At the hospital there are too many doors and corridors. I get lost.
I lie down by the grey wheels of a trolley. My feet are hot and cut and bleeding and I can’t find where I’ve hidden the stick to pick the lock to get out and something hurts very very badly in my chest and for it to hurt so badly I must have hidden the stick to pick the lock in there, in my chest, so I tear open my pyjama top and the buttons roll on the floor and I must open my chest and if don’t I won’t get out and I will drown in seven minutes.
I ran amok, they told me afterwards, dribbling and shrieking in the wind like a maniac. But I only remember the pain, throbbing like a wound. And a raging thirst. Mucus gathered like glue in my mouth and throat. Colours blurred, fluid in the sway of a curtain, the glitter of metal bed frames and trolleys: water. Watching a crack in the ceiling, edges of cabinets, rippling shadows on the floor. The air dripped and trickled. It would come from somewhere.
The thud of my heart: a fist. Dryness cracked my ribs, breath a sandpaper rasp. A tinkle of curtain-rings and the heave of a face as a doctor loomed over the bed.
And the thirst.
The doctor seemed to be saying something about tincture of hemp for the spasms but that couldn’t be right and at the periphery of my vision, something swirled like liquid in a dark corner of the ward. Every scratch of the doctor’s pencil startled me, soaked me again in a cold sweat. I had to drink.
Someone leaned towards me, lifting a metal beaker to my lips. I glimpsed the transparent menace of the water’s surface, a slanting zero, and was flung from side to side. They held me down. The bed rattled with rage. Rain on the window. My back arched and twisted. My joints snapped from their sockets, bones splintered. My neck squeezed, locking. I was strangled, blood in my nails.
On page 65, Clifford Ashley describes the most suitable method for trying a delirious patient to the bedposts in order to prevent exhaustion. Strips of sheeting should be used to tie the patient spread-eagled, passing a smooth round turn about the wrist or ankle and finishing with a Bowline close up around the bedposts so that it will neither bind nor work loose, yet can be easily untied.
it’s raining it’s pouring the old man is snoring
A scream hurtled down the corridor and out into the black.
Chapter 9
There’s a note in a plastic bag stuck to the sun-room door with a drawing pin. I lever it off with my penknife blade and unfold the paper.
FRIDAY, it says.
I look at my watch, but it doesn’t tell me what day it is.
COME AND SEE ME AS SOON AS YOU CAN. IT’S IMPORTANT. SXX
I’m wet and cold from last night’s walking. I probably smell. I hang the sodden sheepskin jacket on the back of a kitchen chair and run a bath.
Sometime later I wake, in cold bathwater, to loud knocking at the front door. I wrap a towel around myself, but when I limp to the front door there’s no one. I’m heading back to the bathroom when the knocking starts again, this time on the sun-room door. Bloody Hell.
Her long legs. The plait with its escaping corkscrews of hair. I reach for her wiry warmth.
‘God, you stink of garlic!’
‘Olives. I stole some from your box of supplies – broke in. You stink yourself. Get back in that bath.’ Her mouth wobbles, but it’s a sort of smile.
I have never seen her cry. That’s one of the things that brought me back.
‘For God’s sake!’ she exclaims when there’s no more hot water and when she sees my feet are blistered raw and when she picks up the sodden sheepskin jacket. She grabs the hospital blanket from the sofa, wraps me in it and holds me like a child, rubbing my back. ‘Come on you, stupid man. Let’s get you cleaned up.’ Then she takes me by the hand to her railway carriage house.
She’s not gentle. She’s bossy and cross and ignores my erection.
‘I suppose you’ve been a nurse too,’ I say, as her fingers make quick circular movements over my scalp, lathering up shampoo that smells of apples. She doesn’t say anything. Soap stings my eyes as she rinses the shampoo off. For a moment she holds one of my hands in hers, studying the palm, and she kisses my fingertips again, as she did weeks ago, in the sun room. Then she hands me the nail brush.
She fetches me dry clothes from The Siding. They smell of the leaf litter linoleum. ‘Get dressed. Once you’ve eaten something, we’ll talk.’
She leaves me in the bathroom and bangs about in the kitchen.
She pushes a full bowl of some sort of thick brown broth towards me. ‘I’ve changed my mind. I’m not hungry. You eat, I’ll talk. It’s only left-over veggies.’ She rips hunks of bread from a loaf and sits down opposite. ‘I won’t waste time telling you what I think about the way you’ve behaved.’
I look up, startled at the anger in her voice.
‘No,’ she holds up a hand, palm towards me. ‘The deal is, you eat and I talk. You can say your bit later.’ She picks up her lighter and turns it over and over. ‘First things first: Susie is still in hospital.’
She shakes her head, gestures that I should keep eating.
‘She had eclampsia and lost the baby but they now think she will survive. It’s been touch and go.’
Susie’s voice on the phone – excited as a child.
The steam from the soup dampens my face. I wipe my sleeve across my eyes.
Sarah’s hand, when it reaches across the table top for her Rizlas, is shaking. She takes out a paper.
‘Keep eating,’ she says. ‘That night—’ she flashes me a glance ‘—Susie had driven down, alone, late, because she was worried about you. Earlier that day she’d been to the doctor’s. There was concern about pre-eclampsia. Her blood pressure had shot up, she had protein in her urine, she was breathless. They wanted her in straight away. But earlier that afternoon she spoke to you on the phone and the line went dead. Richard told her she was being ridiculous. Reminded her you’re a grown man, etcetera. They argued. He said he’d drive her to the hospital in the morning. He put her to bed. She crept out of the house and drove down here. The fit that she had in your kitchen was the eclampsia. Andrew, she could have died.’
I have been lifting the spoon in an automatic, measured way between the bowl and my mouth but when Sarah pauses to seal her roll-up and light it, I stop.
‘She’s OK?’
Sarah nods and takes a drag, her cheeks sucking in with the smoke. ‘It was close. She’s been moved now, nearer home.’ She looks me steadily in the eye. ‘Andrew, you do remember? Her convulsions?’
I try, but I can’t see it.
Sarah rubs her face with both hands. ‘We didn’t get to hospital in time to save the baby.’
I rip some bread to mop up the last of the soup, watch the brown liquid seep into the rounded spaces left by air. I focus on these, the air pockets filling with soup, thinking that bread is a sort of froth, cooked, and how strange it is, the way the bread itself stretches and there are these spaces ...
Sarah’s voice cuts in. ‘Susie said this disappearing act of yours is not the first. She blames herself, for giving you the news about your mother over the phone. Says she should have known you’d go off on one.’
Go off on one.
‘You can’t keep doing this to people, Andrew. I’m not saying any of this is your fault – the baby or anything – Susie already had pre-eclampsia – but ...’ an intake of breath as she takes another drag on her roll-up. I watch her hand shaking and wonder what she’s been doing while I’ve been away.
Finally, I push the bowl aside, wiped clean, and she gets hold of my hand again. ‘Now, if you’ve had enough to eat, we’re going to bandage your feet and get straight in a taxi to the station. We’re going to visit Susie in hospital.’
When she’s finished with the bandages my feet will not fit back into my deck shoes. Nowhere near. We talk about using plastic bags, and I have a flash of memory, of myself as a boy and my mother tying plastic bags over my gloves so that I could play in the snow. Then I remember the wellingtons in the
sun room at The Siding. I don’t know whose they are, but they’re huge. They’ll do.
I hobble into Sarah’s studio while she goes to look for the wellingtons. The studio is in darkness and smells of underground caves. The light goes on in the sun room next door. Sarah is bending to search for the boots under the table.
I can’t see the concreted Jelly shoe from here, there’s the cardboard box and some other junk in the way. A rope hangs from the rafters. I don’t remember telling her what I planned to do with the Jelly shoe, but I must have done because the rope is hanging right over the table where I left the Jelly shoe in its concrete. And there’s a noose. I can see the turns.
Part Five
Chapter 1
The train is hot and airless. Sarah’s face, resting on her fist, is smudged in the dark glass as she stares out at the night.
‘Any drinks? Tea? Coffee? Any snacks?’ The young black guy pushing the trolley has a lisp. I catch his eye. He pauses by our table and smiles, a grin that shows teeth caged, top and bottom, in a brace. His gums are very pink. I order black coffee; Sarah chooses hot chocolate. The cardboard cups are placed with a flourish on folded paper napkins and we’re given thin wooden spatulas for stirring.
‘You’re welcome,’ the young guy says when we thank him, and he smiles broadly again before rattling down the aisle.
The disturbance is a relief. We shift position to sip our drinks, and finally look at each other across the table.
‘You look rough,’ she says. She takes the plastic lid from her cup and stirs her chocolate with the wooden spatula. ‘Where did you disappear to?’
I try to gather my thoughts, to think of some way of telling her where I’ve been when I’m not completely certain myself.
‘I walked. Caught a train – to Wild’s Rope Walk.’ This much I remember, more or less.
She raises her eyebrows in query.
‘Yorkshire – where my grandfather used to work.’
‘Why there?’
‘Why?’
I found myself there. White splinters of frost thickened the grass blades, my left hand enclosed in the thick leather of Grandfather’s sail-maker’s palm. Wild’s Rope Walk in Jerry Clay Lane beside Foster Ford Beck: now a straight row of terraced houses; men washing cars and women hanging washing.
I went for lots of reasons.
‘Not sure, really.’
She sips her drink. I think about Sarah stirring the rich chocolate she made for me, its texture like custard. She asked the right questions then, questions I wanted to answer.
‘What were you feeling?’
‘Feeling?’ I swallow a mouthful of coffee, weak and lukewarm. ‘I was frightened.’ I’m guessing that’s about right. I don’t remember what I felt. There was the Jack Russell cocking its leg; the black telephone receiver swinging. I don’t remember much else. But words might anchor my mind. Sarah is waiting for more. ‘Also, a sort of disgust.’
‘Disgust?’
‘Yes.’
‘At?’
‘Not sure.’
People fold up newspapers, collect up carrier bags and shuffle to the door. Sarah stares out of the window as the train pulls into a station. A blur of light and faces; scarves and hats and long dark coats. Nobody gets on. Our part of the train is now empty.
‘Why not tell someone where you were going?’
People always want to be told.
‘Didn’t think it was anything to do with anyone else.’
‘So it was nobody else’s business?’
She sounds pissed off. I want to point out that she disappeared to London regularly but then I realise that she did usually tell me when she was going. I need to select my words with care.
‘I didn’t know. Didn’t have a plan. Sorry. And sorry you had to deal with it all, get involved.’
‘I didn’t mind.’ She rests her wrists on the edge of the table and leans towards me. ‘That’s what people do usually, Andrew, get involved.’
She flops back against the seat again and gazes out of the window for a while. Then she sighs and places both hands palms down on the plastic table top, looking at them. She opens her fingers, spread-eagled on the table; closes them again.
‘There’s something I need to tell you, Andrew.’ Spreads her fingers wide; closes them again.
The harsh overhead light shadows her eyes. Surely she can’t be pregnant.
‘Because I don’t know who else will find the time to tell you, at the moment.’ Now she fiddles with the lid, trying to fit it back on to her cup. She gives up and sighs. ‘What you told me about the accident on the beach?’
I prop my chin in my hand. On the wall opposite, an arrow points down the carriage. Next to it are symbols for a man and a woman. A third stick person sits in a half-circle.
‘That’s not what happened, Andrew. Maybe you were frightened by what really happened, or thought it was your fault. I’m not sure why. Perhaps gaps in your memory, things you couldn’t explain, as a child. How many times have you told that story?’
Water from my bucket slopping over my shins; the stretches of wet sand; Elaine lying face down; my mother scooping her up.
‘Never.’
‘But to yourself? I wonder how many times you ran it through your own mind. Because Elaine didn’t die that day on the beach.’ She puts up a hand. ‘Don’t say anything. Let me keep going.’
But it’s kaleidoscopic, my mind scattering into fragments that fly apart. I shove my hands in-between the rough upholstery and the press of my thighs, stare at her lips. Watch them move.
‘I asked Susie. She couldn’t remember anything about an accident on the beach. Seemed odd. From what I can gather you must have seen Elaine again after that day, but perhaps she was ill, or you were frightened, or something. I don’t know. I can’t explain it. I can only tell you what Susie has told me. And Hoggie.’
Her upper lip is fanned with fine lines. No lipstick.
‘Andrew, Elaine was put in an institution, against your mother’s wishes and only temporarily, but then your mother had some sort of breakdown and your father thought caring for Elaine was always going to be too much for her, too much for everybody – something along those lines, from what I can gather. Both you and Susie were taken to visit Elaine, but you had some sort of hissy fit because of the look of the place. The bars at the windows, or something. Later, Elaine went with your mother to Spain.’
Bars in wax crayon on my mother’s wardrobe mirror, the wax sticky and crumbly against the smooth glass. When was that? And the photograph of Houdini, manacled and semi-naked, standing behind bars that were not real, but drawn on to the photograph – it seems relevant and I want to tell Sarah, but she leans towards me again, gripping the table with both hands.
‘Wait. Just listen. Susie says Elaine was there one day and not the next. Your mother had to get your father’s permission, of course, but they went to Spain to live with the man she was in love with – an artist? He’d had an accident. You know who that man is?’
I can’t make sense of her words. Spain, she keeps saying Spain. I look away from her mouth. One black symbol by the arrow on the wall opposite has a square for a body, the other a triangle: a man and a woman.
Sarah is shaking her head. ‘She must have had her work cut out, because later they cared for his handicapped brother too, ran some sort of care place.’
It’s a little more than half a circle that the third pin man sits in, his stick arm held out as if to receive a gift. My body rocks with the train. Pinpricks of light flash past in the dark shine of the window, my face a pale smear just out of focus.
The photographs. Her belt with its silver buckle; the hat, a fan of starched white. ‘She was a nurse.’
Elaine. I try to picture her – a woman, an adult – but my mind slithers.
‘My mother – she was a nurse.’
‘I know.’
‘Elaine’s living in France with my mother.’
Her throat makes a sound, choked. ‘Oh
shit! I’m so sorry.’ She half rises, reaching across to me. Her face is collapsing.
Don’t, I want to say to her. Please don’t cry.
She’s out of her seat, pressing my head to her belly as her hand moves over my ear. Her voice, reaching my ear, is distorted.
‘No. It was Spain. Almeria. And, Andrew, no, Elaine died when she was about twenty.’
So she has been dead. There is no way I could have brought her back.
Sarah’s jeans smell as if they’ve spent too long damp.
‘Passed away in her sleep, is what your mum’s friend Hoggie said. They hadn’t even realised she was ill. I’m so sorry.’
I talk to the thick denim material. ‘You’ve met her. Hoggie?’ Sarah’s met a ghost from my childhood.
‘No – we spoke on the phone. I stayed with Richard for a while, to help with the boys.’
‘At The Vicarage?’ I can’t imagine her, barefoot, braless, sitting down at the scrubbed pine table with Richard and the boys.
‘Shove up,’ she says, a hand on my shoulder as she squeezes in beside me. ‘Yes.’ She rolls her eyes dramatically and pouts. ‘For a vicar, Richard’s lousy at communication. And you’re really not his flavour of the month, you know.’
‘We don’t get on.’
‘“It is his considered opinion,”’ Sarah does a passable imitation of Richard’s silky voice, ‘“that you are almost certainly suffering from low spectrum autism.”’ She flicks her plait over her shoulder. ‘His only knowledge of autism is most likely Rain Man.’
‘The rain man?’
‘The film. Dustin Hoffman.’ She peers at me and snorts. ‘Don’t say you’ve never seen it! Everyone has seen it! Where have you been all your life? This is why you’re so impossible!’
The Devil's Music Page 24