The Late Hector Kipling

by David Thewlis

  Lenny lingers a while, saying nothing. I’m counting backwards from a million to zero. When that doesn’t work I turn onto my front.

  ‘Well,’ says Lenny, realizing that all the main points have probably been covered, ‘I’ll be off, then.’

  ‘You don’t have to,’ I say.

  ‘Yeah, whatever, Hec,’ he says and makes his way to the door. ‘Oh, by the way, Kirk went into hospital this morning.’

  ‘No!’ says Rosa.

  ‘No!’ I say.

  ‘Yeah,’ says Lenny, and starts to pick at his teeth. I found him collapsed in his flat. He’d been there for two days.’ His eyes fill with tears. So do Rosa’s. Mine, for some reason, do not. Why don’t mine? ‘Yeah, so now he’s in hospital.’

  ‘Oh fuck,’ I say.

  ‘Just thought you might like to know. Oh yeah, and your mum called again. Wants you to call her. And Eleni. That was Eleni just now. Your sister. The dentist. ‘And with this he opens the door and then slams it behind him.

  Rosa lifts her thigh up to my belly and snuggles her face into my neck. ‘Weird job,’ she whispers, ‘pulling teeth all day. Tiny fragments of the skull just peeping through.’

  ‘Yeah,’ I whisper and offer her my thumb to kiss; anything to prevent her from elaborating.

  I gave Rosa a lift home and took myself off to my dinner party, which was back at my place. Two boiled eggs and banana cheesecake. The wine flows and the company is delightful – it’s Mum:

  ‘Ever so smart he was, ever so smart. Lovely smell. You don’t often see men like that in Lancashire.’

  ‘Well, that’s fantastic news, Mum.’

  ‘I made him a ham sandwich and he had a little frolic with Sparky – Sparky adored him – and listen to this, he said it was a very rare piece and worth much more than what we were asking. I said, “Give over,” he says, “No, no, I’ll feel like I’m cheating you if I don’t give you more for it,” and he writes out a cheque for nine hundred pounds. Nine hundred pounds, Hector! Can you believe it?’

  ‘I can’t believe it, Mum. That’s amazing, I mean, you made a profit! Have you told Dad?’

  ‘Oh aye, I was straight on the phone to the hospital the minute the fella left. I mean he took it right there and then. He had a van out the front with a horsebox hitched to the back of it. We called in Barry from next door to give him a hand. I got straight on the phone to the hospital. I just got back from there now. He’s a lot, lot better. They say he can come home tomorrow.’

  ‘Mum, this is all just brilliant. I can’t believe it’s all turned out so well. You sound all happy again.’ I’ve got a big smile on my face, spooning in a mouthful of egg. Dad’s not dead. Dad’s not gonna die. What a magnificent son I am. If only they knew. If only I could tell them. One day, maybe, one day they’ll know. I’m smiling. Jesus, look at the breadth of this smile.

  ‘So what’s going on with this American lass?’ says Mum, suddenly sombre.

  There goes the smile. Bye.

  ‘Nothing, Mum, nothing’s going on with her.’

  ‘Hector, you told me only yesterday that you was in a bath with her.’

  ‘I never said I was in a bath with her.’

  ‘You said you was in her bath.’

  ‘Whatever.’

  ‘You was in her bath and there’s nothing going on with her? How do you make that out?’

  ‘It’s over, Mum.’

  ‘It’s never over, Hector. You behave like that and it’s never over. Never! Do you hear?’

  ‘Yes, Mum.’

  ‘Have you spoken to Eleni?’

  ‘Yes, Mum,’ I lie. I’m not really lying cos I’m gonna call her right after this. I really am, that was always the plan.

  ‘And what have you said?’

  ‘Her mother’s a lot better. She’s gonna stay out there for a little while and I’ve said I’ll go over. I mean now that Dad’s feeling better it’ll be all right to go and see her.’

  ‘Well, you do that. You fly out there and you look after her. I can’t believe that you’ve risked losing that girl.’

  ‘I won’t lose her, Mum.’

  ‘How do you know? You’ll lose her if you don’t change your ways. You’ll lose her if she finds out about all this.’

  ‘She won’t find out about all this.’

  ‘And you’ll lose her if you keep secrets from her. Secrets don’t like to be locked up. They’re like rats, they’ll bite you if you back them into a corner.’

  I tried to call Eleni. I tried every ten minutes for an hour. No luck. I tried to get the operator to put me through. No luck. About half-past ten Lenny returned with two suitcases, a large box of tools, wood, paint, panes of glass and a long tube of rolled-up plans. He laid it all out in front of the enormous ugly beige settee and said, ‘So I can do what I want to this, then?’

  ‘Absolutely,’ I said, and smiled.

  After that he wouldn’t talk to me, not another word. He wouldn’t even look at me. He was behaving like a silly, bald child, stomping around, banging cupboard doors, cooking up his pasta and totally ignoring me. I sat and watched him shovel it down. I asked if there was any left over but he just carried on eating. He’d made just the right amount for himself. Fucking hell! You’d think he’d caught me in the arms of his mother.

  12

  ST THOMAS’S HOSPITAL, LONDON

  All these tubes and wires. The blips and bleeps and clips and nozzles. The clinical minimalism of the fabrics and the machines. The frosted mask. The way the tape pulls at the skin. The flowers are starting to wilt and everything’s on wheels. The sum of all that must be inserted and drawn in the final throes. Please don’t let me die in a hospital. More to the point, please don’t let Kirk die in a hospital. Not in this hospital. I really don’t want my friend Kirk, whom I love intensely, to finish his life right here, right in front of me. And then it occurs to me that this would be preferable to finishing his life without me, or in the company of another, say. If he’s going to go, then better he goes in front of me. At least I’ll report his end with the appropriate ceremony. Of course I’m not happy about such thoughts but what can I do? I’m not happy anyway and thoughts just do as they please. Thank God I didn’t see Dad like this.

  This morning I was woken by the sound of laboured sawing. By the time I emerged from my room Lenny had already cut a perfect square into the back of the settee and was busy filing down the dovetails for the window frame. There was a faint whiff of sweat and putty.

  He kept his head down whilst I buttered my toast and prepared a coffee. When I asked him if he wanted one he looked over and shook his head. Oh well, it was a start.

  I took the phone into the bedroom and tried Eleni again. Nothing but static and formal electronic Greek.

  It was only when I asked him about Kirk that Lenny relented and mumbled the name of the hospital and the number of the ward. I asked him how he was and he said, ‘Unconscious.’

  ‘And what do the doctors say?’

  ‘They don’t know. He was almost dead when they brought him in. He’d had nothing to eat or drink for two days, and they don’t know.’

  ‘But do they think he’ll—’

  ‘They don’t fucking know!’ he screamed, and I couldn’t think of any more questions.

  I put on my Crombie and then my hat. I walked to the door, thought better of the hat, threw it into the bedroom, and set out for the hospital.

  Two nurses turn up with a trolley of towels and bedpans. One of them asks me what happened to my face and I say that I took a few blows whilst apprehending a mugger.

  ‘Poor you,’ she says.

  ‘Yeah, well,’ I say, ‘they’d made off with some old lady’s handbag.’

  She smiles and sighs. Her eyebrows are a model of concern. The other one just gets on with the pillows. They pull the screens around and ask if I’d care to wait in the corridor.

  I’m out in the car park smoking a fag. I keep pulling my shirt away from my burning nipple. Now and then I put my han
d inside and waft my fingers back and forth, and then I blow on it, but it does no good.

  I have Rosa’s number written on a scrap of paper. Originally she wrote it on my hip, in blood, but I worried that it might rub off in the night so I wrote it out on the back of a receipt. I’m looking at it now and feeling in my pockets to work out how much change I have. She looked into my eyes last night, just before she got out of the car, held my face in her hands, fixed me with her stare and whispered, ‘I love you.’

  ‘I love you too,’ I said.

  I’m thinking of calling her. I speak the numbers out loud. Long and solemn vowels, like it’s a fucking psalm. I whisper her name over and over. Somewhere in the distance I can hear someone screaming. That’s what scares me most about hospitals: you can always hear someone screaming. There’s the rattle of tools, the clang of the vending machines, the drone of the boiler room, and always, always, in some distant bed, the shriek of a departing coward let down by his faith.

  An ambulance flies through the gates, screeches to a halt and a flock of doctors race out to meet it. There’s some sort of human being broken into pieces beneath a dark wet blanket. Man, woman, boy, girl, it’s difficult to tell. It’s not the blood that disturbs me, nor even the flashes of blue. It’s the occasional bulbs of soft wet pink, shining through the black. It’s these glistening bubbles of cherry blossom that make me throw up all over my shoes. I wish I’d never looked. I wish all that had been withheld from me. I’d really rather not have to go through what’s left of my life knowing that all this can be reduced to that. To remains.

  I have no friends. Squatting here in the car park, this is what I realize. Everyone has gone. There is only Rosa now to smile at me. But then Rosa doesn’t know anything about me. Nor I of her. I have lost them all. I have been found despicable in the eyes of my loved ones. If I was as famous as Lenny all this would be in the papers. They’d have paparazzi in the bushes. Eleni would have been tracked down by some sweating hack with a phrase book and a Dictaphone. There’d be pictures of Kirk, smuggled out by the nurses, pictures of Dad, pictures of Mum, an artist’s impression of the big beige settee and what went on, and how, and why. And then, in their columns, they’d discuss what might be wrong with me and what was to be done. And I’d buy every single one of them, cos I’d really like to know. But I’m not as famous as Lenny, so I’ll just have to get by. I’ll just have to work it out on my own.

  I make my way back to the ward and the nurses tell me that whilst I was gone Kirk woke up momentarily; the first time since he was brought in. I sit at his side for an hour. I try to speak to him – the doctors say that it’s helpful if I speak to him – but what am I gonna say? Tell him what’s been happening? Tell him what he’s been missing? Fuck, he’s better off in a coma. I try to remind him of some old times but his eyes are shut tight and don’t even flicker, so I stop and just stare at the floor. No use in my being here. No use at all. Tick, tick. Tick, tick.

  ‘Hi, Rosa?’

  ‘Hector? How’s it going? What you up to?’

  I’m actually on my hands and knees, halfway under the bed, cos I’m not supposed to be using my phone on the ward, and I don’t want Kirk to hear me, just in case he’s having a crafty semi-conscious listen.

  ‘I’m down at the hospital looking after Kirk.’

  ‘Oh my God, how is the poor little guy?’

  ‘He’s unconscious. But anyway, listen, I thought maybe I could come over later. I mean Kirk’s mum’s gonna be here in an hour and then Lenny’s gonna visit him tonight. So I ... er ... I just wondered what you were doing and er ...’

  ‘I’d rather come over to your place. I feel happy at your place. I love it there.’

  It’s the sound of her voice. I love that as much as I’ve ever loved anything. I’ve never heard a voice like hers.

  ‘Shall I come round about seven?’ she says. ‘How’s seven?’

  ‘Seven’s good,’ I say.

  ‘OK, angel, I’ll be right there. Do you need anything?’

  ‘I need you,’ I say, and immediately wish that I hadn’t.

  ‘Aw, little angel,’ she giggles, ‘you are such a fucking angel.’

  I’m just putting my coat on and making for the door when I become aware of Kirk’s head shifting slightly on the pillow. When I look over it’s still again. I wait a few seconds and I’m just about to leave when Kirk’s blue eyes spasm and flutter, and eventually, a small liquid gash appears between the lids.

  ‘Mum?’ he whispers.

  ‘No. It’s Hector.’

  ‘Lenny?’

  ‘No, Kirk. Hector. It’s Hector.’

  ‘The doctor?’

  ‘No,’ I say almost losing my patience, ‘it’s me. It’s Hector.’

  ‘Hector?’

  ‘Kirk?’

  ‘Hector?’

  ‘Kirk, are you awake?’

  ‘Am I?’

  I kneel down and take his hand. ‘Kirk, mate. You’re awake. It’s gonna be all right.’

  ‘Where am I?’

  ‘You’re in hospital. You’re being taken good care of. I’m here, Kirk. I’m taking good care of you.’

  His eyes struggle to move around the room. At last they come to rest upon my face. ‘What’s happening?’

  ‘You’re recovering,’ I say, ’that’s what’s happening. You’re getting better.’ I squeeze his hand so tight that he has to move his arm to shake me off.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ he says, and a tiny puff of laughter escapes from his lips. ‘I really don’t think so. I think we can tot up the scores now.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘You won’t believe how big it all is.’

  ‘What’s very big?’

  He closes his eyes and stretches his jaw. His tongue is all white, his breath smells of ink. ‘It is very big. The thing you don’t know about.’

  I feel a little indignant, and shift on the stool. ‘What’s the thing I don’t know about Kirk?’

  ‘Exactly,’ croaks Kirk. ‘Good question. Best question.’

  ‘Kirk, you’re not making sense.’

  ‘No, Hec, that’s you who’s not making sense.’ And he smiles and leans his head to one side.

  A nurse marches up and takes his pulse. She smells of bleach and methane. She writes at length in a little blue notebook, stops, pauses to think and then writes a little more. And then off she goes. Perhaps she’s a poet.

  ‘Kirk,’ I say, laying my palm upon his brow, ‘have you seen something?’

  Silence.

  ‘Kirk, tell me what it is. What do you know?’

  ‘I know that all the lines collapse to the base, and all the shapes fly off to the sides ...’

  ‘What?’

  Silence. The sound of his dry tongue, peeling away from the gums.

  ‘And words ... mean nothing at all... so forget it.’

  ‘Kirk ...’

  ‘There are sparks . . .’ he mumbles, ‘concealed in the heart of the cream.’

  That’s what he said. That’s what he left me with. Cheers, Kirk, that’s cleared that up, then.

  BOX STREET, BOW, LONDON

  By the time I walk through the front door Lenny’s just putting the finishing touches to the window. He’s polishing the panes with a blue cloth, breathing on the glass and coaxing out the grease into an immaculate sheen. The frame has been painted beige to match the upholstery. In the meantime he’s punched ten thousand black hairs into the flesh of the fabric giving the whole thing an element of a constricted life. I must say, it’s looking good.

  ‘How’s it going?’ I say.

  ‘Fine,’ he says, ‘in fact you’ve arrived at the perfect time. I need you to give me a hand.’ And with this he moves to one end of the settee and beckons me to take the other. ‘Let’s put it over by that wall and stand it on one end.’

  ‘OK,’ I say, just so fucking pleased that I might just have my friend back.

  We lug the beast over to the opposite wall and stand it on its end. It’s then t
hat I notice the bathroom door leaning up against the wall.

  ‘So how is he?’ says Lenny.

  ‘He woke up for a few minutes.’

  Lenny’s face breaks open into a smile. ‘Yeah? Did he say anything?’

  ‘Well, he was kind of rambling.’ I take another look at the door.

  ‘I’ll go down there. Is his mum with him?’

  ‘Yeah. Er ... what are you doing with the bathroom door?’

  He walks over to it and runs his hand down one of the panels. ‘It’s OK, I’ll put it back on. I wanted to try something.’

  ‘What?’

  The telephone rings.

  ‘Aren’t you gonna get that?’

  ‘Er ... I er ...’

  ‘It might be Eleni,’ he says and glares right into the centre of me, right into the heart of the cream. ‘I think you should take it, don’t you?’

  ‘Take what?’

  ‘The call, bonehead.’

  ‘Hah!You’re calling me a bonehead?’

  ‘Hector, pick up the fucking phone!’

  ‘You’re the bonehead.’

  Lenny races across the room and picks up the phone. ‘Hello? Yeah, it’s Lenny. Yeah, he’s here, hang on.’ I walk over and he passes me the phone. ‘It’s your mum.’

  For a while I don’t say anything, but just hold it to my ear and listen to her crying. Lenny’s pulled out a Stanley knife and he’s cutting away the fabric from the base of the settee.

  ‘Mum?’

  ‘Hhhhecctooor.’

  ‘Mum, what is it, Mum? Is it Dad? How’s Dad?’

  ‘Hhhhecctoooor.’ Gasping. Gasping.

  Is it Dad? Is this the phone call I’ve spent my whole life dreading? Oh well, it was always going to happen. One of these days the phone was always going to ring and it would be either Mum or Dad and they’d utter the name of the other in the same sentence as ‘dead’. She can’t bring herself under control. I can hear her sniffing and trying to catch her breath. Oh my God, it must be Dad.