Suddenly there was an eddy of air as the lane turned and widened. The press of people melted behind him and he was in an open square with buses, motorcycles and perspiring white faces. All the time he had been lost in that other parallel world, he’d been only minutes away from the comforting tourist landmarks of squares and cafés, now brightly lit by multicoloured neon signs as the day fell away.
He passed tables of people drinking beer, salivating at the film of condensation on the bottle, the head of foam in the glass, remembering and craving the taste of it. He turned away and bought a Coke from a street vendor. He drank the bottle in one gulp, grateful for the distraction of the burn at the back of his throat as he waved for a taxi and told the driver the name of his hotel. All he wanted was a shower, even if it was only a tepid trickle, and a pharmaceutically induced sleep.
Later, in his room, just after he swallowed another pill, he sent a text to Emily and Matthew. He punched out the letters with painstaking care, cursing his clumsiness.
‘Give me a chance please. I love you both so much.’
[email protected]
To: [email protected]
Hi Mum,
A while ago, back in England, I went to this place called Jump. It was in Dorset, a kind of self-discovery thing. Emily talked me into it before she left. I guess she thought it might help. One of the things they asked us to do was to write a letter that you didn’t have to send. I wrote one to Sandy. I only got through one page when I kept repeating again and again how much I hated him, how he was a fat arsey bastard who talked crap all his life.
It was a bit stupid. Anyhow this is another one I’m writing but not sending. The thing is, us being here, me, Sandy and Em, it isn’t working out. I had a bit of a blip, as we like to call it in what’s left of our family, and got lost in more ways than one. Anyhow, Em and Sandy found me down some lane and dragged me out. Sandy had to half carry me until we found a taxi to take us back to the hotel. The first two taxis drove off because I’d been sick. Funny. I’d always thought of this place as being so filthy dirty. I’d never thought of anyone worrying about keeping anything clean. Let me tell you here and now, they’re pretty obsessed by it, almost as much as we are, although in a different way. But I digress. After they found me, and on the way back to the hotel, Em kept shouting at Sandy about what he’d done and that everything was his fault. I guess she meant me, or the mess of me and how I can’t seem to make anything work for myself.
It made me remember when you used to nag him about doing things with me, and not being around for me and everything. I suppose you thought I couldn’t hear you. You used to whisper, but you still had the red voice thing going on. And you meant well, you were trying to look out for me but it made me feel so shitty, because until I heard you say all that stuff, I hadn’t realised that Sandy didn’t want to spend time with me, or give me any thought, or that he was so obsessed by himself. I don’t think I would have realised it either, not until I was a lot older and then maybe it wouldn’t have mattered. I reckon it would have been better if I hadn’t known that.
So what I’m trying to get to is that I can’t seem to get myself out of the past. Dad pisses me off, but I don’t do anything about it. I don’t want to be like him and yet I want him to like me. I want him to be proud of me. Em says, and she’s right, that we had it absolutely fine. The thing is, I don’t feel so fine. I used to imagine sometimes that you thumped us, and that Dad had a crack habit or something. Or maybe you both left us, and we were on our own, just me and Em. That way, there would be something real to feel bad about. I’d have something to hang it on. How mad is that? Here where everyone is so poor, I feel guilty about having had so much and still moaning on, as you used to say.
I’ve started to go to this orphanage place, just to help out a bit. It’s run by the Rosheme people, Em’s fave. We make these enormous pots of vegetables and lentils, we boil up vats of rice and that’s what the kids eat. Every now and then there are eggs, but they cost so much money. There’s this big sign up saying no one must kill any living thing, but they don’t take much notice if they can afford meat every now and then.
There is this kid, Adjubal. He’s about eight and he follows me around when I’m there. Maybe he thinks I’m his big brother or something. He had this big boil thing on his neck, so gross. I went to the internet café to look up a cure. Some sites said tea tree oil was good, but I couldn’t find any. The other thing they recommended was turmeric, so I made a kind of paste of it and put it on a bandage. I changed it every time I went there and after about ten days, it was gone. Kind of exploded really, and there was this disgusting pus smell, but now it’s better. I don’t see him worrying about where his parents are, or why they left him here. I wish I were more like him and not so caught up in myself. Okay enough of that.
All the kids love football, and think David Beckham is God, but they keep losing the balls because when they kick them over the wall, the people won’t give them back. They say the children shouldn’t be playing, they should be working. I’m trying to teach them basketball instead, because I found a hoop behind a shed. But we’re not too sure of the rules.
This is about the longest thing I’ve ever written, longer than a school essay. The ones I managed to finish anyway. So I’ll stop now and send you a text.
Love you Mum
Chapter 41
‘Do you think they ever repaint the ceiling here? Or it’s just that colour from everyone smoking so much in the old days?’
Tim peered inside the brasserie. ‘Does it matter?’
He drank his beer, wiping the foam from his mouth. Along with Arthur’s, this restaurant always made Tim think of Sandy. Sandy, in one of the corner banquettes, sometimes with Penny by his side, more often on his own, schmoozing producers and musicians, eyeing the girls with their carrier bags from Harrods and Harvey Nichols. Sandy drinking tea with that pop legend who ended up managing that tiny singer.
Tim watched the pigeons pecking under his table and waited a few seconds for the name to swim up to the surface of his brain. Adam Faith. And the singer was Leo Sayer. The three of them would chortle away for hours.
Peter shrugged. ‘All this DIY work at home has got to me. The ceiling isn’t important.’
Ever since Tim could remember, the ceiling had been the same nicotine colour and the chairs the same burgundy leather. Even the perspiring waiters looked the same, simultaneously harassed and bored, dropping plates of steak and frites onto the tables with a clatter.
Unusually, Jeremy was late. They hadn’t met since early summer. Jeremy had been away, then busy, and Tim had gone on a trauma management course in Cardiff while Peter had repainted Frieda’s flat. Tim had pushed for a lunch, or at the very least a drink. For once, he had a story to tell in which he was the hero, the man with the money. A Dutch bank had approached him about working for them three days a week, a kind of one-man psychological health unit. Six lovely fat figures were mentioned. He couldn’t wait to tell the others. How good it would be, to escape the usual role of passive listener, to be able to contribute something more than psychological maxims or anecdotes about the mad farmer down the road.
It was a day of confused seasons; the air carried late summer’s heat and dust, yet the leaves had already begun to fall. Passers-by flaunted what was left of their holiday suntans. A group of children dressed in red and white checked uniforms waited at the pedestrian crossing. ‘Do you like your nanny?’ Tim heard one freckled girl ask her friend. ‘I like the weekday one better than the weekend one,’ the friend replied, fiddling with her plaits. The traffic lights changed and their teacher marched them across the road. If Angie had been here, she would have said their parents didn’t deserve to have children. She was so excited about the new job, suggesting a trip to Venice and making plans for the garden. A wave of affection for Angie swept through him. He scanned the menu, which appeared not to have changed in thirty years.
‘Let’s order,’ said Peter, looking at his watch.
‘Jeremy must be held up somewhere.’
What was Peter’s hurry? For someone who had scaled down their work commitments to the point of early retirement, Peter appeared unnecessarily agitated.
‘Maybe another beer?’ asked Tim. He wanted Peter to relax, so that when Jeremy arrived, Tim would have an attentive audience for his good news.
‘Okay, but let’s order at the same time,’ said Peter. They agreed on hamburgers. Together they flagged down a waiter then sat in companionable silence until Tim felt, rather than saw, Peter stiffen as Jeremy got out of his taxi, and then, just as quickly, collect himself with a quick gulp of beer and a shifting in his seat.
The man approaching their table was stooped, with an old person’s gait. The shoulders of his jacket hung limp and empty halfway down his arms and the collar of his shirt gaped around his neck. Only Jeremy’s hair, that thick grey thatch, was still the same. All the plumpness from his face had disappeared, and his eyes, staring out of hollowed sockets, were tinged yellow.
Tim forgot about his planned announcement and made an effort to assume his therapist’s mode. He tried to look straight at Jeremy but somehow his eyes wandered above his friend’s head. He wanted to say how scared Jeremy looked and how scared he was himself, but he couldn’t.
‘Jeremy, looking bloody trim!’ Tim leaped up and clasped his elbow. He waved at a waiter, trying to think what to say, ashamed by his own lie.
‘Good to see you, mate. Have a drink.’
He should have known how to react when something was so palpably wrong. He should have been able to ask the question, listen to the answer, empathise, transfer, enable. He should be able to at least acknowledge the shocking change in Jeremy’s appearance. But he didn’t do anything.
Peter had taken refuge behind his glass, unable to stop staring at Jeremy.
‘Beer? Or wine?’ asked Tim.
‘Maybe water,’ replied Jeremy, slumped in his chair. It was one of those uncomfortably small café chairs, and still it looked big for him. ‘Not sure if I’ll stay on for lunch. Need to get back.’
‘All work and no play,’ said Tim. ‘You know what they say.’ No number of trauma management courses could help him escape his platitudes. He hated his own ineptness.
Beside him, Peter lurched towards Jeremy, almost elbowing Tim out of his chair. ‘Cut the crap, Tim. Jeremy, what is going on? What’s wrong with you? You look bloody terrible.’
‘Ah,’ said Jeremy, leaning an elbow on the table. The back of his hand was covered with purple blotches, like a bruised and rotting plum. He must have seen Peter wince, because he removed it immediately. ‘You’ve noted something is amiss.’
‘Of course something is amiss,’ said Peter. ‘You look half dead.’
‘Actually,’ said Jeremy, his knee starting to judder against the table. ‘I am almost three-quarters dead. Pancreatic cancer. So efficient. From diagnosis to death in only three months. That’s what my cancer team tells me. Don’t you like that? Cancer team. So jolly.’
He smiled. In his shrunken face, his teeth appeared enormous. White crusts of spittle had settled in the corners of his mouth.
‘You don’t have to make a joke about it,’ said Tim. ‘It’s nothing to laugh about.’
He wanted to reach over and hug Jeremy, to weep at this terrible thing that was happening. He wanted to do something to make it better. ‘There must be some treatment, somewhere,’ Tim said. ‘The Mayo Clinic, Sloan-Kettering, one of those places.’
Peter interrupted with a sweep of his hand. ‘I reckon Jeremy would have that covered. What about Rosie?’
‘We, ah, haven’t spoken for a while.’ His voice faltered. In the afternoon sun, his face was beaded in perspiration. ‘I’ve decided not to have any treatment. Only palliative care, as the team calls it. I’ve decided, for the first and last time in my life, to let things just happen.’
‘You’ll need support, you have us,’ said Tim, almost pleading. ‘Angie and me, Peter, we’ll do anything, anything at all. Why didn’t you call? Why didn’t you tell us?’ His questions dribbled into silence.
Jeremy shrugged. ‘There is nothing to be done.’
Across the road two paparazzi on motorbikes were snapping at some girl leaving the hairdressers. Her hair was pulled into a tight chignon. She posed at the traffic lights, hand on her hip, before darting into a waiting car.
‘My mother used to wear her hair like that,’ said Jeremy. ‘Though I don’t suppose that girl would welcome the comparison.’
‘What about Sandy?’ asked Tim. ‘Will you tell him? Do you want me to let him know?’
Jeremy sighed. ‘Matthew is my godson. I’m in contact with him. But no, since you ask, neither of them know and I’d rather you didn’t tell them. Please. It’s the one thing I am going to beg for.’ His hands were shaking and he tried for a smile. ‘God knows, you owe me that. I’ve paid for enough lunches in my time.’
The waiter appeared behind Jeremy, brandishing their plates of hamburgers surrounded by heaped French fries and little jars of condiments. He banged the food on the table and strode off.
‘He might have asked if I wanted anything,’ said Jeremy. ‘It’s only polite.’ The smell of seared meat and toasted buns wafted about them. Just in time, Jeremy found his handkerchief and put it to his mouth, silently retching. Tim stood and rushed behind him, holding his jerking shoulders. It seemed there was no flesh left. It was hard to see clearly against the afternoon sun, but he felt sure Peter was weeping. Tim felt Jeremy sag against him, then recover himself.
‘For heaven’s sake, do sit down,’ rasped Jeremy. He wiped his mouth and put his handkerchief in his pocket, a small movement that caused him to wince. ‘Thank you, but I’m perfectly fine now. I’ll just have some water and then I must go.’
Jeremy’s hand trembled as he reached for the glass. He tried to steady it as he sipped, but some of the water slopped onto his shirt and dripped down onto his trousers. ‘So clumsy of me, apologies.’
He gave a small salute, heaved himself up and almost limped to the edge of the pavement. But Tim was there before him. He embraced Jeremy, wiped away the cold beads of perspiration on Jeremy’s forehead with his hand. He heard Jeremy’s jagged breathing as Peter joined them. Tim felt Peter’s arms lock around the two of them, and then Jeremy trying to break clear.
A taxi stopped at the traffic lights. Jeremy hailed it and the door swung open. He got in, his hand shaking a final wave as he pulled the door closed. Tim took Peter’s arm. He watched the taxi drive away, not noticing the girl on the scooter who nearly ran over their feet, not hearing the apologies of her mother. Tim didn’t register anything at all until the waiter came over and asked had they finished eating. Tim nodded and, still holding Peter’s arm, slowly walked back to the table, all the while thinking that he would never see Jeremy again; that money and power counted for nothing against something like cancer.
‘What should we do?’ he asked. Peter didn’t reply. He slumped in his chair, his chin wobbling.
‘What’s happened to us?’ asked Tim. ‘We used to be invincible, remember?’
Peter clenched his jaw and said nothing. They sat on, unable to talk and unable to leave each other. Half an hour passed and Peter got up. ‘I’m sorry, I have to go. I wish I could think of something to say, or do, but I can’t. It’s too sad.’
A quick embrace and Peter was gone. On his own, exhaustion crashed in on Tim. He thought of Jeremy, dying alone without the comfort of his daughter or Sandy and his other friends, almost as if Jeremy thought he didn’t deserve anything more than a solitary death.
A shadow fell across the table. The waiter, standing impatiently, wanting him either to order something or leave. Tim paid and left. Suddenly, he couldn’t wait to get home to Angie, to tell her what had happened.
Chapter 42
The three of them turned towards the cave and walked in silence up to the gate. A hawker selling white scarves patrolled his pitch. Sandy waved him away, but Emily and Matthe
w bought one each. The hawker ushered them through to the path, which was steep with rough stone steps cut into it, each one as high as Sandy’s knee. Ropes of faded triangular prayer flags festooned the stumpy pine trees growing on either side.
Emily looked around wide-eyed and bounded up the steps, with Matthew close behind her. Sandy fell behind, exhausted and disoriented. He was determined to keep climbing, although his thighs and calves had begun to shake. The path traversed back and forth up the mountain. He thought it would never end.
On a bend above him, Emily and Matthew paused, waiting for him as he stumbled and almost fell over the last few steps. He straightened and stood gasping for breath. His face ran with sweat. His knees buckled and he sat down with a grunt. Matthew lay sprawled on a rock. Emily gazed over the valley. She’d wrapped her hair in a scarlet-patterned scarf and wound it around her neck. Strands of blonde hair escaped at her forehead and floated about her face as she stood there, her long arms and legs arranged like a Modigliani. They were both so at ease here. Every step he took jarred.
‘Is this the sacred place?’ Sandy asked, still breathing hard. He was expecting something physical: a sign, a statue, or even an etching in a rock. But there was nothing, only dead pine needles clumped in rough mounds. He kicked them apart as he left the path and walked over to the cliff face. Two small openings seeped black liquid.
Emily was behind him. ‘It’s so holy … so sacred.’ Her voice was an awed whisper. ‘It’s where Rosheme’s ancestors came into being, the beginning of the line of deity which has continued until this day.’ Her words sounded formal, like learned catechism.
‘What is Rosheme like?’ asked Sandy, although he wasn’t interested in her answer. He wanted to delay going into the cave. He’d always hated being underground, felt claustrophobic on the Tube. ‘Do you know him well?’
There was an audible intake of breath. ‘I haven’t met him,’ said Emily. ‘Being in his presence is a privilege I’ll have to earn, after huge amounts of study. Even Samten doesn’t see him, even when Rosheme is not away. Samten only sees him in special audiences every now and then. You don’t just walk up to Rosheme in the street. Half the time we don’t even know where he is.’
After Everything Page 26