The World Was All Before Them
Page 14
Well, not actually always.
‘Click the remote: the whole world vanishes. As if it had never been.’
Because her mother had gone out into the world to get her, Sue. And then she had brought her back and kept her safe in the den where they had been together.
‘But with great big old-fashioned tellies we’ll maybe get people to see how new that is, and strange.’
From which afterwards she seemed never really to have wanted . . .
‘The image’ll be fuzzier,’ said Charlotte.
. . . to move, not really. Except to the supermarket and then back . . .
‘And actually’ – Charlotte was continuing – ‘there may be some technical difficulty as well because I’m not sure . . .’
. . . to the wonderful place . . .
‘We can get Stuart to sort that,’ said Sue.
. . . where the images were.
‘It’s a digital / analogue thing,’ Charlotte explained.
There was a pause. The surge of energy seemed to have dropped. The light had gone from the room. Sue leaned forward off her perch and stepped towards the table to fill up her glass from the bottle there. Charlotte moved around switching on spotlights and standard lamps.
‘We can always go out,’ she said.
‘Let’s just’ – Sue sat in one of the squashy chairs: ‘Let’s just get to the end of this bit, provisionally.’
‘So there’s something we can draw a line under.’
‘And then go out.’
Charlotte gathered up the scattered bits of paper and sat on the sofa opposite. ‘The TVs,’ she said.
‘Older the better,’ Sue said. ‘You know, wooden casings.’ Her voice was abrupt. She was speaking bullet points. ‘All stacked up in a wall, like the mosaic of screens at the start of the news. Streams from all over the world. Because we are connected to everywhere, even though sometimes . . .’
‘It’s bewildering,’ offered Charlotte.
‘. . . we don’t even know what the place we’re connected to is. So what we’re gonna do, what we’re gonna do is give the punters a – what are they called, tic-tac-toe thing, slidey jigsaw puzzle thing, with names of locations, and they can stand in front of the screens and try to make them match up with the names of the places. Which will make them realise they can’t do it.’
‘Or maybe some of the time . . .’
‘That’s right, that’s better: some of the time they can and some of the time they can’t. Because . . .’
‘Because that’s what it’s like,’ Charlotte concluded.
Damn that glibness, thought Sue, suddenly savage. But then, actually – she said to herself, calm suddenly spreading through her – this was how it had to be, thinking the thing out. You put the impulse, the feeling, provisionally into words. Which always, always felt unsatisfactory. But it had to be done. Because it had to. And then you pushed through the words and out the other side: you escaped from the words into the show: using the words allowed you to get the feeling out of words and into the object or the event; into the piece of art. And that was when the ideas and feelings could grow again and flower and flourish and be alive. That was the real thing to hold onto.
‘And the actual locations of the webcams,’ said Charlotte.
‘Can we leave them to tomorrow?’ said Sue, slumping back in her chair, depositing her goblet on the glass-topped table beside it.
‘I’d say’ – said Charlotte, appraisingly – ‘you’ve done enough, and are allowed’ – her voice became more jovial – ‘a short break! Let’s get you out of here!’
‘Before I go to sleep.’
‘Which is absolutely definitely not allowed.’ Charlotte went and stood before her, legs braced, hands held out.
Pee, phones, money, glance in the mirror; and then the two young women were away into the still-warmish evening air.
Philip’s mind was somewhat enlivened by his walk back through the still-warmish evening air, down Turnpike Lane, along Helium Avenue, across Elysium Crescent and along Parnassus Row to Eden Grove. Empty without Sue here, he thought as, having pushed open the front door, he stepped in onto the mat and rubbed his shoes on it. Quiet, he thought, as the door slammed behind him. The shock-waves of that impact seemed to spread through the silent space as he turned right into the kitchen-living room. He chucked his jacket on the faux-leather sofa and noticed the slithery sound of it. The fridge started up its periodic irritating buzz as though to say hello.
I’ll just do melted blue cheese, he thought, as he filled a pan with water and set it on the hob (the water whirled and chattered; the pan-base clanked). He noticed his foot was on something on the lino and stooped to look – a chunk of toast-crust from this morning – and picked it up. The lid of the swing-bin made a donkey-ish squeak. Yes there was Stilton and half a packet of rocket in the fridge: good. He stood, propping his bum against the edge of the worktop, waiting for the water beneath the lid of the pan to start its breezy roar. I wonder what Sue. He checked his phone again: still nothing. Shall I call? No definitely not. He knew that was one of the stress-points between them, his need for reassurance, for a continuous everyday keeping in touch, versus her need to be trusted, to be left, whenever she felt like it, alone. He was like, what, like a satellite maintaining radio contact. Or maybe he was like a little duckling going peep-peep-peep to its mother. But he didn’t know what she was like, apart from like herself. Her face was there, suddenly, filling his field of vision. Like a rock face on Mount Rushmore only soft, pale, round as a drop of dew. There was a scattering of freckles across her little snub nose. Her eyebrows were made of distinct separate hairs like black wires and you could see the waxy skin beneath. It was the same at the top of her forehead where her real hair began. She was looking at him with that expression that was so her. What could he say about it? It was: affectionate. No in fact it was OK to say that it was loving. Because when she looked at him like that her hands would be reaching out towards him, touching him at the top of his arm or gently on the side of his neck beneath his ear. It had wonder in it. No, that wasn’t quite right. Puzzlement would be better. Because it was amused as well. It seemed to say to him both: I love you, and: what a strange creature you are. And that reservation was what so tore him up sometimes. Tore him up in a way that was love, he knew that. Because love was an emotional pain that was also a pleasure. But the tearing was also something else, also something that was just pain, on top of the pain that was part of love. Because it made him always know, or think he knew, that she could drift, whenever she felt like it, out of reach. There was something conditional, was there something conditional in the way she looked at him? Whereas he was attached to her unreservedly. Like a bee having stung her. Like a tree with its roots grown deep.
The pan-lid rattled and he reached for the spaghetti. He held it upright in his fist, a bundle of rods. Then let it drop, thud, to the bottom of the pan, at which the rods fanned out like . . . maybe like a cut stook of straw. The bits in the water would soften and fatten and the rest would tumble in. He tapped the sticking-out ends with a wooden spoon. Still quite firm. He checked his phone again. For Chrissake Philip, if there had been a message it would have made its noise, just leave it, she is busy working on her thing, or she is having a drink with Charlotte, she is a human being and can do stuff, leave it.
He walked away from the cooker to help change his thought. Ash smiled smugly at him: no please not Ash. He sat in a squashy chair, leaned his head against the back of it. In a moment he would get up and crumble the cheese. The humiliation of Andrew Lansley, yes let’s go with that. What was the tune, Andrew Lansley greedy, Andrew Lansley tosser, da-da-da-da-da-da-la-da. He saw the rapper’s fingers flicking. That CIS guy too. Graham thingummy. He must be uneasy. Funny not to have known of him at that party in Feb because now he was sensitised he saw CIS everywhere, aiming to facilitate the transition, supply the expertise that health professonals themselves could not be expected to have. Do the dirty work and take the pr
ofit. Which showed you something about George.
He stood up, went across to the cooker, stirred the boiling water with the pasta in it, set a little non-stick pan on the hob, knob of butter, splash of milk, reached for the cheese.
He saw a succession of images of George. Bottle in hand at that party / presiding firmly at the practice meeting / crouched in the dark by a firework / sitting solicitously in the waiting room talking gently to an OAP who had completely forgotten where she was and why. The sequence ran again more quickly. No he was, could be, a caring doctor. But he also had the air, always, wherever he was, of being in charge, of having some executive decision to arrive at. And therefore a brusqueness and impatience. So that you never felt he was really hearing you or seeing you, never quite sensing you fully, but instead processing the information so that he could then do what needed to be done and move on.
Philip was crumbling the cheese into the oily mixture, prodding it with the tip of a wooden spoon.
Or maybe actually that was unfair. Maybe that was inevitably the stance of being the senior partner. Experience. How experience always looked to someone who was, let’s face it, young and still a bit naive. Because of course George would have seen a lot of stuff before.
Nearly ready now.
And also maybe Sue was right that the early death of his wife was at the root of it. Of course in those circs you would grow a carapace. And expand so you seemed to fill all the available space. He had had to be the whole world to his little girls. He had had to be solid.
Philip lifted the heavy pan and drained it sending puffs and swirls of clammy steam into the air around his face.
Although the thing about that sort of explanation was that you could run it in any direction. I.e. if George had ended up completely different you could still point to the same cause.
He tipped the yukky-looking cheesy gunk in among the heap of spaghetti.
Though in that case you could probably assume the cause was having its effect on different pre-existing material. So that it would still be the cause, even though it provoked a different sequence of reactions and led to a different character precipitated at the end.
Philip turned, put the plate on the table, sat. As he did so, the person in his mind switched. It was his father who sat across from him. His father’s face red, eyes panicking, breath rasping, the chest tight, solidified, not working, the air not coming in. Philip winced, his eyes watered, the fork in his hand put the readied mouthful back down on the plate.
His own heart was jolting and there was reflux in his throat. He should have . . . but then Sue’s voice cut in: ‘You did tell him. I saw you telling him. You worried about him a lot. You said: “Just pop along to your GP and get it checked up.” You can’t order him.’
And in fact, he told himself, perhaps it was a good thing. Because otherwise, if nothing had happened now, then later it could have been the big one straight away. Whereas this really was going to get him to change his behaviour as no amount of nagging could. Or it ought to.
He saw his mother moving around neatly. Her careful arrangements. The reading-up she was doing on healthy diets. The little verdant meals put in front of his father. The watching for his reaction with concerned eyes. A little myocardial infarction went a long way.
He should ring them.
He was able to eat again. He twirled the oily cables and forked them in. The clingy sauce slithered down the sides of his papillae to where the taste buds responded, sending excitation along fibres to the brain. Bitter, and a touch of sour, and sweet. Smell played a crucial part in the perception of taste. And in fact what about texture which was also pretty damn important.
Dad would be on aspirin and dipyridamole and quinapril and something like glyceryl trinitrate which, did you know, is the same stuff, 100% the same stuff as nitroglycerine the explosive? And a statin of course, to combat the low density lipoprotein which was being endlessly noxiously pumped into the bloodstream by digestion of meals like especially for instance this one he was consuming now. The cheese ending up as in fact something pretty much like cheese again to look at though it would probably be a. slimier and b. harder to the touch. Calcified desposits lumped together with fibrous layers and lipid-rich regions, clagging the blood vessels until an amazingly tiny way through was left – that was what was surprising, how completely narrow they could get before the patient noticed any ill-effects. Until for instance a slimy dark frogspawn clot or fool’s-gold nugget came tumbling, boulder along rapids, until, thud, it lodged, a plug, immoveable, the pressure on the one side only fixing it more strongly while on the other side, sudden emptiness, just nothing, nothing getting through, the muscle struggling to contract, spasming, leaking lactic acid, alarms blaring, red lights flashing, a submarine with power failure, sinking, not enough to breathe, everyone will die.
Unless, kerching! The thrombolysis goes zapping in and chips away at the clot until, whoosh, the blood can go spurting through again and there is his dad once more. His dad can continue as a human being. As opposed to not. As opposed to cooling, and solidifying, and becoming food in its turn for, well the pancreatic bacteria for instance, which are probably the first to have a nibble. Hang on, they say, something’s up. And then: wahay! Ere we go ere we go ere we go. Which will almost certainly be happening to Grace Hanworth in the next couple of weeks.
Jesus, how callous you can be as a doctor! Philip chewed, reached for his glass, drank. Even you; even already.
Only actually in fact it wasn’t callousness. It was knowing what was going on; properly knowing what was really going on. And the question then was how you negotiated between that and other people. Being tactful while also truthful: that was the conundrum.
The funny thing was how, these days, stuff came from all over the place and ended up in a single human body. Which he kept on noticing after hearing Sue talk about her ideas for her possible show. Like take for instance what he’d just been eating. Wine from Australia, Stilton from – where was that from, Somerset maybe? Milk from not far away, he hoped. Pasta, now was that really still made in Italy? He got up to see if it said on the packet. Yeh, here it was, grown and packed in Italy – but for a company with an address in Liverpool. What else? What about the pepper? Where the hell did that come from? India? Indonesia? And had got here by what invisible process of global circulation, wagon, presumably, and lorry, and . . . no in fact presumably a basket first, somebody’s hand picking it and tossing it into an enormous basket secured by a band over the person’s forehead. Maybe. Unless that was a fantasy. Unless it was all mechanised now even wherever it came from. So: hand and basket, then maybe lorry, then maybe train, then ship, then lorry, then warehouse, then lorry, then Tesco. Or planes? Which were probably too expensive but what does he know?
So you took all that and put in in your mouth. You chewed and mixed it with secretions and turned it into a bolus which was sent down your throat by the amazingly complex action of swallowing, followed by a Mexican he meant a peristaltic wave which sent it to the stomach. Having been mixed with hydrochloric acid, etc. etc., the bolus became chyme which little-by-little was released into the slo-mo helter skelter of the small intestine. Where molecules of carbohydrate and fat and protein were absorbed. And sent scurrying round the body by a circulation system that he this time did know something about. And the molecules were used for, well, everything really. Except the ones that got stuck on the way as atherosclerosis. Which hardened and narrowed and impeded until bang! – that was the end of you. Unless you were one of the lucky ones, like dad.
He was sitting at the heavy, sharp-edged pine table. Ahead of him, the dark, shiny sofa and the squishy chairs. Above the mantelpiece a delicate artwork, courtesy of Sue. Who was now . . . well, let’s hope it’s going OK. Let’s hope it’s going brilliantly. Because it was completely brave, what she was trying to do. A complete putting-herself-at-risk. An act of self-definition. Whereas the thing about being a doctor was that that was what you were. People said: I’m going to the GP.
And very often they didn’t in fact know what your name was. Who is your doctor, Sushma would ask, and they wouldn’t know! To them your name was just: GP.
You could imagine GPs all having names that began with G and P like what was that chain of pubs where they did that? His name would be . . . Gerald . . . Partridge. George of course had one half of it already. He would be George . . . Plum.
Whereas if you went to an Art show you knew damn well exactly who it was you were looking at, that was the whole point, even if Sue said it shouldn’t be. The individuality. Which of course in a doctor you actually wouldn’t want. You wouldn’t want to be able to say: only Newell could have diagnosed that IBS. Observe the inimitable flourish with which he inflates the cuff of the sphygmomanometer. Such delicate tact in the palpation of a shoulder.
Unless Lansley got his way of course. In which case they would all be boasting their distinctiveness. Branding themselves. Or at least the hospitals would be. Ha, the good old bad old District Infirmary. Offering everything you would expect from a two-and-a-half star hospital of county-wide renown. Complimentary tap-water available on request (don’t forget to bring your own cup to benefit from this service!). We believe in offering you the fullest possible liberty to take or forget to take your medicine. Our nurses will leave you almost wholly undisturbed.
Although in fact, he thought, as he got up, turning, gathering his plate etc. to dump them in the sink, he was still him. There was the as-it-were uniform of the profession: the skills they all learned and performed reliably. And then there was the way you wore that uniform which did actually matter quite a lot. He was a different doctor from George, different again from Sara, different from Isobel and Paul. And a lot different from Adam Hibbert. It was just that it happened bit by bit. You expressed yourself in little things, each day, within the fixed contraints. A nudge here, a bit of initiative there. As he was doing majorly with Janet and Albert, for instance, and would do again no doubt with Grace Hanworth tomorrow.