In the Light of What We See

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In the Light of What We See Page 15

by Sarah Painter


  I closed my eyes. ‘What did he tell you?’

  ‘That you were in the hospital. Asleep, he said, but I assumed he was tiptoeing around. I thought you’d be in a coma.’

  ‘Sorry to disappoint you.’ I kept my eyes closed, couldn’t cope with the sight of Pat in this place. She didn’t belong here. She didn’t belong anywhere except Gower.

  I could feel something patting my hip through the blankets. I opened my eyes and saw Pat move her hand hurriedly, as if it had been acting against her will. Then she straightened the edge of my blanket and checked that the cord for my buzzer was lying straight.

  When she leaned down underneath the bed, presumably to check the cleanliness of the floor, I said: ‘It’s okay. I’m fine. I promise.’

  Pat popped back up and fixed me with a sour look. ‘Apart from the fact that you’re going to hell.’

  ‘Apart from that,’ I agreed, injecting as much cheer into my voice as I could manage. There was one thing that made me feel like myself again and that was irritating Pat. It was a reflex. Impossible to resist. ‘Where are you staying?’

  ‘I don’t know yet,’ she said. ‘I just arrived.’

  She looked uncharacteristically worried. Everything about her was less frightening than usual. Maybe it was because it felt like I hadn’t seen her in years, or maybe it was because everything else was so strange and difficult, but taken out of her house she seemed smaller. ‘You can stay at my flat, if you like,’ I said, surprising myself. ‘My keys must be around here somewhere. My bag was in the locker, I think.’

  ‘I’m not sleeping in the same place as a strange man.’

  Mark. I kept forgetting about him. ‘He’ll be at his house.’ As soon as the words were out I realised I was wrong. We lived together. Mark lived in my flat. With me. And my purple sofa. I didn’t remember him living with me, but I had to assume that the memory of it would come back eventually. Sooner or later I would remember his clothes in my wardrobe and his shaving stuff in my bathroom and perhaps even us in old clothes, painting the walls, like a scene from a romantic comedy.

  ‘He has a house, too?’ Pat sniffed. ‘Is he made of money? Or is it just for when you two argue? When he needs a break from you?’

  Despite myself, I was annoyed. It derailed me from thinking about Mark’s house. ‘Why do you assume that?’ I said. ‘Maybe I want him to go somewhere because I need my space.’ Again, I had the strangest feeling. I knew what I was saying was true. I did need my space. I always had done. I’d sworn I’d never live with a man. Even if I loved him desperately, I was going to make us both keep our own homes. I was independent to a fault. But, apparently, I’d let Mark move in. The feeling of wrongness was back again. It sat on my chest and I felt as if it was a real live thing, staring at me, waiting for me to make a connection.

  ‘So, does he have a house or not?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said, frustrated. ‘My memory—’

  At that moment, Stephen made an appearance. He introduced himself and shook hands with Pat, speaking to her warmly. ‘They told me Mina had family arrive and I wanted to be on hand in case you had any questions.’

  ‘That’s very good service,’ Pat said. ‘Is she being treated privately?’

  ‘Excuse me,’ I said, waving my hands. ‘I’m right here.’

  ‘But you don’t even know where your man lives,’ Pat said witheringly, turning immediately back to the doctor.

  Stephen looked momentarily confused. Then he said: ‘Good old NHS, I’m afraid. Although your daughter is a valued employee, so we’re taking extra special care of her.’

  If this was meant to be a joke, it fell on deaf ears. Pat had barrelled on, was asking searching questions about the accident, my injuries, my prognosis.

  Once that fun portion was winding down and Stephen was making a move to leave, Pat homed in on the one fact I’d hoped had passed her by. ‘Valued employee? You mean she works here? At the hospital?’

  ‘Of course,’ he said. I wanted to signal to him to shut up, but it was too late. ‘Mina does wonderful work in therapeutic radiology.’ He glanced at me. ‘Research, too, right?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘Wonderful,’ Pat said. ‘Isn’t that wonderful?’ She turned back to me. ‘You can show me around once you’re on your feet again.’

  ‘Excuse me,’ Stephen said, beating a retreat.

  The siskin was still on Pat’s shoulder. It had its head tilted, as if listening to her. Then it turned its head and seemed to chirp into her ear, although I couldn’t hear any sound. I wondered if the bird was explaining radiology to her. I waited until Stephen had disappeared from view, then said: ‘Please stay at my flat.’ It was a peace offering. I knew Pat wouldn’t like a bed and breakfast or a Premier Inn. And the plus side of not being able to remember my flat properly was that I didn’t feel quite as panicked as I might have expected to at the thought of her being there unsupervised, though fear still clutched my heart. What if I had some horrible habits that I’d forgotten about? Pornography strewn around the living room? Or, worse yet, a dirty kitchen with an overflowing bin and rancid fridge? I didn’t think being in hospital would completely absolve me in Pat’s eyes. If she were ever incapacitated, you could be damn sure you’d find the house in perfect order, with laundry dry and ironed and the furniture freshly polished with that disgusting fake lavender spray she favoured.

  Pat was looking at me oddly and I realised I was probably making faces. With too much time spent alone, I was losing what few social skills I’d previously possessed. Or might have possessed. Pat stopped staring long enough to locate my bag and then my keys. ‘Address? Or is that a secret? Something else we’ll have to find out from a complete stranger?’

  ‘You have my address,’ I protested. ‘You must do.’

  Pat shook her head slowly. ‘No. We do not.’

  I couldn’t stop the word ‘Why?’ from coming out of my mouth. Then I wanted to punch myself in the head.

  Pat smiled with no humour whatsoever. ‘When you’re feeling yourself again, no doubt you’ll explain. It’s probably something I’ve done wrong.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said.

  Her eyes widened. ‘Well,’ she said. ‘You’re in a worse state than I realised.’

  I swallowed, not sure whether I was about to dump Geraint into trouble, break some confidence that he’d asked me to keep, but I couldn’t stop the words that were demanding to be spoken: ‘I had a phone message from Geraint.’

  Pat’s lips went very thin. ‘That’s impossible,’ she said, her voice a shard of glass.

  ‘I didn’t know whether—’ I began, but Pat was up and out of her chair. In that moment I remembered that you never could get Pat to sit still. Especially when she was upset.

  ‘I’m going to speak to your doctor,’ she threw over one shoulder. ‘You get some rest.’

  I watched her leave with a curious mixture of relief and terror. I was alone again. Fear clutched at my chest and I wanted to call her back. I wondered if it would be different if my mother were alive. I wondered if she would be by my side, stroking my forehead, and whether I’d feel pure comfort, rather than this strange clawing mix of emotions. I knew my mother through stories, photographs and her brightly coloured dreamcatchers. I’d always thought that she would understand me, that she’d be warm and open, and that I would have grown up to be an entirely different person had she been around.

  No matter how pleased I’d been to see Pat, I was still furious with Mark. I tried to calm myself down by flicking through the hospital book, looking at black-and-white images from the past as if they could give me some perspective. I was also hoping to see my ghostly nurse. There was a shot from some kind of event, with a field and runners. I looked for my nurse, but the quality of the reproduction wasn’t good enough for me to see the faces properly. For a while I convinced myself that I recognised her amongst the cheering crowd, but I knew that I was kidding myself. The caption under the picture read: ‘Nurses take part
in sports day fun’. Instead of feeling calmed, I felt a new surge of energy. Angry energy. Something about those carefree figures, running full pelt, the material of their uniforms flapping, made me think of a flock of birds rising into the sky. My resentment towards Mark solidified and I imagined, just for a moment, that I could leave him. Have a fresh start.

  When he arrived after work, I didn’t waste any time. ‘What the fucking hell?’

  ‘What?’ He put down his newspaper and coat on the end of my bed.

  ‘You called Pat. She was here.’ I waved my hands to indicate the ward. ‘Here.’

  ‘Of course I called your family. Why is that so terrible?’

  ‘I don’t—’ I broke off, unable to continue. He’d made me speechless. I didn’t think that was possible. Ger had always said that I talked in my sleep, that not even being unconscious could shut me up.

  ‘Oh,’ Mark said, drawing out the word as if comprehension was dawning upon him. ‘You don’t remember?’

  ‘Remember what?’ I was so bloody sick of playing that particular game. The ‘what the fuck is going on’ game. The ‘big holes in my mind’ game.

  ‘Christmas? You went down to visit and when you came back you said you’d promised to keep in touch more.’ A smug, sanctimonious expression took over his face. ‘I promised to help you honour that. We were going to visit together next time.’

  ‘I said we were going to Wales? Together?’ Everything about that statement was wrong, I knew it. I knew it in a deep, true part of me. At that moment, Mark was a stranger. His face morphed into a robot face. An imposter. I could feel my heart racing, my breathing coming in shallow gasps.

  He patted my hand. ‘I know this might be a bit of a shock, but it’s a good thing. You’ve been unhappy about your family for as long as I’ve known you.’

  Unhappy. That wasn’t right. The feelings I had about my family were too complex to slap a neat little label like ‘unhappy’ on the front. It was like labelling a war ‘unfortunate’.

  ‘Take some deep breaths, you’re going to make yourself sick.’

  That snapped me out of it. I really didn’t want to throw up. Just the idea of it made my head pound. I forced slower breaths.

  ‘It’s time to move on with your life,’ he was saying. ‘Build bridges so that you can move forward. So that we can move forward.’

  The man spoke like a management seminar. At that moment I had absolutely no idea why I was with him. The realisation that he was all I had knifed me in the gut. I didn’t care that I didn’t feel anything, I just didn’t want to be left on my own. I forced my voice to behave, to speak calmly. ‘I don’t want Pat to see me here. I don’t want her to worry.’

  The smug look was back. ‘That’s what mothers do. It’s part of the job description.’

  And again, the urge to throw something at his head was back.

  ‘Besides,’ he said, ‘it’s done now. She survived. You survived. Now you can move on.’

  ‘You don’t understand,’ I began, but then I realised I didn’t want to finish that sentence.

  Mark seemed to sense the fight draining out of me and he patted me on the leg. ‘This will be for the best, you’ll see. Something good to come out of your accident. You’ve got to learn to look for the bright side.’

  When Pat came back the next morning, she looked tired.

  ‘I’ve spoken to Mark and he’s willing to look after you,’ she said. ‘I’m going to move in for a week or so, to keep an eye on you while he’s at work, and after that we’ll reassess the situation. Hopefully, by then you’ll be okay on your own during the day and I can go home.’

  ‘That’s—’

  Pat held up one hand. ‘No arguments. I’m not having people say that I don’t look after my children.’

  I wanted to say ‘I’m not your child’ but I knew it wouldn’t do any good. Pat was an unstoppable force.

  ‘He says the house purchase is moving quickly so hopefully you’ll be recuperating there. If not, we’ll have to make do in your flat. Mark says his place is mostly boxed up.’

  ‘When did you speak to him?’ My head was spinning and, for once, it was nothing to do with my injuries or the cocktail of medication.

  ‘Last night, after I left here.’ Pat pursed her lips. ‘Can’t say I’m pleased that you’ve been living in sin, but he’s a doctor at least.’

  ‘PhD, not medical. And why is that better anyway?’ I said, knowing the answer, but unable to stop myself from needling Pat.

  ‘I asked him to do the right thing by you, but mind you don’t let on I told you that. Act surprised when he asks you or his pride will get hurt. You know how fragile men are.’

  I felt cold horror. Embarrassment mixed with terror. ‘You didn’t?’ Oh Christ, oh Christ, oh Christ.

  Pat shook her head. ‘Don’t take on. You can’t very well buy a house together without getting married. It’s not sensible.’

  This surprised me. Pat had always put the ‘burning in hell’ bit above any other concern.

  ‘And it’ll save you from eternal damnation,’ she added, looking slightly flustered.

  ‘I don’t want to get married,’ I said. ‘It’s never going to happen. And especially not with Mark.’ The thought popped out of nowhere but I couldn’t pretend I didn’t mean it.

  Pat smiled. ‘Don’t think you can push me away. I know you’re trying to rile me but I’m not taking the bait. I’m going to stay with you when you get out of here and look after you while your future husband is at work. I’m not leaving you until you’re healthy and settled.’ She reached out and patted my hand. ‘You don’t need to worry about a thing.’

  Pat was being far too calm and nice. I must’ve looked worse than I realised.

  ‘Now that I know what’s needed, I’m going to go home and pack properly. And I’ll get some decent sleep before I’m to look after you. I never sleep well in England.’

  ‘I don’t think you can blame the entire country,’ I said. ‘You just don’t like being away from home.’

  Pat gave me a pitying look that spoke volumes and began unpacking things from a cloth shopping bag. ‘Fizzy Vitamin C so you don’t get the flu, goodness only knows what bugs they’ve got flying around in here. There’s a couple of books in case you’ve run out – I know what you’re like – you’ll read until you go cross-eyed . . . and there’s this.’ She pulled out the soft toy rabbit with the long twisted, chewed ears I’d had as a child.

  Rabbity was dead. Pat had killed him. It was one of the stories I told myself, one of the pieces of evidence for her uncaring, overly controlling, basically soulless nature. But here was Rabbity. Limp from lack of stuffing, riddled with holes and no longer the yellow I remembered but a dirty off-white from repeated cycles in the washing machine. I held him to my face and inhaled the scent of washing powder. Underneath that there was the faintest forgotten odour of childhood. I held Rabbity underneath my nose and twirled his long ears around my fingers in a motion I hadn’t known about, hadn’t thought about in years. His ears were crumpled, one severely twisted and both frayed at the tips, but the feel of the material was soothing and familiar. I blinked back tears. Rabbity was so very welcome. I felt that a talisman against evil had been given to me in a time of need.

  ‘We had a new boiler put in and they took out the hot water tank in the airing cupboard. I know you thought I’d thrown him out but he really was lost, just like I told you. He’d slipped down the back, must have come off the tank or one of the shelves when he was drying one time. You know I was always drying your bedding.’

  I knew. I’d wet the bed long past the age these things were supposed to stop. Despite my gratitude for Rabbity I felt a stab of resentment towards Pat for bringing it up. That was the problem with family; they never let you forget a single thing.

  Pat wore a strange expression. I moved Rabbity away from my face. ‘Thank you for coming,’ I said. ‘Give Uncle Dylan my love. Tell him I’m fine.’

  Pat nodded. ‘Of course.�
��

  I wanted to ask about Ger, see if he’d rung Pat, too, but my heart was too full. If I felt a single other thing, part of me would break.

  Pat’s lips were compressed, like there was something trying to get out. She nodded again and gave me a quick dry kiss on the cheek.

  After she’d gone, I held Rabbity back up to his rightful place, just underneath my nose and breathed deeply. As soon as I did, I was back in my childhood bedroom, sitting up in bed with the flu or measles or something. Bored and hot and out of sorts. Pat was on the edge of my bed, her back resting against the wall, and we were playing cards. Happy Families. I could picture the illustrations on the cards.

  People say that twins aren’t complete without one another and, speaking as a twin, it’s deeply annoying. And insulting. When it comes to my mother and Pat, though, it’s nothing but the truth. My mother was always everything Pat isn’t: creative and free-spirited and bohemian. My whole life, I’ve heard stories about her wild nature and her creativity and, because she died when I was just a baby, I’ve never had to confront the reality. I’ve kept the fairy tale of my mother safely under glass but, as much as I’d like to deny it, without Pat I would’ve had a far less stable upbringing.

  My mother is the elemental half of Pat. It’s as if all the practical, solid stuff went into making Pat, and all the ephemeral soul stuff into making my mother.

  That makes it sound as if Pat doesn’t have a soul. I didn’t think that. I might have done, once, but as I held Rabbity close to my face and breathed in, I knew that I didn’t believe it any more.

  GRACE

  Grace skidded into the sluice with her arms so full she could hardly see where she was going, the stack of bedpans threatening to topple over at any moment.

  ‘You shouldn’t carry so many,’ Barnes said, her back to the room as she bent over the sink, elbow-deep in soapy water.

  ‘If I don’t, I shan’t get finished before rounds,’ Grace said, breathless. ‘I mightn’t get finished anyway.’ She broke off, suddenly aware that if she carried on speaking she’d dissolve into sobs. She was so tired. Her feet hurt, her legs ached, her back screamed.

 

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