by John King
Ruby was washing sick off one of her new shoes when Sally leant over and told her about Ron Dawes. She blanked the words at first, nodded and kept rubbing. Twenty-five pounds and the first time she wore them a patient did the dirty on her, Papa splattering the leather with a collection of carrots and peas. She couldn’t believe it. She’d only been at work two minutes. Papa wasn’t well, and she knew puking up was extra painful with those stitches in his belly, an exploratory operation with the threat of more to come. She couldn’t be angry with him, plus one of his sons hadn’t charged her for last night’s meal, recognising her from his visits to the hospital. She’d tried to pay, didn’t like owing people, but ended up with a free kebab and a nutty little pastry dripping in honey. Papa did his best but hadn’t made it to the toilet in time. It wasn’t his fault. Uneasy on his legs, he needed a helping hand, and as he disappeared into the WC she knew he felt ashamed. She called after him not to worry, she’d seen it all before. And how many times did she say that a day? She left Papa to it, going over to a sink, grabbing a towel and a bottle of disinfectant.
She was buzzing anyway, with a tune in her head and a spring in her step, stuck with this idea that the whole world was sound, the vibration right there in her head, the stem of her brain feeling like it was being twanged, DJ Chromo talking to her last night as she lay on her bed with the lights off, knackered, the window open and radio rolling, going on about how nothing was solid and it was just a case of being able to see the truth.
Did she know, and it was like he was sitting in the corner the signal was so clear, that once upon a time the scientists swore blind atoms were the building blocks of life, rock-hard solid, at least till they looked inside and found that every one of them was made up of vibrating energy, and sitting in a secret location he was emphasising the point for the benefit of the DTI who couldn’t wait to confiscate his aerial again, that last raid had cost Satellite dear, and the point he was making was everything around Ruby wasn’t how it seemed, it was vibrating faster and faster, and it was music, vibration, sound that made up the world, like that chest of drawers with the woodworm dots in front of her eyes, and she could see beyond the shapes, knew it broke down into smaller units, so many zillions of options you could never ever count them, and it was inside her already, Johnny Chromozone’s take on life, it came from working in the hospital where there was no end to the job, at the worst times it was a conveyor belt that never switched off, viruses you couldn’t even see wiping out the strongest people, that amateur fighter they’d had in, killed by microbes, twenty-five and all his muscle couldn’t save him, there was no happy ending, but if you looked at things individually then there was, most patients got well again, so when Chromo said the world around them was breathing in and out and working to a different agenda she understood, could see it was true, watching the walls move, ripples gliding along next to Paula the other night as she stood with a bottle stuck in her mouth, rubbing her teeth on the glass, froth crashing along the neck, wet paper towels finally getting rid of the sick on her shoe after five minutes of rubbing, Dawn coming over and spraying them with perfume. Ruby held the shoe up to her nose, couldn’t smell the sick, went over to the WC and knocked for Papa.
—You all right in there?
There was a muffled sound and she stood back. She couldn’t think about Ron, Mr Dawes, right now, anything but that, concentrating on DJ Chromo as if she could still hear him, and if nothing was solid then nothing mattered, not really, none of it was real, tears weren’t needed, nor the flapping butterflies in her belly, the nausea she had to control.
The door opened and Papa was holding the frame, looking at the floor. She helped him back to his bed. His head was hung so low with shame she wished he could see everything moving around them, those protons whizzing back and forward, and she wished he could understand that smells and colours weren’t always how they seemed, it was only carrots and peas, nothing to worry about, energy-giving food, and she almost laughed thinking about it, tucked him up in bed instead. He reached for his beads and started clicking them, the steady tick of Papa’s worry.
—Thank you, nurse, he said.
Now the job was done she thought about Ron. Hurrying out of the ward she heard Sally saying he was eighty-four years old and that was a good age, Ruby’s tears stuck inside her. There was silence. Just her breathing, heavy like a scared old man behind an oxygen mask gasping for breath. Nobody died of old age, not really. Ruby knew what Sally meant, he’d lived longer than most people, but so what? It just didn’t seem like it was his time yet. You got a feeling about these things.
Ron was so fresh and interested in everything, even though he’d done more than anyone she’d ever met, geography and history rolled into one, a glimpse into another dimension that was more wacky than life in the Chromo Zone, and when Ron got going, Ruby sitting in the TV room with him drinking tea, it was almost trance-like, same as waking up to On The Parish. He could listen as well, interested in everyone and everything. She liked that about him. That’s how she felt. When you were old, memories were more important than lots of money. Those were his words and they struck a chord. She knew what he meant. It was personal, and she loved him for it, had only met him three weeks ago but felt like she’d known him all her life. You had to hang on to the memories. The worst thing was having them stolen after you’d worked so hard, ending up tired but with no reward. She thought of her mum and felt the cold trip across her body, her skin nearly frozen even though the hospital was hot, fans clanking on the wards she passed.
Ruby ducked into one of the toilets on the corridor, for visitors and passers-by, locked herself inside a cubicle and burst into tears, washing the grit away. She was sobbing, tried to control herself. It was like her granddad had died or something. It was so sad. Ron was happy, more alert than a lot of people her age, and he was healthy enough, was almost ready to go home. She’d never seen his house, but knew how he spent his time. It wasn’t like he was alone, bored, depressed.
She sat there for a good ten minutes, wiped her face with paper and flushed, went back into the corridor. Sally was waiting for her.
—I saw you go in, she said. Are you okay?
—Suppose so. It’s silly really, I hardly knew him. It’s just, I don’t know …
—Maureen said you should go and have a cup of tea. She knew how much you liked him, sitting in the TV room on your breaks. It was like he was your granddad. He had a long run. You have to remember that.
—I know, but it doesn’t seem right. I know he was old, but you get a feeling after a while. I don’t care what anyone says. What did he die of?
—Seems like his heart gave up. It was weak, you know that. He died in his sleep. Didn’t suffer.
—That’s something, but I can’t get my head round it. You think you know what’s coming. Some patients aren’t going home from the moment they come in. Do you know what I mean?
Sally nodded, thoughtfully. She was always trying to smooth things over, at least between the people she knew, but was tough when it came to union affairs. She’d had a few conversations with Ron herself, about the trades union movement in the old days, while Ruby preferred hearing about the places he’d been in the navy. Sally was more of a fighter than her, didn’t like a lot of the doctors on two scores, class and sexism. Ruby kept out of all that, knew that too many of the doctors looked down on the nurses, but believed in giving everyone a chance.
—Come on, Rube, he didn’t suffer or go senile. He had his wits about him right to the end. He had his day and now he’s gone to a better place. It would be worse if he’d suffered, wouldn’t it? He died in the best possible way, at peace with the world, no fear or panic. Come on …
Ruby started crying again and Sally hugged her. She knew she should be rational and agree he’d reached a ripe old age, but for some reason it wasn’t working. She tried to be tough, but couldn’t. She knew she was being silly.
—Go and sit down, Sally said, once she’d stopped. Dawn was suddenly the
re as well, ruffling Ruby’s hair.
—Here, let me clean you up.
She took out a tissue and started dabbing at Ruby’s eyes and cheeks.
—Mr Dawes? Dawn asked Sally, who nodded. Ruby looked away.
—You silly cow, Dawn laughed, but in a friendly way. He lived longer than most people do. He died in his sleep as well.
Ruby was fed up with hearing he was old so his death was expected. There’d been a lot of talk about the elderly receiving second-class treatment in the NHS, files marked so there was no attempt at resuscitation, things like that. It was as if slipping away in their sleep was seen as a nice end to a life that had outlived its usefulness. She knew Sally and Dawn didn’t think like that, they were only trying to make her feel better, but what they were saying reminded her of that. There was nothing to say or do, so she thanked them and walked down to the cafeteria, keeping away from the staff canteen.
She stood behind a middle-aged woman and a boy of twelve or thirteen, who moved awkwardly, a problem with his hip, space-hopper trainers on his feet, waiting for his mum to pay Peggy on the till. He stood back from his mum, turning from a boy to a teenager, and Ruby couldn’t help smiling remembering how she was at that age, thinking of her mum again. She bought herself a can of Coke and a cream egg, sat at a table sucking the drink up through a straw, peeling away the foil and biting the top off, the yellow blob in white cream, noticing sugar on the table and brushing it on to the floor, and that’s what little girls were made of, sugar and spice and all things nice, looking at the boy arguing with his mum, thinking of slugs and snails and puppy-dog tails. It depended on your mood. She made a decision.
She wasn’t going to pity Ron, treat him like someone who’d done nothing with his life, and she was thinking of those funerals where the relatives did their best to turn a sad occasion into a celebration of life, thanking God for the good times, that was all you could do, so instead of a dead man in a hospital morgue she was watching a cocky young Jack-the-Lad sailor swagger along a Shanghai street and turn down a rickety alleyway, following a shoeless kid to a blank door, paying the boy and entering a hidden opium den, walls lined with carved panels and glass cabinets, flame-tongued dragons and framed ancestors, painted china girls sitting on a platform covered with a mountain of silk cushions, an ornate pipe passing his way.
Sitting on foam chairs in the TV room he’d taken Ruby back and told her how he’d smoked opium fresh from the poppy fields, squeezed her hand and said it was pure opium, not heroin, and he’d done the same in Hong Kong and Canton, before moving up to Shanghai, later on he visited opium dens in San Francisco and New York, the East End of London, but Shanghai stood out, real opulence buried away out of sight of the world, he could smell it to this day, sniffing his tea. He was young and took risks, spent most of his spare time in ports when he was in the navy, after months of doing nothing at sea they were bursting at the seams when they docked, and these places knew how to look after sailors, there were bars and girls most places they went, but you had to watch yourself, he’d been in some rough old holes, sheer poverty you’d never see back in England.
They’d lost one of their boys in Calcutta, dragged down a back-street and his throat cut, but other seamen had been to this place in Shanghai and said it was kosher, he wasn’t a drug fiend, just visited a few dens and forgot about it when he was in another part of the world, and she could feel his fingers right now, gentle on her hand, and she was tripping across the globe with Shanghai Express, running at Epsom, because Ron liked a flutter, had this special system he used where if the name of the horse connected with something in his life he’d put a few bob on it, he never looked at the form, it could be something connected to his navy days like Shanghai Express, a place and memory, or from his years at work in England, when he settled down, Hard Labour at Aintree, or a son or daughter, one of his grandkids, a favourite drink or a pub, anything he had a feel for, and from Shanghai Express she went to a horse called Burmese Days, Ron telling her how they’d got stuck in Burma for a month, the air heavy with water building up for the monsoon, so humid he was soaked twenty-four hours a day, massive insects dive-bombing them, mosquitoes everywhere, the food beautiful like nothing he’d ever tasted before, this was a long time ago, before curries took over in England, and he laughed remembering how the boys off the ship were chewing betel nut that turned their mouths red like they’d been fighting, but the Burmese were good as gold, Buddhist monks parading past with their bowls first thing in the morning, and because they had to wait around he was able to get out of Rangoon and travel upcountry, Rangoon a decent enough town with this massive gold dome in its main temple complex he’d read years later could be seen from space, and Burma had some of the most beautiful women he’d ever set his eyes on, along with the Persians, Brazilians, the girls on the Ivory Coast, but that was something else, him and his best friend Fred took the train north to Mandalay then travelled on to Pagan, a temple city next to the Irrawaddy River, and it was one of those experiences you only ever have once in a lifetime, surrounded by thousands of forgotten stupas and pagodas, temples staggering to the horizon, he was told there was near enough ten thousand of them, and so many years later Ruby had watched his eyes light up with the memory, and Fred and Ron walked into this deserted city late in the afternoon and climbed one of the tallest pagodas, sat and watched the sun sink down beyond the river, and in the East the sun really did look like a fire-ball, you were nearer the equator so closer to the sun, and they slept the night on the temple, it was cold but well worth it because in the morning they’d seen the sun rise again, light shooting out over the stone and sand, abandoned temples a red he’d never seen since, a fantastic sight he would never ever forget, and if he died next week he’d know he’d been lucky enough to see something most people never even guessed could exist, it gave him goose pimples thinking about it now the image was so clear in his mind, a magical place in a magical country, he’d felt so alive seeing the sunrise, as if he knew all there was to know about life in a split second.