Marion searches for Patrick and brings him home to care for him

Marion Burgess’s decision to find Patrick Hazlewood and bring him home transforms an old triangle of love, secrecy, and injury into a daily practice of care. A solo trip to Venice, where she imagines the city through Patrick and her husband Tom Burgess’s former intimacy, becomes the catalyst: rather than simply laying the past to rest, she seeks Patrick out and takes responsibility for his care. The act draws her close to him physically, but it does not erase the history between them or guarantee a shared future.

The Venice trip as catalyst

For years, Marion and Tom took holidays separately. Marion was careful to laugh off questions about her husband’s absence, offering whichever explanation suited the occasion: he disliked opera, gardens, or historic houses. She had never told him that a Verona opera tour included a day in Venice. Travelling with a coachload of strangers, mostly people her age and mostly alone, she entered the city with the knowledge that Tom and Patrick had been there together.

Venice made their absent journey vivid. Marion pictured them arriving at Santa Lucia station, crossing bridges, and standing together at the quay for a vaporetto. At Santa Maria della Salute, she watched two young men share a guidebook and found herself close to tears. At the Gallerie dell’Accademia, she studied the two men in The Arrival of the English Ambassadors and imagined Patrick explaining the painting to Tom. The city’s beauty did not comfort her; it gave shape to the intimacy she had once been excluded from.

Marion wondered whether walking the city was a pilgrimage or a way of saying goodbye to the ghosts of 1958. She concludes that it was neither. The trip was a catalyst, and the action it prompted was one she had been meaning to take for years: she sought Patrick out and brought him back. The account does not specify how she located him or describe the practical arrangements. Its emphasis is on the change in direction: Venice does not close the past for her; it moves her to act within it.

Bringing Patrick into her home

By October 1999, Patrick is living in Marion’s house in Peacehaven, severely impaired after strokes. His speech is almost destroyed, and the two communicate through flashcards: he points to pictures to indicate basic needs such as a drink, the lavatory, or a sandwich. Marion often knows what he wants before he points, but lets him make the gesture so that he can retain some independence. Her care therefore involves not only meeting physical needs but preserving the small actions through which Patrick can still express a choice.

Marion writes an account of their shared past with the intention of reading it aloud to him. She calls the writing a kind of confession and recognizes its strange reversal: she now holds the pen while Patrick lies in bed, watching her. The doctors have instructed her to keep talking because conversation is important to his recovery. Writing and speaking become part of the care she provides, even though Patrick can no longer answer her in the way he once could.

The work is bodily and recurrent. On Saturday and Sunday mornings, when Pamela does not visit, Marion washes Patrick herself. She uses an amber, vanilla-scented soap, a soft flannel, and a scratched plastic apron once worn for painting sessions at St Luke’s Infants’ School. She describes removing his blue-striped pyjamas, washing him beneath the sheet, and talking throughout about the grey sea, the garden, and television. What had once been a relationship marked by jealousy and painful knowledge is now encountered through the ordinary intimacies of bathing and tending a helpless body. Marion says that this work comforts her: she can wash him without her hands shaking or her jaw clenching.

The limits and cost of care

The care is not effortless, and Marion’s account records its physical demands. She rises at five thirty each morning to change Patrick’s waterproof pants and incontinence pad. She does not feel strong enough to lift him onto the commode, and the daily changing of sheets, turning of his body, washing, dressing, and feeding leave her with aches and stiffness. Although she believes she is capable of caring for him, her body is also being worn down by the labour.

Marion regrets that Julia is not there to help. She wonders whether greater courage on her part might have preserved their friendship and made it possible for Julia to share the practical burden. Instead, Marion manages the work largely within the household. She does not tell Pamela how little Tom is prepared to help, fearing that the nurse might question whether their home is suitable for Patrick’s care. The arrangement is thus sustained partly by Marion’s own determination and partly by what she withholds from the person assessing it.

When Dr Wells reports that Patrick’s coordination, speech, and appetite have not improved and that he may have suffered a third stroke, he raises the possibility of a nursing home if there is no improvement in the next few days. Marion has anticipated the suggestion. She argues that Patrick is comfortable at home and recalls the doctor’s view that he stood a better chance of recovery among friends. When Dr Wells suggests that a home would make life easier for her and Tom, Marion understands his concern as being directed toward the marriage. She refuses the placement plainly: she does not want Patrick among strangers.

Care, narration, and departure

Marion’s choice to bring Patrick home creates a new closeness, but the novel does not make care a simple reconciliation. She can tend his body, speak to him, and insist on his presence in the household; she cannot restore his speech or make their history disappear. Her manuscript gives her a way to address him while acknowledging that he may be unable to respond. The account is at once a record of their past and an effort to secure his attention in the present.

The arrangement also changes before the story ends. After a difficult period, Marion leaves her manuscript for Tom to read to Patrick. She watches Tom sit close to Patrick’s bed and read aloud while Patrick’s open eyes remain fixed on him. Marion turns on a lamp so they can see each other, then leaves them alone. She plans to go to Norwood and hopes to tell Julia the story, this time listening to someone else’s words. Her departure does not undo the care she has given or settle what Patrick and Tom will become to one another. It marks the limit of Marion’s role: she has brought Patrick home, made herself his carer, and finally leaves the two men together with the account she wrote for him.