Time
My friend since we were eleven owns three watches. One was his grandfather's. One buzzes on his wrist when he's been sitting down too long, and he gets up when it tells him to, which is more than he does for the rest of us. The third I gave him, at his fortieth. He has been late in all three.
At twelve it was the school trip to the castle. The coach waited at the gates for a quarter of an hour with its engine running, and forty of us watched him come up the hill with his packed lunch in a carrier bag, eating it. He was late.
His fortieth was in the room over a pub four streets from his house. He'd booked it himself, for eight. Thirty of us stood about under a banner with a big four and a nought on it, and at twenty to nine he came up the stairs saying the traffic was terrible. That's when I gave him the watch, with a short speech about the castle. He laughed louder than anybody. He was late.
My own fortieth, a few months later, was at the fish place on the front, where the two of us eat once a month anyway. He sat down as the puddings came and said a meeting had run over. It was a Saturday. He was late.
Last summer his mother turned seventy, with a cake in her back garden. He came in through the side gate as she was cutting it. She put the first slice on a plate and held it out behind her without looking round. She's had forty-one years to practise. He was late.
I could go on. I've kept every one.
In February my father had a fall at home one evening, and the hospital kept him in overnight behind a curtain to watch him. He's seventy-four. He went home the next afternoon, fine, complaining about the tea.
I didn't ring my friend. It was a fall, and he had work in the morning. My sister had gone round to sit with my mother, and that seemed like enough people up.
A bit after four I went outside for some air. I'd been up all night. The car park was white with frost and almost empty, and in the first row a car sat with its engine running. It was his. He got out when he saw me, in his slippers.
"Your sister rang," he said.
He'd been there since half past one. He didn't know which ward, and they wouldn't have let him on it at that hour anyway, and he hadn't liked to ring me in case I'd got to sleep in a chair. So he'd sat where he could see the doors. Nobody had given him a time.
I told him there was nothing he could do. "I know," he said.
I sat in his car with him for ten minutes with the heater on my feet. He'd come out without a coat, and he hadn't noticed the slippers until he got out on the frost. We didn't say much.
Then I went back in and sat behind the curtain while my father slept. Every hour or so I went to the window at the end of the ward and looked down at the car park. His car sat in the first row with the exhaust going in the cold, and he sat in it, in his slippers, until it got light.
