I recently learned that my Godfather had passed away. None of my family had seen or heard from him for a number of years after a messy divorce left him bitter and upset that my parents refused to take sides. He died after having had a total Gastrectomy (removal of the stomach) some ten years ago and clearly had been living under the black cloud of cancer for a long time. His death made me wonder whether those years of anger and resentment had somehow manifested themselves in his physicality.

For J.M.

The  room is vast. I have walked miles, days to see him laid semi-conscious on wooden planks suspended by a chain at the other end of the room. When I first arrived, the whiteness blinded me; once the door had been shut it had seemed like there had been nothing to focus on until I moved a couple of inches away from the entrance and my eyes fell upon the dark spot ahead. With no landmarks or clocks, it is like time has been suspended but I know it has been eons since I began to walk towards him because my stomach twists in hungry protest and my throat rasps with every intake of breath.

There is nothing apart from the white that billows and sometimes weaves around us occasionally so I can focus completely on him. A shrivelled cocoon that used to house a man. Now it is a mass of bones thinly wrapped in tissue paper skin, with a mop of dark hair threaded grey as a grotesque bow to complete the package. He lies supine, sore eyes facing the cloud-like shapes above us, refusing to make eye contact with me even though I’ve struggled to walk this far to see him.

‘I’ve waited years to see you. To clear this all up.’

He turns his head away to face the decades that await us all. Even now, he cannot bring himself to speak to me.

‘Please, face me.’

He turns and I start in horror as I watch small mites crawl from orifices of his decaying body armed with needles and thread to sew his mouth shut. His eyes rage at me defiantly.

‘Fine,’ I say and look beneath the wooden planks of his makeshift bed. He squirms in anger and resentment but can no longer shout out to me, his protestations fall helpless against the fleshy wall of his gums. There it is. In a large glass bottle suspended in a thick bilious fluid is his stomach. Deformed and rotten with cancer, it was removed a decade before but in this half way corridor it has been partially reunited with him. In fact, the intestines have pushed the rubber bung out and are starting to feel along the chains to find him again. As I watch with morbid curiosity the small intestine finds him and, using his belly button as a handle, pulls open the door to his torso to reveal a blackened liver that looks at me ruefully from a myriad of pustules. Hastily, I pull the bottle out and hold it aloft. The stomach blinks at me and I begin to walk back towards the entrance a kilometer. Howls of anguish echo. He knows. He knows what is about to be said.

I crouch down and look intently at the bottle, twisting it to see how it fares in different lights and angles. The speckles and spores of cancer change tone but always remain at base level, the colour of a thin gruel.

The stomach blinks again and from the lacerated tubes spells out the following tale…

‘When it first happened he couldn’t bring himself to talk to you because he felt as though he had failed at work, at home; it wasn’t how things were meant to have been; he was destined to be the high-flyer, Alpha-Male, self-made man. The disappointment was crippling. But as the years marched on it became harder and harder to turn things around and speak to you. Pride and resentment consumed him. Every event you took for granted; Christmas with your family, another anniversary, was a bitter and empty meal . He fed me only lies, anger and fear that served to starve me. Eventually I succumbed and couldn’t pretend to digest it all anymore. I leaked the years of poisons and they destroyed him. Within days he had me removed and blamed me for his predicament. ’

Guiltily the stomach contracts until I can no longer see the eye. Sadly, I realise this is all the closure I am ever going to get.

Thoughtfully, I walk back to where he now lies half sleeping, his pale lidded eyes half closed as though squinting at something bright. Gently, I return the stomach to its place beneath his hanging bed. Gently, I touch his hand and walk back to 1987.

As I emerge through the door I’m in a large drawing room in Cobham, Surrey. A Christmas tree glitters in one corner, John Lennon is playing softly from the play room down the hall and with a start I see the white again weaving its line across my line of vision. What reality am I really in I wonder and then he pats me on the back, hands me a drink before walking towards his son, Jamie and I realise it’s his cigar smoke, always was, his calling card (the smell lingered for days). Emma appears in the doorway holding Georgina’s hand and I have this strange feeling that I’m suddenly disengaged and watching this all through someone else’s memories. It’s like I’m watching him laugh and move with ease around our families and friends as though they are all in a cinematic image and I find myself wishing I didn’t know what happens next. That it turns out differently for us all.