‘I knew it.’ She smiles.
‘You could see it in my eyes?’
‘No,’ she says. ‘I could see it in his.’
I head through the catacombs of the hospital and into the chapel. The seascape is still looming; the sage curtain looks like it has something awful hiding behind it. Lloyd is in there, sitting on one of the woolly chairs. He has his back to me and his head in his hands.
‘Hi,’ I say.
‘Oh, hi,’ he says, turning round. He’s in long shorts and a T-shirt and those same trainers, which are not quite so white today. His Puffa jacket is squatting on the back of the chair next to him.
‘Do you think he’ll be OK?’
‘I don’t know.’
I sit down on the coatless chair the other side of him and sigh. ‘I don’t know what to do or say,’ I venture. ‘Last night was almost like a party and now …’
‘I know.’
‘He’ll be OK,’ I say. ‘He has to be.’
‘Let’s hope so.’ Lloyd looks at his watch as though he has a flight to catch. Perhaps he has. Perhaps he’s desperate to get back to the other side of the world. To sunshine and his kids and wife and away from the dad he doesn’t like too much. Away from all this hurt and drama.
‘What date are you supposed to be going back to Australia?’
‘I haven’t booked a return flight yet. I was going to see how things go.’
‘I see.’
‘I can’t stay too long, though, you know.’ He takes his head from his hands and looks at me. His eyes are all red; his face looks like a crumpled cushion. ‘I have a course starting next Wednesday. Six people. Extensive dive course with a three-night trip to the Reef at the end of it.’
‘Sounds great,’ I mutter. ‘Hopefully there’ll be good news and you’ll be back way before then.’
‘Yes.’
‘Thank you for visiting him,’ says Lloyd, looking at me. ‘All those nights. You didn’t have to.’ He makes it sound like it’s final, like there will be no more visiting. Like it’s over. It’s not over! I want to scream. He’s going to be OK!
‘I wanted to. I’ve liked sitting on my chair in the ward and being with Mac,’ I say. I realize there’s a single tear hesitating in the corner of my left eye. I sniff it away and attempt a smile. ‘And like Mayo in An Officer and a Gentleman I had nowhere else to go.’
‘What?’
‘Oh nothing. Film stuff,’ I say. I have clearly lost my mind.
‘I’ve seen that movie, too, you know,’ he says. ‘One of Dad’s favourites, right?’
I nod pitifully. I feel I’m being told off for my feeble, incriminating attempt at a private joke and quite right, too. Despite Lloyd saying he liked me a little – though that could be a lie – anything that reminds him of my affair with his father must sting. ‘He’ll be OK,’ I repeat numbly.
‘Yeah.’
It’s weird how Lloyd and I are two strangers worrying over the fate of a life we have known two separate halves of. Me: the young Mac, the maverick King of Campus; Lloyd: a dad, a whole different kind of man altogether. We cannot relate to each other’s experiences and the gulf between us is massive. Yet, here we are, side by side on woolly chairs in a plastic chapel.
I realize I don’t feel good. I wish I did knit, so I can distract my hands, which are shaking slightly and rubbing at my sides like wobbly hams.
‘Yes. Well, I’m going to go out for a bit,’ says Lloyd, standing up. ‘Walk around London, see a few sights. I can’t handle it in here any longer.’ He looks around him. The cross on the curtain. The laminated psalms, stuck on the wall with Sellotape. ‘I don’t like hospitals.’
‘Well, no …’ I say. I’m not sure how he can go wandering round London staring up at buildings and ooh-ing and aah-ing when he doesn’t know if his father will live or die, but he will be called, won’t he, and he’ll come back, unless he gets really spooked and by the time Fran calls him he’s on a plane eating nut-free snacks and settling down to the latest blockbuster …
We swiftly shake hands like we are at the close of a business meeting flogging paper supplies or something and he is gone and I am grateful, for Mac’s sake, that his lost boy came back. Mac saw his son, he saw his grandchildren. There had been a bedside moment to treasure and replay and if Mac can’t then I will replay it, in my mind, for him.
Oh God, am I thinking he won’t make it? I slump further down in my chair, at a loss for what to do with myself. I clearly can’t be trusted with my own thoughts. There’s a noise behind me, someone else coming in. I get up; let a real person use this room properly, I think. I’m an imposter; I’m just a woman potentially grieving for a man she had an affair with thirty years ago. I don’t know what I’m doing.
‘Arden.’
It’s James. ‘They told you?’
‘Yes. I came here early today, just been showing a house. An old wreck, I’m not sure anyone will want it.’ He comes and stands next to me, his brow furrowed. ‘Will Mac be OK?’
‘They don’t know.’
He nods. ‘Shall we go to the café?’
‘Yes, please,’ I say with relief.
I toy with sponge and consider cream cheese frosting, but my slice of carrot cake goes largely untouched. I sip at my tea but it brings me no comfort. I just want Mac to be all right. I don’t want this to be the end; I want to know what happens next and I’m willing it not to be something bad. James and I don’t say a lot; it’s just nice to be together. And the sounds of the café are a buzzing, cheerful backdrop to our uncertainty and worry. Not cancelling them out, obviously, but providing a happier slice of life: warmth, chatter, the hiss and steam of the coffee machine; bickering women behind the counter shouting to each other about the whereabouts of the ‘sliced white’. Life is going on regardless, always just going on.
‘How long shall we sit here?’ asks James eventually. ‘We’ve already been here an hour and a half. They’ll have to kick us out at some point.’
I smile and lay down my fidgety spoon. ‘Yes, they might. I suppose we ought to go fairly soon.’
‘Do you want me to walk you home?’
I’m about to say ‘no, thank you’ but I change my mind.
‘Yes, please. Just ten more minutes, though? Just in case we hear?’
‘OK.’
We step outside the hospital. The night is coal black, the drizzle unremitting. The same as any other unremarkable British winter night, really, but the world looks slightly different when you fear someone you have loved may not be in it for much longer.
James walks me home. I wave goodbye to him from the front door as he walks up the street and I wonder, should Mac not make it, if I would still see him. Probably not, is the answer, but I don’t want to think about that, or indeed about Mac not making it. I’ve got a headache. I close the door and go to the kitchen where I take four halves of chalky paracetamol, as they have broken and splintered in their blister pack at the bottom of my bag, and go to bed.
NOW
Chapter 27
It isn’t the best timing, I think, as I try to drink my tea the next morning. I have a thing today. A leave-the-office thing – a rare treat, usually. I have to travel to Richmond and check out a three-storey family mansion we may do a week’s shoot at, for a Coppers episode which will feature domestic violence. I have to be cheery all day. Make notes. Check power points and access. Drink lots of hot drinks made for me by a woman in a jolly print Boden skirt with a matching scarf. I don’t know how I’m going to get through it. I’ve packed tissues and mascara and the darkest sunglasses I own, not that I’ll wear them as it’s another dull, charcoal-grey day. I wish I could stay in the office and spend the day hiding behind my PC and all my junk.
Mac survived the operation – just – but is in a coma; I called the hospital first thing and some faceless person, with not the greatest bedside or consoling manner in the world, gave me the news whilst the voice of another person shrieked ‘How long will you be, Sheila?’ i
n the background.
I walk to the tube. The word ‘coma’, when the horrible staff member said it to me, like she was simply declaring Mac had gone off on a walking holiday in the Lake District or something, chilled me to the bone, not that I’m an expert on them. All I know of comas is the movie Coma, which was terrifying, and that some people are in comas for years and years and then wake up, twenty years later, and everyone around them has got old and they don’t know what’s going on any more and they have to learn all about the new technology and stuff. Or, they don’t wake up.
I’m utterly petrified. I have on my swishing skirt, my black gloves and my black New Look coat (the style from the forties and launched by Dior – full skirts and cinched-in waists – not the high street shop) and try to style out my fear and my worry. Sometimes Mac used to say to me, ‘What would Katharine Hepburn do?’ She was his favourite of all the feisty, plucky Hollywood heroines and occasionally this was his mantra. I’ll give it a go today. I’ll try to emulate Ms Hepburn’s no-nonsense, keep-going, independent spirit but it will take everything I’ve got.
I laugh at the twitterings of three-storey Boden woman, accept and drink endless cups of tea, measure up doorframes and count electric sockets. Tears are behind my eyes the whole day but I ignore them. I return to the office to hand in my notes to Nigel, like homework. He’s on the phone and does that condescending nodding thing, holding his arm out for the file, too important to say ‘thanks’. At five o’clock, when I come out into the tiny car park, James is waiting for me.
‘Hello?’ I say. I’m pleased to see his face but really surprised. ‘How do you know where I work?’
‘Coppers, you said, and I was in the area so I thought I’d meet you. I hope I haven’t stepped into some kind of stalker territory?’ He looks worried.
‘No, no, not at all,’ I say. ‘How did you know what time I’d come out, though?’
He shrugs. ‘I didn’t. I just thought I’d wait around. I’m hungry,’ he says. ‘Shall we go and get something?’
‘OK,’ I say, ‘let’s try that new burger bar on Colman Street.’ Typical man, I think. Everything revolving around their stomach. I’ve barely eaten all day and am not sure I could manage even a couple of chips, let alone a burger, but I could do with the company.
‘I phoned the hospital and Fran told me about the coma,’ James says, as we walk.
‘What did she say his chances were?’ I ask. ‘The woman I talked to didn’t seem to know.’
‘Fair to not great,’ says James. ‘Fran didn’t seem to know either. Are you OK?’
‘Not really,’ I say.
‘Me neither,’ says James. ‘I like the old boy. I don’t want him to die.’
‘Don’t even say the words, James.’
‘Sorry.’
We keep walking. We’re in the park now. It’s cold. My work bag is bashing against my leg. The same spot each time: upper right thigh. I will have an almighty bruise there tomorrow but I don’t care. I relish the comforting, rhythmic thwack thwack thwack of the pain. It keeps my mind off everything.
‘How’s your job?’ asks James, an attempt at deflection, I know. ‘You said there aren’t many thrills. You don’t enjoy it?’
‘Not really,’ I say.
‘Why not?’
‘I’m bored, I guess. Unchallenged. A colleague has told me about a position that’s come up in the script department. I’m thinking of applying but I’m not sure if there’s any point.’
‘Why not?’ he asks. James the Direct again. ‘Would you like to work in the script department?’
‘Well, yes, I would. The position’s for a reader. I think I’d enjoy it.’ My voice is flat, I feel cold and sick inside. Mac is in a coma.
‘Then why not apply?’
‘I’m scared they’ll say no.’
‘Yes, they might, but they might also say yes. What have you got to lose?’
My safety, my boring monotony that I have been wrapping round me like a blanket, I think. For God’s sake! I know James is trying to take my mind off it, but Mac is in a coma!
We walk past The Parade. The kebab shop is surprisingly busy for this time of day and there’s a scrum of schoolchildren outside Tesco; skirts rolled up, socks rolled down, scuffing shoes, the odd swear word. One of the girls drops a packet of sweets; I pick it up and hand it to her. ‘Thanks,’ she mutters.
‘You’re welcome.’
A telly in the hi-fi shop window is playing an old movie. It’s one of those massive ones with the whole HD thing going on; you can see every pore on Robert Redford’s face. He’s drunk at the end of the bar. He’s asleep and looking absolutely beautiful. I stop to look at him, my bag thwacking to a stop against my leg. This would be a good time to cry, but I’m not going to.
‘You might need to prepare yourself,’ says James, and he doesn’t say anything more but I know exactly what he means.
‘I don’t want to be prepared,’ I say. ‘Look, can we swerve the burger bar, go to the hospital instead?’ I ask him. ‘I just need to be there. The café does toasted sandwiches?’
‘Oh, I love a toasted sandwich,’ says James. ‘Let’s do it.’
I have cheese and tomato and James has ham and cheese and I have a tea and he has a hot chocolate. The ladies behind the counter now call me ‘ducky’ and James ‘pet’. We have virtually moved in, after all. After we’ve eaten, I check my mobile phone but there’s nothing from Fran. After we’ve finished our drinks, James gets a call on his.
‘Oh God, Arden,’ he says, slipping the phone back into his jacket pocket, ‘I’m so sorry to do this to you again, but I’ve got an emergency second viewing and I really have to go. Will you be all right? What will you do, stay here?’
‘I’ll stay for a bit,’ I say, ‘nothing much to go home for. Television, bed. Nothing.’
He stands up, pushes back his chair. ‘Sorry,’ he says again, then he hesitates. He looks at me, his gaze steady. ‘What did Mac think you’d do with your life?’ he asks.
This is a bit random. ‘What do you mean?’
‘When you were with him, all those years ago, that photo … When you were young. Did he see this as your life, going to work, coming home again? Doing nothing? Did you?’
‘He thought I’d have a brilliant life,’ I say, and a Bigger Love, I think. ‘But things happen. Like my ex-husband. Like normality.’ Like real life that sometimes has no brilliance or sheen, it’s just life …
‘There’s still time,’ James says.
‘Is there? Time for what?’
‘To do exciting things, new things, fall in love …’
‘Yeah, right,’ I say, remembering Julian said something equally ridiculous about going out looking for love, ‘like that’s going to happen!’
I look at James and pull a face. He pulls a silly one back at me, then smiles. We look at each other for a while, and then I look away and he leaves the café, waving cheerily to the ladies. I push what’s left of my sandwich around my plate, like it’s a packed bus in slow-moving traffic.
When I emerge from the double doors of St Katherine’s entrance, I am surprised to spy Dominic hobbling in through them, on crutches.
‘Dominic!’ I am pleased to see an open and friendly face untouched by life’s misery.
‘Hey, Arden! What are you doing here? I’ve been a bad boy – I got the cast wet, messing about with a girl and a bottle of champagne, you know how it is. I’m coming in to get it changed before the clinic closes.’
‘I’m visiting someone,’ I say, my heart breaking. And, as I’d quite like to be swallowed back into the warmth and buttery light of the hospital, I add, ‘Do you want me to come in with you or anything?’
He checks his watch. ‘Nah, you’re all right. I’ve got a girl – a different one – meeting me in there. I met her at the last fracture clinic.’
‘You old rogue,’ I say, mimicking a Dominic-esque cheeriness I’m not feeling.
‘Yeah.’ He shrugs. ‘I probably am too o
ld for all this nonsense, but there we go. How’s Becky? You spoken to her today?’
‘Today? No, but she’s fine, I guess,’ I say.
‘I hope so. She’s all right, then?’ I notice he looks quite earnest, for Dominic.
‘Well, yes, as far as I know. I haven’t seen her since that night at the bar.’ Dominic has an even odder look on his face. Concerned; a very rare look for him. ‘Why, shouldn’t she be?’
‘You do know about her relapse?’
‘Relapse? What on earth are you talking about?’ My heart starts to race.
‘She’s had a bit of another breakdown. Because of the attack.’ Dominic must know from my face that he’s completely lost me now. His turns pale. ‘Shit, you don’t know, do you?’
‘No,’ I say, shaking my head. Attack?
‘Christ, Ardie. Just over a year ago Becky got mugged on the way home from work. She got jumped from behind and wrestled to the ground, by two men, all for her mobile phone.’
‘Oh God.’
‘She broke a rib. Was severely traumatized for ages. I think it’s PTSD, myself. Surely she must have told you?’
‘No, she didn’t.’ Mugged, a broken rib, severely traumatized …? No, she didn’t tell me, and as I am processing this news I fold up inside because I know why. Of course I do. Because since I bumped into her that day in M&S eighteen months ago I have not only kept her at arm’s length but actively pushed her away. Why on earth would she tell me? ‘I need to call her, I need to go to her,’ I say. I am agitated, totally bewildered. She told me a lie about her mobile phone rather than share this with me. All this has happened and I didn’t even deserve to know. I am still the same selfish, terrible Arden.
‘You can’t,’ says Dominic. ‘Not unless you get on a plane to Tenerife. She’s gone to her cousin’s apartment for a few days. That place helped her when it happened. She went there for three weeks. You really don’t know any of this?’
‘No.’ I am more ashamed than I have ever been. ‘I’ll call her,’ I say. I am already striding away from him, if you can call it that – in truth my legs can barely hold me up. ‘I’ll call her.’
You, Me and The Movies Page 30