by Clare Curzon
‘Vodka Martini.’ She watched him dispense it and slide the glass across to her waiting hand. His face never changed. Over the eight days since he’d been taken on she’d never seen him smile. She wondered if it was perpetual sulk or just that he was as thick as a haystack.
‘Have one yourself,’ she invited on a whim. He stopped in mid-movement, reaching for a beer mat, but his features never changed. He nodded. ‘I have it later.’
She supposed he’d simply take it in cash at the end of the day. Immigrants only wanted money. Silly to have tried to get a reaction. There were better things to spend one’s hard-earned on.
He did relent though, coming back to her high stool when there was a break in serving. He ran a damp cloth over the mahogany counter. ‘You a nurse?’ he asked, assuming it from the hospital’s nearness.
She grunted assent. Not a real nurse, but for a part of each day she did the same work, didn’t she? He’d not know the difference. There were a number of tiny Filipino girls worked in the wards at various things. She supposed he was married to one of them.
‘Yeah,’ she said, drooping heavy breasts over folded arms and leaning close so that their swelling and darkly defined cleavage could not be missed. She watched his slatey eyes follow the movement. Still no outer sign of personal connection.
‘What do I call you?’ she asked, burrowing in the dish of peanuts for the really salty ones.
‘Ramón.’ He sounded more distant, as though forced to give something valuable away. Well, sod him then.
One last push: ‘I’m Sheena.’ Smiling suggestively at him, while his eyes still lingered on her exposed flesh.
‘Nice name,’ he granted.
‘I’m a nice girl.’ She giggled. Was it wishful or were things starting to warm up? She ordered the same again. She remembered then there’d been a volcano blew its top in the Philippines way back. Perhaps he’d been a child refugee, orphaned, lost everything. She’d never known anyone who’d fled a volcanic eruption. Kind of romantic. Maybe the wooden face didn’t signify thickness. Enigmatic; wasn’t that it? Oriental man of mystery.
‘You live round here?’ she probed.
‘Here, yes.’ He pointed at the ceiling.
‘In the hotel?’ It seemed so. Resident staff, he’d have been given some grotty little attic under the roof and worked like a slavvy all hours to pay for it. So maybe he was a loner.
‘With your family?’
‘No family.’
She considered this while he moved away to serve drinks at the far end of the bar. There’d been a lot of grumbling about immigrants and refugees. She wasn’t really sure which were which; only that a lot were illegal. They slipped into the country from the continent and tried to lose themselves in the system, get unofficial jobs. God knows what they did about identity papers, National Insurance, that sort of thing. Fakes and forgeries probably. It didn’t bother her that much, but she could see they’d find it a lot easier if they could become Brits. Which really meant marrying into it, didn’t it?
She took a further look at him. Small, which was a pity Clean, though. Nice square white teeth. Not much of a talker, but then maybe his English wasn’t up to scratch. He had a job, even if a poorly paid one. A male immigrant, he could be looking for a wife to legitimize him.
Not that she’d want a permanent hitch. That short stint with Barney had put her off for life. But she needed someone to muck in with, bed with, share costs, hang around and make a fuss of her when she was down. Girlfriends were all right, but not all the way
She could always pretend she was interested, string him along. Single men of her age weren’t so thick on the ground that a girl could be choosy.
So why not? She’d got all the equipment. So keep it active. She could sound out Roseanne, the barmaid, about knowing Ramón a bit better.
Roseanne, less like a flower than a rather cute cartoon mouse, fiddled with a loose strand of hair while she swallowed the line a middle-aged police-court usher was handing her, grinned, displaying two long front teeth at its finish, said perkily, ‘Well, you do see life, don’t you?’ and passed down the counter to where Sheena sat slumped. ‘Hard day, mate?’ she greeted her.
‘Bloody awful boring. Still, it brings in the bread. I’d trade it for your job any day.’
Over her head a newcomer demanded a pint. Roseanne started to pull it, recognized the ominous sucking resistance, apologized. ‘Just a moment, sir.’
She pivoted on her stilettos. ‘Ramón, the barrel needs changing.’
Sheena, watching, caught the momentary flicker of some expression on the flat, square face. Had Roseanne’s voice sharpened just then? Whatever, he turned away, went through the curtained doorway Doing as he was told, like a good boy.
Roseanne, serious about her job, was engaging the newcomer in chat while his order was delayed. Sheena marvelled that she bothered. It wasn’t that anything would come of it. Roseanne was in a long-standing relationship, even talked of having a kid, once Tom finished his management training at Halford’s.
The newcomer was giving Roseanne the story of his life, and she grinning away as if it wasn’t the far end of boring. And across the way someone else was hammering on the counter with the edge of a coin, impatient for service.
Sheena sniffed. So even bar work was mostly sweat and hassle. At least in her own job you didn’t waste effort on the half-dead.
Sheena pushed her empty glass across the counter. Still with her listening face, Roseanne swivelled to apply it to the vodka optic, added the Martini and pushed it back into Sheena’s hand.
‘Speak to you later,’ Sheena said, counting out the money, slid from the stool and took her drink to sit at a table by the window. She doubted the crowd would thin out, but she knew Roseanne. In duty bound, she’d come over on the excuse of collecting glasses. Liked to keep people happy, daft cow.
Oliver Markham sipped at his lager, making it last, telling himself he wasn’t a real drinker; just for the moment needed an anonymous crowd to get lost in. Things were going wrong at work again. You knew when they started watching you that way. Then they’d produced that new woman and told him to show her the ropes. Part of the new policy of making magistrates’ courts all mumsy-comfy. This time he could really be on the way out. Not that he wasn’t shit-tired of the rotten job anyway.
Smothered in legal lists all day, keeping at bay the pompous and legally qualified while enduring the feckless and unruly, he relished this pub as halfway-house back to an empty flat. Relinquishing Roseanne (and it seemed she’d quite enjoyed the one about the mermaid and the bishop) he turned his back on the bright range of mirrored bottles to take in tonight’s wallpaper faces.
Many were known to him; some of their names were too. They shared quite a number of personal histories he could quote if he cared to be indiscreet. These professional secrets in the safety deposit of his mind were little jokes to mull over in his private moments. ‘Lord, what fools these mortals be!’
That was Oberon’s line. Markham gave his tight little lean-cheeked smile. He’d rather fancy that part, seven feet tall, antler-crowned and draped in filmy woodland colours: one of the bard’s most magical characters. Not quite Prospero, but then by the time he got to write The Tempest Old Will was almost out of this world.
What would he have made of this crowd here? The men – suburban hempen-homespuns, few of them commuters to London; at most two generations away from artisans, but considering themselves sophisticates. The town had grown faster than their wits. Their big adventure these days was a fiddled tax return; a weekend wife-swap; the family’s holiday money blown on a three-legged dead cert at Newmarket. Smallest of small beer, the sort that ended up before him in magistrates’ court.
And the women? He looked around – office escapees still tangling with Fred from Accounts or Ted from the next computer; the odd librarian delaying return to a grouchy husband or sullen kids. (No young talent, not at The Crown: there were brighter lights drawing them only streets away.) A
couple of slags, and over by the window the Big Lump settling at a table with a fresh drink in her hand, hoping to mingle, pick up some interest. Bored and boring.
Well, he could bore her some more. As an old couple rose from her table he swung his legs from the stool and carried his lager across. ‘Mind if I join you?’
Little welcome on the pudgy face, but she made room for him alongside on the padded bench. It amused him not to notice the move, sliding instead on to a chair that faced her. She flicked a glance back at the bar counter, making sure the Filipino noticed someone else was interested.
‘I’ve seen you in here before.’
‘Yuh. Just this last week or so.’ She reached in her bag for cigarettes in a crushed packet, offered him one which he refused. Then let him light hers from a disposable lighter. She wondered why he needed it if he wasn’t a smoker.
‘I carry this for clients,’ he emphasized as if she had questioned it aloud; meaning to get across to her that he was a professional man. Sheena, knowing exactly what he was, didn’t rise to the bait.
‘Not new to the town, though?’ he probed.
‘Me? No. Born here.’ She spoke as if it was an infliction. She waved a vague hand towards the door. ‘Other side of town, but I took on a – a patient close by. This bar’s on my way home.’
If he was making out he was a full-blown lawyer, no reason she couldn’t be a qualified nurse. Ramón had swallowed it easily enough.
‘Agency nursing?’ Markham sounded impressed.
‘Private. One-to-one treatment. Very demanding.’
‘Drink up and I’ll get you a refill. You must deserve it.’
Actually, I do.’ She batted her short, blond lashes. ‘It’s been a long day.’
‘So what happens overnight? With your patient, I mean.’
‘I have someone else for the graveyard shift.’ She wasn’t sure she’d got the term right, but it sounded fancy.
‘Nothing much to do then, with the patient asleep,’ she amplified. ‘And I’m on call at home, see, if there’s a need to consult.’
‘So it’s a critical case?’
‘A doddery old lady. Ninety-four next May, if she makes it to then. Bedridden, special diet, but I have to get her sitting out. Do everything. Puree her food. Still, you don’t want to know.’
Actually he did. Anyone that old who could afford twenty-four hour attendance would surely have made a will, maybe appointed a proxy. He wondered which firm of solicitors had drafted it. His court work made him curious about all legal matters.
‘I’m surprised she lives in the centre of town. Must find the traffic noisy, what with emergency vehicles from the fire station and hospital.’
‘Oh, you can’t hear a thing up there. Enormous triple-glazed windows. It’s so quiet it’s spooky. Gets on your nerves. Still I’ve got my tranny and the TV’
Yes. He could picture her polluting the silence with a ranting television soap or a tinny version of a DJ’s histrionic enthusiasms.
‘Up there’ could only mean the block of luxury apartments above the BMW showrooms. It was the nearest to a residential tower that local planners had permitted. He knew the solicitor who’d dealt with the purchase of the fourth floor flat. The price had made him whistle. This very old lady who owned the penthouse had to be mega-rich.
He reached for the woman’s empty glass, stood and took it back with his own to the bar, forgetting to ask what poison she’d been taking. But the barman remembered.
‘Vodka Martini. After this she has enough, yes?’
‘Just as you say. Mine’s a lager, touch of lime.’ He counted out the exact money, not begrudging the expense. You never knew when information gathered might be useful. The woman was trash but the connection needn’t be.
She had swallowed her drink down before he was halfway through his own, but he wasn’t to be hurried. ‘So what do you young people do of an evening for entertainment round here?’ he asked, presuming on his forty-odd years making her thirty-odd seem juvenile.
‘A bit of this and that. There’s the theatre, the flicks. Clubbing,’ she added hopefully
Slouching in front of the TV, he guessed. This one would go for the line of least resistance: supper out of a foil container courtesy of an Indian takeaway – unless she had the proverbial old mum chained to the kitchen sink, serving up bangers and mash on a cold, cracked plate.
‘Have fun while you can,’ he advised. ‘For me it’s a Hawaiian pizza, a large whisky, and more of the same I’ve been doing all day.’
‘You take work home?’ She didn’t believe him. Maybe she’d noticed he had no briefcase.
‘It’s all on the home computer,’ he said confidently. He tapped his head. ‘What’s not in the old noddle.’
Sheena wasn’t impressed. He was a court usher. Sort of dogsbody, to her mind. And old with it. Forty-five if he was a day.
Because he’d planted himself down here Roseanne hadn’t bothered to come across, so she was cheated of a good natter. And she hadn’t had that chance to drop Ramón’s name into the conversation.
‘Look, I gotta go,’ she said on impulse, gathering woollen gloves, scarf, shoulder bag, and lurching out under the table’s rocking edge towards the standing crowd. ‘Thanks for the drink. Be seeing yuh, eh?’
Gracious she wasn’t, Markham regretted. He watched her push through towards the bar counter waving her fingers at Roseanne, go close, bob her head and exchange a few words behind one hand, giggle and be off.
He didn’t like that. She shouldn’t have giggled. She’d tossed her head in a knowing sort of way and Roseanne had grinned back, darting a look in his direction. A joke at his expense? He felt heat rise up his neck, knew his face was flooded with colour. Bloody woman making a mock of him. He clenched his right fist in his lap. The nails would have marked the flesh if they hadn’t been nibbled away.
‘Slag,’ he said under his breath. The green-striped cotton dress below her fake fur jacket hadn’t convinced him she was a nurse. Looked more like a lavatory cleaner.
Chapter Three
Alyson had Emily in the bath, gently pouring water over her shoulders when the buzzer sounded. Dr Stanford was late tonight: she’d more or less given up on him. She reached for the inflated rubber ring kept for emergencies and slipped it under the wasted arms. ‘Just for a moment,’ she promised.
The CCTV screen in the kitchen showed the familiar face upturned to the exterior camera for identification. She pressed the button for the street door’s release, stood the apartment door open and went back to Emily’s bathroom. She was lying back in the water, cooing like a dove.
When Dr Stanford stepped out of the lift she had Emily on her feet wrapped in a warm towel, transferred her to the wheelchair and rolled it alongside her freshly made bed. He followed them in and threw off his coat.
‘Good evening, ladies. Alyson, you should ask for a mobile lift for getting Emily out of the bath. It’s too much for one person.’ His robust approach was belied by the dark smudges under his eyes. It had been a long day with some hard decisions.
‘Emily’s no weight, really. We manage, darling, don’t we?’ She completed the old lady’s transfer to the paper undersheet of the air-bed and pedalled it up to working level.
Stanford adopted a hangdog expression. ‘I suppose I’m too late for coffee?’
‘Not if you can wait while I do a little something.’
He took a seat across from the bed and watched as Alyson cupped a hand for oil and began gently to massage the birdlike body. ‘How does she seem?’
‘Why not ask her?’
He spent a few minutes trying to coax a response from the old lady, but she had screwed her mouth into a tight circle and given herself up entirely to the sensation of being smoothed and stroked. At the end she expelled her breath in a long whoosh of contentment.
‘Best …’ she said. Then, after a few seconds’ pause, ‘ …part …of the day.’
‘Brilliant,’ said Stanford. He had seldom hea
rd her say so much.
‘It is as Emily says: this is her best part of the day. And she is brilliant. You’re right.’ Alyson went back into the bathroom to wash her hands, calling back over her shoulder, ‘Can you stay and talk to Emily while I make our drinks?’
‘Right.’ He leaned forward confidentially. ‘Well, Emily, it’s devilish cold outside. Quite a bit of snow underfoot, so you’re lucky to be snug in here. And very lucky to have Alyson taking care of you.’
‘Martin!’ the old lady called out sharply, gazing blindly over his head. ‘Martin, get me out of here!’
He reached for her hand. ‘Sorry, Emily. I’m Keith, and you’re really better off where you are.’
For the first time she looked at him, her eyes focused, but the moment passed even as her lips started to form words. The pupils wandered off. Her eyelids drooped. Another five seconds and she was sound asleep.
‘It tires her out,’ Alyson said, coming back with their drinks.
‘Maybe she should have her bath during the day, but I can’t leave it to anyone else.’
‘How long will she sleep now?’
‘An hour and a half, perhaps two hours. Then I’ll feed her and she should get another four hours solid.’
‘And you?’
‘I’m geared to much the same. I’m a light sleeper. If she’s disturbed I hear her in my room through the baby alarm.’ She stood there, tray in her hands. ‘Let’s go through, shall we?’
He wasn’t happy about the duties. ‘That isn’t good enough. Not on top of a day shift in ITU. You’re overdoing it.’
She said nothing, knowing he didn’t doubt her ability to perform at the hospital, but was concerned for her welfare.
He followed her into the large penthouse lounge, its lights dimmed to preserve the panoramic view, and they sat together looking down at the orange-lit snow, the diminished night traffic.