by Jo Verity
Every now and again, Jack glanced up from a patient to catch Sheila peering at him, as if he were a culture in a Petri dish and she were waiting for something to develop. He needed to reassure her that things had changed since they last spoke; that by surrendering to his baser instincts, he had been tested and failed; that by making love to his wife he had dishonoured Non, the Evans family and everything they stood for, thus forgoing his entitlement to happiness. Llangwm had been elevated to Shangri-La – an unattainable paradise beyond the distant hills.
The outcome of his actions – continuing to live with Fay and be a dentist – ought to please Sheila, but the way he’d arrived at it certainly would not. Indeed, he was stunned at the ease with which he’d allowed Fay to use his body and was well aware that people – Sheila was the person he had in mind – would claim Fay couldn’t have done what she did without his full cooperation. Technically true.
But at lunch time, when he’d planned to set the record straight, Sheila and her Tupperware sandwich-box were nowhere to be found. He was still trying to work out what had made her react so violently to yesterday’s revelation. He’d hoped that, after she’d had the night to mull it over, she might be more sympathetic to his position – or the position as it was until he entered the hall last night – but her coolness this morning, and her absence now, indicated that he’d misjudged it again.
He could count on the fingers of one hand the times, apart from holidays and illness, that Sheila hadn’t been there between one and two o’clock, eating her lunch and standing for everything that was reasonable in an often unreasonable world. Dental nurses came and went – it was seldom worth getting to know their names – but Sheila had been a constant in his working life. She’d been there through every family, medical and professional crisis; through the crippling months after Kingsley left; and she had never made a single joke about bells or hankies. Now, all he had to do was persuade her to ignore yesterday’s revelatory conversation – that it had all been a joke. Then she would chuckle, telling him what a daft old thing he was, and they could settle back into their comfortable camaraderie, as if he’d not said a word.
He sat in the silent waiting-room, waiting.
She returned five minutes before afternoon surgery, without revealing where she’d been to eat her lunch. When Jack followed her into the tiny kitchen, she turned on him. ‘D’you want to know what I think, Jack?’ This was his opportunity to put her straight.
Before he could speak, she raised her hand. ‘No, let me have my say. If I heard this tale of woe from any other man, because, call me foolish but I didn’t have you down as being like other men, I’d say he was a complete loser, making a pathetic attempt not to grow old. There has to be a name for it because there are enough of you at it. The Peter Pan Syndrome – that’s what I’d call it.’ She paused. ‘Have you ever read The Picture of Dorian Gray? Perhaps you should.’
‘But Sheila—’
‘I’m not interested, boyo. If you need approval for your…sexual peccadilloes’, the rise and fall of her strong Welsh voice endowed every syllable with derision, ‘you’ve come to the wrong woman. Heaven knows, Fay and I seldom see eye-to-eye but after thirty years, she deserves the truth. Why don’t you confess to her that you’ve got the hots for a young woman. And her whole family. And a guesthouse, for God’s sake.’ She shook her head and that was the end of that.
By the time Jack took off his smock at the end of the afternoon, he had no idea what he wanted. All he did know was that if he hadn’t allowed Fay to seduce him, he’d be at home now, packing his possessions into a hired van and heading for Llangwm. That wasn’t wholly accurate. It would take weeks to sort things out at the practice but it served to dramatise the consequences of his folly.
On the other hand, it had been bloody fantastic. It was disquieting that such an everyday act – ‘Shock! Horror! Husband and Wife Make Love’ – had made him feel so…wanton, so…dangerous. Before Fay came along, there had been fumblings and couplings with a few unmemorable girlfriends. And there was Laura, but that didn’t count as having sex, did it? He had never experienced anything like last night so, if he had blown all entitlement to a new life, going home to Fay might not be too unbearable.
He was the first one to arrive at the hospital and he sat in the cafeteria, pretending to read a discarded newspaper. But he couldn’t concentrate. It was ridiculous how excited and, it had to be said, embarrassed he was at the prospect of meeting his own wife. When she appeared, weaving towards him between the tables, he jumped up, like a young man trying to impress a new girlfriend.
He bent and kissed her clumsily, not quite connecting with her lips. ‘You look fantastic, love.’ In fact, she didn’t. She was wearing too much makeup and her hair was stiff with whatever she’d taken to using. Beneath her blouse, her breasts looked a funny shape, sort of lumpy and squashed.
‘I aim to please, sir.’ She gave a coquettish smile, and he noticed lipstick on her second incisor.
When they got up to the ward, the contents of Harry’s locker were heaped on his empty bed. ‘Just having a sort-out,’ his mother explained, bustling across to the black rubbish bag suspended from the wall near the sink.
‘Where’s Dad?’ Jack collected two plastic chairs from the stack in the corner and they sat down.
‘Tests. They took him off about four o’clock.’
‘That’s over two hours ago, Mum. What were they testing for?’
‘I didn’t like to pester. They’ve got enough to do.’ Vi went on tidying.
Jack searched for his father’s notes but they weren’t in the rack at the foot of the bed, and he ventured down the airless corridor to the nurses’ station. The grubby walls were plastered with curling A4 sheets, the information they displayed – visiting times, support groups, hospital cross-infection regimen, the chapel opening hours, the complaints procedure – badly set-out and hard to decipher. A whiteboard showed the layout of the ward and the location of every patient, names written in green block-capitals. Some of the names, including ‘Harry Waterfield’, were smudged and illegible, as if that person were fading away. Jack shivered.
‘Mr Walker’s sent him down for tests.’ The nurse treated him to her aren’t-you-silly-for-asking smile. ‘Shouldn’t be long. Why don’t you get a coffee?’
Jack stood his ground. ‘My mother said he’s been gone since four. Anyway, what sort of tests?’ But he got nowhere.
The three of them sat around the empty bed. Fay didn’t say much but he could tell, from her tapping foot and frequent glances at the wall-clock, that she was calculating how long it would be before they could get away. His mother, twittering and restless, looked worn out. She’d been keeping watch for days and he recognised how exhausting hospital visiting was. He felt bad that he’d not been more tolerant of her presence in the house or given her more of his time.
Just before eight o’clock, nurses shoo-ed the visitors down the corridor to the exit and started the medication round, but there was still no sign of Harry. ‘Come on, Mum. I’m sure they’ll ring if there’s a problem. Let’s get you home.’
‘Don’t you worry about me…’
‘It’s not too late, if you still want to go out,’ Jack said once they’d settled Vi in front of the television. He’d passed the hungry stage an hour ago but was prepared to press on with their plan if Fay was keen. ‘Or we could order a takeaway.’ He wanted to compensate, in some way, for their dreary evening.
‘Oh, I don’t know. Whatever.’ She was snappy and he began to wonder if he’d imagined last night. ‘Actually I think I’ll have a sandwich and an early night.’
Early night. A coded message?
‘And I do mean an early night, Jack.’
‘A sandwich sounds just the job.’ To tell the truth, he wasn’t confident that he’d be up to another night of passion.
Fay undressed in the bathroom. Removing the silk blouse and linen skirt, at first she tried not to look in the mirror, but her reflected self was i
nescapable, the efficient lighting emphasising every fold and bulge of flesh, every inch of blemished skin. Taking a deep breath, with hands at her sides, she risked an objective appraisal.
The Moll Flanders underwear had chafed and pinched but, for the first hour or so, she’d accepted the discomfort as reminder of last night, and a promise of what was to come. It had been thrilling to walk towards Jack, the scanty bits of fabric prickling her skin – a secret, waiting to be shared. Then they’d been through the missing patient fiasco and her mother-in-law’s pitiful, ‘Don’t you worry about me. You two carry on and have fun. I’ll get the bus home.’ As the likelihood of another night of lovemaking faded, the underwear had become downright painful.
The suspender belt, slung around her hips, and the thong, barely covering her pubic hair, framed a cushion of podge, etched with the puckered scar, a constant reminder of Kingsley. The skimpy cups of the bra had almost disappeared beneath her breasts and, obviously not designed to support anything heavier than a couple of marshmallows, the mean straps had gouged deep channels over her shoulders. She turned around to reveal two larger cushions, dimpled and overstuffed, sad and ludicrous. She finished undressing, shoving the preposterous underwear to the bottom of the linen basket, then pulled a white cotton nightdress over her head, covering up the marks gouged by taught elastic and rasping synthetic lace.
Although Jack had already switched off the bedside lamp, the street-light illuminated the room enough for her see that he was lying on his back, eyes open. He remained motionless as she slipped in to bed beside him. Last night, his passivity had helped to unleash her excitement but now it simply irritated her.
‘What are you thinking about?’ she asked, offering him the opportunity to set the ball rolling.
‘Oh, nothing much.’
Thirty years and he hadn’t got any better at opening up. ‘Come on, Jack. Don’t you think we should talk about it?’
He wriggled slightly. ‘Perhaps it’s more serious than we think. If his chest’s the only thing they’re concerned about, they’d have sorted out his medication and sent him home by now. Hospitals have to meet targets these days and he’s a bed-blocker.’ He turned to face her. ‘I can’t stop thinking about him, alone in there, too bloody frightened to make a fuss. Too scared to ask what’s happening, or if he’s going to die. Mum’s the same. Blindly soldiering on, as though acceptance is a virtue… Two martyrs bound for glory.’
She reached out and stroked his face. It hadn’t crossed her mind that he could be thinking about anything but last night. She was ashamed that she hadn’t given poor Harry as much as a passing thought. Nevertheless, last night was what she wanted to discuss and she left it a few seconds before prompting, ‘Anything else on your mind?’
She felt him stiffen, as if he were assembling the right words to say something vital, but the silence extended for too long. ‘No. Nothing in particular.’ And she’d lost him again.
The day, which had begun with delicious promise, had fizzled out in a plate of cheese and pickle sandwiches. If her life were on the GCSE English syllabus, this would definitely have been classed as a metaphor.
27
Jack phoned the hospital first thing next morning. He hoped to find out more about the mysterious tests but was palmed off with the standard ‘the patient is comfortable’.
‘I’ll pop in and see him straight from work,’ he told Fay, ‘Then I really ought to go to Morris practice. I can’t miss another week.’
Before he went to work, he retreated to the shed to give his shoes a rub over with the duster and snatch a few moments to himself because, beyond a doubt, something was happening to him. The first hints of this change had been evident at Dylan’s wedding and, since then, he could pinpoint several other manifestations. He’d gone over and over it during the night, coming to the conclusion that he had become an Existentialist, and he’d crept downstairs at four o’clock to check the dictionary, which stated: Existentialism, n. an anti-intellectualist philosophy of life holding that man is free & responsible, based on the assumption that reality as existence can only be lived but never become the object of thought. He liked the sound of it, especially the ‘man is free’ bit. It seemed to address the dichotomy of his life – or existence as he might have to call it from now on. Jean-Paul Sartre. Albert Camus. Who else? He’d Google it later.
He shoved his dancing kit into a holdall and, passing Neil in the hall, asked if he’d be able to collect Vi from the hospital after Fay got home from school. ‘And you mentioned you might like to see what we get up to on a Thursday evening so…how about tonight?’
‘Great. Yeah. Cheers.’
He gave Neil instructions for finding the community centre. ‘Then listen out for bells.’ He shook his bag.
Sheila appeared to be dismounting from her high horse. She smiled at him a couple of times during the morning and, at lunchtime, inquired after Harry, looking concerned when he told her about the tests. ‘Ooh, bless him. No point in getting all steamed up, though, until you know if they found anything. I’ll try and get in to see him at the weekend.’
‘Thanks. He’d like that. And Sheila,’ he paused, nervous that he might undo the progress he had made, ‘about the other day. I didn’t mean to involve you in my personal problems. Could you forget that I mentioned anything? I’ve sorted myself out now.’ Her face softened and, although it was unfair to play on her sympathy, he added, ‘I can’t have been thinking straight. It’s all got on top of me lately.’
He dropped into the newsagents and bought his father a gardening magazine and a bar of milk chocolate – gifts such as he might take any work colleague or neighbour who was in hospital. Jack, himself, had been an in-patient only once. When he was thirty-two he’d suffered a nasty ear infection and been kept in hospital for two nights, in order for the medics to blast it with intravenous antibiotics. The constant noise, inedible food, waterproof under-sheet and, worst of all, the other patients had contrived to make it a ghastly experience. But, when Harry gently grumbled or asked when he might be going back home to his own bed and Vi’s cooking, he and Fay scolded the old man for his impatience and lack of gratitude for the attention he was receiving.
He had no idea what might make his father’s incarceration less monotonous. He tried to imagine how he’d be feeling after ten days confined to bed, or the armchair next to it, with no date set for discharge. He went back into the shop, searching for anything that might distract Harry from his dreary routine and surroundings. On a shelf marked ‘Pocket Money Toys’, he found the very thing – a pack of gaudy plastic puzzles. Silver balls to coax through a maze; numbered tiles to slide into sequence; coloured squares and triangles to create dozens of different shapes. By the time he reached the ward, he was feeling delighted with his own inventiveness.
Harry half sat, half lay, flopped against a pile of pillows, eyes closed and denture-less mouth slightly open.
‘Dad. Dad.’ Whispering to avoid startling him, Jack touched the back of his father’s hand, the flaky skin purpled and blackened by ten days of invasive needles. ‘You awake, Dad?’
Harry’s eyes opened and he moistened his lips with his tongue. ‘Pour me a drop of pop, John.’
Jack passed him the plastic beaker, ‘There you go. Mum been in?’
‘Aye. That young chap – Neville is it? – he’s given her a lift home.’
‘Neil. That’s good. He’s a kind lad.’ Jack paused, uncertain how to raise the subject of the tests, unsure how much his father knew about his condition. ‘Any news?’
A reassuring look of irony flitted across Harry’s sunken face. ‘Yes, boyo. I scored the winning try. Right between the posts.’
Jack laughed, keen to maintain the offhandedness. ‘It’s just that they were doing some tests when I came yesterday. What was that all about?’
‘Don’t ask me. I’m only the patient.’
Now that Harry was looking brighter, Jack produced his gifts. The chocolate joined the confectionery heaped on th
e locker, and the magazine went on the pile of unread papers, but his father smiled when he saw the puzzles, ‘What’s this then?’
While Harry nudged silver balls through the maze, Jack flicked through the medical notes which had reappeared at the foot of the bed. It looked at though his father had gone to the urology department the previous day. What did that suggest? Next to the locker, a flickering TV on an articulated arm advertised its ‘pay-as-you-view’ services. ‘Only four pounds a day.’ For that the patient got to watch drivel on a screen the size of a paperback book. Welcome to capitalism, NHS style. A catheter bag dangled from the bed’s metal frame, its contents alarmingly orange and, free of charge, Jack watched liquid dripping out of his father, debating when he could decently escape from the time warp of the ward.
‘Go in, you blighter,’ Harry muttered, then smiled triumphantly, ‘Done it,’ holding out the tiny maze for Jack’s approval.
‘Well done, Dad.’ Didn’t they say that, in old age, we revert to childhood? ‘Look, I’m sorry I’ve got to rush off but—’
‘Off you go. I’ll be fine.’ Unlike Vi, this was said without an iota of self pity. ‘Just fine.’
Jack leaned over and kissed the top of Harry’s head, breathing in the antiseptic smell of coal tar soap which never failed to bring back Sunday nights in the chilly bathroom. ‘Sheila says she’ll pop in at the weekend, if you feel up to having visitors.’ He beefed up this slender life-line with a plausible lie, ‘And Marion phoned to check how you were. She sends her love.’
But his father was busy shunting plastic tiles around and didn’t answer.
Shouts of ‘Here he is,’ and ‘Hello stranger,’ greeted Jack, but the Wicker Men kept leaping and stamping in time to fiddle and accordion, filling the room with panting energy. He changed in the corner, slipping on the old tee-shirt and jogging bottoms which he wore for practice sessions. Next the heavy, buckled shoes, shiny and smelling of feet and shoe polish. Finally, the bells, twelve to a leg, four attached to each of three vertical leather strips. He had strapped the harnesses around his shins scores of times, but the chink chunk, exotic and atavistic, never failed to thrill, evoking much more than the rustic dance – Christmases; wizards and witches; troikas across the frozen steppe. Trevor and Malcolm struck up ‘Trunkles’ and he took his place in the file. In no time at all, the monotony of hospital visiting, the Llangwm dilemma and Fay’s extraordinary behaviour the night-before-last evaporated, exorcised by the ritual of the Morris.