Here we are, lined up with our parents on the bench in the garden of our Highbury vicarage. Families don't seem to look like this any more. I'm on my mother, Sally's, knee, David's just behind with what looks like a home-made fringe. The privet hedge looks equally trimmed, and my mother is in a blouse - this could be early autumn so I think I'm about 3, making Matthew 5, David 7 and Jeremy 9. Or maybe we're 4, 6, 8, 10. As far as age facts go, I always appreciated the half of the year when we were evenly spaced, 2 years apart, as opposed to the half when we were 3568 or 4679. My father, John, has his left-hand mittened because his left arm didn't work properly, the result of hemiplegia caused by encephalitis in 1959. He nearly died when Jeremy was just 6 weeks old.
The little boy David came as a blessing after the catastrophe of my father's illness, and he is now Consultant Cardiologist at the Hammersmith Hospital, London. I've always been proud of this fact and have to try not to mention it too often, whilst he's unassuming about his talents, and talks about his work as if it were ordinary to perform life-saving procedures week by week. As brothers go, he is top of the admiration list at the moment, and I'm sure Jeremy and Matthew would agree.
He phoned me yesterday to explain his role in the front-line of patient care in London during the pandemic. He will be heading a team, working with acutely ill patients in a hospital which was cleared last week in readiness for a sharp rise in complex corona virus admissions. He told me that everyone in the NHS - doctors, cleaners, porters, nurses, midwives, physios, cooks, administrators - everyone who so much as sets foot in a hospital in the coming weeks is a hero, before s/he even does anything. The courage being required of them is hard to imagine. They are feeling fear, and carrying on, organising themselves for the tsunami, the battle, the overwhelm.
David and I said more than we usually do (and not nearly enough) about our appreciation of each other, just in case. I asked if he'd forgiven me for writing a poem about a previous telephone conversation (Running Advice, below). He replied, "There's no such thing as bad publicity" - this absolution is a relief.
My big brother and I concluded by agreeing on the luck of being born into our particular family - flawed and odd and wonderful as it was and is, and will continue to be. Nothing, not even the new expressions of fear we are all experiencing, can take away that moment of the photograph, this conversation we had, the deep love I feel for my brothers, who I've known from the beginning of my life, who've been with me and seen me through all the rough and tumble since then.
Running Advice
On
hearing I’ve taken up running, my brother mentions fish oil
like
it’s the next most logical thing in the conversation.
We’re
on the telephone because he’s one of the few people
I
talk to on the phone any more, and it’s a Saturday morning.
I’d
just got back from my run when it rang, and it was him.
It’s
on account of us not being young any more, he says.
We
need to take care of our joints. I reply that I was always
four
years younger than him, which he acknowledges.
Younger
is how I feel after completing circuits of the park
in
the early light, with the air clear and cool and my blood moving.
I
tease him, ask whether I’m to apply the oil externally.
Of
course not, he states, sounding on the verge being a doctor.
Which
he is - he’s a cardiologist, and a good one at that,
and
I can tell that on this matter he expects to be taken seriously.
While
we’re talking, I’m looking out of my upstairs window
at
the people going about their business in the street below.
The
sun is showing up the dirt on the glass and I notice
that
after my run I have the energy to consider cleaning windows.
This
is what I am thinking about when he asks about footwear.
I
look at my old trainers. I’d got in from my run
and
only just put on the kettle and not yet had time to mix
the
pancake batter or squeeze oranges when the phone rang.
For
goodness sake, my brother says, when he hears my silence,
buy
some decent trainers. You need to take care of your knees –
and
try not to run on hard surfaces. I
decide not to tell him
about
the tarmac path by the river through the avenue of lime trees.
The
orange sun was still low in the sky at half-past eight,
and
it was hard to look directly at the swans taking off midstream.
I
can hear him thinking, because the line is clear as a bell,
and
he’s working out how much to write on the cheque
that
he will send me for my birthday in three weeks’ time.
I’ve
got to go in a minute because I haven’t showered yet, I say,
and
I’m getting fragrant. There’s nothing like a shower followed by
breakfast
after an early run, he says. And on this we agree.
Well,
good to talk and thanks for the advice, I say.
Just
one more thing, he says. Never look down.
When
you’re running, look up, and always look ahead.
Other poems about running are also available (with this poem in this book):
I have ordered this anthology for David - the poems are written by those who, like him, know what the inside of a hospital is really like:
All Profits donated to “NHS Charities Together” – CORVID 19 EMERGENCY FUND
