53.5 miles away, as the two women climbed the steps to Charlotte’s apartment, Philip slept in the unconsciousness of slow-wave sleep; and, as they moved purposefully here and there, Sue brushing and cleansing, Charlotte getting out the spare duvet, he slept on. As Sue snuggled down on the squishy sofa, and felt the scratchiness of the matted texture of its mixed linen, acrylic and polyester fabric through the sheet that veiled it, Philip rocked his head on the luxury micro-fibre pillow: a guttural breath emerged from his half-open mouth. As Sue’s mind slowed, as she wondered how much of what Charlotte had splurged at her was true, or rather – well, there had to be some distance, didn’t there, beween that confession, that story Charlotte had told about herself, and what being her was actually like. A lot of distance – as Sue’s thoughts wandered in this vein, Philip slept in the unconsciousness of slow-wave sleep; and, as she felt thirsty, and rose, and poured a glass of water, and drank, and re-filled, and brought the glass back and placed it on the carpet near her head, and snuggled down once more, as all that happened, he slept on. As Sue’s mind slowed again, she thought of her mother who was, well at this time of night she was probably asleep, or trying to be, but who at most other times would be sitting alertly, watching telly, monitoring News at Ten and Question Time and Panorama and News at 6 and Channel 4 News at 7, keeping herself to herself, keeping an eye on things. Which was so – well it would have been hurtful / it was hurtful / it would have been hurtful if it were not so very her, the way she had seemed to say when Sue had gone off to uni: OK you are an adult now, I must not cling. And had kept to that resolution unwaveringly. So that although she gladly received bulletins she never . . . but now Sue’s mind was caught by a gleam of imagined moon on the canal which must, after passing through suburban and industrial outskirts, and miles and miles of fields, and doubtless traversing other towns as well, come out at Kidney Meadow, or at least maybe there was a junction so you’d have to take the right turning. She saw herself and Philip hand in hand. Meanwhile, at last, Philip dreamed: Sue’s face emerging from the shadows, vanishing / Sue’s face floating up through the night sky towards the moon / a path lay ahead of him over an upland and as he scrunched along it, footfall by footfall, there on the path ahead of him was a pebble in the form of the face of Janet Stone; and as these images flew through his mind, Sue was remembering the weight of his body, the solidity of his shoulders, for even though he wasn’t what you’d call a big man it was still lovely to have the mass of him there, when he was there, lovely to have the restless mass of him next to her, to notice as it settled bit by bit to sleep; or to sink into sleep herself while that body, Philip’s body, was still alert beside her. Bit by bit she imagined herself back into that bed she shared with him in that house (rented for the year) in The Willows. She placed a hand on the duvet. She attached an arm to it. She connected the arm to shoulder and neck, and joined the neck to her head which she laid gently on the pillow. She imagined another shoulder and arm ensemble hidden by the duvet. One by one she envisaged torso, hips, thighs, calves, feet; and as she did so they materialised under the duvet, plumping it up. There she was; and as the last bit of her arrived her mind dropped into sleep. She slept; he slept. She dreamed: Philip behind a desk, in a white coat, attentive / the two of them sitting side by side on the fat, horizontal branch of a tree. He slept. She slept. He . . .
. . . jolted awake to ‘Steel knife / In my windpipe’ Eminem strangled shout from the clock radio, what the, Jesus the harshest beep-beep-beep would be preferable to that, don’t they ever think, when they do their playlists, that people might actually be woken up by what they play? He reached out, switched it off, and lay back for a last resentful moment in bed; as he did so, she was sleeping. On she slept while he hoicked himself up, washed, dressed, had coffee and toast and marmite and an apple and then was out – oh, of course, the car was at the practice – taking the familiar route along Parnassus, through Elysium Crescent and Felicity Place and out through Lily Walk towards his work. As his hand pushed at the wire-glass window of the practice door, she slept. As he greeted Jackie and went through to the Little Ease – i.e. consulting room – that he had borrowed from Dr Adam Hibbert, and readied himself for the first patient of the morning, she began to dream: an enormous ball of wool, the two of them, Sue and Philip, being wrapped in it, two little wooden dolls being wrapped around, around, around.
Saturday morning surgery was a mix of the brave and the anxious. The brave were people with long-term conditions who were still at work and so could not attend the usual weekday consultations. They took the pre-booked appointments which filled up weeks ahead. The anxious were usually parents who rang as soon as the line opened in the morning. I am speaking on behalf of my daughter who, well, who says she needs the morning-after pill and I know it is available at the chemist but I think it would be very helpful if she could be talked to by a proper professional. My little boy is ten weeks old and he’s had a cold and now there’s something wrong with his breathing. It’s terribly fast. His chest never goes out properly, it just goes in, in, in with each new breath. His temperature is a hundred and two. For real emergencies people dialled 999. So Philip rather enjoyed his tri-weekly Saturday duty, even though of course it cut into the weekend. There was a lot of humanity in this sort of doctoring. Since he was the only GP present the practice lost its weekday feel of crowd control. In fact, this was about the only time he felt able to give completely undivided attention to each patient. Plus, it was all over in three hours.
After which today, of course, there would be Grace Hanworth.
As Philip outlined for a patient a holistic approach to the management of IBS, explaining that it was a process in which medication, diet and more general lifestyle adjustments all had a part to play, Sue slept a dreamless sleep. As Philip tested the peak flow of a chronic asthma sufferer who was taking steroids in the wake of a recent acute attack, Sue opened her eyes to brightness, closed them again, turned over to bury her face in the cushion, and realised that she was not at home but at Charlotte’s on a sofa. As Philip treated himself to a quick cup of coffee, Sue gave up trying to sink back to sleep, swung herself upright, blinked, and blearily wondered whether Charlotte had green tea. As he sank back into his chair, she rose; as he buzzed for the next patient she opened a cupboard to begin to look. As she found what she was seeking, only bags but at least basically the right stuff, he was beginning to catch up with Jason Armour, a regular attendee who had MS which was as yet progressing only slowly, thank god, though obviously there was only one way it could go.
Sue sat at the glass table. She watched the lines of light that came in through the slatted blinds and lost their focus in the dusty air / her mother in the little flat in Stoke. Sue reached across and pulled towards her Charlotte’s A3 sheets of paper. Leaving the cup steaming on the table, she let her eyes wander over the loops and lines and apostrophes and squiggles and dots and underlinings that Charlotte had inscribed. Then she reached across again and pulled towards her her notebook and her pen. Clean sheet. She started a column of ideas, copying and adding in her lumpy, mechanical handwriting.
Geiger counter – Japan.
Flood measuring thingy.
Thermometer? / weather station??
Glacier.
An eye.
She heard again Ash’s soft, compelling voice; felt again the exhilaration as she fell. But there was a difference between his photo of an eyeball which was analytical and the video stream she had in mind which would be observant, which would show the eye budging as it looked, which would notice the eyelashes twitching, which would be alive.
She saw again the man like Charlton Heston, like Charlton Heston in . . . what was it, that dark film, that Welles film Touch of Evil.
They could, obviously they would work out how to arrange the images once they had the images themselves. And of course the TV sets themselves. For instance: a thermometer was like a glacier because both got longer and shorter with the temperature, although in opposite ways.
It might be good to put them side by side; or it might be too obvious.
Something to do with acid rain: Taj Mahal?
Or actually maybe better would be tears on the face of the Buddha, of some enormous stone Buddha like those ones that were blown up in Afghanistan but there must be others.
The surface of a river.
Which would display an organic and yet stifling algal bloom; or what was the name of that one Charlotte mentioned that got filled with detergent bubbles or fertiliser run-off bubbles, really horrid, glitteringly overflowing with them like bubble bath. Sue looked for the name through the swirls, the razor wire, the jungle undergrowth of Charlotte’s writing. It seemed not to be there.
‘Why don’t we try and connect that . . .’ – Sue remembered herself saying; ‘make your self-analysis a part of it.’ But actually it was really important they stay focused on the concept because the show was not about individual expression, it wasn’t about therapy: it was about . . . well, it was about creating an impersonal sensory environment that lots of different people could inhabit as their own. So she hoped when Charlotte got up she wouldn’t . . . Sue was now feeling some trepidation about what might happen when Charlotte arose.
Blades of grass.
Something underwater: coral reef.
Some half-dead reef with a few, what are they, polyps, still clinging on, still popping their little fluffy noses out, hanging their colourful laundry out to flutter in the currents.
But now there was a thud from behind the bedroom door, and a moving-about, and the door opening, and here was Charlotte in a pink-puce silk or satin dressing gown that gleamed intermittently in the shadowy light.
Charlotte said: ‘Coffee.’ Then she moved through the room towards the windows. Passing Sue, she dropped a hand onto her shoulder, squeezed it. Then she was pulling at the blinds, letting the sun rush in.
‘Another surprisingly hot day, looks like’ – she said.
‘End of the world,’ said Sue.
‘Oh well,’ said Charlotte, in that thin, bright tone of hers.
It’s funny, Sue thought, how sleepiness shows in the face. Why is it, when you wake up, your skin is puffy and your eyes are shrunken and pink? Charlotte had the Warhol look, the colour-planes of her head not wholly coalescing with its lines.
Now Charlotte was fiddling with the Italian coffee thingy, unscrewing it. ‘I’ve been thinking,’ she began to say . . . but her voice stopped and she switched on the tap, let the pot fill gurglingly up. Then she screwed the top bit on, and set the contraption cooking on the hob as Philip, 53.5 miles away, put his computer to sleep, went out, locked the door of Little Ease, and walked along the quiet corridor and through the empty waiting room.
‘Good weekend!’ – he said to Jackie who was doing something in reception: she sent an echo back to him. Soon she too would leave and the building would enter upon forty-three and three-quarter hours of emptiness during which some small proportion of the particles in the air would sink to the floor, chair-cushions, desktops, keyboards, monitors, glossy magazines and even the plastic toys in the children’s corner of the waiting room; during which the earth in the plant pots will dry a little; during which whatever the process is that will eventually make the brown gloss paint flake from the somehow chemically incompatible doors will proceed a little further towards its end.
Another surprisingly hot day, thought Philip, clicking the car unlocked. Not exactly environmental to drive three hundred yards but he needed his kit with him just in case. Though almost certainly, he thought, as he eased the Golf out of the narrow practice car-park, there would be nothing to do except maybe adjust the dose of painkiller and anti-nausea. He saw Grace Hanworth’s face, the skin marbled and shiny across the high bones, wrinkled and soft elsewhere where the flesh had subsided. Yellower and yellower every-day but there was no point trying to do anything about that now. As if – he braked for traffic lights – she’d let him! He heard again her quiet decisive ‘no’ after he had outlined the benefits of chemo for the metastasis in her liver. He smiled as the rhythm of the exchange came back into his mind, his measured, detailed, guardedly optimistic proposal, designed to take her concerns fully into account while also almost certainly extending her life which had to be a good thing surely? Followed by her stone-like, what was the word, lapidary ‘no’. Nothing to discuss. I am my own person. I am not going to give myself up to being repeatedly half-poisoned. I am not interested in experiencing chemically induced physical distress – the distress I am already suffering is enough. I am not going, to that extent, and for that reason, to turn myself into a guinea-pig and be experimented on by experts.
‘It wouldn’t be an experiment.’
‘Can they guarantee it would work? Are they in a position to say: this amount of treatment will give you that degree of remission for these many months and weeks and days? No they are not. It is all in terms of probabilitites. And that is always so, is it not, in your profession? You always think in terms of likely benefit in balance with degrees of risk. In that case, every course of treatment is an experiment. There is always the possibility that it will not work. There is always a chance it will go wrong. Which means that you’ – she had pressed on, in her precise, clipped voice, not looking at him but seeming to see in front of her the line of thought that she was following to its conclusion – ‘you doctors are in the position of adventurers and we patients figure as the virgin land you are struggling to bring under your control. I have no wish to be a subject of your empire.’ Only then had she looked across at him with her ungraspable expression which seemed at once cold, and triumphant, and mischievous, and warm.
It had been even worse – now he was looking for somewhere to park – when he’d suggested she might spend some days in a hospice so that her hypercalcaemia could be treated with diuresis and IV pamidronate. She’d been really irritated with him that time: positively hissing. She’d have thought he might have known her well enough by then to realise that she wanted to stay at home. That she was concentrating on her own decline and did not wish to be exposed to new people in a new environment. That she did not wish to be subjected, etc. etc. – so that she would rather die than leave her home. That phrase for once not being an overstatement. Because in this case he pretty much could guarantee that it would work: the intravenous treatment really was just like having something done to your car, oil change, new clutch; and it really could not happen safely outside an institution.
Although, he reflected, as, parked, he turned the key and the engine stopped, the oral bisphosphonates he had ended up prescribing instead had done a perfectly good job. At least, good enough in the circs. He sat for a moment, breathing in, feeling his chest expand, his shoulders drop. Treating her really had been an education. Because she had an informed, distinctive view set up in opposition to his, no in balance with his. A fully articulated set of wants and values. With no qualms about asserting them. Whereas so often he was dealing with a bundle of uncertainty and fear. All sorts of emotions, and a lot of them. That was it: usually there was this sort of miasma of undefined emotion for which, as he diagnosed what was going on in the body, he also had to find a voice on the patient’s behalf, make a channel. Janet Stone was the great example of that, the other week, suddenly crashing, suddenly turning away from everything they had gained up to that point. He had had to sort of rebuild her software, remind her of the decision she had made, of the path she was on, of what she stood for. Whereas Mrs Hanworth was solid. She had it all worked out.
Or at least, he took a moment more to say to himself before he opened the car door, she seems to. You could imagine a psychological argument saying that all this assertiveness was a mask for deep anxiety and distress underneath. But you could make that argument about anyone. And as a GP – he simultaneously pulled the catch and pushed the door, performed the everyday awkward movement of levering himself out of the car and up onto the pavement – as a GP you had to take people – he bent and reached in for his case and pulled it
out and straightened and pushed the door shut – you had to take people as they presented themselves – he was walking along the pavement; he clicked the key and heard the car lock behind him.
Push open her wooden gate, take four steps up the little garden path. How quaint, it again seemed to him, the gothic arch above the doorway. But rather lovely, the care that must have gone into constructing it. Having rung, he stepped back to look at the old, patterned brick. It continued down into the terraced front garden, or front patch would be a better word for it. Mrs Hanworth must have done that, or someone: it wouldn’t have been original. Every feature given a dark outline. A circular central flowerbed from which a rose bush rose, its shiny reddish leaves beginning to unfurl. And an oblong one behind the low front wall where tufty lavender bushes grew.
The World Was All Before Them Page 16