Vital Signs

by John Metcalf

  “I did stay for a year but then I fled the country and here I am back with Winston Churchill and the Boy Scouts.”

  “Fled?”

  She laughed.

  “Yes, I really did flee—all very dramatic and intense. Possessions abandoned and dishes left on the table. It all seems very young and silly now.”

  “Don’t be tantalizing.”

  “Oh, well, I was living with a very agonized Englishman who was trying to decide if he was or wasn’t homosexual, and one day I knew I just couldn’t take it any more. I didn’t know what to do. So I ran away. He was a Marxist, too, and that’s a bad combination because they talk a lot.”

  She traced the rim of the wine glass with her fingertip.

  “Perhaps it was the talking,” she said, “more than anything else.”

  Peter nodded.

  “Bad talk,” he said, “is not good.”

  “That’s a profound remark,” she said. “You’re not a Marxist, are you?”

  “No,” said Peter, “nor homosexual.”

  “That’s a relief,” she said. “Most nice men are.”

  The waitress arrived. Dinner was served from casserole and platter onto plates, wine glasses were replenished. When the waitress had withdrawn, Peter said,

  “Okay. If we’re asking intimate questions, let me ask you one.”

  She looked up.

  “Have you got a cat?”

  “A cat?”

  “A cat.”

  “Can I take the Fifth?”

  “Not allowed.”

  “Well,” she said, “no. I hate them.”

  He nodded slowly, as if weighing her reply.

  She made a mocking little-girl face at him.

  “Did I pass?”

  “We’re not allowed to say,” he said, preparing to dissect a herring.

  She gestured at the seafood crêpes with her fork.

  “Delicious, Peter. Like to try some?”

  He shook his head.

  “All that heaving brown cheese—it looks like a thing a friend of mine makes—he calls it ‘Disgusting Potatoes.’ You’ll like Alan.”

  As they ate, they chatted of other foods and restaurants, other cities, until the talk turned, inevitably, to the drama of families. Anna’s mother was a martyr whose sufferings were inflicted on the entire cast. She ironed underwear and saved paper bags. She rearranged Anna’s books in Anna’s apartment according to colour. Anna’s father was a mining engineer who, unable to stand the provocation of ironed underwear and paper bags, now lived in Edmonton. This desertion was a matter of profound satisfaction to his estranged wife. The script demanded from Anna guilt that she lived in her own apartment.

  Peter related the saga of how his much-loved grandfather, in an inebriated state, had introduced a horse into his grandmother’s teetotal kitchen. This event with its conflicting values was, he explained, the archetype of all relationships in his family. It explained, he said, why his mother had a brooding fear of firearms, why his father had built a second bathroom, and why his brother had gone to Australia.

  Anna was smiling and stemming with Kleenex after Kleenex the explosive sneezes and sniffles that had overtaken her.

  Plates were pushed away and cigarettes lighted.

  Talk turned to Peter’s job, the shop he had opened and which had folded, the general duplicity of the antique trade. Anna was fascinated by the fakes, the frauds, the piracy of buying and selling. He explained to her that, contrary to appearances, provenance, or apparent age, all antiques were made in the closing years of the nineteenth century.

  She kept making faces of apology for her fits of coughing and urged him to go on, to pay no attention.

  He told her of the workshops and factories that turned out Luristan Bronze-Age artifacts, Solingen sword blades, Delftware, and eighteenth-century English silver with genuine eighteenth-century hallmarks; of the intricacies of the aging process in the faking of early Quebec pine, how pieces were usually buried first for six to eight weeks in a manure pile; of the vast Chinese industry and the Chinese copies of European copies of Chinese originals.

  Her coughing seemed to be getting more rasping and uncontrollable. He suggested ice cream in the hope it would soothe her throat. Her face was startlingly red and she kept mopping at her eyes. He suggested that they leave, that the night air might make her feel better, but she made a pantomime of refusal, of swallowing something followed by immense relief

  They sat waiting for the ice cream to arrive. It had become impossible to talk. She was restlessly plucking at the neck of her sweater, pulling it away from her throat. The coughing tore at her and between bouts her breathing was audible, harsh, and wheezing.

  “I’ve got an idea,” said Peter. “I’ll go and get some of those after dinner mints from the bowl at the desk. The sweetness might do something for it.”

  He had to wait behind a noisy crowd of people arguing about whose privilege it was to pay the bill and then for an old man doddering over the choice of a cigar and then the bowl was found to be nearly empty and the girl insisted on refilling it from an enormous bag she had to fetch from a cupboard in the cloakroom. She then searched through drawers and cupboards for an envelope to put the mints in.

  As he made his way back to the table, he saw standing there a waitress and the maître d’. They were looking down at Anna. As he came up to them, the maître d’ said,

  “It is too much to drink.”

  “She was doing that,” said the waitress.

  Anna was making movements with her hands as if unaware of what she was doing, rubbing the bunched sweater under and between her breasts. The red ribbon had come undone and her hair hung about her face. The chain of her pendant had snapped and it lay snaked on the table in front of her. There was something disturbing, almost frightening, about the movements of her hands; it was a movement that reminded him of the violence of a sleeping baby.

  “Anna?”

  Peter knelt beside her chair and lifted back her hair, smoothing it away from her face. Her eyes seemed to see him. Her skin looked coarse and grainy and sweat glistened under her eyes.

  “Can you tell me what’s wrong? Anna?”

  He pried her fingers loose from the sweater and pulled it down to cover her. Her body was slippery with sweat.

  “She would like to go to the ladies’ room,” said the maître d’.

  Peter put his arm around her and prepared to lift her up but her head lolled.

  “I don’t think she can move,” he said to the maître d’.

  “She didn’t say anything when I brought that order of ice cream,” said the waitress. “She was just doing that.”

  They looked at her. Her breathing scraped at their silence.

  “Well,” said Peter, straightening up and turning to the maître d’, “I don’t think she can walk.”

  “It is wine,” said the maître d’.

  There was a crash of broken glass and cutlery falling as she collapsed across the table. Her shoulders were working and she was making noises. Vomit spread out around her face.

  Her eyes were closed. Heads were turned; some people were standing up. Peter gathered her hair and lifted it from the path of the vomit. The hair was heavy and alive in his hands. Water dripped onto the floor. The maître d’ started to pile the shards of glass at the corner of the table.

  “Anna?” said Peter. “Can you sit up? If l help you?”

  “Excuse me,” said a voice behind them. “Thought I’d better pop over and take a look.”

  The dapper middle-aged man bent over her. His tie trailed in the spilled water.

  “Are you a doctor?” said Peter.

  “She has fainted,” said the maître d’.

  “Sneezing, coughing, and so forth,” said the doctor. “How long’s it been going on?”

&nb
sp; “About half an hour,” said Peter. “Maybe more. What is it? What’s wrong?”

  “Do you have oxygen?” said the doctor to the maître’d. “Canister sort of affair with a mask? Well, you should have.”

  “What’s wrong with her?” said Peter.

  “Shock,” said the doctor. “Anaphylaxis.”

  “When I brought that ice cream . . .” said the waitress.

  “I need a room,” said the doctor, “and blankets.”

  “By the side of the cloakroom,” said the maître d’, “is the wine cellar.”

  “That sounds just the job,” said the doctor. “And now phone for an ambulance—as fast as you like. You,” he said to Peter, “take her other arm. Right? Better this way in case she vomits again.”

  As they lifted her, there was the sudden stench of diarrhea. Urine trickling down her leg.

  “Never mind that,” said the doctor. “They usually let it all go. Thank God for pantyhose, eh?”

  In the long, narrow room which served as a wine cellar, they lowered her to the carpet. It was cold there and silent with the door closed. Her breath laboured on, harsh, rasping in the quietness. The sour smell of vomit and the sweeter stench of excrement hung on the chilly air. The doctor turned her head to one side. She was unconscious.

  The doctor was breathing heavily from his exertion.

  “Not getting any younger,” he said.

  “But what is this anaphylactic shock?”

  “It’s the devil of a thing,” said the doctor, looking at his watch. “Like an extreme allergy reaction. Food can do it, insect bites.”

  There was a knock at the door and a waiter came in.

  “The lady’s shoe, sir.”

  “But I don’t understand,” said Peter. “She was all right. I was only away a few minutes . . .”

  “Can be as short as two minutes,” said the doctor.

  “Is it . . . serious?”

  “Well,” said the doctor, scratching at his moustache with his thumbnail, “yes. I’m afraid it is.”

  “But I don’t understand,” said Peter.

  “Results in a massive fluid imbalance, you see. The, ah, serum in the body engorges the tissue—can’t breathe as a result of that. Throat closes. Lungs fill with liquid. That’s what all the coughing and sputtering was in aid of. The whole thing—well, it’s rather like drowning, you might say, but drowning from the inside.”

  There was another knock and the maître d’ came in with two blankets.

  “Any sign of that ambulance?”

  The maître d’ shrugged and shook his head.

  “Phone again. Immediately. We haven’t much time. And send us two brandies—none of your wretched bar stuff. You don’t want two poisonings in one night. I don’t like that fellow,” said the doctor to the closing door. “He seated me in a draught.”

  He covered her with the blankets and knelt, taking her pulse.

  “No sense of humour these Italians,” he said. “They hadn’t got one in the war and they haven’t developed one since.”

  Peter stared at her face.

  “But what happens?” he said.

  “Happens? Oh. Well, the heartbeat becomes more rapid and eventually so fast that the heart isn’t circulating at all. No crossover of blood between the, ah, whatnames. Everything demanding oxygen, you see, and the heart doing its best to push round what there is—works harder and harder with less and less—a losing game, you might say. And death results from cardiac arrest.”

  “Death?”

  “No, no,” said the doctor. “Clap on an oxygen mask—takes care of the breathing. And an injection of what you’d call adrenalin or cortisone steadies the heart—right as rain in no time.”

  He glanced at his watch and then felt the pulse in her neck.

  “Boccaccio was a good chap,” he said thoughtfully, “but I haven’t a lot of time for them since.”

  The waiter entered with two snifters of brandy on a tray. He stared at Anna as they took the glasses. The doctor swirled the brandy, inhaled, swallowed. Peter drank from his gratefully. The smell of the room was beginning to make him feel queasy.

  “Forbes,” said the doctor.

  “Pardon?”

  “Forbes,” he said. “I’m Forbes.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry. Peter Thornton.”

  “Wife?” said Forbes, gesturing with his glass.

  “No. I’ve just met her.”

  Anna was stirring under the blankets.

  “You just hang on, old girl,” said Forbes.

  “Do they have oxygen and adrenalin and things in the ambulance?”

  “Standard equipment, old chap,” said Forbes. “Not to worry. We can set her to rights down here.”

  Forbes checked her pulse again. Peter stared at Forbes’ forefinger as it lay across the inside of Anna’s wrist. The finger was bright yellow with nicotine. He tried to read the expression on the man’s face. The face told him nothing.

  They sat waiting. Peter began to count the wine bottles in the racks. The rasp of Anna’s breath filled the silence. He counted all the bottles up to the first partition. There were one hundred and sixty-one bottles.

  “They put me in one of their silly prisons, you know,” said Forbes.

  “Pardon?”

  “The Italians. And a damned inefficient place it was.”

  They were silent.

  “Come on,” said Forbes suddenly.

  “Is she all right?”

  Forbes knelt by Anna’s side again taking her pulse. He considered his watch.

  “Is she?”

  “Look!” said Forbes. “Scurry up there above-decks, would you, and investigate that bloody ambulance.”

  Peter hurried out past the mermaid with the carmine lips and up the wide staircase. He pushed open the heavy, padded door and stared out into the blizzard. It was difficult to see much further than the width of the road. Sidewalk and kerb were obliterated, cars were white mounds. The wind nearly wrenched the heavy door from his grasp. From St. Catherine Street came the muffled sound of horns.

  He stood shivering there, trying to peer through the flying snow, straining for the sound of a siren.

  As he opened the door to the wine cellar, he saw Forbes kneeling over Anna, the blankets thrown back, her sweater pulled up.

  “Nothing?” said Forbes.

  “You can’t even see,” said Peter. “Everywhere’s blocked.”

  “Heart’s moving into fibrillation,” said Forbes, taking off his jacket. “We’re going to have to get some oxygen in there.”

  “But there isn’t any.”

  Forbes held out his wrists.

  “Can you manage these damn cufflinks? Wife usually does it.”

  “What do you mean—oxygen?”

  “Tracheotomy, old chap. Bit of a long shot, but . . .”

  He pulled the blanket off again.

  “Sweater?” he said.

  They worked her limp arms out of it and pulled it over her head.

  From his trouser pocket, Forbes produced a fat red knife.

  “Swiss Army job,” he said. “Ingenious thing. Use it in the garden. It’s got a pair of scissors and a saw.”

  “But won’t she bleed? I mean . . .”

  “Can’t make an omelette, old chap,” said Forbes, rolling up his sleeves. “Simple enough. Not to worry.”

  Peter stared down at her. A small blue-and-white cotton tab stuck out from the edge of the left cup of her bra. It said: St. Michael. Registered Trade Mark.

  “Get all that hair out of the way,” said Forbes.

  Then,

  “Bloody HELL.”

  “What? What is it?”

  Forbes crouched across her.

  He remained like that for long moments.

  The
n, slowly, he raised himself up, sat back on his heels.

  Then Peter, too, became aware of the difference, the change in the room. The room was silent. The sound had stopped.

  Forbes took the tip of the blade between forefinger and thumb and eased the blade inwards to the half-closed position. He then pushed the back of the blade with the flat of his hand and the knife closed with a loud click.

  Peter stared at her body. Just above her navel and to one side there was a faint, brown birthmark. He stared across her at Forbes.

  “But she was all right,” said Peter. “I only went to the desk. I was only away a few minutes.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Forbes. “Without oxygen, without drugs . . .”

  He stood up and started to roll down his sleeves.

  “It doesn’t make sense,” said Peter.

  “It’s all right,” said Forbes. “Not your fault.”

  “But she was all right,” said Peter.

  “Look, old chap . . .”

  “We were talking. She was all right.”

  “You need a drink,” said Forbes. “Do you a world of good. I’ll take care of details here. Phone and suchlike—have a word with Chummy out there. Then I’ll join you. Right?”

  Forbes led him to the door.

  “Get yourself a drink. Doctor’s orders.”

  Peter went out into the restaurant. It was noisy and warm. Her red coat was still draped over the back of her chair. The table had been cleaned and reset. The carpet was dark where the water had spilled. Someone had sprayed the area with a lemon-scented air freshener. He sat down. He picked up a fork and sat staring at the flash of light on the tines.

  A voice said something.

  “Pardon?”

  A waitress stood there with an order pad.

  “Are you the party that was at this table before?”

  He nodded.

  “The other girl, she’s finished her shift. She’s gone off now.”

  He stared at her.

  She was middle-aged with frizzy, yellowed hair and glasses. She looked tired. Like the other waitresses, she was wearing baggy red pirate trousers and a blouse with puffed sleeves fastened at the breast with black thongs. Round her waist was a wide leather belt with a brass buckle. Stuck in the belt was a plastic flintlock pistol. She was wearing the sort of boots that are illustrated in children’s stories, Dick Whittington, The Brave Little Tailor, Puss-in-Boots.