The World Was All Before Them

by Matthew Reynolds

  ‘No!’ Sue almost shrieked. Then, abashed: ‘Sorry, that’s a good idea. Obviously. It could work. There’s a pool of talent we could draw on. But’ – her stomach swooned. Now she was going say what she thought. ‘I think we should try something more radical. How about we . . .’ – oh, if only she had had longer, just a clear afternoon – ‘. . . put the punters centre stage, get them to focus on their own experience. Let’s say we don’t show them anything that they can think of as having been created by an artist. No actual works of art at all, not even videos, not even really installations.’

  She paused. She glanced. There was no immediate positive response.

  ‘And instead’ – she was speaking it slowly, thinking it through – ‘they walk in, and there’s a room, with . . . a heartbeat. Let’s say, there must be such a thing as a portable ECG: let’s say we strap on an ECG to each person as they walk in. And then they go into the first room. There’s a heartbeat. They’re not sure if it is their own or not. Or when there are two or three of them in the room they’ll have to really listen to see if it is actually two or three heartbeats superimposed. Or . . . not.’

  Still no enthusiasm but at least no interruptions.

  ‘In the second room, . . . it’ll be the brain. Instead of sound there will be vision, a projected brain trace on the wall or all around them. And we’ll have put electrodes on their heads so there’ll be the same uncertainty. About whether it is theirs or not. And in the third . . .’

  But Omar was speaking: ‘I welcome this contribution, Sue . . .’

  Sue wanted to press on: ‘We can call it The Whole World, because what they experience . . .’

  ‘I welcome’ – Omar’s voice was flat, his face still – ‘this contribution, Sue. Let’s keep it in the air. Other ideas?’

  ‘OK another idea,’ she said, now frankly floundering: ‘Postcards . . .’

  ‘I think,’ said Charlotte, ‘I might be able to get Elton Barfitt.’

  ‘Now that . . .’ said Omar; but Sue was saying ‘they don’t do gallery shows.’

  ‘I think,’ Charlotte said with an air of authority, ‘that could change.’

  Was Omar going to . . . why wasn’t Omar probing her on that?

  ‘Elton Barfitt are a name,’ said Omar. He paused, still holding the floor with his expression: he was thinking; he was reaching a decision. ‘And, when it comes to it, that’s what we need, a gallery like us. Sue,’ he said, pointing his narrowed eyes at her, projecting his penetrating voice, ‘I appreciate your idealism. Your verve. I really do. We need you here to keep on goading us, keep us up to the minute, keep us . . . live. But, when it comes to it, we have to recognise our limitations.’ He stopped to think again. He brought his fingertips together and touched them to his lips in a filmic pose. And then he said: ‘I can’t . . . I’m going to hold myself back from this; leave it to you, Charlotte, and you, Sue, the two of you together, to take forward. You need to be very careful. Your negotiations with Elton Barfitt will require tact and sensitivity. But at the same time we need an answer quickly.’ He leaned back in his chair, looked past them towards the slatted window, then gave them one final moment of focus: ‘Keep me informed.’

  The meeting was over. Charlotte and Sue had risen and were easing out through the glass door; they were in the brighter light of the main office. Then Charlotte’s mouth was near Sue’s ear, murmuring: ‘Let’s keep going, walk straight out, get a coffee.’

  As Sue and Charlotte carried on walking, Philip, 54 miles away was dabbing clorhexadine on a painful crimson swelling around a little pus-crimped puncture.

  ‘I thought,’ said the patient, as Sue and Charlotte were trotting down the stairs, ‘it might, you know, come out by itself.’

  ‘Now I’m going to put in some local anaesthetic,’ said Philip, ripping the bag around the syringe and piercing the ampoule of lignocaine 1%, as, 54 miles away, the glass doors swung shut and a little bit open and then decisively shut again behind the two women.

  ‘It’ll sting first before it takes effect,’ said Philip, sliding the needle into the tissue, pulling back a little on the plunger then pressing it gently, firmly.

  Charlotte leading the way, the two women turned left along a cobbled street.

  Philip injected the other side of the swelling too.

  Sue and Charlotte parted to circumvent a lamp-post in the middle of the narrow pavement then recombined with syncopated strides.

  He waited for, what, three, four minutes as they walked.

  It was very much stuck in the adductor pollicis muscle between thumb and index finger, right down at the bottom where the metacarpals met.

  Now right into an alley.

  ‘What I’m going to have to do,’ said Philip, as the two women turned again, ‘is push it. Because if I pull it’ll just get worse stuck because of the barbs.’

  And here they were.

  ‘OK. This might hurt. Ready?’

  So that, as the two women were stepping down through the door of the little pub, Philip was pushing the tiny metal eye; and as Sue was noticing the stone floor, wooden benches and velveteen stools, the patient, a Mr Stephenson, sucked in his breath; and as Charlotte strode towards the illuminated promise of the bar, the sharp, bloody tip emerged through the epidermis, and as Charlotte exclaimed ‘What are you having?’ the whole big, strong, steel, lurid fishhook lay in the palm of Philip’s translucently gloved hand.

  ‘Just fizzy water thanks,’ said Sue.

  ‘Well I need a whisky after that.’

  ‘Alright then . . . gin and tonic.’

  They took their drinks to a small round table and perched there, shrugging off coats, laying purses and phones on the tabletop between them, the two women: Charlotte with a blonde bob and pale tweed jacket but a blue blouse under and no pearls; Sue with crew-cut dark hair, and straightforward grey jeans and a black, felt, square-cut jacket, breast pockets like the top of a boiler suit, practical and plain.

  ‘Shall I tell you a secret?’ Charlotte confessed: ‘I’m not completely sure I can get Elton Barfitt. I don’t know them. I don’t even know if they’re free.’

  Sue was struck by the chubbiness of Charlotte’s face, the pinkness of her cheeks. She said: ‘So how are we . . .’

  ‘I simply love their work. And also I really didn’t want the gallery to go dark. Omar would have taken that decision right then. Did you see how he reacted to your ideas you were putting forward?’

  ‘Well it felt like you both . . .’

  ‘He would have said the same to mine if you hadn’t . . .’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘It was like he was a stone,’ Charlotte declared. ‘Letting them wash over him. Not open to them at all. So I thought what can I say that he would go for. And what should pop into my head but Elton Barfitt? There’s no harm in it. The worst that can happen,’ she carried on gaily, ‘is they say no. But I would so love it if they didn’t. I would so love it if I can persuade them.’

  ‘Why’ – Sue was still in the turmoil of the meeting – ‘does he ask me to come up with things if he doesn’t ever like them. Why did he employ me?’

  ‘Because, well I think,’ Charlotte said, ‘he wants to feel they’re in the mix. You know, that they could be his sort of thing. I think,’ she opined from the height of her eight years’ experience of working with Omar, ‘he wants to feel radical but in fact he is a very conservative figure.’ Charlotte had finished her double whisky already and was turning her head towards the bar.

  Sue said: ‘But Elton Barfitt aren’t going to do anything conservative.’

  ‘But did you hear how he talked about them? It’s the name. It’s simply the fact that they are famous. He came up through the time of the YBAs so he thinks that value and celebrity go together.’

  ‘Which makes it all the more . . .’

  ‘Plus,’ said Charlotte, rattling the ice-cubes in her glass and lifting it to drain the last drops of dilute drink, ‘with Omar I’m sure there’s a financial consid
eration.’

  Sue allowed herself a little bit of a guffaw: ‘Those suits . . .’

  Charlotte smiled. ‘Can I get you another?’

  Sue shook her head and then waited as Charlotte arose and went across to the bar. How good The Whole World might have been. People would have come in, opened their ears, opened their eyes. Been so . . . alerted. They would have loved it, she was sure they would. It was such a fuck fuck fuck. But then her vehemence exhausted itself, and the alcohol softened her a little, and she ended up thinking: still, there will be other chances.

  ‘Running a gallery,’ said Charlotte, returning, ‘it’s basically like, or it can be, basically like insider dealing.’

  ‘So you think he’s been quietly buying up some Al Ahmed?’

  Charlotte smiled appreciatively. ‘He’s bloody sharp. Has to have been to have got where he is, given, well’ – Charlotte seemed to lose her way for a moment – ‘given who he is, and especially where he started. Walthamstow: would you believe it? Then Aberdeen for Chrissake; then the break to Bristol and now here. He’s created himself.’

  The two women reached for their glasses, drank. Charlotte checked her phone. Sue looked around: nobody. Only an old bloke with a pint bent over the paper which was spread flat on a large rectangular table in the darkest bit of the . . .

  ‘So: Elton Barfitt,’ she said.

  ‘Are you really OK to work with me on this? I know it’s not what you . . .’

  ‘No, it’s alright,’ said Sue. ‘It’s my job. And anyway I do like them.’

  ‘To me,’ Charlotte announced, ‘they are really among the greats. The person I do know – because I’m not actually being completely cavalier, I do have some idea – the person who I hope can get us access was the publicist for their last project, you know the one in the Sahara?’

  ‘To do with air-conditioning.’

  ‘Yeh, roughly,’ Charlotte admitted. ‘So they were sitting there, on this big, double gold throne. In the middle of the desert. In like forty-five, fifty degrees. And, yeh, surrounded with air-conditioning units and, like, micro-spray sprinklers, so they used up all this electricity to create a bearable environment, because of course all the air-conditioning went off into the air and the water-droplets evaporated pretty much as soon as they left the nozzles. And they were dressed like Restoration fops, in wigs and silk . . .’

  ‘I remember, it was wild.’

  ‘Though apparently,’ Charlotte leaned forward to whisper, ‘so my friend says, they had a military-grade cooling system going on inside the wigs, with lots of little tubes, so actually it wasn’t as wacko as it seemed.’

  ‘Still, said Sue, ‘it was a very strong piece.’

  ‘Yeh,’ said Charlotte. ‘It was, wasn’t it. I’m glad you think so. Because, to me personally they are probably the artists I most relate to, that mean the most to me.’

  Sue decided to leave that one floating in the air. ‘So,’ she said: ‘Say you do get through to them tomorrow. Or whenever. What will you . . . ?’

  ‘Spur of the moment.’ Charlotte grinned. But then her face relaxed: ‘No actually shall we sleep on it? And confer first thing tomorrow? I’ve got an inkling of an idea . . . but I want it to mature.’

  ‘Sure,’ said Sue: ‘But we can’t in the office.’

  ‘Oh no of course. I’ll say I’m working from home. And you can . . .’

  ‘I’ll ring you on my way in.’

  ‘And can you . . . ?’

  ‘Yeh,’ said Sue, conspiratorially: ‘I’ll take care of anything that comes in for you tomorrow.’

  ‘That’s it then.’ Charlotte had her hands on the tops of her thighs; was pushing her stool back, standing up, reaching for her coat. Sue gathered their glasses, slid two fingers down their sticky interiors, deposited them on the bar. Then the two women were sweeping out of the door; Sue was licking her fingers clean; they were out in the bluster of the world outside, stepping along the pavement while Philip, 54 miles away, was sitting, relaxing, breathing deeply in . . . out . . . in. Maybe 30 seconds till they knocked. And if . . . Deep breath. Just wait and see . . . now here were footsteps. A brisk tap tap on his door. The face as it opened . . . but this was not Janet, not Ms Stone, nor Albert.

  ‘Do come in,’ he offered encouragingly as he rose, stepped backwards and around his desk to check the name which now turned out to be a Mrs Grace Hanworth, the receptionists must have changed it at the last minute. But no, here in the pile were old paper notes for her as well, so it must have been at lunchtime.

  ‘Welcome Mrs Hanworth!’ – he exclaimed to the figure who was already sitting neatly in one of the orange bucket chairs, watching him with pale, greenish eyes. A bit of jaundice in them?

  ‘Am I not who you were expecting?’

  ‘Oh no, just – checking the list,’ he explained: ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Yes I am Mrs Grace Hanworth,’ she said. ‘I don’t come here often. I try not to come here at all,’ she elaborated, watching him.

  ‘Well, I think that’s a good plan.’ He is walking back around, lowering himself into his own orange bucket chair, resting one elbow on the front edge of his desk, giving his attention to the patient. ‘So long as it doesn’t result in anything getting missed. You’re right that lots of people come to the doctor when they don’t really need to. But also, sometimes’ – he is speaking in a measured and yet jovial tone – ‘you have to see a doctor to be sure it isn’t serious.’

  ‘Oh but something has been missed already,’ she said. Her face seemed to harden at that moment as he watched her, her eyes lost their focus. There was a pause. She was looking – nowhere. He was noting her face, sunken (query cachexia?); a bit parchmenty too. Her neck was swathed in a scarf of swirling red and purple; the rest of her was wrapped in a long woollen cloak of pale brown. Coming to herself again, she said: ‘It’s nobody’s fault.’

  ‘And what . . . ?’

  ‘People usually say that they are riddled with cancer. Which is so’ – she took a little breath, lifted her eyebrows – ‘ignorant. Because to be riddled is to be aerated with holes. Whereas cancer . . . what shall we say?’ Now her eyes were lowered, she was contemplative. ‘Cancer congeals. Clots. Infiltrates. Gluts. Overruns.’ She spoke the words softly. Then she lifted her eyes and smiled a little smile. ‘In my own case,’ she said, ‘it completely blocked me up.’

  Dr Newell waited attentively.

  ‘I’m sure the details will be there for you in my notes,’ she said carelessly. ‘Cancer of the small bowel. Quite a rare one! But only adenocarcinoma so not so rare as all that.’

  She shifted her body, trying to get comfortable in the slippery, un-ergonomic chair. She came to rest slumped somewhat to the side.

  ‘Initially’ – she was speaking in half-profile – ‘the patient refused treatment. Social evils, she had always believed, should be resisted with every possible resolve. But something like this’ – her hands opened suddenly like claws – ‘this was physical. It said to you: step back from the world of people. You are part of the natural world. Like a wounded pigeon. Like a broken blade of grass.’

  There was a moment’s quiet.

  ‘And also,’ she said, turning, lifting her torso upright, meeting Philip’s eyes, ‘the patient was a bloody-minded independent old bitch who simply didn’t want to put herself into the hands of so-called experts.’ She grinned cheekily.

  Then her face went blank.

  ‘But after a while, as you can see, she changed her mind. There was a risk of a blockage. Of the duodenum tearing. Of all the sludge in one’s stomach spilling out into the torso and filling it up and swelling and getting infected and – ugh, it was disgusting. The insertion of a bypass seemed a sensible and straightforward operation. And so it proved. Just a bit of plumbing really. It has done its job and I have since been able to concentrate on other things.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear it.’ Dr Newell paused; and then he set about speaking in a manner designed to project both calm and concern. ‘Mr
s Hanworth. I’m sure you can appreciate, and I hope you don’t mind me saying, that yours is quite a complex case, with a history. And I’m – I’m new to this practice. So, if you would like, I think it might be worthwhile our taking some time to go through things in detail so we can see how best I can help you. If you would like. And do please feel that we have all the time in the world, there is no pressure on time.’

  ‘So you see, I am not a fanatic,’ she began to say as he looked at his watch: 5.58 already. ‘I am not ideologically opposed to the undoubted advances made by western medicine. I understand that there is no given boundary between the natural and the artificial, no difference, really, between antibiotics and peppermint tea. However, I also believe that it is wholly misguided to subject oneself to a series of intrusive, uncomfortable, expensive treatments in the desperate endeavour to delay what cannot be averted. In struggling to prolong life’ – she was looking past him now, straight ahead of her – ‘you destroy it. Because life is not mere existence. Life is not measured in days, hours, minutes, seconds but in sensation, action, understanding, illumination. You should not rage, rage against the dying of the light.’ She had relaxed now and was looking at him again, looking into his eyes warmly; and there was almost a smile in her voice as she continued: ‘Enjoy the sunset. The evening is part of the day. Imagine a sonata with extra alien notes stuck in the final bars to make it last a few more minutes at whatever cost of dissonance and disproportion. No.’

  ‘I completely appreciate that point of view. I sympathise with it.’ This was one of those moments when you had to remember that the normal gestures of fellow-feeling were very ill-advised. In normal life, someone speaking to you like this would be a relative or close friend. And you would reach out and touch them, give them a hug. But as a doctor you could not. All Philip’s sympathy had to be concentrated in his voice: ‘Nevertheless, as I am sure you know, there are things that I might do, or that a nurse might do, to help you live out the rest of your life more comfortably.’