Virtual Strangers

by Lynne Barrett-Lee

  ‘Hello,’ I say back. ‘What are you doing here?’ Helen Keller Ward. Admin. He clears his throat and then says,

  ‘Asthma clinic. Wednesdays. Are you visiting someone?’ I know he’s turned to look at me, but I daren’t look back.

  ‘Minnie,’ I say. ‘Minnie Drinkwater.’

  ‘Of course,’ he moves a sheaf of what look like patient notes from one arm to the other. His face is still angled towards mine as we walk. I can tell from the degrees of light and shade at the edge of my vision. ‘How’s she getting on now?’ he continues.

  Pharmacy. Pharmacology. WRVS Shop. ‘Oh, okay, I think. She’s been up, she’s managing to get about a little on her frame, now.’

  ‘Uh-huh. That’s good. That’s good. Look, er...’

  ‘I took her some tarts. My father’s. Gooseberry. Apricot and Whiskey. Something purple. Dad did say. I lose track.’ God. Phlebotomists. Marie Curie Ward. Fracture Clinic. Morgue.

  ‘Of course. Preserves. I remember. Er...Um.’ His face is back facing the way I prefer it. ‘And Rose? How’s Rose doing?’ And now it’s back again. Rats.

  ‘Um, er.’ (My turn.) ‘Her hysterectomy is next week. Oh, but you didn’t - or maybe you did - anyway, she -’

  Somehow, I’ve been manoeuvred into having the sort of conversation that can’t help but involve the participants in looking at one another, and soon after, that I’ve stopped in the corridor and quite naturally made all the little gesticulations and facial expressions that generally accompany having a chat about someone’s operation with someone else about whose precise knowledge (and right to knowledge) of the details of that operation are actually quite unclear. Should I have simply said ‘women’s troubles’? Should I instead have just opted for ‘op’? But he’s nodding. And is also a doctor, after all.

  ‘Of course,’ he replies. (Third ‘of course’. Must be doctor speak, it’s so automatic. Doctor, I’m depressed/stressed /obsessed and should really know better. Of course. Of course, my dear. Of course.) Then he adds, ‘You’re going down to stay with her, aren’t you?’

  I move off again. Pasteur Ward. Outpatient Toilets.

  Go for Outpatient Toilets? But I should at least thank him. ‘Oh, yes,’ I say. ‘Thank you. It’s been a Godsend for me, your conference. You’re not skiing, I hear. Off to London instead.’

  ‘Hmm,’ he says, shifting the notes between arms again. Then silence, bar pulses. Lub dub, lub dub.

  ‘Something interesting, is it?’

  Now he’s all eyes front. ‘Palliative care in the community for the twenty first century. It’s...um...look, Charlie -’

  And then he sort of swivels. And stops.

  Mould Room. What’s a mould room? Some sort of spore-ridden laboratory?

  ‘Ah!’ I say. ‘This is me now.’

  His eyes follow mine. And then narrow.

  ‘In there?’

  ‘Ha, ha, ha. Oh, look! Here we are. There’s the exit!’

  Followed by another. At some speed. My own.

  ‘Did she like them, then?’ asks my dad, when I return, irritable and churned up and with a rubber band headache. He’s made scones and a sponge cake and a big pot of tea. I’m beginning, I realise with no small measure of relief, to feel comfortable, pleased even, about having him around.

  I plonk myself down and take the mug he holds out for me.

  ‘Wolfed them down. Every last one,’ I assure him.

  ‘Excellent stuff. You’ve a message from Dan - says he sent you an email. And that Rhys chap telephoned. I’ve left his number in the hall. Oh, and I hope you don’t mind but I’ve asked Hester for supper. She’s made a pot-pie, which she thought she could road-test on us three.’

  Addendum. Grrrr. I’ll give him Hester for supper. In fact, no, will simply give supper a miss.

  Take tea, wodge of cake, plus headache, to study. I’m in danger of Hester becoming a chronic irritant in my domestic balm. I am conscious also of a huge gulf beginning to gape in our respective expectation landscapes. Concerned that my father, as well as hoping for a wife substitute, is developing a sentimental yen for finding a mother substitute also. For me. I have not the slightest objection to any amount of grandmother substitute type behaviours toward Ben (birthday cards, small gifts of cash, tolerance and kindness in the face of maternal strops etc.) But I manifestly do not require a new mother. Expect the domestic forecast to become changeable, turbulent, force ten, gales expected. In short, I expect the worst.

  And I did expect the email. (Because, though cross, I had crossed my fingers.) Which reads;

  thesimpsons@cymserve.co.uk

  Dear Charlie,

  Yet another unsatisfactory encounter!

  Truth is that yes, there is a conference and yes, I’m going (even speaking perhaps), but there is another truth, and that’s that I hadn’t originally intended attending the conference at all (if we went on every conference we had an opportunity to attend there would be a queue for the surgery that stretched way beyond Swansea). It was only when I found out about you and your trip to Canterbury that I decided I would perhaps go after all. The fact is that, given everything, I wasn’t altogether enamoured with the idea of the skiing trip this year, and, well, it seemed a perfect opportunity both to avoid it and to help you out at the same time. I have to go to the conference now, naturally, but I wondered if perhaps we could take the opportunity to meet up at some point? I don’t know what your schedule is, but I’m going to be in London from the Wednesday to Saturday. You, presumably, will be travelling back to Cardiff at some point during that time. Could we get together, perhaps? Would you meet me in London? Would you, at the very least, give it some thought?

  No pressure. No rush. I’ll leave it with you.

  Adamxxx

  I mean. Bloody hell. What is a girl to do?

  He simply isn’t taking the slightest bit of notice of anything I’ve said to him. I consider ringing Rose, of course, as if she’d have all the answers. But it just wouldn’t be fair. I have this picture of Rose in my head that I can’t seem to shift. She’s lying in bed - on her own because Matt’s in the garden on midnight pest patrol or whatever - and she’s imagining her own death. It’s so clear in my mind’s eye. She’s laying there - possibly stroking her abdomen - and she’s imagining what cancer would do to her body. Imagining her children attending her funeral, imagining - oh, it’s too awful to contemplate - which is why, I guess people try not to spend too much of their lives worrying about other people’s troubles - it’s just too awful. Anyway, the main thing is that I can’t ring Rose. My problems are way too trivial. Just love and hearts and stupid stuff like that.

  But what the hell is it with him? What’s with the jocular tone? What’s with the ‘given everything’? What’s with the ‘unsatisfactory encounter’ nonsense? What’s with the ‘schedule’ crap? And how could he attach exclamation marks to such a serious business? Ha bloody ha. But it was a nervous reaction I suppose. Classic male unease with intimacy. And what’s with ‘could we get together perhaps’? Like we were a pair of old school chums and do lunch type stuff. As if! Forget it.

  Click, click. Log on. Find the post room and send;

  griffith@cymserve.co.uk

  Dear Adam,

  Don’t be ridiculous. No way. Okay? Yes, it’s been a godsend but, hey, there’s a limit.

  Charlie.

  I hesitate about kisses, as ever. Then add some. What the hell; observing moral propriety is all well and good and fine and so on but there’s no need to hammer it home so prissily all the time. But hey, there’s a thought. This is one of those times when what you’re supposed to do is to pretend to the person you are in love with (yep, am) that really you can’t stand the sight of them, and tell them to go and clear off and get out of your life, because you’ve got someone else and so on. Like in that film - when the dead beat Dad tells his son he doesn’t want him around. Do people do that? Do people really do that in real life? Are people really that unselfish? Is love really that unselfish? Am I,
more to the point, really that unselfish? I would like to think so, but on the whole I doubt it.

  It’s all a con anyway. All that crap about how if you love someone all you want is for them to be happy and that it doesn’t actually matter if them being happy involves you or not. All patent nonsense. All that ‘you go, I’ll be okay’ stuff is garbage. Is love ever like that? Guess with kids it probably is. Love of kids is so utterly unconditional. You just can’t help it. You don’t love your kids any less because they whizz off to Australia, do you? Minnie sure doesn’t. But partners stuff, romantic love - that’s so, so different. It’s selfish. It has to be. It’s all about genes. I don’t want Adam to be unhappy. Of course I don’t. But I don’t want me to be unhappy either.

  When I go to see Minnie at the end of the week, I ask what she thinks re. what I have now whimsically come to think of as my Adam-love-tryst-thing. I am fully aware that this is of no more use than slaughtering sundry livestock and examining their entrails in order to divine the best course for the future of the planet etc., but in my current frame of mind I find I am able to understand that just because much of what Minnie says has no basis in logical thought processes, doesn’t mean there isn’t (at some deeper, reflexology/iridology/acupuncture /tiger’s bollocks/feng bloody shui-type level) a great deal of wisdom in the bizarre things she says.

  I ask;

  ‘What should I do, Minnie? I’ve been telling myself that I could go and see him - have lunch or whatever - with the intention of talking things through - discuss our feelings and so on, and making him understand that it would be so much better if he just stopped emailing me and that we made a strenuous effort to avoid one another - I’ve been thinking long and hard about changing my job anyway, which would help - but the thing is, I know myself. I know agreeing to meet him will signify no such thing. Agreeing to meet him will just crank the whole thing up even more. I cannot believe that I will be able to spend more than half an hour in his company without either him trying to kiss me, or me thinking about how long it will be before he tries to kiss me and looking for all those little signs and so on, and then - well, I just know it would all turn into the very thing I’ve been dreading it turning into. Sex, Minnie, will be on the agenda. If not then, not there, it will be on the agenda. Of that I am utterly sure.’

  Minnie smiles and arrests the progress of her third macaroon.

  ‘Sex?’ she says. ‘Sex? With a stranger? In London?’

  ‘He’s not a stranger, Minnie. I mean he was, as far as I knew initially, of course, but, no. Not a stranger, far from it. I’ve known him a long time. Liked him for a long time. Liked him as a person. As a friend. You know? And I don’t mean it quite like that. I don’t mean sex then, particularly. But just as a natural evolution if I let things go any further. D’you see?’ She looks blank. ‘ Okay. Yes, sex. Let’s talk about that scenario.’

  She puts the macaroon down. ‘Let me tell you something, young lady. Last time I had sex that was just where I had it. Floating Discotheque, if I remember rightly.’

  ‘With your husband?’

  ‘Dear me, no. He was past all that years back. With an actuarial chap. At the Southern Area dinner cruise.’

  ‘On the Thames?’

  ‘On the floor of the cabin, by the galley.’

  ‘Really? When was this?’

  ‘Nineteen sixty eight.’

  Chapter 19

  Ten years four months. I have computed that I can reasonably be expected to enjoy no more than ten years four months worth of sexually active life. I could, of course, meet another great love, get re-married, enjoy a rich and varied agenda of mutually satisfying sexual encounters commensurate with our age, flexibility, health status etc., but, masochistically, right now I prefer to believe the former. The former sounds scarily plausible for a divorcee about town like me. Christ - Minnie was married but still redundant in the bonking department before decimalisation. A sobering thought. Plus (and mainly, if I’m being scrupulously honest here) it is a deeply compelling argument for a full on shagathon with Adam in a Travelodge somewhere. Soon.

  Things could be worse, I suppose. When I pack my case to go to Rose’s it is at least with the knowledge that I am getting ever closer to fulfilling my Everest ambition, because the last call I take before leaving work on the Friday, is one to let me know that the Habibs - hurrah, hurrah - have had a full asking price offer for their house from a corporate couple with nothing to sell. Which means they can make an offer for Cherry Ditchling. Though why they would want to is way beyond me.

  When I arrive in Canterbury later that evening, it is to find my friend tired and sore and a little bit tipsy, and exuding a palpably false air of jollity.

  ‘Gross!’ she reports (with a laugh and a flourish). ‘Gross is what it is, Charlie. I feel like a bloody combine harvester’s been up there. Let me tell you, childbirth has nothing on this.’

  We sit and drink some more while she outlines the gruesome details. Incontinence, bleeding, bizarre sounding packing, plus nightmarish crises with catheter leads. Rose never seems to tire of the blood and guts re-runs. I don’t mind. They’re just her way, I think, of purging her brain of the fear that will lodge there till the pathology is finally known. Which should be sometime this week.

  ‘But it will all have been worth it,’ I remind her. ‘Whatever the pathology, at least the op’s over. At least you can get on with your life now.’

  She gulps back her wine - the second since I arrived, and judging by the bottle, her fifth, at least - and suddenly her expression becomes serious.

  ‘But the funny thing,’ she says, ‘is that I have this huge, horrible, nagging sense of loss, you know? Of myself. Of myself as a woman. It’s as if they’ve pulled a big shutter down on a whole chunk of my life. And I want to get back there. You know?’ Her brows knit as she says this.

  We are side by side on the sofa, so I put my arm around her.

  ‘Of course you do,’ I soothe. ‘That’s quite natural, isn’t it?’

  ‘Is it?’ She sounds mournful. ‘I’m not so sure. I certainly didn’t expect to feel like this. I was all gung ho with me. It was all “whip it all out!”, “toss those tampons out of the window with a merry whoop!” etc. I thought I’d feel free. Liberated. Up for it. You know? But I don’t. I feel sad.’

  ‘But Rose, you’ve just had a major -’

  She swivels to face me and silences me with a finger.

  ‘It’s not about that, Charlie. It’s not about cancer and stress and being ill and all that. It’s about the finiteness of life. It’s about stages and phases and looking back and regrets.’ She pulls on a curl that’s come loose from my scrunchie, pulls it straight and then winds it carefully around my ear. ‘It’s about being dragged on to the next bit when you don’t feel ready. It’s scary. It’s bloody miserable. ’

  I take her hand. ‘But it’s not as if you want any more children, is it?’ She shakes her head. ‘So it’s just a reaction. To everything. All perfectly understandable.’ As if I’d know.

  Rose sighs, then rests her head in the crook of my shoulder and snuggles up beside me.

  ‘This isn’t about having children,’ she tells me.

  ‘Then what?’ I feel her shrug. There is something quietly desolate in her manner, and there isn’t, I realise, a thing I can do about it.

  ‘Your life. My life. You and Adam, maybe. Fuck knows. I’m just sad and I need lots of hugs.’

  So I hug her, and she is asleep mere moments later, snoring extravagantly, and warm and heavy against my chest. Matt, who has been ‘leaving us to it’ now enters, and beckons me silently.

  ‘Come and join me outside,’ he says. ‘Come commune with a fag.’

  There is little in the garden but grey-green rows of flaccid cabbage and root tops plus the wizened pre-blizzard breakfast debris from the bird table. I flick a nugget of bacon fat from the bench and sit down.

  Matt lights a cigarette and sends blue smoke curling skywards.

  ‘It’s b
een a bugger, this snow,’ he says. ‘Put my cauliflowers back by weeks. And God only knows when the onions will sprout.’ He flicks his ash off and stares mournfully skywards. Then sighs.

  ‘You will keep an eye on things, won’t you?’

  I know what he means, but I stick with the garden. Matt has never been one for the baring of souls.

  ‘Of course,’ I reassure him. ‘You just say what needs doing and I’ll do it. Precisely, mind you. I haven’t the first clue about vegetables. You can do me a timetable before you leave.’

  ‘No sweat,’ he says. ‘I’ve already done it.’ And we find ourselves laughing. Because we both know the only reason we’re fussing about the garden is because it’s infinitely better than discussing the real thing we’re worrying about now.

  I am glad to be sterilised, at least, as I am reminded daily that small children are knackering. Have taken to eating tea with the kids as I cannot be fagged to cook twice and would anyway rather flollop around in state of undress discussing weighty philosophical/esoteric matters over a similarly weighty quantity of wine. I’ve had a seriously bad hangover every morning this week. Possible iodine overload too, as I have rediscovered fishfinger sandwiches big time. Rose is now almost three weeks post op and becoming bouncier and more cheerful daily, and revelling in lassitude and giving orders to everyone (me). But I don’t care. I’m so glad to see her smiling. And for my part, I’m almost convinced that I could deal with whatever the rest of my love life lobs at me, if I could partake of regular female bonding sessions such as we have enjoyed this week. Such a shame that we can’t, because despite feeling that, rather like vectors and quadratic equations, my knowledge of child-rearing must have dropped out of my neural net altogether, it’s been a definite good move to drop out of my own life for a week and drop into one more grounded instead. Beginning to feel that I can lick the whole Adam problem; I’m more determined than ever to get to Nepal, carve out some new territory, take a firm line with my career, and hope the spin off of my aesthetic and holistic new lifestyle will reap an incidental bounty in the shape of a six foot gentle hero, with whom I can explore (given constraints of age, flexibility and so on) an active physical union for bit more than ten years. Though not Rhys Hazelton, probably.