by James Ellis
He woke in the morning wearier than when he had gone to sleep. He looked to see if Karen was on her pillow but she wasn’t. He was alone in his bed and in the house. He went downstairs to the kitchen, opened another bottle of vodka and poured himself a large glass. He took it back upstairs and into the bathroom, where he ran a hot bath.
The almost boiling water further depleted any remaining energy he might have had and when at last he stood up, the glass empty, he felt the same dizziness he had experienced in the hospital. He looked fearfully at the mirror, but it had been coated by the steam and no reflection, man, animal or otherwise, was visible.
Still wet beneath his dressing gown, he went downstairs, made coffee from ground beans and ate croissants with butter and jam. Then he went upstairs, let the dressing gown fall and assessed his naked body. It didn’t please him. He’d lost muscle in his arms and shoulders and gained a roll of fat around his waist. He looked flabby, tall, lopsided and pale; a lumpy torso on gangling legs. His oversized head hung forwards from his neck, his huge moustache and uneven beard the only items on display with any vestige of virility. He frowned. He went to his wardrobe and put on a white shirt and a blue suit. He raked his hair back into a ponytail and waxed the ends of his moustache into pointed tips.
Then he ordered a taxi. He was going to the hospital.
It was the Borkmann journey in reverse, although this time he was neither squashed nor flayed against the roof. He sat in the back, content to let the passing scenery fill up his mind.
At the hospital Tom went to the main reception and showed them the discharge letter. They found his records on their computer and then directed him to the outpatient department’s reception on the next floor, where they found his records again and told him to take a seat until Doctor Muller was ready.
Someone had written on a whiteboard that Doctor Muller was running 20 minutes behind schedule. When, Tom wondered, had that been written? And how often was it updated? He sat down and surveyed his fellow outpatients. In the far corner, a large, elderly man, wrapped up in multiple layers of jumpers, jackets and overcoats, studied a puzzle magazine. His face was red and purple like a farmer’s face that had spent hours in windy fields and local pubs.
Opposite Tom, a teenage boy in a tracksuit was lounging next to his mother, who sat neatly in her light raincoat and whispered constantly to the boy, which seemed to irritate him. A thin woman sat beside him. A man in a cap dozed across the room in a chair next to a table piled with magazines, and two receptionists clicked and tutted behind their desk while they looked at their screens.
Tom stretched out his legs and folded his arms. How would he draw these people? The big, old fellow was clearly a badger, or maybe a bulldog, or possibly an old and aggressive goldfish. The mother was attractive, a swan or a deer, but her son was one of those tall, leggy pups, not grown into its body yet. The receptionists could be two newborn chicks tweeting in their nest. The rest of the outpatients were merely foliage to Tom.
He got up and poured water from a machine into a plastic cup. A harassed nurse appeared from somewhere beyond the reception desk and called, ‘David Miller? David Miller?’
The dozing man in a cap looked up, startled, and then stood up. He followed the nurse quickly with his head down and without looking at the rest of the cohort who were left behind, as if he were ashamed of his condition. Something vile, Tom thought, something vile and sore and dripping. He stood up and went over to Miller’s seat and looked through the magazines – fishing, fishing, knitting, fishing, fishing, knitting and a candle magazine. The blotchy farmer had done well to find the puzzle magazine.
It had become quiet. The mother had stopped whispering, the chicks had stopped twittering and then amongst the silence Tom heard a happy, musical laugh. He would know that laugh anywhere: Ward Manager Margarida Monroe.
Tom sat up and looked over his shoulder. Maggie was coming down the corridor with Bee. She looked younger, rounder and happier than he remembered. Her glasses were thicker. Her hair was longer. She was shorter and taller and wider and slimmer and bigger and smaller than he remembered. She looked more Maggier. Had he ever seen her before?
He stood up, suddenly self-conscious in his suit, and the image of his deficient body beneath his clothes, of his ludicrous moustache and unnatural height, made him wish that he was somebody else, anybody else, somebody suave and svelte and confident. She walked towards him, eyebrows raised, a wide smile on her face. This was why he had come. The hell with Doctor Muller and Karen and Lawrence and the whole lot of them. Prepare to be knocked up in the air.
‘Mister Hannah,’ Maggie said. ‘Come back to see us?’
Bee smiled too. ‘You look very smart,’ she said. ‘Been somewhere nice? Or going?’
‘Hello,’ said Tom. ‘No, I’m just here. Visiting. It’s my outpatient appointment.’ He could think of absolutely nothing else to say and was finding that speaking aloud felt strange. It was as if he were unused to the language, a savage brought to civilisation, dressed up in a suit and sent out to mingle with polite society. He stood there grinning and then stopped, conscious now of his broken tooth. Why had he not yet visited a dentist? He cursed himself. Bee and Maggie, however, continued to smile at him. Tom was unused to meeting people who were genuinely pleased to see him. Borkmann had said it was Darwinian, that people were genetically predisposed to avoid people who looked like Tom.
‘So, how have you been?’ said Bee.
‘Good,’ said Tom. ‘Very good. Very good indeed.’ He stopped himself before he added any more goods to the sentence.
‘Well, that is very good indeed,’ Maggie laughed. ‘Is this your first time back?’
‘Yes.’
‘You haven’t had your tooth fixed yet?’
‘No, not yet.’
‘How are you coping at home? Are you getting all the help you need?’
‘Not bad. You know… not bad. Could be better.’ He hoped that he was conveying the message that things were not good between him and Karen, that the children were like strangers and that he had a lot of time on his hands should Maggie ever wish to pop round.
‘I’m sure you’re doing fine,’ Maggie said.
Bee was beginning to edge away. ‘Well, good luck with your outpatient appointment,’ she said.
Tom wondered if they could smell vodka on his breath. Or perhaps it was the coffee and croissants that they didn’t like.
‘Wait…’ he said.
Maggie waited. Bee waited. Tom waited too, because like everyone else in the waiting room, or so it felt, he wondered what he was going to say next. But Maggie’s eyes were greener and larger and darker than he remembered and they were interrupting his thoughts. He had a sudden vision of looking into those eyes while she lay on a pebble beach, taking his weight on his arms so as not to crush her.
There he is.
Tom heard the words and jumped. They were like rifle shots. It felt as if the world moved beneath him, giving him a genuine sense that he was about to lose his balance because the planet was spinning too fast. He looked up. At the far end of the corridor, from where Maggie and Bianca had come, stood a fox, a cat and a hedgehog. They stood on two legs, as large as humans, clustered in the same pose as on his T-shirt, as on the picture in his house, except that instead of the Pelican, it was the always-angry restaurant owner who stood with them. She was pointing at Tom and the others were looking at him with a hungry curiosity in their eyes.
Bee said, ‘Are you all right, Tom?’
He looked down at her and then raised his head again and looked along the corridor. They were still there and Scraps was lighting a cigarette, leaning forwards and cupping the flame with his hands.
‘That’s not allowed,’ Tom said, although he was unaware he had spoken. He could smell the cigarette smoke. He could smell them all. He could even hear Billy chewing his gum.
Maggie turned to where Tom was looking and then back to him.
‘Tom?’
‘Thomas Hanna
h? Is Thomas Hannah here?’
He was being called by the nurse. Doctor Muller was ready to see him.
‘Tom? Do you want to sit down?’ said Maggie.
Tom didn’t want to sit down. He wanted to stand and to continue staring. They were not fading out of view. They weren’t vanishing when he blinked. No one was saying, ‘Wake up, Tom. It’s time to get up.’ He looked at his own wrist and pinched it as hard as he could. It was such a comical thing to do but it was all he could think of.
‘Tom, what are you doing?’
He pinched himself and it hurt and that was all that happened. The creatures remained. They were solid and they were there and they were casting shadows and leaving marks on the world. His world.
As if to prove the point, Plenty batted her pink ball into the air. She looked muscular and aggressive, and seeing her as big as a human frightened Tom – in the same way that seeing a lion prowling the corridors of the hospital would have frightened him. He was as much physically afraid of her, of the violence that emanated from her, as he was of her sheer impossibility.
The ball fell on the floor and rolled up to where Maggie was standing.
‘Is Thomas Hannah here?’ said the nurse again, looking at him now. ‘Are you Thomas Hannah?’
He felt Maggie’s hand on his. Her hand was smaller and softer than he remembered.
‘Tom, come and sit down.’
‘Look at this,’ he said. He stooped and picked up Plenty’s ball, and stood slowly and stiffly as if he were wearing a heavy backpack. The ball was wet and sticky. He shook it and the bell tinkled. He held it up to Maggie’s face. ‘Look.’
He’ s got my ball.
‘Tom.’
Tom released the ball and let it drop onto the ground. Drips of liquid splashed the floor. He looked at his hand and saw that it glistened.
‘That’s odd,’ he said. ‘I didn’t think she put the ball in her mouth.’
Maggie looked at his hand and he felt Bee’s touch on his arm. He was being guided towards the chairs. He looked along the corridor. They were watching him. Scraps threw down his cigarette. They were going to come to him.
Tom looked at Maggie and took in every detail of her face, of her hair, of the way she moved and looked and smelled and spoke. ‘I have to go now,’ he said. He stepped back, turned and walked away from Maggie and the reception area and the nurses and the outpatients and his cartoon characters who couldn’t possibly be there but were.
‘Tom.’
He picked up speed and, by the time he reached the glass fire door that led to the stairs, he was running. He barged through and ran down the steps and then walked briskly through the main reception. Outside he saw a bus about to leave and, risking cars and curses, he crossed the road and stepped on, giving the driver more money than the fare cost. He looked back at the hospital only once as the bus pulled away. There was nothing out of the ordinary to see. Nothing whatsoever.
‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Let’s go home.’
He felt as if he were emerging from a stupor. Slowly colour and sound and movement returned to the world: traffic, people, hustle and bustle, shouts and conversations, the jolting of the bus, people getting on and getting off. After half an hour or so, Tom stood up and, lurching from side to side with the bus’s movements, made his way to the doors and stepped onto the street at the next stop. He walked randomly from street to street, changing direction suddenly and keeping to open areas. He knew he was a long way from normal but he felt in control.
He found an empty pub down a side street, went in and ordered a pint and a whisky. He sat at the bar and watched the door, his heavy-lidded eyes seldom blinking. The barman kept looking at him and at first Tom wondered why, because he wasn’t drunk, he had paid, he was being quiet, keeping himself to himself. But in the mirror behind the bar, he saw an enormous man bursting out of his suit, dishevelled, pale, sweating and wildly hairy, his hair loose from the pony-tail, his moustache colossal. Who wouldn’t be looking at him?
He ordered another two drinks.
In the far corner was a table with two tired-looking street people sitting at it: an old man and a young girl. They were nursing an almost-finished bottle of lager between them. Tom watched the barman go over to their table. He was a fat man with heavy forearms. His stomach overhung his trousers. His shirt was stained.
‘Out,’ Tom heard him say to the girl. ‘This isn’t a refuge.’
‘I’m with him,’ she said.
‘Not in here you’re not.’
The barman pulled the girl and she stumbled and almost fell over. The old man tried to get up and Tom thought he might be coming to her rescue, but he got his words mixed up and the barman couldn’t understand him. ‘You can get out too,’ he said.
Tom watched them leave, huddled together like two monkeys who’d had a fright. The barman came back to the bar and started loading glasses into a washer. Tom looked at him and then around at the empty pub. He felt the thin line of anger extending upwards from his stomach to his brain, an anger he knew could expand and thicken until… what? Until he erupted? Was he capable of the sudden, savage assault that he was imagining, that would end only when he ran out of breath? He could already picture himself walking calmly from the empty pub, leaving his bloodied victim on the floor amongst the smashed remnants of his trade.
Nothing like that happened. He drank his beer and whisky and left quietly and peaceably. But as he stepped outside, something made him pause. It was a half-revealed memory, a light attempting to escape the black hole. It related to the moment the barman pulled the girl and she almost fell over.
A struggle.
Stumbling.
Not for the first time that day, Tom felt disconnected from his surroundings, as if he were watching his life from another place. Across the road he saw the girl and the man who had been evicted from the pub sitting on the kerb. They were simply sitting there, not talking, not doing anything. He went over, dug into his pockets and gave them all the change he had. The girl took it and looked at him and said, ‘Thanks. Are you all right?’
Careless of his suit, Tom sat down on the kerb. He stared at his outsize feet. His hair hung down, partially obscuring his face. He ran his hands through it and sighed. His moustache smelled of beer.
‘Probably not,’ he said.
The girl nodded. ‘Got a cigarette?’
Tom shook his head. ‘I gave up.’ He ran his tongue along his uneven teeth and added, ‘Weird day.’ What was he doing there, sitting on a kerb? He heaved himself back onto his feet and looked down at them and then back along the road that had led to the pub. It had been a weird day indeed. He nodded at the odd couple, who were watching him, and walked off. He was several steps away when the girl said, ‘Are you the one that fell off the roof?’
Tom stopped and turned back. ‘Pardon?’
‘Are you the one that fell off the roof?’
‘Why do you ask?’ he said.
‘In order to find out.’
‘Did you see it?’
‘It was on the news. Cartoonist Falls Off Car Park Roof.’
‘And you recognised me?’
She peered at him through narrowed eyes. ‘Yes.’
Tom pushed his fingers against his moustache, thinking. ‘Where did you see it on the news?’
‘On the internet.’
‘Really?’
‘Don’t you believe me?’
‘Of course.’
‘Do you think people like me don’t have the internet?’
‘I don’t think that at all.’
The girl tut-tutted. ‘That’s not nice,’ she said. ‘Not to believe me.’
‘I do believe you.’
Tom looked around. How had he ended up arguing? The street was deserted, the pub was quiet and it was getting dark. How long had he been in the pub? It all felt surreal and again he felt disconnected from events.
The old man stirred. He looked up at Tom. ‘She didn’t even know her own name,’ he said.<
br />
Tom looked at the girl.
‘Not me,’ she said. ‘The other one.’
‘What other one?’
‘You know the one,’ the old man said. ‘The one with those animals.’
Tom frowned. His mouth felt dry and sticky. ‘What do you mean? What animals? Can you see the animals?’
The girl ran her tongue around her lips and laughed. ‘Course we can. I’ll tell you something else, too. You might be the one that fell off the roof but there were two of you up there.’
Tom backed farther away. She and the old man cocked their heads to one side as Holly and Dan had done.
‘How do you know that?’
‘Listen,’ she said. ‘Can’t you hear him calling you?’
‘Who?’
‘Give me a cigarette and I’ll tell you.’
Tom turned and walked away. Who said there was no problem too big it couldn’t be run away from? Compartmentalise. Deny. Dismiss. He kept walking, putting distance between himself and whatever-they-were sitting on the kerb. He didn’t know what would be worse: if he looked back and they were still there, or if he looked back and they weren’t.
He walked until his throat stopped throbbing and his hands stopped shaking and then he searched for a familiar street, all the time expecting to hear Plenty’s ball rolling along behind him, or feel the beat of the Pelican’s wings above his head, or see Scraps and Billy leaning on a wall in front of him, or feel the heavy hand of the always-angry restaurant owner fall on his shoulder.
You might be the one that fell off the roof but there were two of you up there.
It was evening when Tom arrived home. Where had the day gone? A purple gloom had settled on the cul-de-sac and the light from the houses and street-lamps appeared diffused, as if covered by a damp mist. He unlocked the front door and pushed in, kicking off his shoes and throwing his jacket on the banister, thinking only of loading up with alcohol and slumping in an armchair. But he heard voices in the living room. He was so used to living in an empty house that he was unprepared to find Karen, Holly and Dan at home. He looked in on what appeared to be a perfectly normal domestic scene.