Nobody Loves a Ginger Baby

by Laura Marney

  Dressed like this she is mortified to encounter Carol in the doctor’s waiting room.

  ‘Daphne!’

  It’s a small room. She can’t pretend not to have seen her.

  ‘Hi Carol.’

  Carol as usual is dressed to the nines in a figure-hugging biscuit-coloured dress that looks like it cost a fortune. Daphne pulls her coat tighter together trying to hide the soup stain on her sweatshirt but Carol has already seen it.

  ‘How are you, love?’ Carol asks, her voice dripping with pity.

  ‘Aye, never better.’ Daphne quickly replies and then bites her lip: she’s here to throw a sickie. ‘And yourself?’

  Daphne didn’t realise that they shared the same doctor.

  ‘Oh God, it’s a piece of nonsense, it really is. They’ve changed the system here and now I have to see the doctor to get my repeat script. I’ve had to take the morning off and I’m up to my neck in assessments. I could do without it, we’re short-staffed at the moment.’

  Ouch, thinks Daphne. Carol does a pretty good impersonation of being stupid and tactless but Daphne suspects she knows exactly the impact she has.

  ‘Are you okay, Daphne? You look… different.’

  Of course I look different you stupid cow, thinks Daphne, I’m dressed up as a Bag Lady.

  ‘And you’ve put on a bit of weight, haven’t you?’

  No woman in the world tells another that she’s put on weight, except Carol. But Daphne nods and shifts in her chair, pulling her coat even tighter, she didn’t think it was that noticeable.

  ‘So what are you in for?’

  Daphne knew it was only a matter of time before she got around to that question and can’t help but be impressed with Carol’s brazenness.

  ‘I’m not able to come back to work yet, Carol, I have free-floating anxiety.’

  ‘Oh ho, you and me both, babes.’

  There is a derisory tone to Carol’s voice. Daphne is work-shy. She’s using an easy excuse to dodge her responsibilities, she can’t deny it. Carol has caught her red-handed and is laughing at her.

  ‘And you Carol, what are you in for?’

  Daphne really hopes it’s something terminal.

  ‘Oh just my usual, my antidees.’

  ‘Antidees?’

  ‘Yeah!’

  Carol says this as though she is saying the word dummy.

  ‘Antidees, you know, antidepressants. Listen Daphne, don’t let them fob you off with any of those old tricyclics. They’re a penny a pound, that’s why they give you them, to keep their costs down.’

  Daphne knows what Carol is talking about but pretends innocence.

  ‘They’re filthy; the side effects are horrible. Try and get her to switch you to an SSRI.’

  Serotonin Selective Re-Uptake Inhibitor. Daphne is translating in her head the stuff from the Internet.

  ‘But stay well clear of Neboxar.’

  She looks Daphne up and down.

  ‘Weight gain can be problem.’

  She probably thinks Daphne is already taking the fattening antidee. Good, thinks Daphne, let her think that.

  ‘Or even better an SNRI.’

  Serotonin Noradrenaline Re-Uptake Inhibitor.

  ‘God knows I’ve tried them all. I’m on a good one now though, a new one, the most expensive.’

  Quelle surprise, thinks Daphne.

  ‘But of course I was away on holiday, two weeks in Miami, it was such a hoot. I was having such a good time I completely forgot to stock up on antidees. I was down to my last tablet. As soon as I got back I asked Magda to ask Bob if he would lend me a packet, he’s on the same ones, just till next week, to save me schlepping in here today when I’ve all these assessments, but he refused. He’s such a dick.’

  ‘Bob is on antidepressants too?’

  ‘Yeah, but he won’t share. Daphne, everyone’s on them. Bob, Jo, Linda, Kevin.’

  Kevin is the Head of Department.

  ‘You know Lily in admin? We call her Lily of the Valium. Eh, who else? Oh yeah, me, you.’

  But Daphne isn’t on them; she didn’t even get the prescription filled.

  ‘You’ll find that once you’re on them and if you talk about it, people come out of the woodwork. And you don’t hear of many coming off them. I tried to get off antidees last year, a bloody nightmare, believe me. I went on a detox diet and took up yoga and meditation but it wasn’t any good. It was all weird positions and breathing in. I felt like I was spending half my life breathing in.’

  Dr Wilson calls Carol’s name and greets her like an old friend when she steps forward. She probably is an old friend. Within minutes Carol is back in the waiting room waiving her prescription triumphantly.

  ‘Anyway, lovely to see you, Daphne. I’ll tell everyone you were asking after them. I’ll need to get back, I’ve got a class this afternoon, uggh! Bunch of lowlife loser junkies, honestly, hang on, didn’t you have that class? I must have inherited them from you!’

  Daphne nods. Carol is talking about Daphne’s adult returners’ class, the sweet serious students, her favourite class.

  ‘They’re quite a smelly bunch, aren’t they?’

  A few moments later Daphne is called by Dr Wilson and spends a similar amount of time in the consulting room. The doctor is kind but brisk and Daphne feels processed as though she were a sausage in a factory. She emerges with another sick line for a month and a prescription for more antidepressants. After everything Carol has said Daphne thinks maybe she should take them after all.

  Chapter 20

  The bite wound is getting bigger. What started out being fingernail-sized is now the size of a large fist. The idea of a fist up his arse is repulsive but fascinating to Donnie and spurs him to get into the shower for another scoosh. It is his only relief. Every time he comes out he has to face Bertha sitting crying in the bedroom. What the hell is wrong with the woman? He’s the one with a fist up his arse.

  She’s crying over her ruined clothes. Bertha chucked everything in her case when they moved to the air-conditioned room and hadn’t bothered to unpack again, so through some weird female logic it’s all his fault. It’s only clothes, he keeps telling her, but it’s pointless. She has refused to throw them out. She won’t even let him put them in storage and so her dry-clean-only designer stuff lies stinking in the open suitcase. Bertha sits on the bed glassy-eyed, silently weeping. Every so often she lifts something out of the case, a fungus-mottled silk blouse or a pair of now baggy-arsed, brown-stained linen trousers. She stares tenderly at them with tears rolling down her cheeks and wails, ‘Oh, my nice things!’ She sits up half the night refusing to go to sleep or even let him put the light out.

  When the excursion has left for the day and the coast is clear Donnie goes everyday to the bar. He brings back bananas, packets of nuts and bottles of wine but she’s not interested. As far as he knows, apart from a packet of cheese and onion Golden Wonder that was in her travel bag, she hasn’t eaten anything for two days. But this is only as far as he knows.

  She could be up to anything when he’s sleeping or when he’s in the bathroom, and he’s in the bathroom quite a lot. He’s in there for maybe an hour at a time and she never asks why. With the shocking trauma she’s suffered over the loss of her beloved nice things she’s completely forgotten about his arse. Donnie can’t forget. No matter how many time he scooshes, the thing keeps getting bigger. Now it’s the size of a dinner plate. He doesn’t need to use the make-up mirror any longer, if he pulls his cheeks apart and turns his head he can see in the bathroom mirror that the inflammation is spreading out across his buttocks. And it itches like fuck.

  The first aid guy is not much use. He is too busy denying, no doubt on captain’s orders, the ship’s liability for the effluent-flooded cabin. This is another thing the insurance will be paying out for, yes, Donnie thinks, the insurance will be paying out big time. The first aid guy concedes that there is always a chance of infection and gives him antiseptic antibiotic cream but insists that Donn
ie is just unlucky to have had such an extreme allergic reaction. Yeah, unlucky.

  When he comes out of the bathroom there she is on the bed, with her face tripping her as usual. This would put years on you, thinks Donnie. He can’t see, even with the make-up mirror, but he is sure something is going on with the bite. The centre of it, the place where the mosquito initially bit him, has become hard and very sore to the touch.

  What if it isn’t a bite? Sweat runs down Donnie’s face as he contemplates another explanation. He has heard these stories about people being bitten in hot countries and then weeks later, thousands of tiny insects burst out of the host’s skin. What if he’s now incubating a nest of poisonous spiders up his arse?

  Donnie doesn’t want to alarm Bertha, she has been acting strangely as it is, as if she’s going off her head, something like this could tip her over the edge. But on the other hand he needs to know.

  ‘Bertha?’

  ‘Hmm?’

  ‘You remember, in the temple, I was bitten?

  She nods her head slowly, rolling her eyes like some kind of imbecile but she might just be being sarcastic.

  ‘Well I think there’s a problem with the bite.’

  ‘Oh yes?’ Her tone is falsely enthusiastic, now he knows she’s taking the piss.

  ‘And I wondered if you wanted to have a look at it for me?’

  ‘If I wanted?’

  ‘Well maybe you don’t want to, but I wondered if you would be good enough to, to do me the favour. I can’t see it myself and I’m worried that a spider has maybe laid an egg or something.’

  ‘Uh huh. An egg.’’

  It’s now clear that she doesn’t give a toss.

  ‘Well, will you or won’t you? I don’t want to have to go back to that first aid guy, not again.’

  Bertha says nothing but she doesn’t refuse. He’d like to ask her to come into the bathroom where the light is better but he doesn’t want to give her any reason to say no and he doubts if she’ll move off the bed. He drops his shorts and bends over, touching his toes, placing his perineum at a convenient eye level for Bertha.

  ‘The middle of it looks different,’ she says dryly.

  ‘Yeah, I thought that,’ Donnie says, his voice muffled by his legs, ‘I could feel it. But what do you mean, in what way is it different?’

  ‘Well, it seems to be moving.’

  ‘Moving?’

  ‘And. Oh my God!’

  ‘What is it?’ Donnie’s heart is pounding; his skin is crawling.

  ‘They’re coming out! Hundreds of them!’

  Bertha scrambles to her feet, she is standing on the bed, as far from him as possible, screaming her head off. Panic envelopes him and Donnie starts to scream. He instinctively goes to pull his shorts back up, to stop them coming out, but then he doesn’t know what to do. He runs to the door of the cabin, shuffling with his shorts once again caught round his legs. He can’t get the door open, he always locks the door from the inside and now he fumbles with the key until he drops it on the floor.

  ‘Help, help!’

  Bertha is jumping up and down on the bed.

  ‘He’s got spiders coming out of his arse!’

  Bertha’s wild screaming turns into hysterical screaming laughter. She is enjoying herself.

  ‘Oh very good, Bertha, nice one.’

  Donnie is angry and then immediately relieved. He isn’t giving birth to baby spiders after all, it’s just her sick idea of a joke. Still with his shorts at his ankles he shuffles to the side of the bed and sits down. Like a naughty child Bertha continues to jump on the bed. Donnie is being bounced around. His bum hurts every time it makes contact with the mattress. This is the most animated she’s been since they got here. With a last final jump she flops down hard on the bed throwing Donnie several inches in the air and then down again painfully.

  ‘Oh,’ says Bertha, catching her breath, ‘that’s the best laugh I’ve had for ages.’

  *

  The holiday is nearly over, thank God, thinks Donnie, only one more night to go. Holiday, that’s a laugh, this is the worst nightmare he’s ever experienced. He’s hardly slept a wink with the heat and the light on all night and Bertha crying all the time. Last night he almost slept. He had a dream, more than a dream; he likes to think that it was an alternative experience, that he was transported from this nightmare to a nice time.

  He looked down and found he had broken ribs but it was okay, he was with Daphne. They walked to the park past the university. It’s okay, he told Daphne, she doesn’t work there any more; she won’t see us.

  They sat laughing in the park looking at photographs. Then they were in the pub and drinking. I miss you, he said, I miss your skin; the way you fill your bra. You always knew how to fill a bra.

  They were in bed together, now his arm was broken, a football injury, but he was glad because he was with Daphne again. He held her and told her how sorry he was, that he didn’t know what had happened. He didn’t know what he wanted. It had all gone wrong.

  Daphne was laughing at his shaven groin but then she stopped when she saw the card. She said, ‘That’s strange, here’s a Purple Ronnie card which is black’, but then she cried when she saw what Bertha had written in it. He offered to tear the card up but then she was in the bathroom pulling Bertha’s toilet bag out of the cabinet, throwing it on the floor. Why? She asked him, but Donnie didn’t know why.

  Even though the dream ended badly, he’d like to dream it again, it’s a lot better than this living hell. Bertha isn’t crying for the moment but it won’t be long. She’s reaching down into her suitcase again. Any minute now she’ll start on about her nice things.

  Bertha, please will you leave it love, they’re only things.’

  ‘Yes, but they’re my things.’

  ‘Well we’ll get you new things when we get home. The insurance company will have to cough up for this lot and think of the fun you’ll have replacing them.’

  ‘But you haven’t lost any of your nice things. Oh yes, sorry,’ she says, with her eyes almost closed in contempt, ‘I forgot, you haven’t got any nice things. That’s why you’re back with me, isn’t it?’

  ‘Just stop this Bertha, okay?’

  ‘Stop what? It’s true isn’t it?’

  She’s screeching and it’s making Donnie head hurt and his arse throb.

  ‘You only want me for the nice things my income brings: my nice house, my nice car …’

  ‘Your nice holiday.’

  This has momentarily shut her up, but it is only a brief respite as she wipes the spittle from the side of her dry mouth.

  ‘Well maybe you would be happier with your old things, your scabby old flat and your plain, ordinary, low-income girlfriend.’

  Yes, thinks Donnie, remembering his dream, his alternative reality. Maybe he would be happier, but he’s too scared to say so.

  Chapter 21

  On the quayside Agnes tells Sean it was peaceful. Bernie asked for him, kept on asking for him. She made Agnes promise to have something hot ready for him when he came home. Then she just went to sleep. They have missed her by two hours.

  Without thinking what he is doing, how he might embarrass his uncle, Pierce opens his arms and walks towards Sean. Sean sidesteps the embrace and, in the manner of a kindly doctor, gently but firmly directs him by the elbow into the arms of Agnes. With his plastered arm around her, Pierce holds Agnes and cries hard. He has known this woman as long as he has known Bernie and never realised before how precious she is; he loves her. He thanks God for her arms, her warm skin, her healthy beating heart.

  No one else attempts to touch Sean. They follow at a respectful distance as he approaches the cottage. He doesn’t invite them in, not even Pierce. The funeral party, along with Pierce, keep vigil next door in Agnes’s house. Half an hour later Sean re-emerges and chaps the door.

  He is taking it incredibly well. Though his voice is hoarse he actually claps his hands and rubs them together as he dispatches his willing
friends to make arrangements. Bill will call the doctor to come and issue a death certificate. Roddy will arrange the drink and food from the Seaward Hotel for the wake tonight. Agnes and Jean, Bernie’s friends, will get her ready for the party, Sean will choose her outfit. Jim will take the dinghy to the other side of the island and bring back those that are able to come. Bill will tell the villagers that don’t yet know and invite them. Sean will phone the family on the mainland himself. Sean suggests, and everyone agrees, that it would be a nice idea if Pierce could compose a few verses for his Auntie Bernie. Pierce nods.

  Something weird has happened to his breathing. He can take in breaths easily enough, gulping down the fresh island air, it’s letting them go again that’s difficult. Maybe he’s developed asthma or a heart condition. Normally something like this would be worrying, interesting at least, but Pierce’s head is crowded with ideas for the panegyric he’s tasked to write for Bernie. Tasked. At last his skills have a practical purpose, at last he can provide a useful service. Pierce is going to write the poem of his life, no, not his life: Bernie’s. Not for his glory – he won’t even try to get it published – but for Bernie’s. He’ll squeeze out every drop of creative juice he’s got. Pierce doesn’t know whether creativity is finite or not but if it is he’ll blow the lot. If blood was creative juice he’d gladly bleed himself dry. This needs to be the most beautiful eulogy ever written.

  Everyone is doing their bit. Agnes, anxious to fulfil her promise, pleads with Sean to eat something but he refuses. Bobby offers to go and collect Charlie McGowan the undertaker from the next island but Sean declines.