Pumping Up Napoleon

by Maria Donovan

  She had stayed by his bedside night and day until she began to smell of the sickroom. And when he was dead Susannah had leaned over the bed as if she was already peering into the grave. She was dry-eyed and sharp-focused while Julie was blurry with tears.

  ‘How I wish I’d used a video camera, or had a tape recorder with me, instead of just taking that photo,’ says Susannah. ‘Because it was just as I bent over him that Dad whispered, “Bury me in the garden”.’

  The silence fills until it is as fragile and heavy as a water balloon.

  ‘And did you?’ The woman’s words spill out.

  ‘It was within my rights,’ says Susannah, raising her voice. ‘Whatever the neighbours say.’ She puts her face close to the woman’s and looks her in the eyes. ‘Julie was on the side of the undertakers. But if you do it properly, bury them six feet deep, and make sure you’re not interfering with the water table, there’s no reason why it can’t be done. No need even for a coffin; just get an old sheet out of the airing cupboard, a last look at the face to make sure he isn’t “only sleeping”, then tip him in and pile the earth on top.’ She sits back in her chair.

  A certain tension in the air suggests the woman is like an arrow, ready to fly.

  ‘But of course,’ Susannah went on, ‘someone told Julie that without a will, nothing written down, there was only my word to say it was what Dad wanted. But I was his daughter after all; I’d known him all my life.’

  Susannah stands up and the scrape of the next chair follows instantly. Footsteps shiver on the new path; Susannah stops by the blue hydrangea. She brushes over it with her hands, and the woman, unwilling to enter the house alone, is kept waiting by the French windows.

  At last Susannah leads the woman inside. The tea things have been left on the table, but it doesn’t look like rain. After the doors have closed, it isn’t long before the blackbird comes flying back.

  The Dancing King

  Brenda is lying in bed reading a romantic novel when the knock comes at her door.

  There he stands, tall, handsome and unfamiliar, dressed in a tuxedo. ‘Pour vous,’ he says, handing her a rose.

  ‘Do I know you?’

  ‘I thought you wanted me to take you dancing.’ His eyebrows flash.

  Brenda takes a deep breath, shakes her head, then swings the door shut in his face and grumbles her way back to bed.

  He knocks again.

  Brenda bites her lip. Bother. Just when she didn’t need a man in her life. ‘Come in.’

  He opens the door, wearing a knowing look.

  ‘Just don’t speak to me, that’s all,’ says Brenda. ‘I’m reading.’

  Loosening his black tie, he lies down beside her on the bed. Over the top of her book she can see dark trousers extending all the way down to the end of the duvet and a pair of shiny shoes.

  Time passes, and the tension grows with each rasp of a page turned. Out of the corner of her eye she sees him looking at her.

  He puts a hand on her arm, brings his face close to hers. ‘Shall we dance?’ he says. Standing up, he offers her his hand. Brenda smiles, in spite of herself. She turns down the corner of the page. With a snap of his fingers he brings the sound of a full-string orchestra looping into the room.

  Feeling at a disadvantage dancing in her pyjamas, without a shred of make-up on, Brenda keeps glancing backwards, afraid she will snag her spine on the corner of the wardrobe.

  ‘Would you relax?’ he says. ‘It’s like dancing with an ironing board.’

  Just as an experiment, she closes her eyes and lets herself be moved. His hold is firm, his footsteps certain. It’s like floating, another state of being. He doesn’t push or wrench.

  ‘You’re good at this,’ she says.

  ‘Only the very best for you, my darling.’

  She opens her eyes.

  He’s wearing a smile of the deepest self-satisfaction. Surprisingly, she finds this quite endearing.

  At last she begins to grow sleepy. He sways with her towards and away and towards the bed, with the subtle advance of an incoming tide. She remembers the light going out and the sound of him slipping off his tie.

  In the morning he’s gone; no need for Brenda to worry about her morning breath or what to say at breakfast. The sheet on his side of the bed is quite smooth and there isn’t a dent in the pillow, as if he’s never been there. But the rose on the bedside table is drinking from her glass of water.

  The next evening she goes to bed early, unfolding the corner of the page she turned down last night.

  ‘Hello there,’ he says.

  ‘Woh!’ The book flies up in the air. ‘What are you doing here?’

  He shrugs. ‘You called me.’

  ‘I did not,’ she says, indignantly.

  ‘You must have.’ He smiles gently. ‘I’m here, aren’t I?’

  A few nights later, despite her best intentions not to care what he does when he’s not with her, she asks him where he lives.

  He takes a drag on his cigarette and blows out smoke before answering. ‘The shed at the bottom of the garden.’

  ‘There is no shed at the bottom of the garden,’ says Brenda.

  ‘Not at the bottom of your garden – no,’ he says, teasingly.

  The next day she looks out of the bedroom window. The shed belonging to the house next door is quite close to her fence. Brenda turns back to make the bed; there is just a slight crease in the sheet where his body has lain and she hesitates before smoothing it away.

  ‘I wonder if you could help me,’ Brenda says to her neighbour. ‘I’ve lost my kitten and I think it might have accidentally gotten into your shed.’

  ‘Nah,’ says the neighbour. ‘Door’s been shut for days. I’ve had the flu.’ He waves a snot-frozen hanky.

  Brenda stands firm. ‘I thought I heard it crying in there. Perhaps it got in some other way?’ The neighbour is sceptical but gives Brenda the key so she can have a quick look and set her mind at rest.

  Down the garden path she goes, her heart leaping. The shed door is secured by a large, well-oiled padlock. The key slides in and turns easily.

  Inside the shed it is dark and smells of old garden tools, clay pots and compost. There’s no bed, other than a folded-up canvas sun-lounger, and no clothes or shoes or other things. She does find a blue-and-white striped mug hanging on a hook, with a stain of old coffee inside. The windows are jammed with dirt and cobwebs.

  ‘No sign of the cat,’ she tells the neighbour. ‘Thanks.’

  That night her lover does not appear. She curls up in the bed to have a good cry, then reads herself to sleep. In the morning she finds she’s slept on her book and buckled its pages.

  ‘Where’ve you been?’ These are the first words out of her mouth when she bumps into him outside Woolworths.

  He hasn’t been round for days. Relaxed but friendly, she’d said to herself, that’s what I must be next time I see him, whenever that might be, relaxed and friendly. But she hears herself saying, ‘Where’ve you been?’ instead; and within two minutes they’re having a row and she’s shaking.

  Later, she feels so sorry for misjudging him. He’d wanted to see her, of course he had. The truth was he’d been on his way over to her place the other night when he’d noticed a woman about to give birth in the doorway of Marks & Spencer. By the time he’d had a chance to call it was already very late.

  ‘What did she have?’ asks Brenda.

  ‘A boy, a ten-pounder. Really quite something. She’s calling it after me.’

  He even has a creased Polaroid to show her, of a sweaty-haired woman lying back on her pillows with a tired smile, and himself standing up, wearing a wide grin and a green hospital gown, holding a new baby in his arms.

  Later, after sex (forgiving, tender, urgent), while they are mid-snuggle, she mumbles to him in a sleepy and contented voice, ‘You can always call. I don’t mind if it’s late. I lie awake anyway, reading.’ But just as she falls over the rim of sleep she thinks: isn’t it odd that I
don’t even know his name? And now he’s given it to someone else’s child.

  That summer, they go on holiday together for two weeks, driving and dancing around Scotland. They laugh at each other’s jokes. Sometimes they get lost.

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ says whoever’s at the wheel. ‘We’re bound to end up somewhere in the end.’ They dance during the day among the heather and look out for hotels with ballrooms.

  She hears him whistling in the bathroom when she wakes. He gets up early to shave so that his chin will be smooth when he kisses her. While he’s doing that she chews gum and applies subtle touches of make-up. When she hears him pull the plug, she wraps the gum in its silver paper and hides it under her book. He finds her smiling sweetly, eyes closed, ready to be woken with a kiss.

  Sometimes though, at dinner, they don’t have much to say and she glances about, wondering if she would prefer to be talking to someone else; but then she looks sharply at him, wondering if he’s thinking the same thing. Given the chance, they take to the floor and glide until she is happy again.

  He moves in with her. When the first night comes when neither of them wants to dance, it feels as if something has ended. Brenda reaches for her long-neglected book. But he says, ‘I need to go to sleep now. Got an early start.’ She puts out the light, but then lies awake, wondering whether to cuddle up to him; for the first time the bed feels too hot with him in it.

  To show her adaptability she buys herself a torch for reading in bed when he wants the light out. In the winter she changes this for a lamp on a headband, so she can keep at least one hand at a time under the duvet. He laughs at her. Without speaking or looking up from her book, she brushes her icy fingers along his thigh. He stops laughing and yelps.

  Some time later, he’s calm enough to try sleeping. He turns on his side and puts his back to her, mumbling, ‘And you’ve got a cold bottom’.

  But she’s always had a cold bottom; he’s supposed to like warming it up.

  Around Christmas time he goes out a lot without her; she accuses him of dancing with someone else.

  ‘You’re paranoid,’ he says, fumbling with his black tie.

  ‘Here, let me.’ She nips at his fingers till he lets go of the strip of silk and allows her to knot it for him.

  He kisses her on the cheek, saying, ‘Don’t wait up’.

  In the week before Valentine’s Day, he disappears. It doesn’t look, at first, as if he means to stay away. His razor is left unrinsed in the bathroom; his shirts are on a hanger, waiting to be ironed; his socks are strewn across the bedroom like the droppings of a large and restless herbivore.

  When all the socks have turned quite stiff, she puts them in an old pillow-case. But the laundry basket is never empty while they are in it.

  A month later, opening the bedroom window, she extracts a corrugated sock and lobs it onto the roof of next door’s shed. Soon the pillowcase is empty.

  That night, to distract herself from saw-edged emotions which are trying to cut her in half, she browses the half-read pile of books by her bed. Every time she feels like crying she makes herself read another sentence.

  One evening, when she can think about signing up for contemporary dance classes without weeping, he knocks on her door.

  ‘I’ve got my dancing shoes on,’ he wheedles through the lock.

  Brenda says nothing. At last he goes away.

  The next evening she is tensed for his return. Tap, tap, tap. He calls to her through the keyhole, ‘Let me in’.

  She turns out the light and says nothing, even though she wants to yell at him. Or weep and open the door.

  On Saturday he comes round at midnight, drunk.

  ‘Go away!’ she shouts.

  All is quiet. Brenda wonders if he is preparing to climb the drainpipe and try to get in at the window. She stays sitting up in bed for some time, straining to hear. But there is nothing.

  The summer comes and the evenings are so light and so sad. She reads and reads and reads. How glad she is to have the big cool quiet bed to herself. But her feet twitch and, having turned out the light, she often hears music coming from the garden of a house close by, a deep familiar voice, and twirls of carefree laughter.

  These sounds are just loud enough to keep her from falling asleep.

  Invitation

  When she hears she is going to die soon, mother decides to hold a party.

  ‘I’ll have it in hospital if need be,’ she says, worried about delay. ‘Let them come before I start to smell bad.’

  She calls it ‘ ...an opportunity for some last precious hours of intimacy and pleasure.’

  I foresee a lot of awkwardness and a shortage of chairs.

  The hospital on a Sunday. Extended visiting hours. In the centre of the main hall is a café with round tables at which people sit on black and steel chairs, under a glass dome; simulated al fresco, no umbrellas necessary. People are eddying in and out of an open-fronted shop which sells a little bit of everything: gifts, newspapers, cuddly toys, sandwiches.

  In here are people quietly queuing: buying flowers, tissues, sweets and magazines. There is a comforting aroma of coffee; an espresso machine clears its throat. From the main hall comes an almost industrial hum of human voices. The shop till chirps as if it lives in a permanent electronic springtime.

  I buy some books of first class stamps, cross the flow of people in the hall and go right up to the glass wall on the far side. From here I can look down into an atrium, where tall plants grow, and water runs over black and grey pebbles and around fallen logs. There are no seats and no people in there. No animals or birds that I can see. Probably no sound either.

  There is a mild ‘splat’ behind me and people stop talking. I look round to see a little girl in a blue coat face down on the floor, still holding on to the hand of a good-looking man in a dark blue suit. People are holding their breath, waiting to see if she will cry. She opens her mouth but no sound comes. The man pulls her up quickly by the hand, right up off the floor, and as her feet touch down, she suddenly laughs. Relieved voices rise up again and close over the moment.

  I take mother the stamps and a carrier bag full of things: a framed photo of me newly aged ten on the bike she had bought for my birthday; two clean nighties and two sets of underwear; a small new tube of toothpaste.

  Mother is sitting up in bed surrounded by a choppy sea of lilac invitations. She hasn’t looked better since her operation: her white hair is washed and softly combed around her face, the intravenous drip has gone, though her left wrist and forearm are still wrapped in crêpe bandage; she’s wearing her own nightie. The pillowcases and the turned-back sheet are smooth and fresh.

  I’d asked her earlier if she wanted to choose her own cards from a catalogue. They say there is a greetings card for every occasion, but not this one. I know; I’ve looked. You could say there’s a gap in the market, but I don’t imagine it’s very big. If there had been a choice, I thought mother would have gone for something bright, like a frantic bear on a unicycle maybe, holding the strings of some coloured balloons as if they were helping him stay upright. Inside, the card would have read: ‘The truth is unBEARable but let’s not GRIZZLE about it… ’. But mother surprised me by saying she didn’t want anything fancy. She’d asked me to go to a printer’s and order plain lilac. She’d given me the words she wanted to be set in silver type: ‘Please come’ and the address of the hospital.

  Staff Nurse Susan has followed me into the room: ‘Your mother had a bath today,’ she says, beaming at me, as if she’s really proud of my mother, or herself, or, somehow, of me. ‘While her drip’s out, it seemed like a good idea. Actually,’ she says, lowering her voice, ‘we need to talk about your mother’s “party”.’ She puts the words into inverted commas with her fingers. ‘It’s not as straightforward as she thinks. Sister says there may be a Health and Safety issue. Besides, we may need this room, and she could probably go back on the ward for a while.’

  Mother, who is far from deaf, ignore
s her. ‘I think I’ve remembered everyone,’ she says. ‘But if you think of anyone you’d like to invite, do say. Would you do the envelopes?’ I move to her side and lean over to kiss her. As I put my hand on her shoulder, I am conscious of having to do it lightly. ‘Yes, mother,’ I say. She smells of her own perfume again: Ultraviolet.

  She looks at me then properly for the first time since I entered the room; her eyes are anxious. ‘Daniel,’ she says, gripping my hand.

  ‘It’s all right,’ I say. I’m all right is what I mean.

  ‘Is it?’ she asks, looking doubtful. ‘I do so want everyone to be here; and for everyone to have a good time.’

  ‘The staff nurse seems to think there may be a problem,’ I say. The staff nurse nods.

  My mother shakes her head and hands me a list of names. She lies back on the pillows and pushes out a long breath. She’s always had this way of holding herself tense and then letting go with a sigh. ‘They just need addressing,’ she says, closing her eyes. ‘I’ve signed all the cards, and put the names on the envelopes.’

  I look helplessly at the staff nurse and shrug. Staff Nurse Susan gives me her smallest smile and says, in another stage whisper, ‘See if you can get her to drink something. We need to keep her fluids up.’ She leaves us. I cannot help staring at the end of the bed, left vacant.

  On that spot the Consultant stood when he explained to me and to my mother that they had opened her abdomen, taken a look, and sewn her up again, having realised that her cancer was, as they had feared all along, inoperable. Behind the Consultant had been the Senior House Officer, the House Officer and a medical student. The Consultant wore a tweedy suit, his tie swept back over his shoulder as if blown by the wind; the SHO’s white coat was clean; it still bore creases where it had been folded and he had three different-coloured pens in his top pocket; the lapels of the HO’s coat were curling a little. The white coat worn by the student, a straggly blonde with bags under her eyes, was rumpled and soft with use. Her every sagging pocket bulged with paraphernalia: notebooks, a dictionary, pens and spare pens. I could see the outline of a banana. She looked utterly stricken by the news.