As You Were

by Elaine Feeney

  The medical staff reassured Hegs at great length that his cancer was slow and he had plenty of time, though he should be more stable and they’d be closely monitoring his odd, but rapid, demise. They didn’t like the look of him. And more specifically, his colour was off. If there was anything at all that he could think of, he was to let them know, especially Ms Jo Moran, who seemed to be the most in charge, and constantly arriving, carrying a wedding edition of Cosmopolitan, if only to open the curtains and complain that they were shut, stylish in civilian clothes and a stethoscope accessory around her neck that cut off at her bony collarbone. The stethoscope seemed to be her most powerful fashion accessory, hanging like a necklace or other useless adornment, and she carried a large solitaire diamond on her ring finger, that was two point five carats, bought in one city and set in another, as you do, indeed as you do, Margaret Rose said, smirking at me.

  No. Hegs couldn’t think of another thing that would be causing him such a rapid demise, and they should/could/would have better things to do with their time and leave him be. For now, he was just grand, he wouldn’t mind if they stopped asking questions altogether, and maybe get him the pills. To take the edge off.

  But the more he said he was fine, the more the Hospital staff seemed to doubt him.

  Claire glanced out at them from underneath a long side-split fringe, soft chocolate brown, and while she had experimented well with honey tones, on close inspection they were brassy. She seemed tired, rather drained around the sides of the mouth that bent downwards, and the creases between her eyebrows were deep like an unformed W. When she flicked her hair back, there were significant greys above her temples. Her face had an odd serum-like texture, a duck’s moist eggshell, wide almond eyes held a long nose stuck between them, slightly lower down on the face than where a nose should sit, like a Picasso line drawing. But her skin, for all its pretty texture, had an unnerving whack of corpse about it, dark downy fluff growing impatient on her jawline. Her figure was clean, nipped at the waist with incompetently skinny calves. And every so often she would blink her eyes furiously, as though congratulating herself or suddenly remembering a personal triumph.

  Jane screamed, ‘Shutupshutupshutupshutupyoufucken

  bitchshutyourmouth.’

  ‘Why is Daddy mixed in with . . . well, with female patients?’ Claire asked loudly of Molly upon her return, holding out a kidney dish in front of her. Claire was getting flustered now at the screaming Jane, and darted her eyes around the Ward as though looking for an escape route, or another person to dump blame on. ‘Look here, it’s obvious we need a private room, in fact we deserve one, we’ve got private insurance, premium plan, and, really, if the Minister for Health could see this, you know, he’s very good friends with Daddy, despite, you know . . . being rivals.’

  ‘Opposition,’ Hegs said.

  ‘Yes, opposites. And we have . . .’ she said, ‘contacts.’ She waved a folded Sunday Independent at Moran as if this were the contact, or as though it would pay heed to Hegs and his shared doom/dorm. Claire Hegarty had an interesting, if naive, faith that highlighting the lack of facilities in the shoddy unhealthy service was going to do Hegs favours.

  ‘And my God,’ she said, ‘but surely there’s some sort of protocol?’

  ‘Protocol?’ Moran said, eyeing the paper.

  ‘Oh, anything could happen to him on this mixed ward. That’s why we don’t mix boys and girls at school. It’s very dangerous . . . and really,’ she lowered her voice, ‘he’s a government official, he’s doing his duty to – and for – the public sector. Bode you all well to remember that.’

  Hegs was a county councillor in a political party that was failing badly since it had destroyed itself and the country’s finances during a hedonistic (for some) Celtic Tiger. Defending himself, he wanted it known that starting out as a young politician there were not many alternatives in Ireland after the foundation of the state. It was really a frustratingly bi-partisan-imperial-theocratic-

  male-option, and he followed in his father’s footsteps. Centre or right of centre. But Hegs wasn’t awfully keen on us interjecting in his political monologues and ­countered it with a, where would you move to, love? (Love, ugh.) It’s not the done thing, he explained, just to party hop because the country was up shit creek, sure he hadn’t even been to the Galway Races, don’t mind ever indulged in a bottle of champagne or even a helicopter ride, and he had most definitely never received a brown envelope of any kind, but he had an allegiance to the party, because it was tradition amongst his people, and he was a popular choice in the local council elections, out west, past Galway city towards Connemara, further than Beyond Barna and just shy of Ellis Island. And what was I looking for? Surely not gender quotas. He was wary giving exact geographic coordinates. The Ireland apparently saved from colonisation. He cheered softly. Giving us all a fat thumbs-up, as though the colonisation were last week. And saved from Cromwell. Both thumbs up again. That part of west that was full of rocks and full up with sadness in the little sacks grown men develop under their eyes, the accumulation of tears they don’t cry as they walk along, shut down, like an out-of-season seaside café.

  But he was mistaken in his defence for I wasn’t judging his party allegiance.

  ‘You know, I could just take him to Lithuania,’ Claire said, labouring the could. ‘I will actually just take him . . .’ she said, as though freeing herself and suddenly excited, ‘just you all watch me. In fact I just heard on the radio, that’s where the best medical help is, and you get respite because really, this place is a joke. Daddy needs a private room. Now. Today . . .’ And she clicked her fingers.

  But nothing happened.

  ‘We’re doing our best,’ Molly said. ‘Your father gits a lot of minding, we’re keeping a close eye on him. Really no need to drag him out of the country, darl.’

  Darl. Eek. This would be official complaint Number 1.

  ‘But of course feel free to go to Lithuania, naw one will stop you.’

  Ms Jo Moran shot Molly a look. Claire curled the Irish Independent into her narrow hand again, and shoved it under Moran’s chin. ‘You really should put some manners on your nurses.’

  ‘Excuse me?’ Moran said, stepping back fast and putting her hand to her ear as though she had misheard.

  ‘I’m not looking for round-the-clock help,’ Claire said, backing off a little. ‘I’m a reasonable woman, nor am I looking for a one-to-one nurse staring in at him sucking on his ice-cream spoon. I’m looking for a private room –’ she took one big long inhale – ‘where I can shower and sleep, and a room –’ she took another inhale – ‘where Daddy can watch Prime Time with a little bit of peace . . . Now is that –’ and she slowed down and uncurled the paper, letting it fall from her hand – ‘is that really too much to ask for?’

  It appeared it was.

  ‘Well, you’re his daughter. Perhaps you know best, and in which case, take him to Lithuania if you like,’ Moran said, and snapping the last words, ‘off with ye both, see how far you get . . .’ and scanning the Ward, she turned on her heel and left curling her own Wedding Cosmo rapidly in her thin hands, its glossy pages filled with promises of all the mod cons weddings now enjoyed, fish ’n’ chip trucks, crisp sandwiches, vintage record players, barns, dress-up, sweet stands, Chinese lanterns.

  *

  I took a Lithuanian bus trip from Vilnius to the seaside town of Nida as a student and for the five-hour journey, an old man sat beside me holding a small glass jar of honey on his lap. Squeezed together on the seat, I noticed how perfectly straight the crease in his grey trousers was. He didn’t remove his colourful anorak for the entire trip, and he didn’t speak, not one word. When the bus stopped to allow us a break, the man remained all the while sitting perfectly still, as we all got off to stretch our legs and stare up at the acres of dying trees poisoned by the cormorants that were shitting on them.

  Later that evening, drinking local wine, I enquired of a man in a bar if this behaviour was part of l
ife, as he knew it here. My new friend, who had good English, told me this man was most likely gone into his head. This was a regular occurrence and happened often he said, as he gestured at me with his hand flat outstretched just below his forehead, to show me how someone lives in their head, as though the brain had permanently dipped down into the skull a little, bobbing in the fluid, just above the eyebrows. ‘We call it introvert,’ he said to me. ‘You know, how do you say it, trauma perhaps, you know, from all the years as a partisan, and all the years the boys were in the woods. Forest Brothers, hiding out or escaping and maybe, in the end, truly lost. Some, well, some never came back, you know? Sometimes people had nothing to come back to, no one, or no place. And even when they did return, most had stayed away, you know, on the inside.’

  The next day, at sunrise, I visited Thomas Mann’s summer house on the Curonian Spit. I couldn’t remain long inside the house – it was claustrophobic. I went on and wandered along the pine groves, over the sand dunes and eventually came face to face with a wild pig. We looked at each other and I stayed absolutely still until he eventually tired of snorting at me.

  I would have liked to escape there, live near the Mann house, hide out, and live out my life with a wind chime and pottery, drink mead, make mead, drink mead, repeat, but I couldn’t enter the sea there, there was no proper swimming, and I couldn’t live in a place where I couldn’t suddenly enter the water, to cool off, or at least know I could if I needed to, so that the water would hold me for a little while, allow me to float, alone.

  *

  On that rare occasion Margaret Rose had no visitors, Hegs engaged her in a little political discussion, while avoiding it entirely with me. Perhaps he was afraid I might ask him for something he couldn’t deliver, or afraid perhaps I’d bring up Anglo-Irish Bank, or worse, NAMA. Hegs took the politics for granted, and he told Margaret Rose that all his nods at consultants, who knew to offer praise for his soft-foam surface just laid in the local playground, were part of the game, and also thanked them for the praise of the footpaths, as he had them widened in his town and built a cute feeding bridge for the ducks over a miniature lake in the park. It was a town where many of the Hospital’s consultants and young careerists lived, a popular area amongst ‘blow-ins’ with its water and grey stone and farmers’ market and Atlantic spray. Hegs knew how to keep the younger professional voters sweet, he explained to Margaret Rose, winking at her, and of course it involved the obligatory funeral attendances, and he said he liked to visit schools, open a new library and complain about the blow-ins/strangers behind their backs, fill up some potholes, promise a path from here to there, push through the odd grant to an up and coming artist who maybe went to one of the local schools and was not too risqué. He wasn’t into art much himself, he confessed, but asked after my musical tastes, nodding at my headphones as though they were contraband, and after Alex’s profession, his people, where he came from. We spoke a little pidgin architecture. I said I liked fast buildings and fast songs. He said he loved song lyrics, especially country. Margaret Rose agreed about country music, she loved it too. Country music is popular in East Galway, more than West, they both agreed and I didn’t disagree, as we all wondered why that might be, but I liked lyrics too, I said. And I read a little poetry, the odd time, once or twice, you know, loved it in school. They knew. Nodding at my books. Hegs liked the poem about the daffodils and I said I liked the Heaney poem about the child dying but Hegs said they only read the British poets at school. And no, none of us could figure out the why of that.

  Hegs explained to Margaret Rose that he popped into the local funeral home just as the remains were about to be brought to the church – sure, otherwise he’d spend his whole life in a queue, and she agreed – and grab the hands of the mourners, but this had taken its toll, all the dead corpses and all the new births and the whining locals who wanted the path to circle the entire village and not just the private estates, or wanted braces for their children, or a free eye test, or a stairlift and some were mad enough to be looking for a cycle greenway, and not even a proper road in or out of the city. I tried to engage him more in politics, pushed him a little on planning laws and where the government could improve on housing, but he was suspicious of me, though both of us recognised it was a mess, especially the horrendous traffic in Galway, and the docks was in real need of some planning. A mess indeed, and I explained that all of my developments were abroad, and he nodded, relieved that I would make no requests of him.

  *

  Father used to drive like a lunatic around the docks. He’d chase off mercilessly at high speed, in tight situations, around the water’s edge, now with their new sprays of graffiti colours, bright bold colours, silver signage, fancy dentists, purples and royal blues with yellow egg-yolk splashes. Old contemptuous oil tankers used to dock there when I was younger with wispy blonde hair that I would suck in my mouth, attempting to nibble away the split ends. The tankers terrified me with their honks and bellows, big metal sea monsters, old robot giants in a sea war. Our gold car would semicircle the docks, and I’d panic, squeezed in the back seat, taking in fast breaths. I was afraid they could blow up, these oil tanks, if anyone decided to light up a ciggie; or that Father would just crash into the sea, finally having enough of the lot of us. I calmed myself thinking that if Father did veer off course, we’d be swallowed whole like the toy submarine that I played with in the large enamel bath, watching the air escape from its soft plastic belly as it dropped to the bath floor with an easy thud, eventually settling itself beside the melting Imperial Leather soap. The submarines came free in the bottom of a bag of cereal. I knew the air could suck our bodies to the water surface if someone managed to wind down a window.

  This never happened, our car never veered off course. Although the first time we went electric windows, I fainted.

  *

  That afternoon, Margaret Rose couldn’t concentrate the good or bad eye on her HELLO! She answered the phone twice and both times her caller hung up on her.

  ‘What are ya in far?’ she asked of me, gently.

  Aggressive. Months. Treatment. Time. Tell. Talk.

  ‘Chest,’ I said.

  ‘Thought so,’ she said, ‘terrible thing a bad chest. And yar so young . . . very unfair. Have ya always had the chest bad?’

  ‘You’re right, unfair, it’s more than unfair, isn’t it all so unfair,’ said Jane, scanning the room and then focusing her attention on something outside the window. ‘Just watching for the postman,’ she said.

  ‘Yeah. Always,’ I lied.

  I thumbed a pamphlet Molly had gingerly left by me. A smiling woman in many lavender hues, jumper slacks shirt, grandchildren at awkward angles to her chair, one on her lap, like on stage, not real life and she was holding a yellow flower, but nice graphics. ‘Dying is one of the few certainties of life.’ I shoved it to the middle of my Mindfulness book, one that I’d bought out of duty from those travelling salespeople who drop books and knick-knacks into the office staffroom.

  Observe your thoughts. Slow down. Watch what is happening inside your head. Fuck sake.

  ‘The chair . . . OK if I . . .? You know . . .’ Molly said at me, as she began moving furniture.

  ‘Oh yeah, yeah, sure, take it away . . . have it,’ I managed, motioning the departure of the chair with my right hand. I was defensive of the chair, considered it Alex’s and yesterday’s curve of his arse was still in the leatherette. He’d have to share my bed and strain at Frank Underwood on the clammy screen of my iPhone, compliments of Shane’s Wi-Fi. Watching Shane’s catheter bag was so public. I focused on it for hours. Sack full in. Sack full out. Clear to yellow.

  in/out/in/out/in/out/in/out/in/out/in/out/in/out/in/

  Claire snatched a baby wipe from her bag and lifting Hegs’s large hand she began to scrape out the underneath of his fingers and scrub the back of his palm.

  ‘It’s high time you met a man,’ said Hegs, quietly.

  Jane announced to the ward that she was
about to teach a Latin class and began. ‘Morior, Moreris, Moritur, Morimur, Morimini, Moriuntur,’ she sang out and waved her hands, conducting.

  After the hand cleaning, Hegs leaned over his nightstand, picked up his plastic mask and attached it around his head, snapping it onto his red face by its blue elastic. A sort of a getaway as a puff of mist escaped through the side holes and he settled the machine pug-like on his lap, snorting.

  I plugged in Ray LaMontagne, attempting a sleep. His raspy voice was so fuckable. It was a Cup of Teatime, which is very different to Actual Teatime.

  ‘I come to you last, see . . . last,’ Michal shouted over to me, over the rasping LaMontagne, winking as he pushed his trolley of goodies out in front of him with great importance. He was a poor replacement for the singer and his beautiful vocal chords, his denims, one leg thrust outwards sitting near a fountain or on a swing hanging off a large tree, looking sexily depressed, a mountain with snow, a cabin with a red door, crocuses making their way through and he’d pick one and put it in a vase on the centre of the table. Oh, and a log fire, and he’d pick up his guitar and sing ‘Shelter’.

  Michal rattled biscuits out of packets.

  I would never wank in here.

  It was full of interruptions.

  Besides, all self-pleasure had gone entirely astray since Magpie landed. Everything filled up with her plumage, the terrifying whiteness of her breast. I couldn’t bear to touch myself. Even brushing my teeth was nauseating.