‘Spag Bol!’ he enlightened his friend. ‘Brilliant!’
‘What’s that?’
Cai assumed a cod Italian accent, like something from an ice-cream advert. ‘E-Spaghetti Bolognese-ee! Haw-he-haw-he-haw! You not have thees?’
‘No. Is it good?’
‘Ees great! Ees – ow you say – complete skeel! You try?’ He pulled open a drawer, looked for a spoon. Out of the corner of Satish’s eye, there was movement: Sarah shaking her head.
‘What’s in it?’
‘Ees-a the meence. You know?’ He’d found a teaspoon and passed it to Satish.
‘Beef mince? I can’t have that. I’m not allowed.’
‘You not allowed? But why?’ Cai widened his eyes and spread his hands, a cartoon of Mediterranean idiocy. Satish hesitated before attempting the accent too.
‘I get big trouble, you know? Much trouble. Me not allowed-a beef!’
‘Really?’ Suddenly Cai was all Bucks again. ‘What would happen? Would your gods punish you? Would you go to hell?’
‘I don’t know about that. My mum and dad would be angry, though.’ He saw the glint in Cai’s eye. ‘I don’t want to anyway,’ he added pre-emptively. ‘I’ve never eaten it. Cows are sacred.’ His friend snorted his derision. ‘I can’t eat beef. Ever.’
There was a moment’s silence, and Satish thought he could see Cai running through some options. He was preparing himself for them when Cai suddenly changed tack. ‘Hard luck,’ he said. ‘Spag Bol’s brilliant.’ Then the three of them went upstairs to play.
And sometimes there was just Mandy. She’d come into his room quietly and that was the first he’d hear of her, or they’d meet in the scrubby grass of Jennings Field, or at her place. Often they’d see each other across the way, she at her bedroom window, head tucked under the nets, he at his. He’d lift his hand to wave and let it rest on the windowpane. When he pulled away there would be the residue of his touch on the glass, a smudge of palm and fingers. On Jubilee morning, as the party was drawing closer, she’d written a note on a big bit of paper and held it up so he could read it – TROUBLE! – with a smiley face as the dot on the exclamation mark. He’d gone over straight away.
Mandy was trouble: that was for sure. She was a safe kind of trouble for him though, her peccadilloes a sort of circus act he could ooh and aah at from the safety of the benches. There was a certain thrill to it. She was unpredictable, like Cai, but the secrecy of their friendship protected him from her misdeeds. She was also a little subversive. There was something about her that picked at the edge of life in Cherry Gardens, not least her secret friendship with Satish. He couldn’t explain why, but he knew it: Mandy was a foreigner, too.
With her, Satish could say pretty much anything; there were no rules here. He got used to her way of thinking: a little off-beam. She’d tell him, ‘When I get older I’m going to live in the Swiss Alps with my husband and loads of children, and I’m going to dress them all in curtains like in The Sound of Music.’ She wanted them to select one pair of curtains from each house that might be up to the job. Some of the things they talked about were a bit girly, but Satish played along; Mandy was a mate.
They maintained an impeccable subterfuge. If Satish was having a laugh with Cai and Mandy and Sarah passed by, he’d let his gaze roll over her with the same casual attitude he used towards her friend. Once or twice he’d found her and Cai chatting, and he’d flick her a quick, ‘Hiya,’ before turning his attentions fully to Cai. Only when things were safe, when the others were concentrating on something else, would they risk a glance, a quick bit of contact. She’d widen her eyes, or cross them comically, and he’d grin, then look away. Sometimes they’d go two weeks without meeting; other times they’d see each other for days in a row.
Mandy was fascinated by the family shrine tucked away in his parents’ bedroom, the artefacts crammed onto a shelf next to the dressing table. She loved the image of Lord Krishna, blue in limb and face, red-lipped, gold bracelets and anklets and crown. Mandy picked up the bell to ring it and Satish grabbed it back in a panic. Then she dipped her finger in the red kumkum powder, smearing it over the back of her hand, and blew on the incense cone, dislodging the ash that clung to it. In the wake of her visits, Satish would have to perform a hasty clean-up job, so they wouldn’t be found out.
In return, Mandy showed him her parents’ exotically separate bedrooms, her father’s devoid of pictures or ornaments, the bed unmade, the curtains closed even during the day. Her mother had a bedspread decorated with elephants (‘she brought it back from India!’) and a red scarf over her lamp. Mandy made Satish plan his own grown-up bedroom, and designed one down the corridor for herself. One time, when the Chandler boys had been blowing off steam with him, she came round to his place and they didn’t say much at all, just sat in his room and listened to his mum and Sima arguing downstairs.
It took a while, but the hard-won territory of field, playground and street began to seem like home to Satish. It was always good to go over to Bassetsbury to see his cousins, but when his dad told him to get ready for Temple, he found he wanted to play football with Cai instead. After a while, he started asking if he could, and just once or twice his father actually let him.
And now, thirty years on, Satish wonders what he might possibly have to say to Cai, what they’d ever talk about if they met. They would have to find a way of being with each other: two middle-aged men, two strangers. House prices, he thinks. Work. Or maybe – he gets a sudden image of Jubilee Day, the downpour in the morning – maybe the weather.
In the days following the Jubilee, people had talked a lot about the weather: how it had drizzled on and off, how lucky Andrew Ford had been to snatch the few bright moments in which to get his photograph. Satish remembers that drizzle, and the oppressive greyness of it, but more than that, he remembers what happened when it rained.
The rain came when the men and boys were busy setting out the tables. In the kitchens of Cherry Gardens, tempers were short. When Mr Brecon knocked on doors – ‘any strong men in there? The tables need moving!’ – fathers and sons left their homes with gratitude. At Satish’s house, as he and his dad prepared to leave, Sima bolted out of the kitchen. She’d managed to pull on one of her shoes when her mum called her back: ‘Ladki kahinki! This dhal won’t stay hot forever!’
Satish and his father walked out into a street lined with gaping front doors. They headed for the Chandlers’ garage, where the Austin Princess had been evicted the night before to make room for the trestles.
Mr Chandler was directing operations. ‘Watch it, you divvie!’ he said, as someone scraped the corner of a table against a wall, or misjudged the arc of a turn.
Out in the street, fathers barked commands and their taciturn sons shammed as old hands: the less you talk, the more you know what you’re doing. Colette was there too, scampering by her dad’s side, yelping suggestions that everyone ignored. Once a few of the trestles were in place, Miss Bissett came out of her house.
‘Should we start setting the tables now, Peter? I think Susan’s got the things in her – oh, bother. That’s entirely typical.’
The drizzle had thickened into proper rain, rather than the fine mist they’d been able to ignore until now. Satish, manoeuvring a table into position with Cai, felt wetness seeping through his T-shirt.
‘Get inside, lads!’ That was Mr Brecon, already on his way into Miss Bissett’s with Satish’s dad. Miss Walsh, head out of her door to gauge the rain, called to Colette:
‘Want to come in here, lovely?’
‘Can I, Dad?’
He looked over from Miss Bissett’s door. ‘Go on, then – but be good.’
Satish turned for home. Across the road, Mandy’s dad was knocking on his own front door.
‘Pam?’ he was saying, then: ‘Mandy? It’s Daddy.’ He bent down to the letter slot and called through it. ‘Can you let me in, love? I’m soaking out here.’
It was only when Satish reached his door, a fresh
assault of rain soaking his shoulders and the back of his neck, that he realised it was also closed. Cai’s wasn’t, though. Cai’s stood wide open. He jogged across the two driveways and thought of Mrs Brecon. She was inside, probably. Would she mind him sheltering there for a minute?’
Inside, it was quiet. Satish could see there was no one in the kitchen. He stood for a few seconds, feeling chilled for the first time. With the front door open he was still in a relatively public space, but he didn’t know where to go from here. Outside the street was empty, a screen of rain between him and the houses opposite.
He wiped a hand down his nose and remembered the banned record lurking in Cai’s drawer. He wanted to see it again. Turning, he trod softly up the stairs and went into his friend’s bedroom. In the drawer, beneath the socks, was the bag containing the single. Satish reached under the clothing and felt something hard and cold brush against the back of his fingers. He snagged it with his fingernail – a thin metal bar – then tugged. As it emerged from the drawer, straining at the black fabric it was attached to, Satish saw that it was a safety pin.
When he’d pulled the whole thing out, he could see what Cai had done. The safety pin held together a long slash down the front of a T-shirt. A shorter cut, nearer the neck, was adorned with a second pin. On the back, in ragged white paint – Liquid Paper? – were the words: ‘No Future’. Satish ran his finger over the lettering. It felt bumpy. His nails made tiny clicking sounds as he ran them across the soft cloth, then onto the letters, then off again.
Like the single that rested in its hiding place at the bottom of the drawer, this was a talisman; it resonated with danger and the possibilities of a different world. Had Cai used his parents’ scissors to make the cuts? Where had he got the safety pins from? How had he managed the slow job of writing on the T-shirt, the material rucking up under the brush, without his mum walking in on him? Satish knew he would not have been brave enough for any of this: not even brave enough to keep such a thing in his bedroom. He did not allow himself to imagine a time and place when Cai might wear this terrible, admirable, perilous garment.
It was as he was putting the T-shirt back in the drawer that Satish realised he was not alone in the house. He had forgotten to wonder about Mrs Brecon’s whereabouts but now he could hear a noise coming from Cai’s parents’ bedroom. He eased the drawer shut, then stood very still. It was a most unexpected noise, and hearing it filled him with apprehension – a series of low, monotonous keenings, each ending in an exhale. It took Satish a long while to identify the noise, partly because of his surprise, but partly because its perfect balance of misery and anger acted as a sort of camouflage. Mrs Brecon was crying.
Satish couldn’t sneak back down the stairs. If she spotted him now, she would know how badly he had trespassed. Stuck in Cai’s room, Satish listened. Mrs Brecon – her name was Jan, he knew – continued like this for a while longer. After a bit, he heard her breathing hard, and then: ‘Bastard – no! Bastard! God!’ He controlled his own breathing carefully, feeling exposed in the middle of the room, the first thing she’d see if she came in. Satish looked around. Anywhere he could shelter, under the bed, behind the door, in the wardrobe, was too long a journey, too fraught with the dangers of discovery. Floorboards could creak, hinges squeak and give him away, so Satish stayed where he was. Outside the rain had stopped, but he couldn’t tell what was going on in the street; Cai’s window overlooked the garden. He could see Colette’s scooter abandoned near the shed, a stack of plastic patio chairs, the barbecue.
Next, he heard movement. He froze as Mrs Brecon, sniffing, came out of her room and went into the bathroom. When she started to run the taps Satish slid around Cai’s door, not touching it, and tiptoed down the stairs. Coming outside again was a relief. Everyone was back in the street, exchanging rueful comments about the weather. When Satish saw his dad pulling a table into place, he rushed to help him.
Chapter 14
The mother in front of Satish is trying not to cry. She turns away from her daughter and looks pointedly out of the window. On the bed the girl fiddles with a cardboard sick bowl. Satish is doing rounds with Kawther, the registrar. Clare Munroe is with them.
‘This is Dr Patel,’ Clare tells the girl. ‘You met Kawther earlier, didn’t you?’
‘Yeah.’ The girl runs her fingers round the rim of the bowl, bending the edges up.
‘Jess and I discovered a mutual loathing for Coldplay,’ says Kawther. Jess says nothing. Her mum comes away from the window to sit in the chair beside her, and Kawther addresses Satish: ‘Jess Roberts, post-viral myocarditis, recovering well but not tolerating food.’
‘She threw up,’ says her mother. ‘Last night and this morning.’ She smiles apologetically and looks down at her clothing. She’s wearing green scrubs provided, he assumes, by some sympathetic nurse. She looks exhausted, washed-out, like a junior doctor at the wrong end of a long shift. ‘I’m Alice,’ she says, and reaches out to shake Satish’s hand.
‘You’ve been vomiting, Jess?’ he asks.
‘Yeah.’
‘And how are you feeling now? Still feeling sick?’
She shrugs. ‘Yeah. It comes and goes.’
‘All right. We’ll see what we can do about that.’ He turns to Kawther. ‘We’ll need to check bloods.’
‘Done. Electrolytes fine.’
‘Good. A single line ECG?’
‘Yes, we did that this morning. All fine. Normal sinus rhythm.’
‘All right. Good.’
‘What does it mean?’ asks Mrs Roberts – Alice, he reminds himself; they like this first-name stuff at Central Children’s. ‘Is it to do with her heart? Is it the medications?’ Two weeks ago, her twelve-year-old was completely healthy. Since then she’s travelled from ambulance to theatre to ICU to high-dependency unit to ward. Mrs Roberts is punch-drunk.
Jess is the victim of events both nasty and arbitrary; the Coxsackie virus that nearly killed her might, instead, have caused a sore throat, or a temperature. She might have had a couple of days off school. She might have had no symptoms at all. The catching of it was arbitrary, too: the sneezed droplet which she could have evaded, the wayward microbes which might have lain untouched. But she had caught it, and after those first few innocent days (sore throat, fever) the virus made for her heart, inflaming its fibres, disabling it: sending her here.
And now she’s throwing up and it might be nothing, the luck might run her way this time, or it might be cardiac failure. What does it mean? her mother asks, and Satish reminds himself that the question is a medical one.
‘It’s relatively common in recovering patients,’ he tells her. ‘Jess’s bloods and ECG look fine.’ He looks at Jess, folding the sick bowl in half, making it into a mouth she then opens and closes. No breathlessness. ‘I’m just going to examine you now,’ he tells her. ‘Is that all right, Jess? I’m going to listen to your chest and feel your tummy.’ She nods her assent and Clare helps her sit forward. Beyond the closed curtains, someone laughs.
Jess has the remains of a temporary tattoo on her back. He can’t make out what it once was – it’s all black spikes and fragmented edges.
‘Breathe in and out for me, Jess. Nice and deep, if you can.’
He imagines Jess at a sleepover with her friends, like the ones Asha has. It’s always been a mystery to him, what they do once the bedroom door is shut, but surely it’s things like this, putting tattoos on each other, giggling together. No creps; her lungs are clear.
‘That’s all fine, Jess. Just your tummy now. I’m going to need to press on it.’ He nods at Clare.
‘I feel a bit sick,’ says Jess. Her mother whips away the bent bowl and puts a new one in her hand. Clare strokes her back. They wait. Kawther runs her fingers along a fold of her hijab. Satish notices the repeated print on the material: lines of red-scarfed teddy bears.
‘It’s OK,’ says Jess after a while. ‘It’s gone.’
Clare lies her flat and pulls up her gown, resettling the s
heet over her hips. Satish rubs his hands together, warming them. ‘I’ll try not to push too hard,’ he says.
His fingers press Jess’s abdomen, up towards the lower edge of her ribs: nothing. ‘Take a deep breath,’ he tells her, and then he can feel the edge of her liver, only just: thin and firm.
‘That all feels quite normal,’ he tells Jess.
‘So, what does that mean?’ her mother asks.
‘It means there’s no sinister cause for Jess’s sickness. It’s not very pleasant for you, I know,’ he tells the girl. ‘But we can do something about it. I’m going to give you some medicine to stop you feeling sick. See if we can get you eating again. Clare?’
‘Yes?’
‘IV Metoclopramide, 50 milligrams.’
‘So can she go home?’ says Jess’s mother.
‘I’m going to suggest we keep her in for a little while longer. I know it’s a disappointment, but I just want to be cautious. We’ll leave her a couple of days, reassess on … umm … Friday.’
On hearing this last word Jess’s mother slumps at the shoulders but she nods. ‘Of course, absolutely – whatever you think, really.’ She drops her voice. ‘Just, it’s hard. You know, I’m not complaining. My other kid’s at home, pillar to post. Got to find another few days’ care for her.’
Satish looks at the clock: he has a meeting in fifteen minutes and needs a pee before that.
‘Are you worried about this? Will it stop her getting better? You just said you were happy with her heart. I don’t understand …’ Her fears come in a rush, as if they’ve been racing to reach her and have just caught up.
‘It’s not optimal,’ he says carefully. ‘But it is very common. I am happy with her, cardiovascularly. I just need to make sure that when she goes home, she continues to make a good recovery. I’m sorry. We really do have to wait a little longer on this one.’
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