by Dawn French
‘In that moment, all I wanted was for you to find out that’s where I hung myself. On “our” tree. Because of you, you, you. So, I reached for the noose and pulled it towards my head. Just as it was slipping over my ears, I lost my footing on the wretched moss and tumbled unceremoniously, arse over tit, on to the forest floor. My back scraped down the bark of the big old dead log and I was scratched to hell. Then the crying turned into sobbing. Completely involuntary. I just felt like such a useless dickhead, I couldn’t even off myself well. Couldn’t do decent dying, I felt utterly bereft.
‘Then, then something happened. Something amazing. I picked up my torch to look at the log that had attacked my back so badly, and d’you know what I saw? Fresh shoots, Silv. In some big storm, this old rotten tree had fallen. But in its new, horizontal position, it had come back to life. It wasn’t finished yet, Silv, it had more living to do, that dead old wood. More to give. Yes. It was so clear to me. However battered by our storm, however uprooted I was, I didn’t have to lie down and accept that I was felled. I still had strength, I still had sap, and more importantly Silv, and what you will never understand the joy of, I had my saplings to shelter and raise. Of course I did. Of course. I left the noose hanging there and I walked away from that huge tree where only minutes before I had thought I would finish.
‘I ran in the darkness back to my car. As I was climbing over the stile next to the gate, I heard a weird flapping noise. With the help of my trusty torch, I could see it was a public notice announcing the sale of Collicott Fields. I read on. It included the beech wood I’d been in, Foy Wood. I didn’t know it even had a name! Surrounded by twenty acres of field. Foy Wood, Silv. That’s my wood now. I bought it the following week. The down payment was money I nicked from Ma’s secret cupboard. Not so secret after all! He he! She counts it every week, and doesn’t even know it’s gone!
‘Yes, that’s my wood and I’ve taken good care of it Silv. And while you’re in here, stuck in that bed and stuck in your head, I’m going to tell you all about it, and that way, I’m going to take you there. You may be a cruel old cunt, but everyone is entitled to beauty. And that’s what you shall have. The beauty might just save you.’
Five
Tia
Friday 10am
‘Hello Mrs Shit! Is me at last – Tia!’
Sutiyah Setyawati bumfles noisily into Suite 5, proudly carting a brace of plastic bags with her. She has brought gifts for her employer Mrs Shute. In one bag, there are three Tupperware clipboxes containing three different dishes that she knows Mrs Shute especially loves. She immediately unpacks them and spreads them on the table which swings across the bottom of the big clinical bed.
‘I have your favourite. Three favourite. I make for you in my cooker last night. Every in my family try steal! I say no, that for Mrs Shit only. For make her much well. I tell them to do big piss off, not to eat. They have many other to eat. Keep dirty fingers and toes off Mrs Shit food. This goin to make her alive again. If Mrs Shit smell my gado-gado, you think she stay dead? No thank you! She jump up and suck it off very quickly.’
Without even removing her coat, she unclips all the tiffin boxes and takes the lids off, releasing the ambrosial spicy scents into the room. The juicy vapours permeate Silvia’s tired dry air with their delicious moisture. Tia, as she’s known to all British people who can’t pronounce her full name, picks up one of the boxes piled high with delicious fried rice with chillies and anchovies and whole, shiny garlic bulbs. She positions herself near the top of the bed where Silvia’s head is slightly lollopped on one side. She places the tub under her nose.
‘Come on Mrs Shit. It smell good, yes? You wanna wake up now? I make plenty more if you do. Deal or no deal, come on. This is my special nasi goreng. For warriors. One big lady is easy for this. Will help you fighting. Come on.’
She checks no nurses are snooping through the window, then she dips her index finger into the luscious juice at the side of the dish, slips it into Silvia’s mouth, and rubs it all over her gums and teeth.
‘Is good. Is very good. Enjoy the juicy and wet. You won’t regret. The taste is gentle, hm? Not enough too spice? Just as the lady likes, I think. Who wants food in the tube? How is getting in properly? A tube with bad soup in, no pepper? No please thank you for Mrs Shit. She like hot, ow ow, nice dance on her tongue. Like a bursting she says. Not boring English soup water. Going in a nose hole. How to enjoy that? Aw look at the dry mouth lips.’
Tia replaces the tub of food on the table, and rummages about in her bag ’til she finds a small bright pink tin.
‘Here comes! I get this in Jakarta, nowhere in UK can find this, special grease made from tiger ass. Not the bad part where dirt comes through, other part higher in. On two sides, the holes make a juice come out to help the dirt get out easy. But this grease is from that bum juice very fresh, very clean, very expensive. Makes mouth lips fat and slippy. You ever see dry tiger asshole? Never! So, here. I put there for you.’
She opens the tin and spreads the balm all over Silvia’s lips and beyond. As high as her nose and as low as her chin, and ear to all-the-way-on-the-other-side ear. The lower half of Silvia’s face is now thoroughly glisteningly greased. She looks strangely mannequin-like. For luck presumably, because there’s no other earthly reason, Tia adds more grease to Silvia’s eyebrows.
‘There. No dry left now. Thank you Tia. You’re welcome Mrs Shit, have a nice day. Now, what I got next? Oh, cock tosser –’
She takes off her coat and rummages around in the bags. She flits between them like a colourful busy hummingbird, singing Indonesian ditties under her breath, swearing and laughing at little incidental personal jokes. Tia has been taught to swear by her two sons who were born and grew up in England, and who amuse themselves by cajoling her into using utterly inappropriate language. She’s not stupid, she knows they are having a laugh at her expense, but she can’t be bothered to deduce exactly why, and frankly, she doesn’t care.
She’s a busy woman. She has two sons at expensive English public schools, and an injured English husband at home. When he persuaded her to come and live with him in England fifteen years ago, he promised her father he would always look after her, in the manner to which she was accustomed. She was from a good family, her father was a textile merchant and sold beautiful cloth all around the world. The most prized silks in Jakarta. That’s what she wore. She still has some, but many of her more valuable possessions, including beautiful cloth and impressive jewellery, have been sold. When her husband injured his head, racing old bangers, he couldn’t return to work ever again. If he’d hurt himself at work, they might at least have earned some compensation but no, he was driving round and round at breakneck speed in highly dangerous cars. Nobody pays out if you do that. He’s been at home ever since.
Tia didn’t mind to begin with, she was determined to nurse him back to health. She felt sure she could do it by dint of food-love alone. Surely her hearty spicy broths would revive him, nourish him, and make him strong? Very quickly she realized that ‘husband’ wasn’t really ‘husband’ any more. He looked the same, but he definitely wasn’t the same person. He was like a tracing-paper drawing of the original husband. Fainter, wobblier, much more distant. His spirit was gone and many many heavy depressions set in. She watched him retreat into his leather lounger in front of afternoon telly, until he was indistinguishable from the chair. They were one item. He wasn’t unkind or ungrateful, he just wasn’t really there at all.
She is married to a living ghost.
That’s why the onus to earn fell on her so severely. That’s why ten years ago Silvia Shute and her family became very important. That’s why Silvia must stay alive. Silvia is almost single-handedly putting Tia’s boys through school. They are good, clever boys. They both have scholarships. But Tia still has to find the money for expensive uniforms and sports equipment.
Tia has to perform many duties for Mrs Shute that she doesn’t want to. She is a house-proud woman, it’s not that she
is shy of hard work, it’s just that some of what Mrs Shute requires her to do is extremely personal. It’s hard to respect a person when you clean their toilet and wash their pants and see their sex toys in their bedroom drawers. Are you supposed to wash those? Tia doesn’t. One of them buzzed once. It scared her. In Indonesia other people would be doing chores for Tia, but she swallows her pride and gets on with it.
Not only does she push on, she does it with massively good cheer, believing that each new day brings a new chance of happiness, new hope. That’s how she gets through.
Every morning she sits at her dressing table and makes sure she looks glamorous. She wears a lot of make-up, using bright colours on her eyelids especially. She doesn’t understand why British women look so dour so much of the time. They don’t know they’re born, why don’t they try to bring a bit of cheer into their lives? Why choose to wear black and grey when there is fuchsia and turquoise in the world? These are the vivid colours of living nature. Why choose the colours of decay and death? It doesn’t make any sense at all to Tia.
From her bright plastic bags, Tia brings out a clutch of magazines. She bought them at the garage, and although they have many different titles, they all seem to be the same, basically.
‘I bring you plenty news. I not sure where you gone, but I bet they got no news there. I’m thinking, if I was doin the dead sleeping, I would sure be thinking hey, what’s still goin on out where the world is? Someone, quick tell me! We love news, don’t we Mrs Shit? So here is …’
Tia settles down in the chair with a lapful of magazines. She is going to be here some time. She hums as she riffles through them, stopping every time she comes across a story she thinks Mrs Shute would be interested in.
‘Ah, OK, here first big one. “Jordon buying LA pad for eleven million!” Woo! She’s givin Peter Andre something to sock in the eye. But who will have kids? No one is telling us. Why not? They all lazy quim-suckers. Next big one is “I married my 28 stone stalker”. He he! Look at him! How he do the stalkin? How he follow anyone? He can’t hide in her bush, she see him pokin out there! And why she marry him anyway? Should just go out – have a drink, have a talk, have a movie. Not marry. Wanko.
‘Ah, this next one very big news. RichardanJudy. We love RichardanJudy, don’t we Mrs Shit? She say no more TV for them, but now please, they just read books. That nice. Judy sit in her big bra readin the books, and Richard makin the coffee. Aw. She say “Oh Richard, I like this book … about a man … who does a thing” and he say “Yes Judy, and I like this other book about a girl who … does a thing … another thing then the end for everyone to be happy and learn a thing.” They very clever up here in the head Mrs Shit. Very clever, cos I read a book, but no one pay me.
‘Now, next story is … oh, big one Mrs Shit, big one, Cheryl Cole is got a tattoo what look like a spider … I love Cheryl Cole, she a proper nice bollockhead …’
Six
Cat
Friday 2.30pm
‘Eh eh, yu haffi check wid de desk before you come in please. It just de rules. Nuttin personal. Syame for everyone.’
Winnie is ever so slightly barring the entrance to Silvia’s room. She wouldn’t be acting in such a brazenly obstructive manner if this visitor wasn’t quite so spiky.
‘I am a doctor, you are a nurse. Let me through please,’ says the visitor, her Irish brogue doing nothing to soften her tone.
‘Of course, soon as you sign de book, no problem.’
‘Please listen now, whilst I say it again. I am a doctor.’
‘Yes ma’am, mi know dat, but not at dis hospital.’
‘Oh, for feck’s sake …’
The visitor retreats and hurriedly, begrudgingly, signs the book at the nurses’ station, then bristles into the room, breathing heavily with frustration.
Catherine Mary Bernadette O’Brien is fighting feelings of massive inadequacy in Suite 5. Why, she wonders, do hospitals always represent such a threat to her? This should be where she is at her keenest, completely en pointe. When she was a medical student, this is exactly what she imagined for herself. The cut and thrust of the hospital front line. The white-coated, hugely respected, stethoscope-round-neck, godlike authority of the hospital doctor. It is a much more special role than hers, she knows this, but it is only during visits to hospitals that she is reminded.
Somewhere along the line, and she now can’t remember exactly when, she made the less glamorous choice to be a GP. Perhaps the choice made her. Maybe she didn’t have the medical X-factor ingredient to make the hospital doctor mark. She mentally kicks herself for thinking that, and for assuming even for one moment that she is somehow insufficient. She is quite the opposite. She is ‘The Mighty Cat’, as Silvia often calls her.
Right now, she must be the strongest she can possibly be for Silvia. This is when she is needed most, yet ironically, her professional, doctoring skills are redundant in this very specialized situation. She isn’t a coma doctor. Until three days ago, she knew very little about this area of medicine. She has internetted and blogged and googled and called informed colleagues non-stop since Silvia’s accident, and now she knows a lot more, but of course her voice is a very tiny one in this hospital.
Inaudible.
Not that ‘they’ are doing anything overtly wrong, it’s just that Cat doesn’t want to be spoken to as if she’s a mere friend of the patient. That is what she is, essentially. A friend of the patient. The patient’s best friend, actually. Best best ever friend. Which, in real terms, makes you the most important person in their life. Chosen by them. Not their bloody family, who they don’t really speak to, even, who hardly know Silvia any more. Only Cat knows Silvia, the real Silvia. She wishes she could shoo them all out of this room with their ruddy visitors’ rota, all these useless hangers-on like Ed and Jo.
Poor Silvia, having to lie there in their dreadful company, unable to resist. They all think they are exactly what she needs to wake her up! How egotistical. Cat is what Silvia needs. Didn’t she and Silvia have a special connection from the very first moment Silvia walked into her consulting room twelve years ago to get help with bouts of serious sadness? Cat is the most connected person to Silvia in the entire world – what place do these other fools think they have?
Cat is Blu-tacking to the wall a large printed photograph of the stunning rugged Connemara landscape. This is where she was born and raised, and where she and Silvia have had several remarkable holidays. Wouldn’t it be fantastic if this was the first image Silvia saw on waking? Something so evocative and so reminiscent of utter joy?
‘Remember Kylemore Abbey, Silly? Sure, I’ve never seen you openly weep like that just because of the sheer beauty of a place. And what beauty. Bloody colossus of a mountain with the perky gothic Abbey nestling in its lap. Got a lovely picture of you at the front door. Hat on. And the nuns. Benedictine bats, you said. They frightened you, Silly, I know, God love you, but you haven’t grown up with them. I love a bit of a nun, forever flitting about on the periphery of your life vision, providing the moral measure. Personally, I never did come across an evil one, although I always expected to. You hear so many stories, doncha? But no one could verify them. Evil nuns and ghosts – do they truly exist?’
The picture is up. Cat turns from her task and looks at Silvia.
Why is half of Silvia’s face covered in Vaseline? she wonders. She unzips a small cosmetic bag she has brought from Silvia’s flat. She has keys, and she knows Silvia would use these products if she could choose. She applies plenty of the Clinique toner to a cotton pad and slowly, tenderly wipes all the grease from Silvia’s face, mumbling and comforting her all the while.
‘Hey there, darlin’ one, just get this mess off you. Off your lovely face. Wipe it all off. What’re they thinking? There. Gone. Now, some proper moisturizer …’
She squirts Silvia’s expensive lotion into her hands, rubs them together and positions herself as close as she can get to her. She places them, creamy palms down, on to Silvia’s face and
starts to rub it in, carefully avoiding her eyes, mouth and so on. She is especially cautious around Silvia’s nose, where the nasogastric tube is taped in. Then she smooths out all the remaining cream. Her fingers follow the contours of Silvia’s face. It’s a face she knows so well and this very intimate touching gives her an unexpected chance to explore it even more closely. Cat relishes this rare opportunity to let her hands echo and confirm what her eyes see. She can’t remember when she last touched Silvia’s face. And until you touch, you can’t know how it really feels.
Now, and only now, she knows that Silvia’s prominent but pleasing nose has very fine skin on it. Skin you wouldn’t want to be too rough with, lest it split like wet crêpe paper. A fine, large defiant nose, with such a delicate covering. And Silvia’s intrepid forehead which has dared a wrinkle to blemish it. Very few wrinkles have thus far had the courage. Freckles, however, are not so lily-livered, they operate in squadrons and are unafraid to muster in such public open spaces as Silvia’s exceptionally wide and high forehead. Alongside her phenomenally red colouring, Silvia has had to accept that freckles will forever be her constant companions. Cat knows that in her capacity as an extreme control freak, Silvia wishes she could properly designate the precise locations of the freckles. For instance, she would prefer a cute spattering of them across her nose, rather than the unsightly enclave that have herded together just above her eyebrows.