Pumping Up Napoleon

by Maria Donovan

  My mother had taken a handful of sheet and gripped it tightly. I offered her my hand and she took it but she didn’t squeeze. I wanted to tell her she could squeeze as hard as she liked.

  There are twenty-two names on the list.

  ‘You won’t be able to take calls on your mobile,’ I tell mother. She’s asked me to add her mobile number to the cards. ‘You can’t….’

  ‘I know. It’s switched off.’ Even now, she’s too impatient to wait for me to finish speaking.

  ‘You’re like a pot on the boil,’ my father would have said. ‘Your lid’s always rattling.’

  When I was a child she had seemed unable to contain her energy. ‘Full of herself,’ my father had called it.

  So full of herself she could burst. My friends thought she was great. The only time she slowed down was when she was ill. Then she turned herself down very low, until she was like a gas burner barely alight. But she’d always been able to turn it up again when she got better.

  ‘Are you drinking enough?’ I ask her.

  ‘I’m sipping,’ she says.

  On the bedside cabinet is her beaker, half-full of water, with a stripey straw leaning up in it. The flowers I brought yesterday are still fresh.

  ‘When I can’t sit up any more,’ my mother says, ‘I’d like you to bring me some flowers that droop, so that I can see them from the horizontal. And nothing from the hospital shop. I’d rather have wild flowers: borage or some buttercups. A handful of parsley from the garden if you like. I wouldn’t mind a little pot of basil. I could eat that if I was hungry. Or pinch its leaves.’

  She’d been worried that as she got older she’d look like her mother. ‘I don’t want to end up skinny and round-shouldered, with a pot belly.’ She’d always been so slim. As her stomach swelled, she ate less. It seemed a natural reaction at the time.

  I shuffle the envelopes. Many of the names I don’t know. Some of them I remember as men I’d once called Uncle. What would I call them now? Some of the names are new: she can’t stop making friends. Always talking to strangers.

  ‘What do you want to speak to them for?’ my father would say. ‘Why?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ She seemed perplexed by the question. ‘How do I know? I haven’t found out yet.’

  ‘Is it OK if I take some blood?’ asks the medical student. She doesn’t wear a name badge.

  ‘You don’t need to ask me, dear,’ says mother, holding out her arm.

  The medical student sits beside the bed and taps mother’s arm to find a vein.

  With her free hand mother rummages in her bag. She holds out her mobile to me and says, ‘I know you hate them, but will you take this and deal with any calls?’

  I say, ‘Of course I will’.

  ‘Give me those invitations now a minute,’ she says. I put them on the bed and she works through them until she finds the one she wants. She holds it out to the medical student. ‘Here you are, dear,’ she says. ‘I hope you’ll come to my party.’

  ‘Oh!’ says the medical student, looking from her to me. ‘Thank you. Cheers. Yeah; I hope I can.’

  ‘Some friend of yours again, no doubt,’ dad used to say to mum when the phone rang. ‘You and your friends. How come you’re so nice to everybody else and not to me? You used to be nice to me.’

  I remember mum laughing once and saying she was still nice to him, or would be if he’d only stop complaining.

  Another time she said, ‘But I see you all the time’.

  Later: ‘Because you keep talking’.

  And finally: ‘I don’t love you. I don’t love you. I don’t love you.’

  There are some other names I recognise: old friends of mine. The ones who liked to say, ‘Your mum’s the best.’ Why did she want them there? I hadn’t seen them for years.

  They didn’t know what she was really like. Oh, yes she was fun when she wanted to be, but other times, she’d say, ‘Don’t talk to me. Sshh. You can’t talk to me now. Stop talking; I’m trying to think.’ And she’d be beating her head and groaning, literally ‘cudgelling her brains’ to get out some idea she had in there, to let it be born. She cared more about that than about me. The old familiar resentment curdles in my stomach.

  Later she’d come and sit with me on the sofa and stroke my hair and say, ‘I do love you; sorry I’m a grump. What do you want for tea?’ But I didn’t always let her off easy.

  By the time she opens her eyes I have been through her address book.

  ‘Why them?’ I say, pointing at two envelopes. ‘I don’t even know where they live.’

  ‘Who?’ I’m sure she’s only pretending to be unable to see.

  ‘These are people from way back. Friends I had when I was ten.’

  ‘You can find their addresses.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I don’t know them any more.’

  And then she cries. ‘I’m so afraid,’ she says. I put my arms around her and let her weep. I let her get my good suit wet. ‘Danny,’ she says. ‘Danny.’

  Her mantra has always been: ‘I want you to be happy; I don’t care what you do as long as you’re happy.’ I thought it meant she couldn’t be bothered to notice what I cared about.

  But now she says: ‘I don’t want you to be alone. Promise me you’ll look on Friends Reunited.’

  I say I will.

  Staff Nurse Susan pops her head out of the office as I go past.

  ‘She seems to have perked up quite a bit,’ she says. ‘Who knows how long it will be?’ She eyes the invitations in my hand. ‘Only I don’t think your mother’s quite got the right idea about hospital visiting.’

  ‘She’s going to die soon,’ I say. ‘Surely she can do what she likes.’

  Staff Nurse Susan is firm. She wants me to leave the envelopes with her until she’s had a chance to talk to Sister again.

  ‘Not necessary,’ I say. ‘I’ll put them in the car.’

  But in the car the envelopes slide across the seat. If I drive some will slip to the floor and get dirty. I can see that the sweat of my thumbprint has already puckered the paper of what used to be the top envelope.

  Leaving two envelopes behind, I get out of the car and walk slowly back. It is starting to rain and I put the sheaf of lilac under the jacket of my suit to keep the cards dry.

  The automatic doors jerk open. Just inside the entrance is the red post-box. Into its mouth I push the invitations. I wait to hear them fall.

  Transit of Moira

  At ten-past-midnight by the Tokyo clock, Gavin started floating down the service corridor. Most of the passengers were Japanese and would be strapped to their bunks by now; the only people he expected to be awake were a contingent from the West Country of England, playing endless games of gin rummy in the recreation pod. It seemed like a safe time to go clean the glass in the Bubble Observatory.

  He was therefore intensely annoyed to catch sight of a pair of beige open-toed sandals of the kind old ladies wear – the ones with the patterns of little holes punched in the leather – floating ahead of him, kicking a little up and down as if their owner thought she was swimming. Further up were light-brown nylons, the flapping edges of a petticoat and an orange-and-yellow flower-print dress – an ensemble Gavin mentally labelled ‘hideous’. She wasn’t supposed to be in here. This corridor was for crew only. She wasn’t even suitably dressed for zero gravity! Gavin didn’t say anything as he hauled past her, just turned and glared.

  She was a silver-haired old lady with a determined but contented look on her face and all she did was nod and smile at him, which annoyed Gavin even more. When he got to the Bubble Observatory, well ahead of her, he thought about bolting the door behind him, but it was against regulations. Suppose she couldn’t manage to get back the way she’d come? He couldn’t really leave her floating there all night, like some over-fed, expiring goldfish.

  Gavin rose to the top of the Bubble and began wiping the glass with his specially-impregnated rags; gone were the d
ays when he could dream of space travel scented by leather seats and mood perfume. As usual, the glass was covered in finger marks and, as usual, Gavin wondered why people couldn’t just hold on to the handles that were put there for the purpose. How many more times would he have to wipe the breath and snot and sweat of the world’s most boring passengers off this glass before he could retire? He could count the days, but unfortunately there were still three thousand and twenty-four to go (Gavin was younger than he looked). By then, as he well knew, if he spent all his time in weightlessness, his wasted body would be useless back on Earth. He’d be condemned to spend the rest of his years in space or on the Moon, breathing canned air. But what did it matter? Wherever he went, he was sure to end up surrounded by scuffed plastic.

  Earth; people always said the same things about it: ‘It’s so beautiful; it’s so blue; it looks just like a marble’. When he looked down at it, he always reminded himself that, though it did look peaceful from up here, really it was as busy as hell and full of tortures. You knew that once you stepped off the ferry you’d be put in line, processed, stamped, herded, sent here and there, told where you could stop and where you couldn’t. He was glad to be up here, on the out-trip, going lunar.

  ‘I always said I’d see the Moon before I die.’ The voice at Gavin’s elbow startled him.

  She bobbed gently, using, he noted at once, the appropriate handles. This ought to have soothed him, but the fact that she was smiling, evidently quite at peace with herself and the Universe, irritated Gavin so much he broke the company code and retorted: ‘It’s not all it’s cracked up to be, you know’.

  ‘No?’ she said. ‘It looks good from here.’

  They were long past the Neutral Point and accelerating towards the Moon, though you couldn’t tell how fast the ship was going. Behind them the Earth had dwindled to a bright blue disk; the lunar sphere hung before them, pockmarked, shadowed and mysteriously empty, apart from the sprinkle of red and white lights on the Sea of Tranquillity. Stubbornly, Gavin persisted. ‘Neil Armstrong’s footprint,’ he said. ‘I ask you. How does anybody know for sure that’s Neil Armstrong’s footprint?’

  ‘Have you seen it?’ said the old lady. ‘I’m Moira, by the way.’

  Gavin didn’t give his name and he even put his hand over his name badge, as if he were putting hand on heart. He said, ‘I’ve never seen it and I don’t want to. You might as well look at my footprint in the dust.’

  ‘You’re probably right,’ said Moira. ‘Or mine. Perhaps I’d like to see mine.’

  ‘The Moon is full of footprints. It’s not like you think it’s going to be.’

  ‘How do you know what I think?’ said Moira, her head on one side as if she really did have a mild interest in his answer.

  ‘You’ll see. It’s all canned music and souvenirs. You can’t just wander about. They make you see things whether you want to or not.’

  ‘Is that so bad?’ said Moira.

  ‘It is for some people,’ muttered Gavin sulkily. ‘Anyway, I got cleaning to do. And,’ he added as a clincher, ‘I’m not supposed to talk to you passengers.’

  Without asking, she took a cloth from his pack and began making circular motions on the glass. ‘Look at that,’ said Moira. ‘My face among the stars.’ When she said it, Gavin looked at his own reflection, something he usually avoided doing as much as possible. He was wearing the expression of a man with a bitter taste in his mouth.

  Moira didn’t speak again for some time. She rubbed at the glass with her borrowed cloth and looked at the lights in the dark. ‘Have you ever seen a shooting star?’ she said.

  Gavin couldn’t resist scoffing: ‘Not up here,’ he said. ‘And not down there.’ He pointed at the Moon. ‘No atmosphere!’ In the weak lunar orbit things either disappeared off into space or kept going round and round, eventually falling onto the surface, where they stayed, because no one would go and pick them up.

  He remembered his first trip, leaving home, when it had all seemed like a big adventure, as well as something to do until a better job came along. How he’d loved to see those bright streaks of burning rubbish flare and fizzle out as they tried to touch the Earth. But now, he knew it was just another kind of pollution. Soon the rest of the Solar System would be polluted too, and eventually the Galaxy and then the Universe…

  A flash of diamond-bright sparks flew past the window, ice crystals catching the light of the sun. ‘Oh!’ exclaimed Moira. ‘How lovely!’

  ‘Urine,’ said Gavin. ‘It’s the voiding hour.’

  ‘Isn’t it marvellous,’ said Moira, shaking her head, ‘how even your own waste products can look wonderful in space?’

  Gavin couldn’t bear it; he gritted his teeth and rubbed harder, as if he might rub out the stars, while Moira made dreamy circles with her cloth. ‘I’ve always wanted to be an astronaut,’ she said.

  ‘It’s nothing special,’ said Gavin. ‘These days everyone’s an astronaut.’

  Moira was in the observatory often after that, or bouncing off the walls of the service corridor, poking into spaces no passenger should know about. Though Gavin saw her, he always hid until she’d gone away. So he couldn’t tell the Captain anything much about her when she went missing.

  They had docked in the orbit of the Moon by then, and the passengers had all disembarked. Moira’s absence wasn’t noticed until the whole contingent went through immigration and the numbers didn’t add up. A search was made of the area, all the restrooms were checked, and every cupboard in the transit shuttle was opened. There was no sign of Moira.

  Gavin and the rest of the ferry crew were put on alert and ordered to check every locked and unlocked space on board the ship and every item of inventory for clues. Then Gavin was summoned to the Captain’s quarters. ‘You were seen talking to her in the Observatory,’ he said. ‘We have it on visual. What were you talking about?’

  ‘Nothing much,’ said Gavin.

  ‘What we’re after,’ said the Captain, ‘is some clue as to her state of mind. We’re not trying to apportion blame.’

  Not yet, thought Gavin. Blame will surely follow.

  ‘How did she seem to you?’ said the Captain.

  Gavin tried to remember. She had smiled a lot – and she said she wanted to see the Moon before she died.

  ‘Captain!’ A voice in the air interrupted Gavin’s thoughts before he uttered them. ‘One of our space suits is missing.’

  At first no one believed an old lady like that would know how to operate an airlock or even want to try. The space suit was fitted with a standard locator device, but it had been turned off. There was a whisper among the crew that murder had been done, and some of them looked sideways at Gavin. He didn’t mind: it would encourage them to leave him alone.

  Then the visuals for that area were checked again and the whole crew saw Moira standing in the airlock and waving goodbye. She even blew a kiss as she stepped out backwards into space.

  That night, with a full set of new passengers safely on board, the story was officially put to rest. It seemed Moira had no relatives on Earth to inform and so the Captain would be spared the difficulty of writing any letters of regret.

  Half-past-one by the Tokyo clock. The ferry left the Moon’s orbit and Gavin went back to polishing the Bubble Observatory. It was quiet; just how he liked it. But the smell of the cleaning rags caught the back of his throat. Angrily, he rubbed harder.

  Then his heart lurched as a star-shaped object crossed the face of the Moon. He knew at once what it must be: Moira in her white suit, spreading her arms and legs to the Sun.

  Pressing his fingers to the glass, Gavin saw himself – a ghastly open-mouthed reflection superimposed on the face of the receding Moon – and it scared him. But what made him truly uneasy was the suspicion that, if he had been able to get up close, he would have seen that Moira was still smiling.

  An Intergalactic Amnesiac in Search of an Identity

  The voice says, ‘Open your eyes’.

  My mind tu
gs at my eyelids but nothing happens. Then a finger touches my eyeball and peels back the lid. Light stabs me in the brain; I see, as if through water, a white shape floating.

  The details of the picture organise themselves and the form comes into focus. It has long hair and its teeth are bared. Instinctively I bring my legs up and push off from the bed with my arms; but instead of executing with ease the lazy back somersault that would me take me to the top corner of the room, well above this creature who wants to bite me, I can hardly raise my legs. Out of breath with the effort of trying to move, I lie helpless, as the creature bends over me.

  ‘Don’t be afraid,’ it says. ‘I’m a doctor. My name is Dr Margaret McKinnon.’

  Over her shoulder I can see off into space: it is beige, except for a long interruption where heads and torsos float by in both directions.

  ‘What’s your name?’ says the doctor.

  ‘I’m….’ That’s as far as I get. I don’t know what to say next.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ she says. ‘We’ll try to help you remember.’

  ‘Look within yourself,’ she says. ‘Do you see anything? Anything at all?’

  I look, but there is nothing.

  ‘I’d like you to try this,’ she says, holding open a black velvet bag. ‘I’d like you to put your hand inside and pick out one marble.’ She bares her teeth again, to encourage me.

  ‘What I want is for you to get better,’ she says. ‘The bump on your head is healing nicely, but we need to find out, if we can, where you belong.’

  She has asked me a lot of questions about:

  my name

  my age

  where I live (alone or with others)

  the name of the current leader of this country

  the circumstances in which I received my injury

  my ability to remember anything.

  All is dark. I slide my hand inside the black velvet bag; my fingers touch a heap of rounded, clinking objects, cold and hard. Closing on one, I pull it out into the light. It is a sphere, almost transparent, with a wing of white inside it.