by James Hannah
‘Now a sip of tea. It’ll take the taste away. There.’
Sip.
Cup rings back into saucer.
‘All right?’
‘Right.’
‘OK.’
‘Is there anything else I can get for you? Your wish is my command.’
‘No. Thank you.’
LIPS
YOUR LIPS. The most delicious kisses.
Oh, when I remember your lips.
Lying back here now I long to think of them, but – I can’t.
The perfect pout–
I’m scared to even begin.
Can’t even bring myself to think – to think of the kiss–
No.
Think about it differently. Lips. What was that first kiss?
The first ones were grandma and grandad. Grandad’s was always over-slobbery and beery. Laura used to hate it. I remember every time she would cringe on the way in. I used to quite like the smell of stale beer. Quite fruity.
But I shrank away from grandma’s kisses. She had thin, dry lips, cold and without resistance, like the kiss of a ghost. But the worst bit was there must have been this one-off piece of stubble or something on her top lip, a little to the left of centre – it must have been where she regularly plucked out a hair because every time I had to kiss her goodbye I would be pricked by it, like a little electric shock.
I can’t believe how she put up with me writhing to get away from her, whingeing, There’s a spike on her lip! It hurts!
What must the older generations put up with?
First serious girl kiss: Nicola Peterson.
Aged fourteen, out in the middle of the school playing fields, far away from anyone.
The lunge that girl used to make. The first thing I would see would be this great wide chasm of a cakehole launching itself at me like it knew what it was doing. For a while I thought maybe it was me who was getting it wrong. I didn’t know, did I? Because no one really teaches you how to kiss; where would you start? You have to make it up as you go along.
Her kisses frightened me. That’s not right, is it?
Kelvin thought it was hilarious, but he’d never kissed anyone.
There were four or five in between, all bases reached, virginity merrily dispensed with, but it really was you who taught me to go back and love kissing.
No.
No – I can’t. I can’t unlock it. It’s too – I’m scared to. It might release it all again, just be too much. Too, too much.
Here comes the cavalry.
I venture into my mum’s bedroom, where I’m not really allowed, and find her sitting on the edge of her bed, gazing into her mirror, a collection of make-up shrapnel slithering in beside her on the eiderdown.
Twenty minutes since Laura slammed the front door behind her and left the house shivering, Mum still seems sad.
She sees me – ‘Hiya, bab’ – and her mouth automatically straightens into a smile, but for once she can’t sustain it, even though I smile back.
She is very sad.
She unclicks her lipstick lid and twizzles out the waxy stick, and aims it at her mouth. But before she sets it to her lips, she sighs and lets her hand drop back into her lap.
It’s on instinct that I step forward and reach for the lipstick myself. She lets me have it, still twizzled out.
Delicious smell. One of my favourite smells.
I reach up towards her mouth, and she turns her face towards me to oblige. I begin to apply, top lip, and then bottom lip, in vague imitation of what I’ve seen her do more or less every morning of my childhood. And like more or less every drawing of my childhood, I go over the edges.
And I know I’ve gone over the edges, so I keep going. And Mum keeps her face there. She keeps it there until I’ve drawn a big smiley lipstick face almost all the way up and out to her ears. As I apply the lipstick, the skin of her cheeks is stretched out sideways, and I worry it might be painful, but she doesn’t move, and I need no more encouragement than that.
When I have untwizzled the wax and slipped and clicked the lid back into place, she turns and looks at herself in the mirror.
She smiles, a small smile in the middle of my great big one.
It’s still possible to smile when you’re crying.
In the dark, unfamiliar pitch-black lips press themselves passionately to mine. Not like yours. Different to yours. They open, and my lips open, open together, drive deeper, a tongue pushes between m–
No. No. I can’t think of this.
‘Are you all right, lovey?’
Sheila, doorway.
Her voice is like – it’s like listening to the radio when I’m falling asleep.
Somehow clearer, more acute.
‘How are you bearing up?’ She’s speaking slowly too.
‘Yeah,’ I say, ‘good.’
‘Well, I’ll check in on you in a little while, see how you’re going on. You’ve got your button if you need me.’
I look at the button. There it is, snaking across my bed. Friendly.
‘I’ve got my button.’
‘OK, lovey.’
She’s not there any more.
Is this working? I think the morphine might be working.
It’s gentle. I feel gentle.
It’s like sitting in the back of the car, the voices and the radio around me, swirling and stirring me to sleep.
Muscles
‘OUR CONCERN IS over muscle wastage,’ the consultant mutters to your mum.
Plastic mask marks your face.
Bedbound, the ventilator breathes out, you breathe in; clicks; in, you breathe out.
A ventilator is not a part of the body. It absolutely is not.
Brainbranded.
We’ve been sitting with you for two days now. The ventilator breathes out, you breathe in; clicks; in, you breathe out.
‘We have to hope that she is going to be able to breathe unaided before long. The concern is that, with the ventilator doing all the work, the muscles she uses to breathe will become too weak to work on their own.’
No – no.
Bitter, evil memory.
That’s where poor Amber will be now. Her brain will branded with the memory of her mum, lying there in the bed. Like the blinding blink trails of a dark sun, repeating on her retina.
It took me over a year to blink away those final moments of you, even for a little while.
Nose
THAT CRAYOLA CRAYON in my first year of primary school.
That’s why I remember that.
After wearing it down to something the size of a pea, I stuck it up my nose, and was surprised to find it stayed there. I distinctly remember not being able to pincer it out with my thumb and forefinger. It just went further up.
I didn’t panic.
I sat there, looking at my rectangular cat drawing, a deep scrunch of my nose every few seconds. Even then I knew I should act as if nothing had happened. And there was no way I was going to go and ask for help. I basically selected another colour and carried on colouring, and sat with the pea-sized crayon up my nostril for half the afternoon.
Then the brainwave: I could try squeezing my nose from above the crayon, and it might come out like that.
Squeeze.
Pop.
Rattle.
I looked down, and there it was on the desk.
Maybe this moment of simple harmony between my thoughts and my actions – that is, the reflection upon and the execution of how to remove a crayon from myself without needing to go and ask a grown-up – was the absolute high point of mental achievement in my entire life.
Eyes open suddenly. Why?
Daylight. Daytime.
At the window, sliced through with strip-lit reflections, a man’s face is staring in.
Unkempt, unshaven.
The face of a man in a maroon jacket, some yellow detail on the top pocket–?
Then he’s gone.
Wh–?
I don’t know what if–<
br />
He was definitely–
Push the button. Push now. Push to the click.
My heart leaps to racing. Beat, beating, beating in me.
Footsteps in the corridor. Sheila.
‘Yes, lovey, are you all right?’
‘There–’ I jab my finger at the window.
‘What’s that?’
‘There – There. There was a face.’
She finally wanders her way over to the window and levers it open.
There was a face, definitely.
I wasn’t imagining it. Not a hallucination – if this was a hallucination, it was the most solid – no. Sheila’s – I know she is – she’s going to turn and tell me there’s no one there.
‘Oi!’ Her voice sounds washed out, projected over the lawn outside. She barks a few demands, and there he is again: the man, drifting in from the right. He’s explaining himself to her with a hint of dumb petulance.
Who the hell is it?
I can’t make him out.
He’s looking at Sheila like a scolded schoolboy. All I can hear is the placatory ascent and descent of the tones of his explanation. Tones that say he didn’t know he was doing a wrong thing, that it wasn’t his fault he was doing a wrong thing, that it was someone else’s fault and he was only following orders, and why was it a wrong thing anyway?
Sheila’s voice is calmer. But still matronly. I catch a few bits. Patients in here … very serious condition … how would you like it? Phrases that have their own signature tone.
The man beats a sheepish retreat, and Sheila fixes the window back shut.
‘Bloody useless, aren’t they?’ she says. ‘It’s the NRG clowns again. I’ve told them they have to come straight to reception, but they think they own the place now. Are you all right?’
‘Not really, no,’ I say, grasping for my oxygen mask.
‘Sorry about that,’ she says, coming to assist.
‘Anyone could get in. It could have been anyone.’
‘No, I know what you’re thinking,’ she says, ‘but it couldn’t have been anyone. They need a special pass to get past the gate, it’s all secure round here, OK? They’ve all been checked. He came in the wrong way, that’s all.’ She straightens her mouth and looks down at me. ‘Come on now, let’s get you back on the straight and narrow. You know how important that is.’
I close my eyes, take a few breaths.
‘I can’t do it. There’s too much. I need more help.’
An amplified crackle shocks my mind, and flings my attention to the two speakers bracketed by the ceiling of the Baurice Hartson Rest & Recuperation Room. They fire out a burst of vaguely Eastern soothe-music, and Karen is quick to drop the volume to an appropriately ethereal level.
‘A bit of something to evoke a more pleasing atmosphere.’ She smiles.
She has a nice smile. And a clipped little accent. Not completely English, although almost completely. She says esses instead of zeds. Odd shape to her ohs. It sounds sweet. Swedish, I presume, if this is a Swedish massage?
‘So if you could remove your pyjama jacket for me, what I’m going to do is massage your chest with this oil, which should help clear your airways and assist your breathing. Sheila tells me your breathing has been difficult?’
‘Yes,’ I say, beginning to unbutton my pyjama jacket.
‘Well, this ought to help to clear those lungs.’
Nod.
‘I’ll just close this–’ She kicks twice, thrice at the rubber doorstop, lets the door drop shut.
‘Here we go,’ she says, helping me off with my jacket. ‘I hope you’re not shy like all the English, are you?’
‘Um, no I don’t think so.’
‘I’m glad to hear it. English people always seem to be so shy.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes, it’s very rude. Women come into our saunas in their swimming costumes. It’s very unhygienic.’ She sounds like she’s telling me off, but she’s still smiling sweetly. They are difficult signals to interpret. ‘A body’s a body. Why should you be ashamed of it?’
I get settled on the table and try to give off an air of non-shyness.
‘Now, I’m warming the oil up in my hands here, so it’s not too much of a shock to the system. Are you OK for me to start massaging you now?’
‘Sure.’
She lays on her hands assertively, smearing my chest with oil. She must be used to it, of course, but I’m not. I’m not quite prepared for the feeling. The contact. I close my eyes. Just her hand-shapes impressed on my chest, this way and that, this and that, working up and around my chest. I can feel a surge of electrical tingles, my nerve-endings recalling when I was last touched like this. Ten full years since. Sensations so long locked I’ve forgotten they ever occurred. Far down in the sightless, silent deep, my muscles have retained lost knowledge. Physical, unthought, unforgettable memories.
‘And if that’s the way you think about your body,’ Karen is saying, ‘then it says to me there is something wrong in the mind. My mother, when she was very frail, we used to take showers together, and I would help her wash, in the same way she helped me wash when I was a baby. What could be more natural than that?’
I start coughing, and she leans away, but leaves her oily hands in place on my chest.
‘Sorry,’ I rattle.
‘No, no, not at all. That’s why we’re here.’
She starts up again when I have settled down, goes more gently, working her fingertips firmly in to the top and middle of my chest.
‘Is that pressure OK?’
‘Yeh–’ I gurgle, and have to clear my throat. ‘Yes, that’s fine, thanks.’ Super-conscious now of my wheezing. Not coughing, at least.
Back to relaxing. Exhale, carefully. Forget the improvised audio, the magnolia walls, the failed double-glazing, its condensation skulking around the lower left corner. Concentrate on her touch. Think of the feel of her hands. Steady rhythms swash, swash, on my chest. Yes, yes.
‘So, how long have you been resident here?’
‘I don’t know – I forget. My third week, I think?’
‘It’s hard to keep track, isn’t it? Have you been happy with your care?’
‘They’ve been brilliant.’
‘Yes, everybody says that. They’re very good here.’
‘I love Sheila.’
‘Very smart woman,’ she says, almost confidentially. ‘Really knows her stuff.’
There they are, the tips of your hair brushing my neck and cheek, your flat palms pressed to my chest, fingers clutching searchingly around my jawbone and earlobe, cupping my cranium, fingertips drawing up tight and scratching into my hair. Tracing your fingertips around my back until you find the place just below my ribs – the unbearable place – just–
No.
The table creaks rhythmically beneath me.
I open my eyes, see Karen’s face working intently, concentrating on the job. She catches me looking, briefly smiles.
‘OK?’
I do a smile, though I doubt it reaches my eyes. Close them again.
Positive thinking. Think something else. Anything, anywhere else.
But you’re everywhere. The memories of you, the shape of you.
All the parts of my body seem to come together and remember you. I’ve got your textures at my fingertips, your scent in my airways, the balance of your weight in my arms and my back. In every part of my body there’s a space for you, and all I need is for you to come back again and fill it.
The electronic beep of the alarmed door strikes suddenly out in the corridor – my muscles suddenly tense, and my heart instantly starts thudding twice as fast. Karen’s hands tense and pause briefly, before working on through the noise.
‘Oh, it’s only the door alarm,’ she calls through the noise. ‘They must be testing it.’
The alarm stops abruptly after a few seconds, leaving a door-slam to slowly subside, and allow the soothing music back through.
I have to relax.<
br />
‘Can you think of any body parts that begin with O?’ I say.
‘Oh,’ she says, stopping her work for a brief moment, with a knowing little smile. ‘I see, are you playing Sheila’s little game?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Yes, she likes to get people to play that one. Gets people to open up a bit.’
‘Yeah,’ I say, although it doesn’t sound quite nice to have it put like that.
‘Let me have a think. O … I know what I’d do for O. Because I’m a qualified aromatherapist, I’d have lots to say about the olfactory nerve. Yes, that’s definitely what I’d do.’
I break out once again into gurgly coughing, and hold my hand up in apology. ‘What’s the olfactory nerve?’
‘It’s what enables you to process scent. It’s an amazing thing, very mysterious. I’ve got reams and reams of research showing how your olfactory senses are some of the most effective in tapping into the brain. They’re starting to utilize it with coma patients to lift them out through these associations.’
Olfactory nerve
I DON’T KNOW what the olfactory memory of my life would be. Vetiver: that’s the scent of you.
I’ve caught it a very few times in the last ten years of working on the checkouts, the scent of vetiver. It’s an immediate hyperlink back to you, to you and me.
No.
Something else.
Mr Miller, holding out the polythene bag before him.
‘In this polythene bag is one of those most incredible, unforgettable smells known to man. It’s astonishing really, it’s possible to store it inside something so simple. Astonishing.’
The whole class in the palm of his hand.
‘Who wants to sample the delights?’
Twenty-four right hands shoot up. Four left hands.
He comes to me.
‘One scientific sniff, if you please.’
He’s acting weird. Why is he acting all weird and sort of – respectful?
I sniff, tentatively.
‘Fuck! Aww, fucking hell!’
Acid explosion in my brain and eyeballs.
I’m back, I’m backwards, up off my stool, and I’ve just said fuck in front of everyone, twice.