your superiority by learning their tongue, just as they have demonstrated their ignorance by failing to learn ours? Cannot all pretend to the erudition of a Milton or a Pope. Many may feel reluctant to turn once again to the syntax and parsing of their youth for an aim so much less elevated than the enjoyment of Virgil. Yet Mercian is not a difficult language. Anglo-Saxon roots. Baltic influences. Celtic strands. Pleasing rustic airs. Young children will recite their epics with unaffected simplicity. With no more than an hour’s application each day, six months will be sufficient for reasonable profiency. The Reverend G. R. Wiley.
One day the sound Cate’s shoes made when she threw them down and they hit the skirting board was harder, and the padding of her stocking feet to the kitchen, and her shoulders in a white blouse against the black of the window, her back to him when he came in.
He’s going into hospital tomorrow, she said.
For the operation.
I don’t think there’s going to be an operation.
Why’s he going into hospital?
I don’t know. She turned round and took the tissue away from her soaking face. She looked into his eyes and sniffed. She looked down at the ground and said something to him in Mercian.
What does that mean? he said.
It means how’s it going, she said. You should know that by now.
It’s not that kind of book. They start you off with 200 different sentences starting I am a.
What are you? she said.
I am a haberdasher. Sorry, that’s the only one I can remember.
She smiled and sniffed and put out her hand to stroke his chest. It’s two months now you’ve been studying that book, she said.
I know.
I thought you wanted to speak it.
I do, but your dad. Unless I speak it like a native he doesn’t want to know.
Just for him? It wasn’t him who bought the book for you.
But when you thought you spoke the same language and then you have to start again, and one of you is super eloquent and the other one can hardly put a sentence together.
How d’you know I’m super eloquent if you don’t understand what I’m saying?
I can tell.
What does it sound like?
It sounds like the sounds the wind makes things make, or a river, or heavy rain on the street.
And what does it sound like when I’m speaking English?
Like words. Like hospitals, and bus timetables, and cups of tea, and a bit short this week, and anything good on.
You’re being sentimental. It won’t seem that way if you learn more. You talk about just the same things in Mercian as in English.
Then why am I bothering to learn it?
Why are you?
Because I don’t think it is just the same.
She liked that. She had to kiss him.
The two of them went into hospital with Cate’s dad next day. He was in a lot of pain. The hospital smelled of pain, or of the notice of pain, the smell of disinfectant and pharmaceuticals and sterilised rubber that took on just the form of what it was trying to hide. The doctors were guessing. They couldn’t bring themselves to say so, but they wanted the three of them to know they were guessing. There was body language of not having a clue and being gutted about it but that was the way it was with the human body, it was so complicated it was amazing anyone ever got beyond the cell-splitting stage. Towards the end of the day they said they were going to have to operate. Cate and Adam went in to see him together and sat down beside him on the same side of the bed. He looked at them, purged of all surprise. Cate held his hand and Adam put his hand round Cate’s waist and the other on Cate’s dad’s thigh for a moment, then took it away. After the Mercian for machine gun and brown lung it didn’t seem strange that Cate’s dad had been surprised before. Waking up in your bed at home in your own flat in the morning, that was surprising. Cancer was the hand that ended the surprise. The whip. He was a brave soldier.
Cate’s dad was dying. He was ready for it like someone who’d been waiting too long in too many offices for his name to be called. Not jumping up in relief and running to the woman behind the window any more but fed up with processes of any name or colour and wanting them all to be over and just to sleep. He was whispering to Cate in Mercian. He saw his hand tighten on hers. She turned round and looked at Adam.
What’s he saying? said Adam.
He’s talking about my mum. He says he sees her.
Sees her.
He says it hurts a lot.
Tell him he’s going to be fine.
Why?
I can’t think what else to say.
You tell him.
What, in Mercian?
He does speak English, remember.
Mr Finzy, said Adam, leaning forward, you’ll be fine.
Cate’s dad closed his eyes, turned his head towards Cate and whispered in Mercian again. The doctors came and took him away. He died the next day, after surgery, without coming round.
They were in a small room in the hospital set aside for hearing that people had died. Adam tried to hide his anger in the crying of Cate and the holding of her. She’d folded into his arms so quickly, as imagined and laid down: she hadn’t noticed. But she had.
You’re angry, she said.
No, of course not.
He wasn’t trying to hurt you.
I know.
You used to tell us you wanted us to speak Mercian while you were there. So we did.
I’m not angry. Honest.
Don’t be angry.
I’m not. But he could have told me to look after you.
Was that what you wanted him to say?
No.
You mustn’t think he didn’t like you.
He could have said something. I don’t know, goodbye.
After you’d told him he was going to be fine?
He could have told me to look after the dog. Adam was angrier now. Cate’s dad hadn’t mentioned him to her in Mercian either.
Do you know how to say goodbye? said Cate.
Yes.
What is it?
Adam couldn’t remember.
What’ve you been doing with that book open on your desk all this time?
Y tess ley.
That’s not enough.
I thought it was.
You know what I mean.
He got up the next morning and stood naked at the table. Rain spat across the window and wind shook the glass. He closed the Mercian book and put it up on the shelf, on top of an album of Picasso paintings someone had given them for a wedding present. He turned round. Cate was sitting up in bed looking at him.
You learned it when you were growing up, said Adam. It was easier. You didn’t have to study it. You just picked it up. It takes so much time. It’s not as if you’ve ever sat down to learn French or German. He waited for Cate to say something but she only looked at him. There has to be a reason. A reward. It’s not as if once I’d learned to speak Mercian I’d be able to do anything with it. I won’t be able to go somewhere and be understood. Your dad said so himself.