He wipes at his face with his free hand. It makes a sound like coarse sandpaper and the grip he has on her gradually tightens until it becomes a painful crush. “I’m scared, Grace. What if I can’t do it?”
“There’s nothing to be scared of. Just think on this if nothing else, the one thing you can count on is that I’ll be beside you every step of the way.”
“Applying shoe leather at regular intervals?”
“I’ll buy a new pair of pointy toed boots especially for the purpose, and if I so much as suspect you getting all maudlin and miserable again, I’m going to ram them so far up your arse you’ll be tasting my coconut foot cream for a month.”
He aims for a laugh, but falls far short of target and it comes out forced and painful, leaving his face corrugated with anguish.
“Okay,” he says at last. “I’ll … I’ll try.”
“That’s all anyone can ask of you, Colin.”
“What about you? What do you get out of all my hard work?”
“I’m going to tag along for the ride, basking in your reflected success, standing right behind you ready to catch you if you should stumble.”
“Sounds like you have it all planned out.” He fills his chest, looks to the ceiling, then to her. “Okay. What do you want me to do first?”
“Us,” she corrects him, and lolls out her tongue like a thirsty dog. “And the first thing I’m going to do is make a cup of tea. All that blethering, my mouth is as dry as an Arab’s sandal.”
This time a genuine smile manages to crawl across his face, broadening as it goes until it can grow no more, and he erupts in deep throated genuine laughter.
He snatches her to him, encloses her in his arms and hugs her, crushing her against him, his scratchy unshaven cheek against hers. “Ye’re a daft mare!” He takes her face in his hands, presses a deep kiss to her cheek. “Thank you,” he says, and kisses the tip of her nose. “I’m glad we fucked everything up.”
Chapter 33
When her phone rings out the theme from the Haribo sweetie adverts, Grace leaves off her search of the situations vacant page in the paper to see to it.
The caller display confirms the caller – Malcolm Pettit. She has to answer it. If she doesn’t, he’ll only ring again, and again, and leave voice mails, then he’ll text her, and then he’ll probably send someone round to check up on her, or worse, come himself.
She presses the connect button, but does not speak.
“Grace?”
A long pause. “Dr Pettit.”
“Will you come in and see me? I think we need to talk.”
“Good to see you, Grace. You’re looking well. Come on in. Take a seat. Denise will bring some coffee in. Got some of the good stuff back.”
He tips a nod to Denise at her desk, who gets up to tend to the request.
“I’m glad you agreed to come,” he says, pushing the door closed. “I thought I was going to have to make another house call, although I don’t think I would have been very welcome.”
“Before we start, I have something for you.” Grace slaps her Pelham Chase visitor’s pass on his coffee table. “There you are. Proof that Colin is real, he is at Pelham, and I’ve been to see him. I’m going again next Saturday and we’re going to have lunch. I’d invite you to come, but you don’t have a card so they probably won’t let you in.”
Dr Pettit picks up the card and hands it back to her without looking at it. “I know.”
Grace stares at him. “What?”
“I know Colin McLeod is real, and I know he’s at Pelham, and I know now that you were telling the truth all along. I can only say I’m truly sorry I didn’t believe you.”
“Oh.” She drops into the armchair. “Well that’s taken the wind right out of my sails. I wasn’t expecting that at all. I had a speech prepared and everything. How did you find out?”
Mal eases himself into his chair. “I used a few professional contacts, pulled some strings. They couldn’t tell me much, didn’t expect them to, patient confidentiality you understand–”
A sharp rap on the door and Denise comes in with the tray. Cafetiere, two mugs, cream and sugar, and this time two Tunnock’s teacakes and a couple of jammy dodgers.
“So how is Colin?” Mal says as he prepares the cups. “If I recall one of our earlier sessions, just after you’d connected with him, you gave the impression he was a man with troubles.”
“You’d better not be touting for new business.”
Mal pours coffee into the cups, mouth puckered.
“Troubles?” Grace says. “An understatement if ever there was one. He’s a shadow of a man, burned and scarred, languishing in a wheelchair out at Pelham Chase with his mind so buggered up by shock and trauma that he’s like a turtle pulled into its shell, withdrawn so far into himself that he may never find the way out again.”
Mal gives both cups a stir and hands one to Grace. “Consensus of opinion seems to be that you are the only one who can climb in there with him and show him,” he says.
Their eyes meet over the mugs. “You’ve been talking to Simon Gibbs haven’t you?”
Mal sits back and takes a careful sip from his steaming mug. “Yes.”
“He’s a good man, and a great nurse.”
“What does he know about your … interactions shall we call them, with Colin?”
“Everything.”
“And he’s alright with it?”
“Yes, and he’s been brilliant. It took him a while to come to terms with it. His almost exact words the first time we met? As nutty as a Dundee fruit cake with extra nuts … delusional … very possibly deranged. Nice eh? Then we settled down for a good long chat and I wore him down, and now he believes me and he’s keen to do whatever he can to help.”
“As do I … now.”
“I’m glad to hear it, although I am also more than a little disappointed that you couldn’t trust me from the start, that you felt the need to check up, to try and prove me wrong just to shore up your own beliefs.”
“I didn’t–”
“Yes you did. I pushed you out of your comfort zone, away from the safe and cosy realms of your training manuals and seminar teachings. I presented you with something so far removed from your own or anyone else’s experiences, something far more complex than either of us dreamed of, that the sheer scale of uncertainty scared you to death, not that I might be right, but that you and everything you believe in might just possibly be wrong. That’s it in a nutshell isn’t it?”
A pause, before a quiet admission. “Yes.”
Grace leans forward in her chair, bum on the edge of her seat, and fixes him with a wide blue gaze, although her look goes past his eyes and far inside him, as if she is trying to read his deepest thoughts.
“Don’t feel bad, Mal,” she says. “It’s not all your fault that you didn’t understand, probably still don’t. You consider yourself a professional and have been trained not to accept anything until you have all the hows whys and wherefores laid out in a straight line in front of you, everything scientifically provable. A. B. C–” She makes a chopping motion with her hand. “Only in this instance, the hows and whys and wherefores don’t matter squat, only that it is. If you are to fully get to grips with what’s going on here, you need to forget all your book learning, forget everything you ever knew, let your mind fall wide open for one minute and think about how two troubled consciousnesses in need of each other could reach out across the great whatever-it-is and by some miracle come together. Yes it is something that none of us fully appreciates, yes it is something that none of us could ever be prepared for, but none of that matters. The only thing … the only thing that matters, is that Colin is suffering. He needs help. He needs me. I need him. Helping him is helping me. Mutual benefit for the common good. Isn’t that what it’s all about?”
“Yes, it is,” Mal says.
Grace drops back in her chair and the surge tide of words ebbs, leaving Mal stranded on the shore, battered and bruised by the verb
al onslaught.
“Can I say something now?” he says before she gets a second wind to pummel him some more.
She nods.
He clears his throat. “It may astound you to know, Grace, that I agree with everything you’ve just said. It’s true I didn’t want to know because it all went so much against the grain. It’s been a gargantuan struggle to set aside everything I know, to cultivate even a glimmer of understanding. It’s taken a lot of thought, sleepless nights even, but I’ve taken into consideration all you’ve said, all I’ve learned, and I’ve used every shred of my rationality and intelligence to come to realise that … I was wrong. Three words you won’t hear very often from me, but there you are, I’ve said them and I mean it. I admit it. I-was-wrong. It wasn’t the talking therapy at all that was helping you. That was just a catalyst. You agreeing to take part in my experimental treatment was just a coincidence because whatever fantastic thing happened to you had already done so while you were in your induced coma. All I did was suggest a few breathing and mind clearing exercises that you used to help make the connection stronger and easier. Everything else you did all by yourself.”
He sags down into his chair, as if all the air has been let out of him, running his hand down his face and over his goatee. “I didn’t do anything.”
He snatches up one of the chocolate teacakes, rips off the foil and takes a huge bite, decapitating the cake. It looks as if chocolate is his go-to comforter in times of crisis and uncertainty too. He is but human after all.
He looks so crestfallen that Grace can’t help but feel a twinge of sympathy for him.
“Don’t feel that your treatment has failed, Mal,” she says, offering a crumb of comfort. “For the right person, I think it could be incredibly useful. I’m just not that person. That said, you can take great solace in the fact that you’ve done me an enormous favour. Without you I would never have known about Colin, wouldn’t have found him out at Pelham, wouldn’t have found a new purpose to my existence, found something, someone to live for. You did say yourself when you came to visit me at home that you thought I had made progress, that I looked better, sounded better, had more confidence, more drive, more … everything, remember?”
He nods, his mouth now full of the chocolate covered biscuit base of the teacake.
“I’d call that a success,” she says. “I … no let’s make that we, Colin and I, have a lot to thank you for.”
Mal catches a smear of chocolate from the corner of his mouth. “I suppose that’s me off your Christmas card list and no groundbreaking article in the International Journal of Psychotherapy.”
“You can write your article. I give you my permission.”
He deflates some more. “You must be joking. I’d be a laughing stock.”
“Did you really mean to say that out loud?”
Sag. “No.”
“You can stay on my Christmas card list on one condition.”
“What’s that?”
“That when Colin’s ready for it, when he asks for it, you’ll help him.”
“He might not ask me.”
“He will. I’m working on it. It’s going to be a long time yet, but if he knows there’s someone out there willing to listen to him, ready to help him when he needs it, it will be a great boost to his self confidence. It’s going to be a challenge for you too, a real test of your abilities.”
“I’ll do my best, although I don’t know if I’ll be up to it.” He takes a gulp from his coffee cup. “Can I hear your speech now? The one you had ready to bawl me out with.”
Still in shock from Mal’s change of both mind and heart, Grace opens her mouth, then snaps it closed. The diatribe she had prepared all seems irrelevant now, and a tad unfair.
He’s changed his mind. He’s on your side. Be grateful. Don’t rock the boat with petty retorts or he might change it back again and then you’ll be back to square one, minus help for Colin.
“No,” she says. “It was somewhat…vitriolic and there may be tears, and as I hate to see a grown man cry–” She points at the plate and the silver and red foil wrapped goodie on it. “But I will have that teacake if it’s going begging.”
Chapter 34
The following day Grace returns to the garden, fully prepared to help Colin tidy up the mess he made. At first she thinks she’s in the wrong place, because there doesn’t seem to be anything to tidy up.
The sun is shining, the flowers are blooming and filling the air with their perfume. The robin is back on his perch, singing his little heart out, and over at the greenhouse she can find not a single crack in a single pane. The seedlings are back in their tiny red clay pots, bright green and healthy against the rich brown compost. Even the aspidistra is back in the Chinese jardinière, not a leaf bent.
It’s as if somehow time had been turned back, restoring perfection.
From the other side of the hedge comes the rhythmic clunk, clunk of axe on wood, and she follows the sound to where Colin is hard at work chopping logs.
He is stripped down to his khaki coloured vest, the raw scarred skin over his shoulders on show. His arms are solid, shiny with sweat, muscles bulging and relaxing as he swings the axe. The large tattoo on his right arm changes shape with each contraction and she watches it with quiet fascination until he reaches for the next log and the time is right for her to make her presence known.
“Shouldn’t you be resting?”
He starts and wheels. “Jesus!”
In one swift motion he drops the axe, snatches his shirt from where he has draped it over the water pump handle and wrestles it on in a desperate attempt to hide his damaged flesh.
“Bit of light exercise never hurt anyone,” he says, stuffing the tail of his shirt into the waistband of his trousers.
“Garden’s looking good,” she says. “Maybe better than before. Two guesses. Either the gardening pixies sneaked in during the night, or you put it right in here–” She presses her fingers to her temples, “–because you’re feeling better.”
“Aye.”
“Which one?”
“Pixies.”
“Good for them. They did a good job. It looks great.”
“I’ll tell them ye said so.”
A touch of humour? A good sign
“I rang Simon to ask how you were,” Grace says, picking her spot in the shade, upturning a galvanised bucket and plonking herself down on it. “He says your fever is coming down, blood tests show nothing out of the ordinary. It was as he said, you stressed yourself sick. You should be feeling much better soon.”
“Aye. I’m no’ sa bad now.”
Colin takes up the axe and continues with his chopping. A few logs later he pauses, takes off his cap, puffs out his cheeks and wipes his hand over his glossy brow. He pauses and listens for something that should be there, but isn’t.
Grace, for once, is not talking. The background radiation of her banal chatter is conspicuous by its absence.
Has she gone already? He looks round. No, there she is, sitting on her improvised seat in the shade, legs crossed, elbow on one knee, resting her chin in her hand, watching him with a gentle smile sitting on her lips.
“What’s the ma’er wi yoo? Ye sitting on a feather?” he says, slopping his cap back on.
“Just admiring that sweaty lumberjack look you’ve got going there,” she says.
“Eh?”
She gets to her feet and sidles over to him. Her hand dips into his pocket and pulls out his handkerchief. She wets the corner of the cloth with spit and wipes it over his cheek, leaving a clean streak.
“You know, under all that sticky grime and grot, you’re a very attractive man Colin McLeod,” she says.
Colin screws up his nose. “Bollocks.”
She wipes off more dirt. “I mean it. Look at you.” She squeezes his bicep as if testing a ripe fruit. “All muscley and toned, as strong as an ox, all that military training at work–” She presses her palms against his face. “And you have a very expressive
face, beautiful eyes and–” Her fingers go to his hair, burying themselves in the curly mop, “–exquisite hair.”
He curls his top lip, frowns, squints one eye shut and looks at her sideways. “You wouldn’t happen ta be flirting wi me would ye, quine?”
Grace lets her head fall back and rolls her eyes. “I’m trying to, but some people are just too…dense.” She puffs out a breath, thrusts the axe back into his hand and flounces back to her bucket seat, dropping down onto it, arms folded in a solid peeve.
Colin turns his back on her so she can’t see the split melon grin dividing his face. “Wound her up like a cheap pocket watch,” he murmurs, and chuckles to himself.
After half an hour he has a pile of quartered logs. He arches and stretches his back until it cracks, then sniffs the dark stain colouring the armpit of his shirt. “Oh aye. Honking here. No sa sexy now, eh?”
Grace wrinkles her nose in disgust. “Ewww.”
Colin leans the axe against the hut wall, “That’s enough hard labour for one day. Gonna find a beer and cool off. Want one?”
“Don’t mind if I do.”
She follows him into the hut and sits on the cot while he takes two brown bottles from the bucket of cold water. He uses the old fashioned slam it against a hard edge method to pop the caps.
“Simple but effective,” he says, handing a bottle to Grace. “Hurts like a bastard though.”
She takes a delicate mouthful of the deliciously cold liquid. Colin, in contrast, downs half his bottle without taking a breath, throat moving convulsively, Adam’s apple bobbing. He then lets out a diaphragm rattling belch.
“Par-don me.”
They sit together on the cot, drinking and making small talk until they run out of trivial things to say, and so just sit and drink in silence.
“It fixed itself,” Colin says, dragging Grace out of quiet consideration of the shopping list she is composing in her head.
“What did?”
“The garden. One minute it was a wreck, and so was I. I had maself a little weep, cleared ma heid, tried to make maself have just one positive thought, and the next time I looked, everything was back as it should be.”
In The Garden Of Stones Page 23