by Sara Alexi
Coco is at his ankles, and he stops and kneels down to cuddle her. She licks his face.
‘What do you feed your dogs, then?’ one of the men at Hogdykes goaded him when he first started. At the time he had only been out of Highroyds for a week and the world felt alien, threatening, oppressive and confusing. He had just moved in with Archie and his care worker said he must work, as he was an ‘independent man now’. She said it as if it was something of which he should be proud, and he imagined it would be work like he did in the hospital, helping in the gardens. But the place that they sent him made him cry. He missed the doctors and some of the nursing staff, and he had real trouble working out his money and what he could buy with it. In the beginning, if it had not been for Archie and Archie’s dogs, he might have walked across the moors and not stopped until the cold or hunger had taken him.
‘Dog food,’ he had replied, confused. All the men in their overalls and wellingtons had laughed.
‘Dog food, he says.’ The man had looked around at his co-workers. ‘Where you think dog food comes from if not dead animals?’
He made sure after that day that he always arrived a bit late so the men would have left before he came in to clean. But a few of them stayed behind to smoke cigarettes by the back gates and there was often some quip, some laugh at his expense. But that was not as bad as the smell of fear that hung in the air when he went inside. Did they not smell it? He could almost feel it, it was almost tangible. The terror those animals must feel watching the animal in front, smelling the fear and not being able to follow their instincts and run. The red was everywhere – running in the gutters, splashed on the walls, on every surface. Even with the hose on full, some areas had to be scrubbed and, as he worked, unidentifiable morsels would get under his fingernails, flick up onto his glass, hang in his hair.
‘Maybe she will have cooked.’ He distracts himself from his own thoughts. She never puts meat before him, only exotic mixes of vegetables and spices and always the folded bread which she calls roti. She does not cook for him every day, but rather when she has made too much. It is often enough, though, for him to no longer find a cold tin of beans appetising, regardless of how hungry he is, and he has been without any food at all on more than one day.
Usually she cooks mid-afternoon, which means he can eat before work. Work is only two hours each day, and on his walk back he will sometimes see Saabira’s husband, from a distance. Aaman. He always looks tired as the bus pulls away but his steps take on a bounce as he turns into their cobbled street.
The telephone box is a good place to remain hidden as Aaman makes his way to his door. It is not that he dislikes Aaman; he is probably a nice man since he is married to Saabira. But his stomach turns and his mouth goes dry when he tries to think of something he could say if they met and so, as yet, he has not even said hello.
‘Triangulation station,’ he mutters to himself.
The first spot of rain hits his glasses, sooner than he expected, but he is on the home straight now. He can see the back of the row of houses, can make out his own. There are curls of smoke snaking from several of the other chimneys. The other dogs will all be hungry when he gets in, and so will the rabbits.
He hopes Saabira has made too much food.
Chapter 12
The scraps he brought from work are torn and chewed and swallowed within minutes. Several of the dogs take the bones and disappear under the furniture, into the dark. The rabbits are equally keen to be fed and as he opens doors and shovels in feed he finds one of the animals lying on its side, eyes glazed over, and the other rabbits huddled in the corner, creating as much space as they can between them and their lifeless brother. Cyril puts down the feed scoop and with both hands flat he lifts the animal from the cage.
‘Oh, you poor little thing.’ He raises the rabbit and puts its nose near his cheek to see if he can feel even the slightest breath, but there is no doubt it is dead. There is a small area of bare earth just up the slope behind his house, and here he digs a hole with a trowel and buries the small animal, covering it gently and picking some heather for a memorial. The tears run down his cheeks, and as he closes his eyes he can still picture it lying in the cage. The cage warps and becomes a chair, the rabbit’s hair turns white, its face becomes bald and it has on trousers and a shirt. It is Archie, just as he was when he found him.
‘Cyril.’ Saabira’s call releases him.
He turns, hurriedly drying his eyes. Saabira has her purple outfit on, the gold of the scarf haloing her face.
‘I have food.’ She holds up the dishes to him before putting them down on the table in her yard, and returns indoors.
Cyril bounds back down on energetic legs, trowel forgotten. He does not hesitate to enter her backyard and he eagerly sits down and lifts the foil lids to see what she has prepared.
Her back door opens.
‘Ah, you are here.’ She comes out with small steps, another dish in her hand. As she puts this down next to his plate, Cyril’s chest contracts. His hands are filthy, covered with mud from burying the rabbit. He puts them in his lap, under the table, and hopes she has not seen.
‘The tap is just there.’ Bangles on her wrist jangle as she points to the sink inside her back door. If he accepts he has to go inside, into her home, but if he does not he must eat with dirty hands. The choice twists in his stomach.
‘Juliet, my baby, is sleeping upstairs. I am just going to check on her.’ She leaves behind her perfume of flowers and musky warmth. It is a smell that brings comfort and the feeling that someone cares. It reminds him of Matron Jan, whose perfume was so strong it filled her small room.
‘Come in, Cyril, come in, and how are you today?’
But even with only Jan in the room his tongue was not immediately freed.
‘Today Steven is on duty, James, Peter, Teresa and Andrea.’ She would reel off the list from the ledger on her desk, ticking boxes. ‘Do you have a meeting with Dr Shilling today? Yes, at – let me see… one, just after lunch.’ And she would talk on, checking her day’s diary, telling him what paperwork she must do as she did it, the calls that she must make before going on to make them, and generally including him so much in everything she was doing in her office that he felt it was alright to stay, and the longer he stayed the more relaxed he became, and sometimes he would even talk to her.
It wasn’t a physically comfortable office. The desk was jammed into the far corner with just enough space to fit a chair behind it. Six other chairs lined the walls between this and the door, which were used for the daily staff meetings. On the wall opposite the window, on the left, was a big whiteboard, and the writing on this changed daily.
When he first started going into the office he would choose the chair nearest the door, but as the years passed he sat closer and closer to Jan.
She is dead now as well. Everyone he has ever loved is dead. His mother, his brother who never had a name, his teacher, Matron Jan, Archie. He loves them, and they die. Now he loves no one. Just the animals, and they die at an alarming pace.
‘Do you need to dry them?’ Saabira holds out a towel and Cyril finds he is washing his hands in her kitchen. He cannot look at her, let alone take the offered towel. With a quick movement he wipes his hands down his tank top and steps back outside, sits. All feelings of hunger melt away as she follows him out with a second plate and sits down opposite him. He looks at the gate.
‘Please, help yourself.’ Like bells and trees in the wind, soft and melodic. He is almost not afraid but he rechecks his hands and sees his nails are still dirty. It will be better if she serves herself first then she will be occupied with eating and will not see his fingers, but she is waiting. Carefully, trying to hide his nails, he scoops up some of the food with the serving spoon and moves his plate to the dish so as not to spill anything in the transfer. Saabira offers him a second dish covered with a cloth. He is not sure whether to take it or lift the cloth, so he does neither, and she lifts the cloth for him. His hand trembles as
he takes a roti-pancake.
She serves herself, each movement precise, gentle and flowing. Animals would not be scared of her, but even so when she settles to eat the backyard feels smaller and Cyril looks out to the moors.
‘I feel I have been a very bad neighbour,’ she begins, and Cyril pauses mid-mouthful and briefly looks away from the moors to see her face. She does not look back but keeps her gaze on her plate. She is so close. He finishes his mouthful and takes another. He will eat quickly and leave.
‘We have been here a little while now and not once have we sat and talked. I feel very bad.’ Still she does not look up. It seems a strange thing to say. She is not obliged to talk to him. Most people avoid making any contact with him, unless it is to tease and laugh, or complain, so why would she feel bad?
‘Aaman, my husband, sends his apologies too. After work and the long journey home he is so very tired. But he says it is getting easier as he gets to know his job, and so maybe we will all eat together soon.’
Cyril stares and her eyes flick up to meet his just for a second. She is waiting for him to say something. The silence continues. She eats, he does not.
‘Did that woman in the blue car come back?’ she asks, but does not wait for a reply. ‘At home, my home in Pakistan, I have two buffalos. They have a bed at the back of my house, and every day I would feed them and give them water. Most of the village have buffalos, for the farm work, and a goat for milk, so I am finding it very strange that this woman considered a few dogs and some rabbits to be a problem.’
‘The old couple complain.’ His words surprise him. He had not planned to say them and they just came out.
‘Old couple?’
‘The house next to mine.’ There! It happened again. It had sometimes happened with Jan, and quite a lot in the year before she was dead.
Saabira smiles at him. It is heartening to see Cyril relaxing enough to talk.
‘Treat him like you treated Hanfi,’ Aaman suggested one morning as he was putting on his overcoat. He picked up his work bag and Saabira handed him his lunch and pointed to the umbrella by the door. ‘Patience and kindness,’ he advised, kissing her on the forehead.
‘Like you showed me,’ Saabira responded, and Aaman put his bag down again and pulled her in close to him.
After he left she willed the evening to come quickly, for him to be home again. The days were becoming colder and, now, every evening, they lit a blazing fire and curled up on the soft sofa, and when he was home it was not so bad. But she was beginning to feel she needed more to do than taking care of Jay. She loved her like she could never have imagined love to feel, but it did not seem unreasonable that she should also need some intellectual stimulation. Her time at Murray College in Sialkot, with her prized bursary grant, had not sated her appetite for learning; rather, it had stimulated her to want to learn more. It needn’t be English Literature again – it could be something else, anything, everything. It is the process of studying that is so engrossing, so satisfying.
Chapter 13
‘Ah, so the old couple complain?’ she says, bringing her attention back to Cyril.
‘Yes.’
She watches his hesitation.
‘They complain about the animals. They say they smell.’
The last word is spoken so quietly that Saabira cannot be sure she heard correctly.
‘They smell?’ Cyril sinks into his chair and colour rises up his neck, covers his cheeks and spreads all the way up to his hairline.
‘I have no sense of smell.’ She releases him; his shoulders drop and his colour grows more natural, but his eyes widen and he is staring at her. ‘Really?’ he asks. She assures him it is true.
‘I was born with no sense of smell. I can taste, but they tell me it is not like most people can taste. The smell is part of the taste too, they say. So when I cook I am extra careful how I spice the food. It is easy for me to give it too much flavour.’
She pauses to eat a little.
‘I can imagine smells though. My mother taught me this. She explained which smells were like which tastes, so I have an idea. So if someone tells me something smells like a flower, for example, and they say it is sweet, I almost imagine I am smelling it.’
Cyril looks away again as she finished speaking.
‘They say the animals smell bad. Not horrible bad, like death and fear. Just bad.’
‘I see. How many do you have?’
He would like to give her a number, to be part of what feels like a normal conversation.
‘Fifty dogs and a hundred rabbits.’ They sound like good numbers.
‘Fifty dogs…’ Saabira smiles, but the corners of her mouth immediately pull down and he is not sure if she is going to laugh at him or not. ‘I saw you had a number of rabbits.’
‘The rabbits are the problem.’ He quite likes these words that just come with no thought. She does not seem to think him strange for saying them, and does not frown or tease him.
‘They make small rabbits quickly, I understand.’
‘Yes. Yes!’ He is amazed that she knows what the problem is without being told. ‘Yes. This is the problem.’
‘Why do you keep them?’
He tells her the tale, and a part of him observes himself talking to her and it feels amazing. She does not laugh. She looks him in the eye and she does not seem to fear him and he finds he does not fear her. Not once does she yawn.
‘So you need to take out all the boys as soon as they have finished drinking from their mothers.’
‘Yes.’ He cannot believe how she knows so much.
‘If you like, when you have finished eating, we could try to do that.’
‘I have to work.’
‘Oh! Where?’ Now she sounds surprised.
‘At the place they kill animals so people can eat them.’
‘That seems a strange place for someone who loves animals to work.’ There is no accusation in her tone, just curiosity.
‘They make me work there.’
‘Who?’ She seems genuinely concerned.
‘They do.’
‘Who?’
‘I don’t know, the people who tell me what to do.’
She frowns.
‘Can you explain?’
Cyril has never really thought until now who it is that was tells him what to do. It is just them. They just always have done. How does he explain that? Where should he start?
‘My mum used to tell me what to do but she is dead. Then the home for children told me what to do. They said I was unwell. So I went to live in Highroyds Hospital, but no one there was sick. Just some of them were unhappy and some used to shout a lot.’ He watches himself talk and likes it. ‘No one really told me what to do there. I had to eat when they said and I had to take the medication they gave me. But that was all. I helped in the garden.’ His collar seems to tighten. He pulls at it, loosening his knitted tie, and the words become stuck again. ‘But then the wards started closing. And no one would tell me what was happening.’ He can feel little beads of sweat forming on his brow. ‘I kept hearing people saying, “Care in the Community helps us instigate.”’
‘Do you mean integrate?’ Saabira asks. She doesn’t laugh because he got the word wrong and still seems interested in what he has to say.
‘Aye. Care in the Community helps us integrate, they said. It was the new big idea.’
People started disappearing from Highroyds. First they were gone and then their beds gone; the doors to the wards were closed, no lights, no nurses, no explanation, nothing. Whole sections of the hospital just lay empty and unused as Cyril continued to cut the grass and weed the flowers in the beautiful grounds. He was not concerned about the disappearance of anyone in particular, and he was quite glad about some of the people who were leaving, but it did make him wonder if he too might disappear one day, and he didn’t like that. Highroyds felt safe, and some of the nurses were very kind, and he liked to work in the gardens, and to be trusted with caring for the plants.
Saabira’s eyes are wide. Her lashes are wet, her kohl running. She sweeps a finger under her eye, wiping away some of the bleed. She is waiting to hear more.
‘Then one day Matron Jan gave me a plastic bag and told me to pack. I put my toothbrush in the bag because I saw Bernie do that but I didn’t know what else to do so I waited. Then they took me to a hospital bus.’ His bottom lip begins to quiver. There was a mouse with a bad leg in a cage behind the rose bushes. He didn’t even have a chance to let it out. It will have died because of him.
‘Are you alright?’ Like the landing of a moth, the ends of her fingers touch his forearm. He stares at her nails, rounded at the ends, the half-moons so white against her tanned skin.
‘They brought me here. Put me in Archie’s house. Care in the Community. They told me to work where they kill animals because I would need money to give to Archie for food. They said Archie would take care of me, but Archie got ill and then Archie slept all the time and then Archie was dead and I have to make money to buy beans and to get scraps for the dogs.’ He cannot stop his tears. He tries. He tries really hard but his eyes won’t obey him.
‘Oh my goodness.’ Saabira’s fingers lift away as if the moth took wing. She offers him a paper napkin from the holder on the table.
Cyril’s tale of hardship draws her thoughts to Aaman, and the tales he told her when he returned from his ‘adventures’, as he so optimistically called them. It makes her think of the misery she inflicted on him, and how he made light of it on his return, assuring her that it had been his choice to go. But she knew she had encouraged him, assured him, spun a web of words to make him believe that it would be a simple journey – a heroic one, even – all along knowing that it was a lie that she was telling him and, to be honest, herself as well.