by Jo Verity
‘Russians don’t shovel snow any more. They buy art and football teams.’
‘What if she’d called your bluff?’
‘The odd tenner always comes in handy.’
It was midday. There was no reason for Gil to stay any longer. It wasn’t as if she could offer him a decent lunch. He would go to the hospital with her if she asked, she was sure of that, but it was out of the question. You remember Gil. He happens to be in the area again today, Dad. Her father wouldn’t wear it.
Gil rooted through his satchel. ‘My camera’s in here somewhere. Before I go I should take some photos.’ He made no attempt to conceal the bag’s contents, lifting out the socks and underpants to get to the camera beneath them, and she felt ashamed of her earlier snooping.
He took several shots of the snowman, bending and leaning until he was happy with angle.
‘Very professional,’ she said.
‘Now you,’ he said, turning the camera towards her. ‘Hood down, please.’
Without arguing, she shrugged off her hood, her cheeks flushing as she looked directly at him, guessing from the gentle whirr that he had zoomed in on her face. She experienced a frisson of pleasure. Now he possessed an image of her.
‘My turn,’ she said, holding out her hand.
‘You don’t want a photo of me.’
‘Don’t make a fuss,’ she said.
The camera was a Canon, similar to her own. ‘I thought you’d have something high-powered,’ she said.
‘I do. It’s a Nikon D300S – a bit cumbersome for everyday use. But I wouldn’t want you thinking I’m a camera geek.’ He ran his fingers through his hair and turned to face her. ‘How d’you want me?’
She did what he had done, zooming in until his face filled the frame, but when she saw him on the tiny screen, he was the meter-man again, as though the camera had filtered out the qualities that made him special.
‘Group shot?’ he said.
‘Group?’
‘You, me and Snowy.’
He went into the kitchen and did something to the camera before balancing it on the draining board. As a red light winked away the seconds, he hurried out and they stood on either side of their man of snow – three faces peering through the window.
*
Unblemished snow covered the steps to the basement. So Feray hadn’t come back last night either. When Gil had texted, he’d been intent on not explaining where he was and it hadn’t crossed his mind that she might not have returned home.
It was punishingly cold in his flat. Still wearing his fleece and hat, he turned the heater up to ‘max.’ and lit the gas under the carrot soup, stirring it to dredge the residue off the bottom of the pan. Whilst he waited for the soup to heat through, he went over it again. Feray’s overnight absence was unusual but when he’d gone down yesterday the flat had been immaculate. She’d obviously gone somewhere with the kids. She might even have mentioned it.
When he’d finished his meal, he called her. Her phone was off so he left a message letting her know he was home. He wasn’t going to feel bad about last night. He’d visited an old guy in hospital, been stranded by the snow and kipped down on a friend’s sofa. What was there to feel bad about?
He made a cup of tea, put Mingus on the player and phoned Vivian. She answered straight away, as if she were holding her phone in her hand, waiting for his call.
‘Hello,’ she said.
She was breathing noisily and, in the background, he could hear the wail of a police siren.
‘Did you get some lunch?’ he asked.
‘Yes. I did.’
He heard a man’s voice asking ‘Who is it?’ and he pictured her holding the phone away from her mouth as she lied, ‘It’s Ottilie.’
Then she was talking to him again, her voice bright and businesslike. ‘I’ve just this minute met Nick at Tooting Broadway Tube. I told him there was no need to toil down here but he insisted. We’re on our way to the hospital. Then we’ll go straight home. Okay?’
Message received and understood. She was making sure he knew that it had been Nick’s idea to join her, and that they weren’t going anywhere near Farleigh Road. This meant she wouldn’t have to explain the snowman or risk a second encounter with Mrs Francks who would enjoy letting him – Nick – know that Vivian had entertained a man last night.
Of course she would still have her father to contend with. He’d make jolly sure that this Nick guy knew she’d brought a man along with her yesterday. Still she was smart enough to pass it off as the ramblings of an old man on strong medication.
‘Well, give your dad my regards,’ he said, playing it straight, not risking tripping her up with a flip remark.
‘I will.’ She paused briefly. ‘I’ll see you soon?’
‘Yes. Soon.’
He washed and dried the dishes and tidied everything away. What would she make of his place if she ever came here? Feray complained that the posters made it look student-y and cluttered. She wanted him to get a rug to cover the threadbare patch on the carpet. He’d resisted and anyone seeing it for the first time might be put off by the transitory quality that he’d made such an effort to maintain.
He loaded the photographs onto his laptop and scrolled through them. Several pictures of the snowman. Vivian. The one she’d taken of him. The shot through the kitchen window. Then back to Vivian. She stared out at him, as if she were weighing him up, her face solemn and timeless, only the colour saturation and the cut of her coat pinning her in the twenty-first century. He edited the image, converting it to black-and-white. There. It could be 1936 or 1947. Was it her hair? Or her features? Could features date?
He zoomed in on the image of his own face. If she were to have a picture of him, he’d prefer it not to be this one. He could Photoshop out the grey of his hair and the dewdrop hanging from his nostril. He could intensify the blue of his eyes, which seemed to be fading with age. But no amount of airbrushing could make him look more distinguished.
Needing milk for tomorrow’s breakfast, he went to the corner shop, a scruffy little place that smelled of damp cardboard and where the proprietor sat behind a grille, looking mournful. Gil was a regular and they exchanged a few words.
‘How’s it going, Saeed?’
‘Slow.’
For the umpteenth time, Gil wondered how this man made a living. He supported the shop whenever he could – milk, a sliced loaf, the odd jar of peanut butter – but like everyone else around here, he was on limited funds and there were a couple of supermarkets only a block away. He took a pint of milk from the fridge then mooched down the narrow aisle looking for something else to bring his total up to a few pounds.
‘Only mad buggers venture out in this weather,’ Gil said.
‘Yes. Mad or lonely. And there aren’t enough of either tonight. I think I will close up early.’
When he got back to the house, the snow still lay undisturbed on the steps to Feray’s flat. He wondered whether to go down and leave a note but he had nothing to say and he decided against it.
19
On Monday morning, Vivian got a call. Her father’s operation was scheduled for the following afternoon.
‘He’s on the list for four o’clock,’ the nurse said.
‘Do I have to be there?’ Vivian asked.
‘Not unless you want to be. He’s signed the consent forms but he asked me to let you know.’
‘He didn’t make a fuss?’
‘Let’s just say we managed to persuade him that a new hip is his best chance of getting back to normal.’
She suggested Vivian ring tomorrow morning to check that nothing had changed and that the operation was going ahead.
Her father had been subdued when she and Nick were there yesterday. Sherlock Holmes was on his locker, a slip of paper marking his place, but he didn’t mention Gil. When Nick attempted to show him how to use the telephone – part of the bedside paraphernalia – he’d waved him away with a can’t-be-bothered gesture. It was less stre
ssful for everyone when he wasn’t playing up yet it unnerved her to see him passive and compliant. He would need to put up a fight if he were to regain his independence.
Vivian had established that a hip replacement was a run-of-the-mill procedure. Generally, patients were discharged within a week. She guessed that this statistic applied to elective surgery where the operation only went ahead if, and when, conditions were favourable. It was possible that, in falling, her father had done something to complicate matters and thus make a repair trickier. Add to that his age and circumstances and it seemed unlikely that he would be fit to leave hospital before Christmas, now only twelve days off.
‘But surely you’ll go and see him tomorrow,’ Ottilie said when Vivian told her about the operation and her proposal to visit the following weekend.
They were in the kitchen. Howard, although easy-going about most things, couldn’t bear the office looking ‘like a student bedroom’ and he insisted his staff confine flurries of ‘artiness’ to the pin board that ran along one wall of the kitchen. Ottilie had appropriated more than her fair share of the board, covering it with photos of her family and her boyfriend, Spencer. Feeling she had to contribute something or risk being thought aloof, Vivian had dug out a reproduction of a Martin Parr photograph showing a group of Korean tourists standing in front of the Parthenon, and a sample of Pantone 3425 C – her favourite colour, despite its being the green used on the Starbucks’ logo.
‘I can’t spare the time,’ Vivian said. ‘I’m way behind on everything. And he’s being well looked after.’
It was apparent from Ottilie’s face that she was appalled by this callousness. She came from a large family all of whom seemed fond of each other. They went on holiday en masse and any occasion, no matter how inconsequential, was an excuse for a get together. She couldn’t be expected to understand that she – Vivian – felt more connected to Friel Dravid Associates than to her own father.
Vivian got home at eight o’clock, around the time the nurses would be shooing visitors out of the ward. She thought of her father, in pain, probably frightened of what lay ahead, the target of jibes from those uncouth men. Perhaps she should have gone to see him this evening. But a brief visit from her could do nothing to alter his situation. Were their roles reversed, she wouldn’t expect him (or anyone) to visit every day. Some things had to be borne alone. At least her father and she had one thing in common – a preference for their own company.
She worked for a couple of hours, bathed then went to bed, hoping to fall asleep over her book. It didn’t happen. At one o’clock, tense and resentful, she mailed her half-brothers to let them know that the operation was going ahead. She didn’t know what she expected, or wanted, of them but it was unjust that, simply because she lived in the same city as their father, she had to shoulder this alone.
The snow had been cleared from the basement steps and a sliver of light was visible between closed curtains. Gil had been sure – pretty sure, anyway – that there was no sinister reason for Feray’s absence, all the same he was relieved to see that she was back.
A couple of weeks ago he would have run down the steps without thinking twice but now he hesitated, tempted to sneak up to his flat and defer a post-mortem on the weekend. Whilst he weighed it up, his phone chirruped and Feray’s text made the decision for him. Chilli tonight if you fancy some x
‘Wow,’ she said when, seconds later, he knocked the door, ‘that was quick.’
‘I’m hungry,’ he said.
She laid her hands against his ears. ‘You’re freezing too.’
He shucked off his coat and followed her down the hall to the kitchen. ‘Dermatology’ had kept him at it all day, photographing a cohort of patients taking part in a clinical trial. He’d barely had time to grab a sandwich. He was brain-dead and ravenous and the basement seemed wonderfully benevolent.
The kids were in James’s room, engrossed in something on the PS.
‘New game?’ he said.
‘Early Christmas present from Arzu.’
So that’s where she’d been – in Essex, Basildon or Chelmsford, he couldn’t recall which, with her sister.
‘We had a great time,’ Feray said. ‘The kids got to toboggan and we made a snowman. Look.’
She pulled her phone from her bag, showing him pictures of unidentifiable figures tobogganing down a field, and others of a snowman in the front garden of a boxy new-build.
They ate and, as the children enthused over their weekend, it came back to him. Feray complaining about ‘another bloody INSET day’, then deciding to make a long weekend of it at her sister’s. (‘They’re going to Will’s Mum’s for Christmas this year. It’ll be a chance to take their presents.’) It had probably been flagged on the calendar if he’d thought to look.
James and Melissa drifted off to finish homework and get ready for school next morning.
‘How was your weekend?’ she said. ‘Do anything exciting?’
He drew the last grains of rice together in the centre of his plate and coaxed them onto his fork. ‘Not really. I went to Kevin’s. To see the baby. He’s been pestering for weeks. We had a few beers and it started snowing. So I stayed over.’ The fiction slipped out easily.
‘Nice baby?’ she asked.
‘Kevin and Debbie think so.’
He waited for her to follow up with a dig about the power his unborn grandchild would have to skew his objectivity. He braced himself, prepared for the inevitable questions about his plans, but instead she asked him to pull out the fridge so that she could retrieve a fork that had slipped down behind it.
They cleared the table. Feray washed whilst he dried, the ritual tripping memories of washing up with Vivian after yesterday’s breakfast. His failure to be straight with Feray about Vivian had, in the beginning, seemed harmless. In the four weeks since the explosion, things had moved on. Become a lot more complicated. He couldn’t backtrack now. (‘Oh, by the way, I’ve been seeing a young woman I met at the hospital. Coffee. Theatre. Sleepover. Nothing worth mentioning.’) If he couldn’t get a handle on the situation, how could he expect Feray to? Besides, there must be stuff going on in her life that she didn’t tell him. People filtered information all the time. They had to or the world would be bogged down in irrelevant crud. This sop to conscience lasted for about ten seconds. Filtering was one thing, lying was something different. Feray deserved better.
Needing to give her a reason to shout at him, he said, ‘I won’t be coming to your mum’s on Christmas Day.’
She shrugged. ‘Fine.’
He pushed it further. ‘I just don’t fancy it.’
‘It’s okay. I don’t want you there if you’re going to be a party pooper. I’ll tell her you’ve had another invitation.’
He was close enough to smell her musky end-of-the-day sweat. The top buttons of her shirt were undone, revealing the lace along the top of her bra and the swell of her breast. He kissed her, forcing his tongue between her lips, running his hand down her back and slipping it inside the waistband of her jeans, pushing his erection against her belly. Why was he making such a big deal of this Vivian Carey thing? His past was littered with meaningless encounters so why not accept that she was merely another?
‘D’you mind if we leave it tonight?’ Feray said. ‘Arzu’s youngest had us up before six. I’m shattered.’
Her gentle but unforeseen rebuff was more painful than any set-to about Christmas.
When Vivian got to work, she rang the ward. Whoever answered confirmed that her father was still on the list for the afternoon. ‘He should be in Recovery by eight o’clock if you’d like to ring some time after that.’
‘Could you let him know I phoned?’ Vivian said.
‘Of course. Any message, Miss Carey?’
‘Message? Oh, wish him good luck I suppose.’
It was only after ending the call that she realised she’d been expected to send her love.
The afternoon limped towards four o’clock. The operation would
either go well or badly. The matter was out of her hands. The hospital would let her know if anything went wrong so she should put it out of her mind and get on with some work. But again and again, the image of a shiny scalpel cutting into pale flesh came between her and what she was trying to do.
Gil mailed, asking how her father was and attaching the snow photographs.
She examined the pictures, recalling the fun they had making their snowman, returning to the close-up she’d taken of Gil’s face. He was okay looking but there was no denying that he was on the short side and wore terrible clothes.
She mailed back, thanking him and adding that, as he’d predicted, her father’s operation was scheduled for today.
Almost immediately he phoned. ‘Let me know how it goes, won’t you? And how are you doing?’
‘Me? I’m fine.’
‘Sure? You sound a little wobbly.’
His perceptive observation demolished her defences. Not wanting to be overheard, she grabbed her coat and went out into the street.
‘I can’t do this, Gil. I loathe everything about it. It’s so…so banal.’ She leant her forehead against the wall, the bricks cold and rough to her skin. ‘I can’t stop thinking of him, stuck in that place, being treated like a child. It’s so undignified. And if he gets through this, which he will, to spite me, what’s going to happen then? He can’t go back to Farleigh Road. And they needn’t think I’m going to look after him. Why should I?’
‘Try not to jump the gun, Vivian. For starters, Social Services won’t allow him out until they’re sure he can cope.’
‘Ottilie thinks I’m a cow.’
‘Who’s—?’
‘D’you know what? It would be best all round if he dies under the anaesthetic. And don’t tell me I don’t mean it because I do.’
He let her cry for a while and then he said ‘I won’t insult you by advising you to “take one day at a time” but—’
‘Good. I despise clichés.’ She blew her nose. ‘What would you do?’
‘Me? I’m the last person to ask. First whiff of trouble and I’m off.’