Check my kibe. Check my kibe. Check my kibe.
Check my what? Dan’s eerie electronic request rings out in the silence. Brenda turns to see his rod twitching violently. Check my line. She hesitates a moment, but everyone else looks at her so she grasps the rod and lifts it from the bracket. It’s nearly wrenched out of her hands.
‘What is it, Bren?’
‘Dinner!’ says Mike. ‘Dan, you actually are the man.’
‘If you ask me,’ says Ron the skipper, with a twinkling eye, ‘I wouldn’t say that there is a cod. You might want to let out some line. Tire it out.’
The creature is swimming fast and erratically, so that one moment Brenda has to pay out line, and the next it goes slack and she reels in frantically.
‘What the hell is that thing?’
‘It’s a shark or something,’ says Natalie. ‘Can’t you let it go?’
Dan’s eyes are fixed impassively on the sea. He looks like he doesn’t give a shit, but when he glances down and taps his keypad, the message is: This is bloody brilliant. He plays it again. They laugh and cheer, even po-faced Natalie.
Suddenly the angle of the line changes. This plucky old gal’s coming up. The surface breaks fifty yards away: a flash of creamy white belly. Brenda reels hard, and her adversary thrashes air again, much closer.
‘What the fuck is it?’
‘It’s a conger. A big one.’
‘Can you eat it?’ asks James. Ron pulls a sour face.
‘Rather you lot than me.’
‘It’s all we have,’ says Mike. ‘We’ll take it.’ Ron’s eyes twinkle again.
‘Oh, “We’ll take it,” he says. If only it were that bloody simple. Can we move this gentleman back? And you, Miss — keep well back too.’ The five- or six-foot eel, thick as a man’s leg, thrashes madly in Ron’s biggest net. ‘Take that priest,’ he snaps at Mike, pointing to a short wooden club, ‘and give it two sharp goes on the noggin.’
Mike looks helplessly at James, who turns to Brenda with a pleading smile. For Christ’s sake. She makes good contact and the beast goes limp, but as they try to tip it into the crate it rears up and breaks loose, thumping around the small deck and lunging left and right. Everyone retreats, cursing. Brenda circles cautiously and, when the eel slumps for a moment, exhausted, jaws silently working, she gives it a mighty whack. Ron steps in quickly, traps the beast’s head between his boots and with a sharp, rusty, two-pronged stake severs its spinal cord.
‘Do not go gentle,’ murmurs James, in the stunned silence that follows. Dan taps his keypad.
There’s a lesson here somewhere.
James F. Saunders finds himself alone in Dan and Natalie’s living room-cum-office-cum-dining room as the mantelpiece clock — a brass thing with spinning balls — chimes seven. Dan is resting. Mike and Natalie are in charge of the cooking, but have recruited Brenda to assist in the formidable and frankly obscene task of skinning the eel.
The clock is a bourgeois anomaly in a room which, if James didn’t know the family circumstances, he would ascribe to an over-imaginative twelve-year-old boy. Mounted on the ceiling is an enormous poster print of outer space — one of those Hubble photos peppered with galaxies like snowflakes in a torch-beam. A dozen more posters on the walls: a motorcyclist leaning into a bend, knee almost touching the blurry road; a pelican gliding low over water; the earth seen from the moon; a topographic map of the Chilterns; a suspension bridge rising out of fog; the periodic table; a photograph of a blackboard covered in equations; an enlarged, incomplete Sudoku grid.
So this is where Becks has ended up. There’s not a single image that James would choose to place on his own walls (the eye candy now exhibited in place of his discarded Joyce icon: nothing), and he could never live with a chiming clock. Is this what happens to people who are dying? They revert to childhood? Dan doesn’t seem childlike in person — or childish, for that matter. More like a prophet. Perhaps it’s James’ own incapacity — his burned-out soul — that sees something juvenile here.
He sniffs his fingers. Despite much scrubbing in the hotel shower, they still smell of fish. And he didn’t catch so much as an old boot. The room is connected to Dan and Natalie’s bedroom by a pair of new-looking sliding doors with electronic controls, now closed. When they arrived, James caught a glimpse of two beds — an adjustable hospital-style one with a hoist beside it, tubes, cables and whatnot, and a small, low single for Natalie. For Becks.
James is happy to be hauled up mountains by Brenda. But if something like this happened to him, and he could choose anyone in the world to look after him, it would be Becks.
The conger did not die in vain: even Natalie has to admit that Mike’s slow-fried steaks with Spanish paprika are a triumph. The man can cook. When he produces two bottles of what he calls the queen of Riojas, James makes a poor quip about drinking red wine with fish.
‘Whereof you know nothing —’ begins Mike, a corkscrew materialising in his hand. ‘Just trust me on this, if nothing else, okay?’
Dan is too tired to join the table for long, but he makes an appearance. He asks to taste the wine, which Natalie presents carefully to his lips, and then collects back into the glass: thin liquids make him choke. Everyone waits for his reaction.
‘I’m getting apricots,’ he says. ‘Liquorice. Marmite. The faintest inkling of squid. Wait, that could be Nat’s hands.’
While the others laugh, Natalie reflects with private, loving irony that it has taken total paralysis and an electronic voice to make a comedian of her husband.
When the community nurse arrives to help settle Dan in for the night, the Mocks excuse themselves. Natalie gives the nurse her usual verbal report, playing down the boat trip as requested, then sees her out and gives Dan his goodnight kiss. Then she returns to the dinner.
‘What about you, Bren?’ Mike is asking as she opens the door. ‘What is it you love so much about wandering off to the arse-end of nowhere?’
‘I love being alone,’ says Brenda, her back to the door. ‘I love having no responsibilities except to myself. No obligations gnawing at me, no stupid misunderstandings, no boundaries.’ Mike sees Natalie, and tries to cut his sister off. Both bottles are empty.
‘I did warn you about Bren,’ he says to James, with a laugh. ‘Ah, Na —’
‘James understands,’ says Brenda, sharply. ‘He feels the same way, which is why we get along. Right?’ Natalie looks at James, who gives a noncommittal smile to them both. Right enough. ‘I’ll tell you one thing,’ continues Brenda, oblivious, ‘I’m not about to start squeezing out babies. Sometimes I feel I’d like to take everyone who has any kind of claim on me, shove them in a top hat, wave a wand and make them disappear in a —’ she looks round, sees Natalie, and finishes her sentence in a softer, uncertain voice: ‘— puff of smoke.’
Disappear. Right. Natalie feels anger and sadness welling up copiously, without hope of containment. She turns, hurries out into the unlit kitchen, lets the sobs come.
‘I’ll go,’ says Mike’s voice, sharply, and then she hears chairs scraping and multiple footsteps. ‘Brenda!’ calls James’ voice. Sound of the front door opening and slamming shut. Mike is beside her in the dark, arm around her shoulders.
‘I’m sorry,’ he says. ‘She didn’t know. She doesn’t understand.’ Natalie turns on him.
‘And you do?’
Mike looks chastened. She’s never seen that ginger crest of his fallen like it is now. The look becomes him. ‘Let’s not argue,’ he whispers. ‘We’re all making this up as we go along.’
James’ face appears in the doorway, an apparition from the past, freezes and then retreats. His intimation, intended or not — that he was interrupting something untoward — is unworthy of a moment’s thought, but it nevertheless tempts her involuntarily to compare James to Mike as she once compared him to Dan. Another stupid thought-crime — she co
mmits too many, each adding its fresh cut to her bloodied self-respect (and people keep calling her a saint).
Mike is the shallower pool, of course: a picturesque but insubstantial lagoon of a man. Likeable, untrustworthy and emotionally retarded — or so she always thought. But after all he’s done for them over the past eighteen months, for Dan but also for her — especially for her, perhaps — she might have to reconsider. This isn’t the first time they’ve stood whispering in the kitchen with good intentions.
26. Circling scythe
‘… on what small things depends our fortitude in dying …’
Montaigne
Sometimes Dan and Natalie go for a walk around the block. This takes them past the canal, where Dan likes to stop and contemplate the scene. There are ducks, perhaps, a pair of swans, a cormorant even, but these days Dan isn’t looking at the birdlife; he’s looking at the water.
One day at a time, and he tries to make each of them worthwhile. When he’s not being hoisted, shunted, medicated or otherwise feeling like a nuisance, he can read (but not for long); he can respond to his ex-colleagues’ respectful requests for technical advice on the synchrotron apparatus he designed; he can write emails to Mike or James; he can classify a few more galaxies in the crowdsourced astronomy project to which he contributes; he can reminisce. His brain is kept supplied with glucose fuel by the liquid feeds, with oxygen by the assisted ventilation he’s now hooked up to at night. As for his body, it’s not entirely inert but visited by strange twitchings and shiverings, memories and imagined sensations of movement, itchings and achings. There is more discomfort and indignity than acute suffering. It’s a life of sorts.
Natalie could understand him until the spring — several months after anyone else — but then the last of his consonants escaped him and he had to resort to typing. For reading and browsing he uses an eye-operated computer, but for simple communication tasks his left thumb just keeps soldiering on, defying the doctors. Weakening of his swallowing muscles brought on the choking episodes which have been perhaps his darkest moments, but those are largely behind him now. This first available exit he passed by — chose life, and tube-feeding. He can still manage soups and smoothies by mouth: between them these cover an impressive array of taste sensations (not a rasher-of-bacon sensation, sadly, or that favourite warm-smacky glass of red). Saliva mostly exits via the corner of his mouth, but neatly now. Adapt, adapt, adapt.
The next exit opportunity seemed to be approaching fast when his breathing difficulties began, but these have now stabilised. He needs the machine they call the puffer — ingenious yet inescapably horrifying — only at night. The disease has a habit of galloping along with intent, then taking forty winks at the roadside. He might be in for the long haul. But what about Natalie? One day for him; one day for her. Her life, its possibilities — that he never did enough to encourage — all on hold. How much longer?
An aura of dread surrounds this place now, hangs over the glinting water. He could get here on his own, and there is no barrier. It would be a messy way to go, upsetting for Nat, but he’s left it too late for the neater options: he can’t take drugs by himself, nor can he ask Nat or Mike to administer them. (They see a lot of Mike, these days — he’s always dropping by, always ready to help.) Dan thinks of those fish living their gloomy, secret lives at the bottom of the English Channel. Hauled up to their doom. Might he not reverse the process?
How much longer?
Meanwhile, James F. Saunders positions his new signboard prominently on the pavement. Chalked on one side: ‘The human heart, O Chactas, is like those trees which do not yield their balm for the wounds of men until they themselves have been wounded by the axe. Chateaubriand.’ On the other: ‘Truth itself is always halved in utterance. Lawrence Durrell.’ Plenty more where those came from.
The bell jangles as he shuts the door and turns the sign to OPEN. He inhales the cool, page-fragrant air. Upstart Books, of which he is now the manager and Brenda the proprietor following its fortuitous selling-up by his ailing employer — and a little help from Mike — occupies one of the prize spots on the main street in Wigtown on the Galloway coast. James is gradually honing the stock towards irresistibility (he is ruthless and well-practised when it comes to disposing of verbal trash). They have a permit to sell coffee and, after much trial and gull-fodder error, have learned to bake passable cakes. Simple website: up and running; Twitter followers: forty-six; upstairs flat: draughty but spacious.
His relationship with Brenda is an adventure in itself. During the summer, while paperwork was delaying the shop’s reopening, they walked two hundred miles up the wild northwest coast of Scotland in nine days. He has never felt fitter or more exhausted. Brenda loves the shop. Her new boss on the Galloway estate has taken all his management courses and treats mental health issues sympathetically.
Last night, as James watched his old university magazine burn in the bedroom fireplace (while Brenda was showering off the residue of her own demolition work), he wondered whether any other copies survived, eleven years on, or if anyone would still remember his poem. Every hour… That clock still runs, perhaps. Meanwhile he and Brenda lean against each other like a couple of damaged spruces, in mutual gratitude and love.
Mike Vickers awaits the seven twenty-two, toes of his brogues on the yellow line, staring across the tracks at the near-deserted platform opposite. During his garden leave he rented a flat in Maidenhead, in between Reading and London. Dan and Natalie didn’t ask why: they understand. He still uses the Paddington flat occasionally, as does his mother, when she’s in town.
He persuaded Mij to follow him across to Crispin’s new firm, and the soft-spoken, fridge-chested developer has become his boss in the small Soho office. He’s learning a new programming language, building a sexy interface for the traders (Crispin’s adjective) while Mij makes the thing actually work. The fund has only a handful of investors so far; there is no magic show — just Crispin and the other portfolio managers calmly presenting their evidence, explaining exactly what the various strategies do and what they don’t do. Fees are low. The office mood is calm and focused. Pay cuts are the norm for new hires, and nobody, as far as Mike can tell, is rushing out to buy tapestries. He’s an essential, competent cog, and it feels good.
In a few seconds, the fast train will hurtle through with a furious wallop of air and sound. Presumably death comes like that sometimes — the only warning an ominous humming of rails. Not always like the Grimpen Mire. Mike takes a deep breath.
Wham. In the blur of rushing train windows he sees his own crisp, sunlit reflection, not alone but standing in the midst of a multitudinous army of commuters. No superstar, high achiever or Rocket Jesus, not top of the class, but a minion, an underling, getting on with it. Some of these solemn-faced, drab-suited worker-bees may indeed be brain surgeons, or social workers, or brilliant, inspiring teachers. The admired. Others are facilitators like him: agents of this or that, telemarketers, baristas, project managers. If nobody facilitated, if nobody tinkered and sold things, the brain surgeons among us would have nothing to buy.
Onward, proud and peaceful commuter troops! Yours is a just and noble cause. Specialise, negotiate, delegate, innovate! Stand tall and facilitate! Help out here and there. Politely disregard the naysayers, the ideologues, the hypocrites. Keep the ball of prosperity rolling. Pay your taxes. Be a good friend.
Find a girl, settle down.
Mike Vickers, do your best! I promise to do my best.
As Brenda Vickers taps the trig, she notices that the stone balanced on top is weighing down a piece of paper — a photograph. She tugs it loose, glances — a grinning, grey-haired man with walking poles. A dead man. She thinks of her grandfather. Of Mrs McCready, too. Stuffs the photo in her pocket. Sorry, but not up here. Let the wind say his name instead.
A two-minute breather. She’s learning to love this arse-end of Scotland. She was afraid she might feel hemmed in, with
Glasgow sat sprawled between her and the Highlands like a vindictive troll, but these broad-shouldered, forest-skirted hills are a revelation: an unshowy, neglected, bleak Brenda-heaven. This fifteen-mile circuit is worth it just for the names: Murder Hole, Rig of the Jarkness, Loch of the Dungeon, Range of the Awful Hand. Sounds like a dinner party.
The Wigtown shop seemed to offer a new start — cold sweats and arcs of blood behind her. Last week’s debacle with James’ ex proved otherwise. Ah, well. James himself, at least, has come up trumps. He really was in love with her — Brenda — all along. The circumstances of their reconciliation — that letter sent by his little devotee, whom she later met over parkin and milkshakes — gives her a warm, cosy, sheltered-from-the-wind feeling. Maybe everything really does happen for a reason. She wouldn’t suggest that to James, of course — they try to avoid both laughing at each other and giving cause. There are frequent lapses, but that’s okay. They’re on the same side.
Brenda has heard that from this highest hill in the range you can sometimes see Snowdon, a hundred and forty miles to the south — the country’s longest direct sightline. The air is clear today, an ozone-tinted void, but not clear enough: she’ll have to make do with the Isle of Man, the Irish mainland and the peaks of Arran, each fifty miles away or more, etched along the shining, circling scythe of the sea.
Natalie blends the soup in short, weary bursts, keeping one eye on the baby monitor that will flash if Dan coughs or presses his call button. Carrot and ginger — his favourite. Chilblains on her fingers, knuckles that bleed from the slightest knock, a split on the tip of her thumb. Marks of her trade. And yes — a baby monitor, recommended by the nurse.
Learning to Die Page 22