by Adam Thorpe
‘What time was it?’
Why should that matter? But it’s what you ask. You want to lock it down.
‘Around four o’clock? Four thirty? I’m scared,’ Paul adds as if amazed. ‘So they tap my feet and I can’t feel them. I’m blindfolded. I won’t be able to read the ground.’
You won’t be able to walk at all, Sheena thinks, but all she says aloud is some drivel about it being early days and so on. She has never known him talk for so long. He’s probably used up more words with her in twenty minutes than over the last ten years. Half of it mumbled, as if he’s on medication. Morphine, maybe: there’s a drip feeding into the veined back of his hand, which makes her feel whoozy. Or some kind of uppers that have brought him out of himself. Even after her boob op (silliest decision ever), she felt high from the anaesthetic for hours, made amazing plans for her life, told the doc he was an angel in disguise. Just chemicals. Better than booze.
She goes on holding his hand. It feels like it has been in the fridge. Warm it up, warm it up. As bad as Gavin’s, God forbid. She wonders why he doesn’t paraglide barefoot. Presumably the landing is too tough on the feet, even for a barefooter. She can’t really ask, not now.
His face peeps above the sheet and blanket like a little boy’s, very pale under the tan.
‘You never told me you went paragliding,’ she says.
‘I knew you’d make a fuss.’
‘Did you?’ She gulps. ‘I mean, you knew that I’d make a fuss?’
(Which meant, You actually care what I think?)
He lies there, as if thinking about it, not looking at her but staring up at the ceiling as if it is the sky. It is hot in the hospital, the sun pouring in. There is a lot of noise coming through the door, like some continuous wild party, with the medical staff shouting and laughing, ever so jolly it sounds. And crashes of metal things, squeaks and bangs. Ever so jolly. His face makes little spasms. Flashes of pain. Everything is delicate. Almost religious.
‘How’s your man flu, at least?’
He smiles briefly. A lovely smile, affects his whole face. ‘Great thermalling but then the wind got jumpy,’ he murmurs, so she has to lean closer. ‘My thinking was haphazard. Chas had copped out. He was out of his harness. His mind is very honest.’
There is a pause because Sheena feels love for him flood her insides right up to her throat. She wishes she hadn’t gone with Gavin. That was her swansong. With Gavin it was a total miscalculation, got sucked in. Now it is all Paul Cannon.
He is in a special room three floors up, with high-tech equipment everywhere and two drips, a monitor and, of course, a catheter. At least it’s warm. His X-rays are in a big brown envelope on a trolley, and she looks at them, heart pounding with happiness. He’ll be all right. The nerve isn’t completely severed; it’ll grow back again, like a stalk. If he is careful. And he is encased in a spinal brace, so he can’t not be careful. It itches, he says. But not my feet. I can’t feel my feet, itchy or not. His morale goes up and down, maybe the morphine or whatever kicking in and out.
His ex-wife doesn’t know about the accident, not yet. Maybe she’ll never know. Israel’s a long way away. He mumbles on; she listens, also relieved his ex-wife wasn’t contacted. The friends were, though. What the heck. The hang-gliding fraternity. She says she’s never done anything scary in her life. The scariest moment in her life was seeing Gavin naked in her fur coat, but she doesn’t tell him that.
He says you’ve no idea how free you feel up there.
She can see the spine snaking up on the X-ray, its vertebrae like stacked tea cups ready to fall. He shows her where the crushed vertebra called L1 is: a bit flatter than the others, that’s all. She expected worse: splinters and cracks and stuff. She screws up her face in imaginary pain. It might have been higher up, affecting his arms, his neck. She has no idea whether it affects the willy, whether it paralyses the willy, blocks all those feelings of pleasure. She doesn’t care, not for herself. Only for him.
‘I’m trying to send these kundalini energies down,’ he says.
She nods. She likes the idea, though she’s never been into alternative medicine. Better safe than sorry.
‘From your India days?’
‘Oh, don’t talk about India.’
Stupid of her. His face purses up in pain. She squeezes his hand then bends towards him and kisses his forehead and lays her cheek against his for several moments. She feels his hand on the back of her neck, stroking it.
‘You made me chuckle,’ he says. ‘Igal the plumber, fantastic with leaks.’
‘Did I?’
‘That’s when I fell for you. Hadn’t occurred to me before, to be honest.’
‘I didn’t mean to make you chuckle.’
‘That’s exactly it.’
There is salt on her tongue, suddenly. Either his or hers. Doesn’t matter. Mingling.
‘Lonely hearts both,’ he murmurs as if mind-reading.
Then a nurse comes in.
‘Oh,’ says the young nurse. ‘Hiya. All right then? Don’t let me stop you lovers. How’s it going today, Paul?’
Sheena sits up and smiles at her lover. The floodwaters are breathable. They are leaping fish in the floodwaters, leaping up and out and into the wind. Wild swans. Great white wings of swans. Her lover is telling the pretty young dark-eyed Asian nurse how he is.
‘To be honest, I’m annoyed. I’m kicking myself.’ He suddenly looks stricken. ‘You know, I was always quite cautious. I wish it was Friday morning and I’d decided not to go. I wish a lot of things.’
The lovely smooth-skinned nurse is taking his pulse. Bound to be from Sri Lanka or somewhere else paradisal, originally. The nurse says, ‘Cautious men don’t jump off cliffs. They keep their feet on the ground. They’re boring.’
He smiles, looking at the nurse. She smiles back, gently placing his wrist back on the sheet.
A more senior nurse – she is older, anyway, about Sheena’s vintage – comes waddling in to see how things are, and her plain age-swollen face makes Sheena unpleasantly aware of her own seniority. ‘Oh,’ says this nurse, whose belly is prominent under her blue top, ‘I know they’re a bit naff, but I love Ferrero Rocher.’ The pretty nurse has left.
‘Have one,’ says Sheena sharply, ‘if that’s what you’re angling for.’
‘You’re spoiling uz, Mr Ambassador,’ the nurse quotes in a fake French accent. Stupid cow.
Sheena thought the chocs were posh. Not too pricey, but posh. The overweight nurse takes three, of course. Fat and getting fatter. Should know better. ‘I brought the paper,’ she says, dropping the Daily Mail on his blanket. ‘Its owner has just left us.’
Released? Or dead? Sheena frowns at the paper, wondering about hygiene. It looks creased and soiled. She didn’t have time this morning to look at hers.
The nurse folds her arms. ‘Lincoln’s in it today. You are from Lincoln, aren’t you?’ Paul nods. ‘Well, you’re in it today, in the paper. Lincoln. Young teenager gone missing, along with her dog. Can you imagine the parents? A few days ago now. Blink and you miss it, but you’re on the map. Even Lincoln!’ Paul thanks her but she doesn’t go. ‘Lunch,’ she adds, ‘is classic lentil roast or pork pie.’
‘Classic lentil roast,’ says Sheena too quickly.
The nurse looks surprised. ‘I can see you know what’s good for him. Cauliflower or chips?’ ‘He doesn’t eat meat,’ Sheena explains. ‘Cauliflower and chips,’ says Paul. The nurse nods and says, smiling, ‘How does rhubarb crumble and custard grab you for dessert?’
‘Oh,’ Sheena says, ‘I think I’m going to, what’s the word, admit myself. Just for that.’
The nurse doesn’t find this funny and leaves them in peace. She and the pretty one probably wash his nether regions. Shut up! Thoughts! Of course someone has to!
‘Who’s naff, then?’ says Sheena, smiling at him through a mash of silly interior voices. It is a little comic episode they have both shared.
He stares at her. ‘Who s
ays I don’t eat meat?’
I’m kicking myself. Christ, he’s probably paralysed. It takes time to absorb. It is from another world. Like watching the nine o’clock news and then the news appearing all around you for real.
‘I assumed it.’
‘You’re kind of right,’ he says. ‘I like chicken, though. They usually bring round this form with boxes to tick. Probably run out, like they run out of nurses. Staff shortages.’ Then he says, a bit like a teenager, ‘I’m thirsty, like really suddenly?’
She hands him the glass. If he doesn’t get better, he’ll need shoes even less. Will his feet feel the cold even less? Of course he’ll get better. Pick up thy bed and walk. Just take bloody care in the meanwhile.
He dribbles from the corner of his mouth as he drinks and she isn’t sure whether she ought to pull out a tissue from the box and give him a wipe. Instead she takes another look at the X-ray. She turns it upside down. The spine has exactly the same slow curve as Totter Hill like that: the L1 vertebra is roughly where her shop is.
‘I always wanted to go to Queenstown,’ he murmurs.
‘Where’s that? South Africa?’
‘Otago in New Zealand. Probably the best paragliding spot anywhere. To jump off a mountain in Otago. Snowy mountains around a blue lake on the edge of the world. You can’t hang around for things until it’s too late,’ he adds. Was he looking at her meaningfully? He’s so pale that it’s like a stocking over his face.
‘I thought Lincolnshire was the edge of the world,’ she says, which isn’t helpful. She picks up the paper. ‘But now we’re in the Mail. Do you want me to find it?’
She rustles it as you do but he shakes his head. She stands up, drops the paper on the chair and goes over to the window. Little Portakabins down below, like a shanty town, gleaming in the sun. Trees that look lost, sandwiched between the hospital grounds and what looks like a retail park. The usual mess. Swallowing everything up. The big names eating away at their efforts. She’s never liked Nottingham anyway. Robin Hood my foot. A helicopter passes in the far distance like a bee.
She turns round. He is looking at her again, his chin shiny. She knew it. She knew he’d be looking at her.
‘Perfect day,’ he says. ‘Look at it. Perfect blue perfection of bloody sky. Not a cloud. You’d see the curvature of the horizon if you were up there. Infinity of blue. How many times is it ever that?’
She turns back to the window. He was looking at the sky beyond her head, in fact. That’s where he belongs.
‘Hardly ever,’ she says out loud. ‘To be honest.’
10
CHRIS
17 August 2012
The bells ring after lunch for the office of None. I love you, Lord, thou art my strength. He raises his head skywards as they leave the chapel. A few fleecy clouds; mostly sunny. Normal service resumed for August, at last. The morning was cool and clammy from a sea fret that hid the surrounding fields then lifted in a few minutes around midday. They are twenty miles from the sea.
An afternoon of humble labour awaits him. Picking blackberries, on Brother Barnabas’s orders. Yesterday it was up the ladder in the apple orchard. He has thick gloves, a large basket with a chequered cloth folded inside, a beech-handle sickle and an ancient chunky pair of steel secateurs stamped ‘England’, the tools carried in a patched canvas shoulder bag retrieved from one of the clapboard sheds by the kitchen. His postulant’s smock has been swapped for a pair of worker’s overalls, circa 1950.
He sharpens the sickle on a whetstone, a task he relishes, by the rain barrel at the entrance to the vegetable garden. You have to sweep the stone away from the body. Away and away and away. He feels a lot more male in overalls, it has to be said: they’re tight at the crotch.
Chris loves foraging. One of his first jobs here was to cut nettles for soup: Brother Barnabas throws in potatoes, carrots and leeks, and scatters nettle flowers over the dark-green surface. Beyond delish. Chris’s taste buds have changed over the last months, since the Great Transformation (as he secretly calls it). They have become more sensitive, more appreciative. He likes to help with the cooking, savouring the colours, the textures, sinking spiritually into the cellular depths of God’s bounty. Other people would call it the result of permanent peckishness. The starvation diet.
Blackberry picking is hard work, he knows, especially in heat. Sharpening a sickle is even hotter work. He dips the whetstone in the rain barrel and sweeps down the blade again and again. Mid-August, and the first time this summer that the temperature has remembered where it is, seasonally. Just in time for the weekend: according to the forecast it’ll start to drop on Monday. They’re all glad of the cavernous cool of the abbey church. Personally, he finds it easier to tune in to God’s ultra-high frequencies there. The voluminous cowls with their endless folds of white cloth have been discarded, but even the sleeveless black scapulars, hanging down over the shoulders to the ankles, look sweaty. He’s glad of his postulant’s grey smock. Few of the monks use deodorant; washing is purely hygienic, and a bodily honesty now wafts through the communal spaces, medieval and spicy.
Visitor numbers have shot up with the thermometer. He doesn’t mind the retreatants, but the tourists are a distraction. Yesterday there was a whole German biker gang all in leather: ‘Angels, but we are coming from Hell,’ as their leader joked to Brother Vincent, manfully grinning behind the shop’s counter. This morning he stepped into the pigsty and shouted his usual ‘Hi, guys’ only to hear a giggle from the wooden fence: a girl in her teens had her hand over her nose, in convulsions with her friend, their naked bellies upfront like laughing mouths. One had a bead in her protruding navel. Doubly distracting. Pass me the hair shirt, guys!
He tests the blade with his thumb. Pretty good. His collar is sodden with sweat.
At forty-five, he is the third-youngest of the fifteen. The youngest is in his early thirties: Brother John from Liverpool. Brother Lawrence is next, unless he’s an undead and centuries old. He’s the only member of the community that Chris can’t quite get through to. A kind of sinister piety. Most of the others are in their sixties or above. White-stubbled scalps, deep-lined faces, some hobbling, with Brother Felix in a mobility scooter. Working the cross-cut handsaw through endless logs, Chris feels useful. He feels young.
A brief letter came yesterday from Emily. Joey is probably anorexic, says the doctor. Never goes out. Hardly speaks. He’s on pills. She didn’t say which ones, but – hey, that’s just so important! Look what you’re doing to him, Chris. He didn’t even watch the Olympics. Should have been trekking in Nepal by now! Unfair, that. Joey’s not a kid any more.
Early this morning he prayed for his son, eyes tightly squeezed, until his knees hurt. Years of jogging on the pavements of Balham. Jesus resisted all distractions. All temptations. However urgent.
I can only follow suit, Chris has concluded.
A cascade of fruiting brambles runs all along one of the lower woods, around a bumpy meadow where a lost village once stood. It’s good to go out through the side gate into the wilder grounds. He takes a shortcut across the visitors’ car park, striding healthily. Last week he started his Canadian exercises and tweaked a muscle in his left shoulder. Otherwise he feels better for them, as he used to feel better when he was a gym regular. His hands have calluses from the axe, the hoe, the broom, the heavy kitchen pans, you name it. His body is, on the whole, slimmer and tighter; it’s finding its younger self, when he was contemplating a sports career after uni. A skiing nut. Or slamming to victory in professional squash. He went into T V instead, thinking it was more creative. Illusion after illusion.
His mind is clearer too. But the bits that aren’t yet there seem to be knobblier, denser, ganglion-like. Loving Jesus and loving one another seems simple enough as an aim, because if you love Jesus then you love his Father, and if you love God then you love the cosmos, but he’s just not sure where the Devil fits in, if by ‘the Devil’ we mean the heartless narcissists, the bullies with giant fists. Th
e demons, minor or major, smashing and poisoning and draining the good energy. He knows it’s in his own veins too. Look at these shiny cars in the car park. Look no further.
As he skirts the rear of a beguilingly battered old camper van, he sees, sellotaped in its dusty rear window, a face staring out at him from a poster. MISSING. A young girl’s face. A young girl, missing. He stops, clutching his basket and his bag of tools.
A bucket of ice-cold water has been dashed over his mind, dripping down into his heart.
It’s her.
What the fuck is she doing here?
He comes closer, mouth open. She has long copper-red hair and a toothy smile. Did you see Fay? He has to read the details twice before they go in. Hasn’t been heard from since the end of January. Vanished along with her dog. Fay Sheenan. Any information, no matter how insignificant … She lives – or lived – in Lincoln. Last seen at 16.22 – CCT V, obviously – wearing a reddish-brown coat with a furry hood.
He stares at her staring back at him. She’s got a name, then. Fay Sheenan. Now that’s all wrong, all wrong. A car reverses before turning with a scrunch to drive away; watching it in a daze, he’s aware of the faces inside looking out at him in turn, an elderly couple under muffs of grey hair.
He touches the sand-dusted metal of the van, warm as a television, and meets the poster’s eyes again. Sea-green, rather large. Exactly the same. And the freckles. Beyond, in the real world, inside the vehicle itself, there’s a clutter of mattresses, blankets, toys. Beach buckets and spades. A draped, deflated dolphin-float with a toothy grin, flat as roadkill. Take the Pacific Coast Highway. Be a hippy. Make love in the dune grass.
He steps back. Below the rear window is a large oval sticker and another dolphin, leaping from Planet Earth and encircled by EcoForce: may the Green be with you. There’s a smaller sticker on the bumper: the blue silhouette of a kiwi with the New Zealand flag inside; but the vehicle has a British registration. These people are far from home.