Back inside, she puts the kettle on and finds herself staring at the lilies. They are way beyond their best, and she wonders whether he has got them cheap somewhere or, even worse, picked them up from some street florist’s discard pile. Their petals are splayed wide and there is something profoundly unsettling about that. They are spread-eagled, gaping, exposing their stamens in almost obscene invitation, craving the entry of fertilising insects that are never going to come. She is reminded of what the American author told her, about the body’s desire, when it is approaching the end of its fertile years. The memory threatens to plunge her back into despair, and into the thoughts of children she never had, but she catches herself in time, and it is easy. All that is behind her now, along with the black skirt and all it represented.
She goes back upstairs. In the bathroom she washes the remains of yesterday’s makeup from her face, then she returns to the bedroom and removes every stitch of clothing. She stands in front of the full-length mirror and looks at her body, really looks at if for the first time in years.
In terror of the effects of gravity upon her softening skin, she has emaciated herself. Her breasts have disappeared and her ribs and her collarbones protrude. She hears his voice inside her head.
‘You’re all bones. It’s like sleeping with Marilyn Monroe.’
‘Marilyn Monroe?’ she said. ‘But she wasn’t all bones.’
‘She is now, though,’ he said.
She pushes the thoughts of him aside. This isn’t about him. He has no part in these deliberations. She looks again, and sees that in an effort to hang on to youth she has made herself grotesque. It has to stop. It is time to let herself go.
She looks up at her face. She still doesn’t quite recognise herself with her grey hair, and she is interested. This is a face that men will pass in the street without seeing. It’s a backstage face, never seen in the spotlights but crucial to the production just the same. She pulls on a pair of white, Indian pyjamas that she once bought for him and that he never wears. She is top to bottom white, now, and she likes it. It makes her smile. She goes downstairs and makes her coffee. In the fridge she finds lasagne that he has cooked, and she cuts a small slice, then doubles it, and puts it in the oven. While she waits for it to cook, she boots up the computer. She has research to do, people and organisations to track down, lists to compile. She has some serious moving and shaking to be getting on with.
{30}
There is no water lying in the street that he can see. There are puddles in the park, around old, makeshift goal mouths, but he is not going back in there under any circumstances. He steps away from the house, so as not to appear threatening if anyone is looking out at him. What would he do in their position? Call the police?
The thought fills him with guilt and dread, but when he turns back to the street and sees the embodiment of his thoughts appear, he realises that the police are exactly what he needs. This is not the nineteen-eighties, when every Irishman was an IRA suspect. He has not stayed too long in the pub and been forcibly removed. He doesn’t even have a little silver twist of dope in his pocket tonight. He has been assaulted and robbed. The boot is on the other foot. He is a victim of crime and not a criminal, no matter what he might look like. So he leaves nothing to chance. He doesn’t try to flag down the police car. He steps out in front of it instead. It isn’t travelling fast, and it comes to a gentle standstill a few feet before it reaches him. Two officers emerge, both of them male.
‘I’ve been attacked,’ he calls out. ‘Mugged.’
They stop at a significant distance from him, just out of reach of a left hook. ‘Where did this happen?’
He waves shamefully towards the park. ‘I know it was stupid to be in there.’
‘Have a look at you, then.’
One of them turns on a very bright torch and examines first his face, then the back of his head. A car inches past and he sees a woman and a girl inside, rubber-necking, wide-eyed and shameless, as though they believe they are invisible.
‘Bottled you, did he?’
‘They,’ he says. ‘I think so. I didn’t see them coming.’
‘Count yourself lucky. It looks superficial to me. We’ve already seen worse tonight. Any other injuries?’
‘No,’ he says, ‘but I keep thinking I’m falling.’
‘Better get you over to casualty, then, hadn’t we?’
He is overwhelmingly grateful to be sitting in that warm, dry car and travelling across London. The driver handles the car beautifully, as if it were full of eggs, wasting no time at all but creating no turbulence either. The other officer sits in the back with him, and hands him moistened baby wipes, one after another, until he has cleaned up his head and his hands and his face and, thank God, his glasses. He tells them his story, but it doesn’t give them much to go on. He didn’t get even the slightest glimpse of the men who mugged him, not even a foot beside his face. He knows there were two because he heard them run away. They took his cash, his wallet with his bank cards, his phone and two-and-a-half packets of cigarettes.
‘Mind my asking what you were doing in the park?’
‘I had a row with my partner.’ He sighs, and adds, ‘My girlfriend,’ in case there should be any doubt. ‘I was walking it off.’
They have already arrived at the casualty department, and pulled into the ambulance bay. The blue light is flashing. It makes him feel important. The backseat officer accompanies him to reception and takes down his details at the same time as the admissions secretary does. Name. Address. Phone number. Date of birth. He rattles them off mechanically. The secretary tells him to take a seat in the waiting area, and that someone will come and have a look at him soon. In a rare fit of appreciation he blesses England and her blue-breasted bobbies and her national health service, still functioning and still free at the point of need.
‘All right now, sir?’ the officer says.
‘Thank you. You’ve been very kind.’
‘Number would be handy, in case we need to contact you.’
‘But you have my number. You took it down, didn’t you?’
‘Is that a different mobile, then? From the one that was stolen?’
‘Oh,’ he says. ‘No. It isn’t.’
Along with the phone has gone his entire contact list, all those important people. They have stolen his whole life, his past, his future. Almost everyone he knows.
‘Don’t you have a landline?’ the policeman asks.
He seldom gives it out these days. It is always his mobile number that he gives people, and it takes him a few moments to remember it. The officer writes it down.
‘Like me to give your girlfriend a ring? Tell her where you are?’
He is completely thrown by the suggestion. Since the moment he was hit on the head she has not crossed his mind, not once, not even when he mentioned her to the police. And now, when he thinks about her, it brings him no relief. It should. He should be happy that he has someone who cares for him and can help him through this trauma. Instead it brings a return of the shock and dread that he had thought was all behind him. He is reminded of what he was really doing on Hampstead Heath; the journey he was making; the place he was so sure that he would find. The falling sensation intensifies, and yet again the name of the country he inhabits flits across his memory. Vanishes again. It is not England.
‘You all right, sir?’
‘Yes,’ he says. ‘I’ll be fine. But please don’t phone her. I’ll manage.’
‘Suit yourself,’ says the bobby. ‘I’ll let you know if there are any developments. And get on to your bank as soon as you can about those cards.’
‘Thank you,’ he says. ‘Thank you for everything.’ He pushes through the double doors into the waiting area and meets disillusionment head-on. He isn’t sure what he expected. A smiling nurse who would take his hand and lead him into a comfortable room where a doctor was waiting, all white and crisp and freshly ironed. If so, he shouldn’t have been. He knows the pressures on the hea
lth service. It is headline news about once a week. Exactly this. Dozens of people waiting, some on trolleys, most on uncomfortable plastic chairs, one man lying on a blanket on the floor with a child, looking terrified, sitting beside him. Just inside the door is a young woman with a flushed and listless baby in her arms, and he is glad to see a nurse arrive and lead her rapidly away through another pair of doors. But there are people here who have the help- less look of endlessly waiting. And there are others like him, fresh in from fights or assaults all over North London, bits of rag or hospital gauze pressed against bleeding wounds.
He explores his own cut gingerly. It gapes, but it isn’t large. He wonders whether he should go away and stick a plaster on it and not waste his own or anyone else’s precious time. If it wasn’t for the fact that he is still relentlessly falling, he probably would have.
{31}
Feng shui or no feng shui, the clearing of her wardrobe had the effect of sending a message to the gods. And on the Monday following the trip to the Sue Ryder shop, they sent her an answer. She was in the kitchen, putting together a meal. He was working in his study and she had the radio on in the background while she cooked. It was a Radio 4 documentary about the slow-food markets in New York City, and the idea had immediate appeal for her. There were organic street markets in London – there was one just down the road two days a week – but they were small and expensive and exclusive, for people like her with middle-class sensibilities and deep pockets. The New York markets were quite different.
They were bigger, for one thing, and had a broader base. Instead of bringing them to the wealthy and trendy parts of the city, the organisers had set them up in the most deprived and run-down areas. In each case, regeneration had followed. Small permanent businesses had sprung up around the markets. The foody set were prepared to travel to get their specialities, and money flowed in and spread throughout the community. Ethnic and class diversity took root.
When the documentary was over she let her mind run on. She envisaged a situation where unsold perishables would be donated at the end of the day, to the homeless hostels, perhaps. It needn’t all be organic, provided it was fresh and as locally grown as London could manage. All kinds of farmers and market gardeners could be brought in, and bakers, whole-food shops, delicatessens, ethnic-food suppliers of all makes and colours. There might be cookery demonstrations showing what could be done with cheap vegetables or unpopular cuts of meat; that there were viable alternatives to junk food, even for the poorest in society. She saw opportunities for them in the new markets as well; micro-business along the lines of Grameen in Bangladesh. Little stalls offering hot food from all parts of the world, hair braiding, head massage, arts and crafts and services, all with the ethos of slow food and hand-manufacture.
And what would be in it for her? Nothing, so far as she could see, except exactly what she was looking for. The chance to use her skills to engage with a wider community and to give something of herself for the benefit of those in need and society as a whole. It ticked all the boxes. Every one.
But this time she didn’t take off half-cocked. She reined in her enthusiasm and prepared to let things take their natural course. She didn’t tell him about it, or any- one else, either, but she quietly put the word around that Elsinore might be up for sale. Then, while she waited, she researched the New York markets on the internet and bought books about the slow-food movement, about setting up small businesses and managing micro-credit loans. She sensed the development in herself of a new kind of concentration; a building energy; a plutonium core of potential.
And then the gods provided. Not one, but two interested parties made enquiries about Elsinore. She left the negotiations in the capable hands of her agent, and booked a flight to New York City.
She looks up from the computer. She has a good list already of individuals and small businesses she wants to contact. Market gardeners, organic farmers, growers’ associations. Credit unions, homeless organisations, whole- food businesses, existing market organisers. All this is basic groundwork. There will be months of phone calls and meetings and discussions before anything can happen, and the biggest obstacle will be to find the right venues and get the necessary permissions from local authorities. She’s aware that it might take years, but she is ready for that. This is not a thing like Elsinore, that can be rushed.
She checks the lasagne and throws together a salad. Her watch says eight o’clock, but that is New York time. The kitchen clock says one. She wonders where he is. It is well after closing time. Has he somewhere else to go in London? Is he staying with friends? Has he got another woman?
She has lived in fear of losing him, but not to someone else. She sees now that it could happen. It is the trend, even the norm in her circles, for men to move on from their established relationships and take up with younger women. Several of her friends and acquaintances have been summarily cast off in favour of some bimbo. She is tempted to plunge into an indignant fury at the injustice of it all, but this new, grey-haired self will not allow her to waste the energy. Fairness is for children’s birthday parties. Adults must face reality. So she does.
And part of the reality is that he is no longer the man he was. It is years since he has written a decent poem and, outwardly at least, he seems content to waffle away to students and radio interviewers, and to write about other people’s poetry. So what if he leaves her? What if he already has a bimbo, and comes back only to pack up his study and take his things? Can she live without him? Does she even want him if he is no longer the man he used to be?
{32}
He sits and waits. People come and go, but mostly come. He reads the notices on the walls about how to drink safely and how to stop smoking, and when to visit your GP instead of coming into casualty. He reads them again, like those posters in the underground which are impossible to ignore because they are the only things to look at apart from other people, and looking at other people is impermissible. There are news- papers scattered about but he doesn’t know if they are provided by the hospital or belong to the people on the seats beside them. And anyway, he doesn’t want to read a news- paper. They are irrelevant to what is going on inside him.
He wonders again whether he has some kind of brain injury that is creating this hideous state of midair suspension. He imagines a clot expanding beneath his cranium, slowly choking off the blood supply to his cerebellum. He considers trying to find someone in authority so that he can thump their desk and demand to be taken more seriously. He has no doubt that he is in danger, but unaccountably, he also knows that it is not that kind of danger. His headache is no worse: if anything, it has receded a little. The bump and cut are sore to the touch but he doesn’t consider it pain. This fall he is in the midst of will not end on the grubby hospital floor, but on land. On soil. And with that realisation comes the knowledge of what it is he is falling from. Not a wall or a branch or a ladder or a tree. He is falling from a horse.
He hears his father’s voice again. ‘Just the toe. The toe. If you come off with your foot like that you’ll get dragged.’
He never did get dragged, but he came off plenty of times, on grass, on tarmac, on mud. He got dropped in the flagstoned yard, scraped off on gateposts, cannoned into hurdles that horses refused to jump. Is that what this is all about? Is this a flashback, caused by the blow?
A nurse comes over and talks to him. She looks at his head and makes a little face. ‘That must be sore.’
But it’s the kind of response his mother might have made to a grazed knee or a wasp sting. It isn’t serious. She bends her knees and looks directly into his eyes.
‘Have you any other problems? Any dizziness or nausea?’
‘I feel that I’m falling,’ he says.
She straightens up and pats him on the shoulder. ‘We’ll get one of the doctors to take a look at you. It won’t be long.’
There are still people arriving, but not at the same rate as before. Some of the ones who were there when he arrived have been seen and
have either gone somewhere else or come back to do some more waiting. A few of them returned from wherever they had been seen and went straight out the front doors, giving him the impression that they had been given an aspirin and sent home. He is slightly irked by the realisation that some people who arrived after he did have been seen before him. He supposes there must be a reason for it. Their problems must be more pressing. Is he making a fuss about nothing? Is he one of the ones who ought to go home and take an aspirin and see his GP in the morning? He watches, in some apprehension, the arrival of a drunk. The man is covered in blood and staggering, and he lays about him and swears at the hospital staff. Eventually he is mollified and persuaded to sit down, where he dozes and grumbles spasmodically.
The episode sets him thinking about the current debate over rationing in the NHS. He doesn’t see why someone so abusive should expect to be treated. But then, if he is denied help, who next? Fat people? Smokers, like himself?
It reminds him of his desire for a cigarette. He is sure he could cadge one at the front door, where there is a constant rotation of smokers, but he’s afraid that if he does he’ll miss the person who comes looking for him.
He’s right, and he congratulates himself. The same nurse returns and bends down with the same sweet manner. She watches him as he walks, and he wishes there was some outward evidence of the symptoms he has described. There isn’t. He could walk a white line if he was required to do it. But inside his mind he is still falling. He follows her to a small examination room, where a doctor is washing her hands. But there is another delay, because a different nurse pops her head around the door and takes the doctor away.
He is left alone again. The room is full of steel and plastic and white paper packages. The walls are the kind of green that is only seen in nature when nature is sick. It is the green of deadly algal blooms in polluted lakes. There is a trolley with a folded sheet and a clean white pillow. There is a chair, but only one. He hasn’t been invited to sit down, so he doesn’t.
Tales from the Tower, Volume 2 Page 11