My mind was beginning to operate with more clarity. It wasn’t that I’d forgotten, I think I’d just chosen not to recall. As I watched the fuss around The Slap, I wondered why I’d ended up in resus.
‘OK Ginger,’ said the nurse – she was dark and pretty, ‘we need to take you down for a CT to make sure there’s nothing going on inside your head that we don’t know about.’
Well, she doesn’t know I’m imagining the colour of her bra for a start.
I was wheeled out into a corridor.
‘Ginger?’ Ms Fish halted the trolley. Her familiar face was welcome to me – the cut on her forehead had been tidied with Steri-Strips. ‘What’s happening?’
The auxiliary moving me answered: ‘He has a slightly low GCS and needs a CT.’
‘What the hell is that supposed to mean?’ Ms Fish blurted.
‘We just need to make sure all’s well in Ginger’s head.’
We carried on down the corridor, Ms Fish walked alongside the trolley.
‘How did I get here?’ I said.
‘You went a little strange,’ said Ms Fish.
‘What?’
‘Then passed out.’
‘Right.’
‘It seemed rather hairy for a moment.’
‘Suppose that fills in the gap.’ I didn’t feel as bad as her look of concern should suggest. ‘You OK?’ I asked.
‘Fine.’ She touched her wound tentatively, pulling a face. ‘If a little sore.’
I flinched, trying to dispel a blood-laced flashback. ‘What happened to Brian?’
‘They said he needed observation – not that it’s any of my business. They thought we were all together.’
We are!
As we moved along the corridor, the auxiliary flashed us a perfunctory smile. Ms Fish returned her distaste with a short sniff, then shielded her mouth and whispered like a bitchy schoolgirl. ‘So… what happens now Ginger?’
‘Brain scan, right?’
‘No, I should say, what do we…’
‘Eh?’
‘… say?’
‘What?’
‘We’re stuck here, who knows for how long.’
‘Well yeh, it looks like it.’
‘And people might be enquiring. They’ll want to know the full story – everything.’
‘Probably.’
‘We should work something out, tell everyone the same thing.’
‘Like the truth?’
She paused. ‘Perhaps a close derivative.’
‘For God’s sake…’
‘There could be repercussions.’
‘What you talking about? We did nothing wrong.’
‘We gave Syd quite a tough time, there’s Daddy’s money, and…’
‘I’ve got a headache!’
‘People might be looking for that ring.’
‘Let them look – it’s not our problem.’
We stopped before some double doors, Ms Fish glanced away.
‘Is it our problem?’ I asked.
She didn’t reply.
Fuck.
The auxiliary gestured Ms Fish to a side and pushed me through the doors. ‘You’ll have to stay outside, miss.’
‘I’ll wait for you Ginger,’ said Ms Fish after me.
Indeed, but will the torment?
Inside, I was transferred to an examination table, positioned by a technician and given a brief explanation of the procedure. Then, my head was moved back into the centre of what I can only describe as a giant Polo mint, which then buzzed and whirred for a few minutes.
Syd is dead! Oh God! My friend. My enemy. It’s my fault.
I imagined the machine was cooking my brain, from the centre outwards – I wanted it to erase the feelings of helplessness, of guilt, to just erase my whole mind!
‘All done,’ said a voice.
Back on the trolley, and into the corridor, I ignored the auxiliary’s polite conversation over her new diet and the healthy bacteria in her breakfast drink. Anyway, she was promptly muted as two familiar faces ambushed us.
‘We wanna talk to him,’ said one.
‘Police,’ said the other.
Briggs and Johnson. Oh dear.
‘You’ll both have to wait,’ said the auxiliary.
‘Now.’ Briggs’s tash was rather bushier than I remembered and his voice came through like a poacher firing a gunshot from beneath a hedge.
‘No.’
‘Look here, miss…’
‘We’re going back to an assessment room and the doctor can decide if Ginger’s able.’
Briggs hung at one side of the trolley as the auxiliary pushed us on, lanky Johnson taking the other flank, his limbs lacking any grace as he struggled to keep pace.
‘He looks all right to me,’ said Briggs. He frowned and both their faces moved in, peering as though I were an exceptionally ugly baby wrapped up in a cot.
‘Where’s the lass Ginger?’ said Briggs ‘They said she’d come with you?’
I closed my eyes and was quiet. When she saw you mate – I reckon she’s long gone.
‘Do you know how serious this is?’
Well, quite.
‘One body, maybe another on the way…’
Don’t remind me, please.
‘I need some answers. I need names.’
Chas.
‘This shit won’t just disappear.’
Hell, I wish it would.
‘We’ll keep someone looking over you, make sure you’re safe.’
Thanks.
‘No sudden movements, and everything’ll be all right.’
Can I hold you to that?
‘Now just leave him alone,’ said the auxiliary.
It went quiet for a few moments, so I guessed they had.
‘Sounds like a mess,’ said the auxiliary, much more gently.
I felt safe with my eyes closed. ‘Yes, it is.’
‘Well let’s just hope that scan comes back as normal.’
I thought for a moment. ‘Suppose.’
‘That’s it – fighting talk.’
My mind drifted from her voice. I’d had enough of fighting; and as for the scan – to be honest, I didn’t really care.
Twenty-Eight
I guess I’m not
what you want.
The local hospital was a looming grey relic from the 1960s. A hodgepodge of concrete fourteen floors high, I found myself peering from a window on the tenth. Such a vantage point offered an expansive view of the city – far reaching into the horizon, cars and buses weaving between hundreds of years’ worth of redevelopment after redevelopment, the houses and shops relics of their own particular decade, all having once been the future.
It was a bright, Sunday morning, and I’d been admitted for observation, though was being more closely observed by a policeman on the other side of the door. I was reckoning on a visit from Briggs and his bushy moustache any time soon, and quite what I was going to tell him was making my headache worse. I wanted Ms Fish to be with me – she could have told me what to do.
Such musing was infiltrated by voices coming from outside my room:
‘No-one but immediate family and medical staff,’ said the policeman.
‘He’s fifty-percent my sperm.’
‘Pardon, sir?’
‘Like I said.’
‘Sorry, could you just clarify what you mean, sir?’
‘What do you want me to say? Dad?’
To be honest, I didn’t much like the sound of ‘Dad’ either. I mean, it was probable I now shared as much DNA with a fat bloke with sideburns who’d emptied the clinical waste – and at least he had amusing facial hair. I stared out of the window and up into the wide blue sky, hoping to draw some of the clarity to my
own mind. I hoped Dad hadn’t arrived to ask how I was doing, because that would mean the whole world really was spinning out of control. As such, it seemed to follow that to maintain an element of order I should speak to him, allowing him to make bad. I straightened my hospital gown and was sure to cover my bottom. Decisiveness was in short supply, though what vestige I could grasp I took with me across to the door and pulled it open.
‘What do you want?’ I said, my grip tremulous upon the door handle.
Dad appeared unmoved by the sight of his son in a hospital gown, in hospital. ‘Well, it’s visiting time innit?’ he said, his tone rather indignant. ‘I’m not here to look pretty.’
The policeman appeared to be weighing the two of us up, perhaps in pursuit of a family resemblance. ‘So he’s…?’
I nodded, though in hindsight a resigned shrug would have been more fitting. Dad gave a short, smug smirk and pushed past the policeman, entering my room with a lopsided walk. He looked as though he’d spent the night fully clothed in his bed, his polo shirt crumpled like one of his discarded betting slips, his grey comb-over wackily unkempt. I stood by the window, a crack along the back of my hospital gown warming my flesh in the sun.
‘What the bloody hell’s going on?’ said Dad.
His regular derision annoyed me. ‘Well, I’m not dead.’
‘What?’
‘Not that I’ve had much support for the cause, but thanks for asking.’
Dad huffed and puffed to sit on the edge of my bed, seeming to observe the cold, clinical décor with a little antipathy. ‘Stop talking bollocks.’
I struggled for anything else to say. ‘So… How was the break with Mum?’
‘Cut short!’
Fuck you. ‘OK, do you wanna just tell me why you’re here?’
He held me with peering eyes, like those of a gerbil. ‘Let some air in, eh?’
My hospital gown barely hid my bottom as I turned a ratchet and the window slid open from the top. ‘So?’
Dad continued to peer, though the odd glance passed by and out through the window. ‘A bloke collared me this morning,’ he said. ‘We’d just got back and I was off to café for my dinner – Mum went for a walk see and she’d left nowt in.’
‘Make a sandwich?’
‘What?’ He continued: ‘So this black cab pulls up and the driver shouts me over – rough lookin’ bugger too.’
‘So?’
Dad appeared very serious, his brow scrunched, like whenever he accidently dropped food onto the floor. ‘You need to listen to me carefully, right?’
I did.
‘Chas says you’ve disrespected him. He says you’ve got one last chance to give it back. That’s all.’
I looked at him hard. He means the ring right? But if he does, then Ms Fish has taken it. Fuck. ‘Give what back, exactly?’
‘That bloody ring. Jesus! I don’t know how the hell you’ve gotten into this mess – again!’
The heat along my back radiated and I felt my face flush. I felt too moist to be comfortable. ‘I…’ How the hell do I explain? It’s all so convoluted it makes my head feel like ginger spaghetti. I gave a protracted sigh. ‘I don’t know either,’ I mumbled.
‘Well you need to take this.’ Dad handed me a crumpled scrap of paper, the scrawl upon it I presumed to be a telephone number. ‘Get in touch.’
‘Who’s this number for?’
Dad threw his arms in the air. ‘Well it’s not “phone-a-fucking-friend” is it – cos you don’t fucking have any.’
‘So Chas?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t bloody know. But don’t involve me.’
I glared at him. ‘He would have had me killed last night.’
Dad shrugged. ‘You’re not dead, you said it yourself.’
‘The way I see it I tell the police exactly what happened and Chas never sees the light of day. Works for me.’
‘So then he comes for me and Mum.’
‘What?’
‘That’s what’s gonna happen.’
‘How do you know? He might—’
‘He won’t give up! Can you live with that hanging over you? Me and Mum shouldn’t have to.’
‘If he’s locked up, yes.’
‘Every day of the rest of your life? With that thought in the back of your mind. Until…’
‘What?’
‘You know, me and Mum have been together twenty years and I’ve not seen her cry since she ditched the dancing – for you – and she spilled bloody buckets when we heard about all… this. So get it sorted.’ Dad struggled to stand, there being a kind of unsteady haphazardness to his steps that made his walk to the door vaguely entertaining.
‘I could be in here for days,’ I said.
‘You’re not dying.’
I grunted.
‘But don’t take my word for it,’ said Dad.
My mind held on to what he’d said, using the words to create a predicament I could barely fathom. An image of Syd seeped into my mind, bleeding; The Slap, strewn over the bonnet; the ring, glimmering. I shook the visions away at once – deferring such thoughts seemed my only chance of coping. I gazed out of the window. It was a big city outside, somewhere inside of which was Ms Fish – and it seemed my life depended on finding her.
Twenty-Nine
I just wanna be alone now,
there’s no-one, no place for me.
‘Your dad?’ said Briggs about ten minutes later. ‘What did he want?’
‘He’s my dad!’ I replied, upright in bed. ‘He was worried.’
‘The Muppet on the door thinks otherwise.’
‘I’ve suffered a personal injury that wasn’t my fault – where there’s blame there’s a claim. We were discussing solicitors.’
‘Don’t get cute sunbeam.’
Briggs and Johnson had arrived in a fluster, seemingly desperate to unravel a story. Of course, what they didn’t realise was that the threads they were tugging dangled from a story yet to reach a conclusion, and I was as keen to know the ending.
‘OK,’ said Briggs, pulling over a chair, ‘Talk!’
I gazed with wide – hopefully – innocent eyes, and as he sat at my bedside the chair creaked under the weight of his last four take-aways.
‘I don’t know what to say,’ I said.
‘We’ve got all the time in the world tucked away in this little room – so take a deep breath.’
Johnson loitered around the other side of my bed, sniffing occasionally, hands in pockets and dragging his feet for odd glances out of the window. I remembered my first encounter with these two policemen, back at the station, and the meekness exuded by Johnson – I reckoned he was more suited to the Boys’ Brigade.
If Ms Fish were here now, she’d have me out of this interrogation in a flash – beautiful girls always seem to have extra powers of manipulation.
For my contingency plan, I could think only to employ a trick I’d learned from Dad: I screamed and grasped my head.
The policemen stared, seeming to judge my performance like sternly faced theatre critics.
So, I screamed again.
‘What the hell’s the matter with you?’ said Briggs. ‘Be quiet for God’s sake!’
‘Nurse!’ I spluttered.
Briggs sucked air through his teeth, I think calculating the consequences of calling my bluff. ‘How bad is it?’
‘Bad.’
He glanced across the bed to Johnson and grumbled: ‘Get someone in here.’
Johnson obeyed, summoning a nurse who was plump, midlife, and greying. ‘What’s all this noise?’ she said.
Briggs nodded in my direction. ‘Sort him out will you.’
‘Headache?’
I’m not holding my knee, sweetheart. ‘Yes, it hurts.’
Her tone was gentle. �
�How long?’
‘Since…’ I looked at Briggs.
‘You two give him some rest,’ she said, frowning at the policemen in turn.
‘Just give him a bloody pill. This is important!’
‘You can come back in a few hours.’
The nurse held the door and gestured for the policemen to exit – though they were not quick to depart, prolonged eye contact making me think Briggs was building up to ask me out on a date. I considered blowing him a kiss, though realised his further antagonism wouldn’t really be to my advantage. Indeed, before long it was just me and the nurse, the room feeling altogether more salubrious.
What time I had forged, I took to think.
PART FIVE
Two hours later
Thirty
It has never been
and it will never be.
My hospital gown was speckled white, front fitting and fastened via sporadic buttons along the back – I found constant difficulty in covering my bottom. Accordingly, as I ventured out onto the ward, I flashed the policeman guarding my room.
‘Sir!’ he said, as I mooched by. ‘For your own protection, sir, you must stay in your room. And cover up.’
‘Sorry.’ I pulled the gown over my modesty. ‘I need the toilet – I haven’t been since… I’ve got tummy ache.’
The policeman didn’t reply, fidgeting on his feet – so I smiled and carried on along the corridor. The communal washroom was a consequence of an outdated 1960s hospital, and housed showers, washbasins and toilets. Inside, an elderly gentleman was undressing.
‘Afternoon,’ he said.
I nodded.
‘I’m going home today.’ He stretched his arms, sporting y-fronts, a considerable girth and much grey body hair. ‘Better look smart.’
If you say so mister.
The man moved rather creakily into one of the shower cubicles, his clothes folded and stacked by the washbasin – a pair of black-rimmed spectacles rested at the pinnacle.
Just like… Oh Syd!
As the old man hummed a tune, I stole his clothes, a brown shirt and beige breeches offering an elevated waistline that folded double beneath the belt. His loafers were a half a size too small, and I limped to peer out onto the ward.
Outside, the policeman had moved to stand over the washroom. He held a hushed conversation via his mobile, shooting glances up the corridor. I ducked back, my eyes then scanning the washroom and settling upon a red cuboid stuck to the wall:
Strange Affairs, Ginger Hairs Page 15