by James Hannah
‘Yes you have, you moron. You absolutely have. You and me, we’re pretty much the same dude,’ says Mal. ‘We both get things done, maybe just using our different special powers.’
‘I don’t. I never do.’
My cart rattles over rough ground, but I’m quick enough with the joystick to get past the tricky bit that normally sends me flying.
‘Yeah, man, that was one of the first things that I noticed about you, when you– you remember when Mr Miller found that pack of my cigarettes?’
‘Oh God, yeah.’
‘I just could not believe you’d take the hit for that. And I thought, man, he doesn’t even know me. I’d better stick around with this lad, he really doesn’t give a shit, you know? He can really go there.’
‘Yeah?’
‘Anyone who can – fucking–’ he ducks instinctively as my kart passes under the low branches ‘–use their dead dad just to get one over on their Science teacher, well, they’re someone who doesn’t give a shit about what anyone thinks, aren’t they? Someone who’s prepared to go there. You’re a Machiavellian type, I reckon.’
I’ve heard the words he’s said, but I’m only slowly piecing them together in my mind to make sense of them.
Feels sort of – nice? – to be thought so shrewd.
My go-kart pings off the edge of the cliff and drops into the abyss.
I hand him the control. ‘Is your head a bit hot?’
‘A bit. That’s probably normal.’
‘Where’s Laura?’
A graphic retch and cough leaks out from the bathroom, followed by a protracted series of spits.
‘I think she went for a little lie-down.’
A whole hour later, with my head stinging, she’s blearily washing the bleach out, and my dreams of a platinum-blond cut like the Russian Action Man thunder into the bath with it.
Orange yellow at the back, bright yellow at the front. And dark patches all around the back top where she hadn’t brushed it in properly.
It’ll grow out in a fortnight, it’ll grow out in a fortnight.
Something wakes me again now. I look up from my pillow and it’s still dark. Sheila hasn’t been in, I don’t think.
As I concentrate on the rectangle of light beyond the foot of my bed, I can hear a low regular noise. Old Faithful’s breathing has changed. Maybe they’ve switched her medication again. The kazoo sound is still there, but it’s like she’s gently huffing through it, a more thoughtful sound. A peaceful sound. I prefer it to what she was doing before.
I am lost in a world of regular hums, distant beeping, the periodic reheating of the coffee machine in the corridor, and that steady kazoo. I don’t know how long it has been. Is Amber wandering around out there? No sign.
Knuckles knock-knock on wood. Rap through the static atmosphere. I glance up at my doorway, but there’s no one. A moment later I hear a murmur next door, and a murmur in response. The tones of a woman’s voice, Sheila’s voice, hushed, and the lower tones of a man. Mr Old Faithful.
Slight metallic clink of a chair leg, and something knocks against the thin partition between my room and hers. It makes me start, makes my heart briefly beat a little faster. For a while there’s a sense of movement out there in the corridor. Diligent attendants move to and fro, and now a nurse passes my doorway.
Sheila pads past too and glances in at me.
I’ve no idea whether she can see if I’m awake. Maybe she’s trying to read my eyes in the darkness. See if there’s a glint off an eyeball. I narrow my eyes, narrow the chances. I don’t want her to see that I’m awake. I don’t know why. I don’t want to encroach on this. Don’t want to be a witness. All I feel is the rhythmic thrum of my heartbeat between the sheets. Can she see me breathing? Sheila drops her look and moves on. Still the kazoo keeps time, though it’s gained an edge of intensity.
There’s a lot of pacing going on out there. No one’s staying anywhere for long.
Slow figures drift past my doorway, closing in on Old Faithful.
Slow spirits.
Come to take her away.
Tender noises from next door.
Gentle huff. Pause.
Gentle huff from Old Faithful. Periodically pausing.
Her own heart, slowing.
I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to be here for this.
Hands
Yes, there again, my dad’s hands, kneading and rubbing my calf to work out the cramp.
Or walking to school with Laura–
‘Mum said you had to hold my hand over the road.’
‘Hold your own hand,’ she says, callously.
Oh. I’m on my own.
I don’t know why, but I flush hot and feel empty in my tummy, and a surge of hot tears boils up. I try to fight them back, I do. I don’t want her to think I’m getting in the way. I know she doesn’t want to because she wants to look good in front of Danny Refoy and his mates. But Mum said. This is what she said we had to do.
The thunder in her glare as she snatches up my hand and drags me across the road.
You took my hand for the first time after our second date – our first proper date after your Easter trip back to the Lakes – walking away from the Blue Plate Café.
I looked down at you, questioningly.
‘What?’ you said, holding up my hand. ‘You weren’t using it, were you?’
‘No, no, be my guest.’
All that anxiety about whether it had gone well, about whether we might kiss – gone. I kissed you on to your bus back to your digs.
I didn’t want to let go, once you’d set the seal.
I waited too. While the engine idled and the driver checked his watch, I waited, and when he finally hissed the door shut and pulled away, I waved you out of sight.
Then I floated off into town to meet Mal.
Was this love?
It felt like love.
The kazoo next door pauses, stays paused. One more murmur from beyond: ‘Do you think that’s it?’
And the kazoo begins again.
No more murmur. It was not it.
Hands, hands.
Your hand in mine.
My hand in yours.
Our hands.
So lovely, so simple to be able to take ownership of someone’s hand.
Palms pulsing together.
‘Have you noticed,’ I say, ‘you’re normally the one who says “I love you” first? Then I say it.’
‘I hadn’t noticed.’
‘I never think the second means as much.’
‘So I’m winning, would you say?’
‘It doesn’t mean I’m not thinking it. I always feel a bit defeated when I have to follow up with “I love you too”. It’s like the sequel to a film: I Love You and I Love You Too. You know the second one’s always going to be a predictable reworking of the first.’
You laugh. ‘Well,’ you say, ‘it’s just like this noise that drops out of my mouth. Sometimes I think it’s down to things as simple as luh-luh being nice to say. You say luh-luh, and it feels nice with your tongue and it creates a resonance in your head that feels nice. Nice vibration. And that’s got to be a good thing.’
‘Bluh blah bloo.’
‘Yeah! Exactly that. Bluh blah bloo.’
‘Bluh blah bloo too.’
And the kazoo pauses once more.
Silence.
Soft breathing of the fans of the machines fills in the emptiness.
And that’s it.
No more from Old Faithful.
And still no more.
And still.
Heart still.
I hear a strangled sniff, a man’s voice. Mr Old Faithful.
Newborn widower.
The coffee machine rasps into life once more, works up through its steady crescendo of warming the water, reaches its peak and ceases.
And Amber. Amber must be out there too.
Mumless.
Muttering now from next door. Mr Old Faithful, I think, and
Sheila. Sheila’s tones sound kind and concise. A nurse I’ve not seen before emerges, and then Sheila herself appears, leading Mr Old Faithful and Amber too. None of them looks in, but they walk past my doorway and troop into a room across the corridor. Its door clicks rudely shut.
It’s just me out here now.
Me and Old Faithful, on either side of the partition.
The lately living and the due-to-be-dead.
I’m here.
I’m still here.
I’m still awake.
I’m thinking nothing.
What is there to think?
The latch sounds again, and the door draws open. Sheila passes my doorway and disappears into Old Faithful’s room once more.
She speaks, softly but clearly, and I can make out her words. ‘Hello, lovey,’ she says. ‘I’m going to take your wedding ring now, OK? Just going to give it to your husband for safe-keeping. I’ll be as gentle as I can.’
There is no response.
’Til death us do part.
There it is.
Love ends at death.
Does it?
Heart
‘Why do you think people link love to their hearts?’ I say.
You look up at me in the orange streetlight, push your hair inaccurately back from your face with your mitten. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Or, like, why is your head supposed to be so sensible?’
‘Mm. I don’t know. Come on, let’s tie a few of these to the bike rack.’
I reach into the bag and try once again through my gloves to untangle one of the crochet hearts.
You’ve plunged into the activity as usual, mittens off and gleeful. I don’t know how you do it. How can you stay so buoyant when it’s so insanely cold?
I’ve got to say, it’s only reluctantly that I draw my gloves off too, and immediately I can’t feel my fingers. I take up the heart and begin to tie its two specially loosened threads around the nearest part of the bike rack. By the time I’ve finished one, you’ve tied on five, and we both step back and admire our handiwork.
‘They are having an impact, aren’t they?’ you say, anxiously.
‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘They look great.’
They do, they do. I thrust my hands rapidly back into my gloves.
‘I was worried they’d be a bit small and look a bit random, but they’re just right. They look like they’ve been thought about.’
‘Yeah.’
‘Come on, let’s finish this off and head over to the churchyard. Almost halfway done.’
Almost half? I look down into the jute bag, which now holds about thirty crochet hearts. My own heart sinks. It’s as much as I can do to prevent a childish whimper escaping my throat.
Come on, come on. I want a new response. I just – I need a response that’s going to help you finish this.
‘Hey, come on,’ I hear myself saying. ‘Let’s go over to King’s Walk. There’s a tree on the corner that looks out over the whole town. Let’s hang a bunch in the branches, I think they’ll look great.’
There. I’ve launched those ambitious words into the air between us to convince myself as much as you. The hug you give me as we set off is return enough.
‘Hey,’ you say, ‘then we could go back and have pancakes for breakfast, couldn’t we? I’ll make you pancakes for being my amazing helper.’
‘With bacon and maple syrup?’
As we make our way along King’s Walk, the sun splits the horizon, and strikes the landscape through with a clean clear light.
Come on now, come on, I wouldn’t be seeing this view on any other day. It’s almost worth the cold, and there is satisfaction to be had from hard work. It’s not all lying back and letting it all come to you, like so many bacon-and-maple-syrup pancakes.
‘You OK, gorgeous boy?’ you ask, linking your arm in mine.
‘Yeah,’ I say, trying to walk less like a frozen robot. And yeah, I am.
You look at me fondly, and say, ‘This is all a terrible waste of time and effort, you do know that, don’t you?’
‘You reckon?’
‘I don’t know why you tolerate me. It’s sixteen below zero.’
‘Is it? I hadn’t noticed.’
You laugh. ‘And you’re tying hearts to trees and lampposts to please a whole lot of people you’ve never met.’
‘Well, I think, if I ignore the cold and the earliness, it’s – probably what I’d choose to be doing? If I had the imagination.’
‘Ah, you do! I’d never thought of putting anything up on King’s Walk. I think it’s a tremendous idea. Very creative.’
‘Yeah?’
‘Yeah. And I love how kind you are about it, and really patient with my silly ideas. I don’t know too many men who’d put up with that.’
So simple, to nudge me with a little appreciation, but I can actually feel my heart growing warmer as you say this. Even at sixteen below zero. It’s my mini furnace. Yes, yes, yes: it’s agonizingly cold. And yes, yes, I’d much, much rather be in bed.
But I’d much, much, much rather you had someone to do this with.
And I’ll be pleased it was me.
‘Well,’ I say, ‘what else was I going to do with these redundant early hours? More meaningless sleep? Come on.’
God, I’m so easily manipulated.
We’ve stopped where the path curves back on itself as the town drops away spectacularly into the valley, and the river wriggles off into the distance. The usual breath of traffic has yet to start up, and so far only one or two chimney pots are beginning to spill their early morning smoke. I hand you the jute bag and launch myself at the lowest bough of the target tree, hoist myself up on to it.
‘Careful!’ you call. ‘It’ll be frosty.’
‘I used to do this all the time when I was a kid.’ I successfully cover up my mild surprise at how much effort it takes to get me up there today. It’s been a few years. ‘Pass me up a bunch.’
You pass me up ten hearts, and I bite off my gloves before starting to tie them among the twigs.
‘Lovely,’ you say, directing me from place to place. ‘They’re going to look amazing here.’
‘Here you go,’ I say, and I inchworm my way along the next bough up, which stretches out over the speared iron railings and hangs over the section where the land tumbles away down to the road below. ‘I’ll put one here, and no one will know how on earth it got so far out over the road.’
‘Careful,’ you say. ‘If you kill yourself over a yarnbomb, I’m going to feel bad.’
Just as I find myself a prime spot for tying, I recognize my fingertips starting to tingle, and I realize my limbs have drained of all energy. I’m feeling properly wobbly. Insulin wobbly.
Hypo time. Shit.
I take a quick glance back along the distance I’ve travelled, make a quick calculation about how to get back, but – not easy. I’d better just– the uncertainty in my body is transferred into the bough, which I’m sure is shivering beneath me. My mind flits through its tick-boxes, and of course: early morning, no breakfast. I look down at you and smile confidently, but your look of concern is not diluted.
‘Are you OK?’
‘Yep, yeah,’ I say. I could black out here. I need to get back. If I blacked out I’d drop like a stone and tumble down to the road fifty feet below. I edge back a bit, with the pretence of looking for a better place. Edge back, edge back.
My fingertips are fumbling the fraying thread as I try to tie a simple bow, and it keeps misbehaving – if there’s any … thing that makes me believe in a God it’s the way … fucking inanimate objects … behave when you really – real – what?
There’s a sudden deep thick silence, and gravity shifts and sweeps around me, until I’m punched solidly in the lower-third back of my body, with a hump and crackle from the pavement, and all I know is my head is in the gutter with all the leaf mould and bird shit and dried-up Friday-night piss, probably.
And there’s you, looking down on me.
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‘Oh my God, are you all right?’
‘Yeah, yeah,’ I say, scrambling to my feet and trying to ride out the dizziness.
‘Stop, sit down a bit. You really banged your arm. Come and sit on this bench.’
I consent to sit.
‘Sorry,’ I say, ‘my fingers froze and I lost my grip.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ you say, mortified. ‘Have you got any pain? How’s your arm?’
‘Fine, fine. No damage done. Look,’ I say, pointing up at the tree. ‘Looks good?’
‘It looks fantastic,’ you say, squeezing my arm and inadvertently hurting it. ‘In the morning everyone in town’s going to see these little hearts dangling all over the place, and think, What kind of mad person would be bothered to put those out there?’ You look at my face for the laugh, but you can see something’s wrong. ‘Are you sure you’re OK?’
‘Yeah, yeah. I just need some food.’
‘Let’s be getting back. I’ve got some biscuits in my pocket here. Have a couple of those.’
‘What are you doing carrying biscuits around with you?’ I say, tearing into the packet.
‘Oh, I don’t know. I imagined I’d probably need them one day. Come on then, let’s go home and get those pancakes sorted.’
We stroll arm in aching arm back along King’s Walk as the town is flushed through with the onset of morning, and my heart is pounding, and I’m resisting the dizziness with all my might.
I only have to get back to yours. That’s not far, down into the valley and over the bridge, but then uphill and into the terraces.
But no, no. Not too far.
What’s–? What’s the time?
It’s light. Afternoon light.
They must have left me to sleep through the day.
I was awake all night.
I look up and I’m surprised to see, crackling at the doorway to my room, loaded with blowsy colourful flowers, Amber.
‘Oh, hello!’
‘Hiya.’ She gives me a weary smile. ‘She’s gone.’
‘Amber, I’m so sorry.’
‘She went last night.’
‘Come in, come in.’