by Ann Morgan
Ellie’s face lolled unmoved on the pillow. Smudge wanted to slap it. She raised a hand and the pages of the letter rustled in the pocket of her coat. The thought of the scraps of skittish writing made her dizzy. She turned abruptly and left the room. She strode down the corridor, fighting nausea, squinting against the glare of the fluorescent lights which seemed to be trying to bore its way into her brain. On the desk of the vacant nurses’ station around the corner five doors along, she discovered a ham sandwich wrapped in cling film. This she snatched up, unwrapped and stuffed into her mouth, gulping chunks of bread and meat down unchewed, determined to deaden the surge and twist of her insides.
When she got back to Hellie’s room, she heard a voice and ducked behind the doorjamb, peering through the crack.
‘Now this is an interesting case,’ said the speaker, an olive-skinned, middle-aged man in a white coat. ‘RTA. Comatose for four months.’
There was a group of youngsters clustered around the bed, clutching notepads. She saw one of them catch sight of Hellie’s face, and mouth something to a girl with plaits. Indifferent to the frisson of excitement in the room, the doctor continued his account of Hellie’s condition. Speaking in a soft voice, he gave a brisk rundown of her injuries, in which the word ‘contusion’ featured heavily, and summarised the readings on the monitor. Ms Sallis had been put on auxiliary ventilator support, he explained, because of a chest infection and they had inserted something called a peg. Then he turned his attention to the figure on the bed.
‘Unlike the patient next door, you’ll see that Ms Sallis exhibits signs of agitation – twitching, blinking, even involuntary groans on occasion,’ he said. ‘These are the sort of signs that often give visitors the impression that the patient could be about to wake up. In fact, the reality is rather different and in Ms Sallis’s case these are largely due to agitation caused by hypoxia from the pulmonary infection, which we are attempting to bring under control with intravenous antibiotics. Ms Sallis’s Glasgow Coma Score is very low – no more than four – as you’ll see if I administer a few of the key tests.’
The doctor leant in and rubbed his knuckles over Ellie’s breastbone. Her arms jerked straight with the palms turned out. He then shone a light into her eyes and turned her head from side to side before pulling back the lower section of her blanket, tapping each of her knees and scratching the soles of her feet.
‘Decerebrate extensor posturing in response to noxious stimuli,’ intoned the doctor. ‘Doll’s eye reflexes preserved, which suggests some brain-stem function, but sluggish pupillary responses. Brisk reflexes with extensor plantar responses. All in all, a poor long-term prognosis.’
As if in response to the doctor’s impertinence, Ellie frowned. A ripple of awkward laughter spread round the group.
‘But,’ said the girl with plaits after it had subsided, ‘sorry, Dr Jalil – aren’t there instances of people with this level of function waking up?’
‘You’re quite right,’ said Dr Jalil, replacing the blanket. ‘There are. That’s why we don’t turn off all the machines and walk away. That’s why we give the drugs to treat the infections. But the truth is, in cases such as this, the chance of a return to consciousness is extremely low. Probably less than nought point one per cent. Particularly after the length of time we are talking about now. And that’s not even taking into account the level of brain damage that may have occurred. The reality is that sooner or later you have to look at the probabilities and ask yourself how much longer it’s worth sustaining this level of existence and combating infections rather than letting them take their course.’
There was an uncomfortable silence for a moment. The group stared at Hellie in the bed.
‘Right, that’s enough for today,’ said Dr Jalil. ‘You’ll be needing to get to your next session. I’ll see most of you in the lecture theatre on Thursday.’
The students shuffled out, whispering and then talking as they went up the corridor. A laugh drifted back as the double doors slid to. Dr Jalil emerged from the room fiddling with a Parker pen clipped to the pocket of his white coat.
‘Thank you,’ he said distractedly, seeming to mistake her for one of the students. Smudge pressed against the wall to let him past.
After he’d gone she went in and over to the bed once more. The blanket was wrinkled where Dr Jalil had lifted it and she smoothed it and tucked it under until it matched the other side. Beneath the covers, Hellie looked smaller than she had before, as though the consultant and his students had taken part of her away with them, and Smudge felt a blast of indignation on her behalf.
‘Don’t worry, they’ve gone, Hellie,’ she said, stroking her sister’s tubed and taped hand where it lay on the covers. ‘It’s just me now.’
For a second the hand jerked and gripped her fingers. Then it slid away.
46
As soon as you arrive in Manchester, you feel better. The air seems clearer, the pavements solid. Your brain stops spinning and rotates in time with the rest of the world. Everything is in sync. Only a vestige of the powerful feeling remains, spurring you on, making you optimistic, putting haloes of possibility around everything.
You love the feel of the city. The big Victorian buildings converted into nightclubs and funky bars. The Gothic churches with their tall spires, like fingers raised in warning. The large squares and grand terracotta facades. It feels grounded and real and sure about what it is: a place for a fresh start.
With most of what’s left from the stash in the anorak, you take a room in a lodging house near the city centre. Unlike the dive in London, this is a proper place with rules and curfews and breakfast served between seven and nine. It’s run by a woman called Beryl, a former nurse. There are fresh flowers in a vase on the hall table and homemade biscuits in a jar in the kitchen and it smells of citrus.
It’s touch and go whether Beryl will take you without references – it’s not her normal policy, as she mentions several times. Even after you tell her that you, Elisabeth, have escaped from an abusive relationship, she still looks at you askance. Nevertheless, over the second cup of tea around the table with its blue-checked cloth, something in her relents and, glancing up at the small cross nailed above the back door, she agrees to let you stay on the strength of two weeks’ rent paid up front in cash.
‘There you are, Elisa,’ she says, leading you upstairs and opening a door on to a room under the eaves. ‘Will this be all right for you?’
It’s big and airy, with views out to the edge of the city, and the bed is made with fresh, white linen – you can smell its cleanness from where you stand.
‘Yes, thank you,’ you say. ‘This will do just fine.’
Beryl’s routine rubs off on you. Before long, you’re getting up at 6.30 a.m., having an early breakfast and heading out to explore the city as the rush-hour builds. You find an art shop in a back street not far from the imposing town hall and this time you treat yourself to a pad of thick, creamy paper and a fistful of pencils and charcoals. These you take out with you, spending hours here and there roughing out the things that you see: the moulding on the corner of a building; the face of a newspaper vendor in a kiosk near the station; an umbrella dropped in front of the elaborate fire station.
When it rains, you take yourself to a cafe in the new glazed, circular shopping centre called the Barnacle up near the train station. You sit at a table by one of the angular panes of glass on the top floor and go over what you’ve done, finessing and refining, doing things again. It’s the first time you’ve worked in this way. Before, you always dashed sketches off in a blur, when the enthusiasm for it possessed you, barely looking at the results once the urge passed. Now, you start to realise, the looking back is everything. The process of sifting and realignment is what makes the work whole, what makes it live. And behind every broken, botched attempt there is usually something worth digging into and drawing out.
You enjoy the rhythm of these days. But as time goes by and the money dwindles, you find the tho
ught of the long term nags at you. You know you wouldn’t want to go back to how things were in London. There is something different and pure about where you are now that you wouldn’t want to tarnish by bringing that other life in. It feels a very long time ago. You are not the person that you were back then, all those tens of hours before.
Knowing that, you set your mind to trying to find other ways of bringing money in. You ask in the cafe at the Barnacle and it turns out there’s a vacancy on the cleaning team that scours the shopping centre after-hours. The money’s rubbish and the guy who fixes it is clearly dodgy, taking a cut before giving you and the other women, who don’t speak English, your pay in cash, but you don’t argue – anything to get started on building life another way, on protecting this clear, precious space you’ve found.
Except it turns out cleaning doesn’t suit you. You’re much slower than the others and when the boss comes to inspect your work, he’s not happy. You only last three shifts before he tells you not to come back.
Next, you try your hand at washing up for one of the curry houses two streets down from Beryl’s, but it’s the same story: your mind wanders as you stand with your hands in the suds and before you know it, the kitchen staff are gathered around you, glaring. You overhear two women talking in the newsagent’s about a pub looking for someone to collect the empty glasses and occasionally lend a hand behind the bar. You think you might be quite good at this and when you pop in they like the fact that you’ve no issues with it being under the table and off the books. You’re hired on the spot. But the first evening, something terrible happens: you’re carrying a tray of glasses round to the dishwasher when you hear a couple arguing over in the far corner by the pinball machine.
‘Just get the bloke who does the fake IDs to knock you one up,’ says the man. ‘I don’t see what the problem is. Hell, go the full nine yards and get a passport. I’ve seen the ones he’s done. They’re really good.’
But the woman’s not having it. ‘Nah,’ she says loudly, sweeping her hand out in a way that suggests she’s had more than a few to drink. ‘I don’t trust him. Something about the eyes. He looks like a wolf.’
And that’s it. Before you know it, you’ve dropped the glasses. There are shards all over the floor and your shoes and the whole pub has turned to look at you, but all you can see is the snarl of his face jerking furiously above you and all you can hear is his flat, dead voice in your ears. And you know it can’t be him. You know it’s paranoia, some vestige of the chaos you’re trying to leave behind. You know your brain does this: conjuring up people where they have no right to be. But all the same you can’t shake the trembling that grips you. When they come to tell you it’s all right and everybody makes mistakes, you make a break for it and run out of the door even though it’s half an hour ’til the end of your shift. Bollocks to the money. You know you won’t be going back there again.
One day, walking past the art shop, you notice a small design studio next door with a gallery attached. The door is open and there’s a sign in the window: receptionist wanted, enquire within. You think about it for a moment. Reception work. That’s answering the phone, right? Maybe it’s something you could do. You wander in, but it’s the middle of the day and no one’s around, so you spend some time staring at the pieces on the walls, a range of artworks with commercial twists: air fresheners nestled in the creepers of a sprawling vine; cows with cartons where their udders should be; a washing machine with a television set cracked and tossed in the drum. It’s edgy and you like it: a sort of advertising-art mash-up.
Behind the gallery space, a large open-plan studio stretches away to the back of the building – all wooden floors and bare brickwork. There are vast tables and easels with works in progress clamped to them and huge angle-poise lamps positioned above, as though the whole room were some giant’s desk. Curious, you wander off towards the tables and pick your way among them, looking at the pictures. Some of them are really good; some need a bit of work. At one particularly cluttered workbench, you stop and look at a sketch of a skeletal, ragged bird with a tube of toothpaste clutched in its beak. The bringing together of two such disparate things is pleasing, but the composition is all wrong. The bird, you realise, should be looking straight at you, its head cocked quizzically on one side in that way they do, not staring off somewhere to the right as it is now. Your fingers itch to pick up a pencil and fix it.
As you’re looking, a door opens at the back of the room and footsteps approach.
‘Oh, thank God,’ says a voice. ‘You’re here.’
You turn to see a tall, blond man in an open-necked shirt advancing towards you.
‘Trudy, isn’t it?’ he says, holding out a hand.
‘Um—’
‘Anton,’ says the man, indicating himself. ‘The agency said you’d be here two hours ago.’
‘Sorry,’ you begin, gesturing vaguely towards the sign. ‘I—’
‘Never mind that now,’ he says, passing a hand over his forehead. ‘We’re in a crisis. The senior designer’s gone AWOL and there’s been no one to answer the phones. Reception’s this way.’
He ushers you over to a table by the door.
‘Computer, phone, coffee machine,’ he says, flicking a hand in the direction of each object. ‘All the usual things. You’ll be all right, won’t you? Of course you will. Thanks so much. Lifesaver. I can’t tell you.’
‘I think—’ you say. Then it hits you: this could be it, the chance you’ve been looking for. You decide not to blow it just yet. Instead, you close your mouth and smile.
‘Lifesaver,’ says Anton again. He strides back across the studio and into a room beyond. You catch a glimpse of a large window looking out over a yard full of bins. The door shuts.
You puff out your cheeks and sit down at the desk. There’s a calendar showing pictures of a young woman with pink hair posing at various landmarks with a dark, hairy guy in metaller T-shirts, and a paperweight containing a tiny model of the Eiffel Tower. ‘Edgewise’ proclaims a banner floating around the computer’s screen. ‘Artful concepts’. The phone rings and panic grips you. You think for a moment about running out and leaving it. But the memory of the empty streets and the fifteen pounds left in your pocket make you pause. The problem of tomorrow and the next day and the next throbs like a headache in your brain. You take a deep breath. You can do this. If London has taught you anything, it’s the value of being what people expect.
You glance at the computer screen once more and pick up the receiver. ‘Hello, Edgewise?’ you say.
You pop out to get something to eat and when you get back, the studio is occupied. Two blokes stand behind easels. They stop what they’re doing as you approach. One, with stubble and wearing an old Nirvana Nevermind T-shirt, scowls at you. The other, in an ink-stained denim shirt, with acne scars at his temples, chews a pencil.
‘Um,’ you say, swallowing, ‘I’m Trudy. Anton said I should start today.’
There’s a silence. Ink-stained denim takes the pencil out of his mouth.
‘Hi, Trudy, I’m G-Gareth,’ he says, contorting his mouth slightly to get the word out. ‘And this is the senior designer, Edmund.’
‘Ed,’ says Edmund.
‘Hi,’ you say. And then, anxious to please: ‘Edmund’s a good name.’
Edmund rolls his eyes.
‘Don’t m-mind him,’ says Gareth. ‘It’s been a tough few days. Nice to have you a-with us.’
You walk to the reception desk and see with a start that the hairy bloke with the pink-haired woman in the photographs is Edmund. Doubt about the wisdom of sticking with the Trudy lie wells up in you once more but you counsel yourself silently to keep your nerve. Compared to what you’ve lived through, this is nothing. You may as well ride this rollercoaster as far as it takes you, squeeze as much advantage out of it as you can. It’s not as though the world is offering you many other options. Baby steps, that’s the secret. Dealing with each challenge as it arises. Playing the cards as and when. You
look at the guys again.
‘Sorry,’ you say. ‘Am I supposed to be doing anything apart from answering the phone?’
To the right, you catch sight of a bank of machines: computers, a scanner and something that looks like an electronic walk-in wardrobe. You hope they won’t expect you to know how to operate that.
‘For fuck’s sake,’ mutters Edmund. He stumps over. ‘Hasn’t Anton told you anything?’
You shrug. Trudy, you decide, is a woman of few words.
‘Fucking typical,’ says Edmund. He runs a hand through his hair. You catch a whiff of cigarette smoke.
‘All right, where were you before?’ he says.
‘London,’ you say cautiously.
‘No, fuckwit. What company?’
‘Edmund,’ says Gareth from across the room.
‘What agency?’ Edmund says, drumming his fingers on the desk.
‘Join the Dots,’ you say. You could kick yourself as soon as you’ve said it, it’s so lame.
‘Never heard of it,’ says Edmund. ‘But wherever the fuck it was, I expect the designers worked by getting a brief, coming up with a concept with the copywriters, and then producing a piece in which the words and design worked together to sell some sort of project or idea. Am I right?’
You nod. You wish you could write this down.
‘Well, you can forget all that shit here,’ says Edmund. ‘All that normal, logical crap counts for nothing. Here, we’re in the dark. If we’re lucky, Anton gives us a word and then we have to produce something – an artistic response, he calls it. A piss in the wind more like! And then he takes all our efforts to the client and more often than not they throw it out and he comes back with another word… and we have to go through the whole half-arsed charade again. Meanwhile, Anton tries to palm off our also-rans as art to footballers’ wives and reality TV show winners, hence the gallery at the front. Battery artists, that’s what we are here. And you’re the poor sod who has to deal with the clients when they ring up to complain.’