‘Is Sean home?’ said Fern to me.
‘I don’t know,’ I said. I ruffled the dog’s chest.
‘Let’s go and see.’
Perhaps with some utilitarian or even Austenian idea of joining our families, Fern had begun to encourage me to an interest in her brother John. This did not extend to encouragement of him – if he appeared while we were playing or lying on her bed she would rise up and drive him away with shrieks and blows. But she told me that he liked me, and teased me about him as though I had admitted to liking him back. She did not seem to be listening to my pleas that I was not interested in him. It was something she had cooked up, and she was intent upon it.
‘Guess what,’ said Fern on the phone one evening.
‘What.’ I had my back against the study door, the phone cord stretched to its length. One of my sisters was demanding her turn on the phone. And our mother was calling us for dinner.
‘John wants to take you to his formal.’
‘You’re joking.’
‘I’m not.’ Fern laughed with delight. ‘He’s going to ask you tonight! He’s going to ring!’
‘But I can’t! I’m too young!’
‘I can’t! I’m too young!’ She always made her voice high when she was imitating me.
John did ring that night but I had gone to bed straight after dinner and I was pretending to be asleep. I tried not to think of tomorrow, when he might ring again. I hoped that I might be so hard to catch on the phone that eventually he would ask someone else.
John arrived at our house after dinner the next day, when I was in my room putting my sandshoes on, with the dog waiting, shifting and whining, at my door. I was sitting on the bed. I was wearing one of my father’s old t-shirts. It’s Time. My mother called me, and I heard John come in and start up the stairs. I could not have him in my room – I jumped to my feet and met him halfway down.
This was ridiculous. He was shaming himself by pursuing me like this. I was – I found myself thinking half his age – in fact I was three years younger than he was. Fourteen to his seventeen. The numbers could not match unless the girl, who must always be younger, was advanced. Like Fern. But I did not even own a pair of high heels. I had short hair, style-less as a boy’s, and I was almost completely flat-chested. I walked my dog and looked after the neighbours’ animals. John was making a fool of both of us.
‘Come for a walk?’ he said, grinning up the stairs at me.
‘I was just going for one,’ I said.
He held out his hand to me and I ignored it, pushing past him, the dog knocking him against the wall in its rush for the front door. Claws on the wooden steps and it was out into the evening light, barking for me.
I tried to be rude to him – I had no choice, in fact, and could neither look at him nor let him anywhere near me – but was finally not able to say no. He was going to get a limousine to take us to the club in the city where the formal was being held. I would have to get a dress from somewhere. I chose where we walked, made bossy by misery, and led him back to his house, where Fern was watching TV. I could see her through the front window, slumped on a beanbag.
‘Tell her to come out,’ I said, and leant away as he tried to kiss me.
I told my mother that John had invited me to his formal, hoping that she might forbid me to go, but she was brightly excited for me. What a triumph! A formal before I had even reached my senior years. She said she would take me to buy a dress, which showed real optimism. I could not say no to that either, but I could ruin it. I wept and raged in shop after shop until my mother agreed that we would have to find something for me to wear at home.
Picture me on the slippery seat of the limousine, letting John cover my hand with his. I am wearing a dress that Fern and I took from the dress-ups room. It is black, made of something intensely, expensively synthetic. It is clearly from the 1970s, hated decade. It is pleated. It has a belt but I cannot draw any attention to my bony hips and so I have chosen not to wear it. It hangs on my body like a nightie. I am wearing my mother’s black glossy high heels. I have insisted, because it is fashionable among girls at our school, on wearing a little black hat with a black net to cover my face. I’ve since learnt that this is called a fascinator.
I arrive and what I suspected is instantly clear – that John is one of the least popular boys at his school. He leads me to a table of boys with glasses, skinny necks, untended acne. Two have white tuxedoes. They fail to be properly ashamed of this and shout and crow when we approach, and one of them calls John a ‘cradle-snatcher’.
The night does not pass quickly. I go to the toilet many times. I wait in the corridor near the toilets. There are speeches, although John is not mentioned. The formal comes to an end and John and his friends are going to the party that is always thrown afterwards. I find a phone and ring my mother and ask her to come and get me, and she says that it would be rude to leave now and I must go to the party with him.
We walked home in the end, with the sun just beginning to take the bruise of night out of the sky. There were no cars or people and so we walked on the road, as far apart as possible. We didn’t speak of the skirmish that had taken place in the rumpus room at the party, although in my body was still the memory of myself kicking like a trapped cat. We reached the Lawrences’ house first, and John turned up his steep driveway without looking at me or saying anything.
My feet were not sore when I got to my house, just as the sun began pouring over the trees. The road, where the cars drove, was free of cracks and twigs and stones, and it was cool and comfortable on my bare feet. The dog was pleased to see me.
I saw less of Fern after this. I could not go to her house anymore and my own house bored me, always people, always bright noise and nowhere silent. The goat had died and the pen it had shared with Beckworth the rabbit had grass growing over the rutted ground. Only the dog, barking in a whisper now, and the rickety, rusty cats, tottering around my legs as I scraped the food out of the can. I spent a little time sitting on the back steps of the Wilsons’ house, listening to the silvereyes twittering and peeping in the bushes.
Eventually Fern and Sean made themselves a couple and I suppose that was the end of it. I lost my place in our friendship. I was the little sister of Fern’s boyfriend and so it was as though I was Fern’s little sister too. I don’t blame her for this. Choices have to be made. She had ascended into a different world, and she had tried to take me with her by forcing me into the arms of her own brother. It would be years before I could properly contemplate the horrible copy John and I made of Sean and Fern, like a suburban musical made out of a Hollywood movie. Me in my grotesque dress. Him mistaking his loneliness for desire.
There was star jasmine growing around the pool at Fern’s house and if I smell its nutmeg scent anywhere I am reminded of her. It is the smell of quiet. Peace, for me, and privacy, a kind of safety, although I don’t know what it meant for her. Some time ago I was standing and looking at another swimming pool and I understood that it had not been Anna who Dr Lawrence and John had been having sex with. It had not been Anna’s job.
CHEMOTHERAPY BAY
ELIZABETH looked up from her screen just as Martin came down the corridor. He walked slowly now, not exactly limping, but dragging himself along. He had the keys to his father’s car in his hand.
She stood up, leaning over her desk. ‘Martin,’ she called.
He stopped in the doorway of her office, gasping slightly. ‘Couldn’t remember which one was yours.’
They both looked around the room, as if for identifying marks. There were none – Elizabeth shared the office, and never left anything of her own behind.
‘What are you up to?’ she said.
‘I thought you might want to have lunch.’ He jangled the keys.
‘Oh –’ Elizabeth paused. ‘I said I’d meet Ross.’
There was another pause. Martin jangled the keys again.
‘He won’t mind,’ said Elizabeth.
Ross was sitting a
t a table in the sun, reading a book. He stood up and shook hands with Martin, who nodded but didn’t say anything.
‘Do you think we could – Martin wants to – do you mind if we sit in the shade?’ said Elizabeth, making a foolish gesture with both her hands.
‘Sure.’ Ross put the book under his arm. He looked immensely healthy next to Martin, whose skin seemed faded, second-hand. They made their way to the back of the courtyard, which was covered. They could still see the harbour. It was cold, but out there was the glittering sun.
Martin ordered octopus, and after that did not speak. The octopus arrived, a purplish tangle of rubbery orchids. He used his knife and fork as though he was still learning, making the tines scrape on the plate, holding the knife in a fist.
Elizabeth and Ross, eating soup, were silent at first, but eventually began desperately to talk. It didn’t work. The words were familiar but something about their pitch and the arrangement of them was wrong. Instead of their own language they spoke a caféspeak that was totally foreign to them; they talked about celebrities and the food in loud, unpleasant voices. Occasionally they addressed Martin, who would nod or shake his head. He wore reflective sunglasses so that Elizabeth and Ross could see themselves in tortured shapes as they ate.
In the distance the water was rocking the sunlight, armfuls of stars that hurt the eyes.
By the time they had finished the last cardboard-tasting mouthful of chamomile tea Elizabeth was slightly hysterical. When she stood she nearly fell, trying to extricate her cold, stiff legs from the stainless steel of her chair without disturbing the people sitting behind her. She followed Ross inside to pay the bill, unable to look at Martin. She knew he would wait for her.
‘Sorry about that,’ said Elizabeth as Ross turned away from the counter, pushing his wallet into his back pocket.
He shrugged.
‘He’s usually nicer than that.’
‘He’s okay,’ said Ross, and kissed her. ‘I’ll see you tonight.’
Martin was standing outside now, near the water, beyond the roped-off expanse of chairs and tables. A bitter breeze raced brightly across the water. Light jumped against his sunglasses.
Martin took her arm as they walked to his car. He needed to. He was actually leaning on her, and walking as slowly as if his feet were chained together, a prisoner’s shuffle. He pressed against her as a group of cheerful people passed them, lowering his head, using her as shelter.
They drove up through the city without speaking. Elizabeth gathered herself up for the leap out of the car on Broadway, but Martin did not stop there, turning the corner and parking in the lane behind Elizabeth’s office.
He switched the engine off, reached across the gearbox and took her hand. She forced herself to keep still. His fingers felt like the struts of an umbrella.
‘I’ve been thinking about my funeral,’ he said, and Elizabeth, involuntarily, tried to pull her hand away. His fingers became harder.
‘I can’t help it,’ he went on, ‘I bet you’ve been thinking about it. You’re going to be there, after all. And don’t say you might die first.’
Elizabeth blinked, and smiled slightly. ‘Have people been saying that?’
‘You wouldn’t believe how many. My fucking grandmother said it!’
‘She’s pretty old,’ said Elizabeth.
Martin laughed. ‘True. True. She might go first.’
Elizabeth looked out the car window. A man in a shirt and tie took a last drag of his cigarette and, catching Elizabeth’s eye, nodded. Elizabeth looked back at Martin. ‘I just don’t know what to say. I can’t imagine you dead.’
‘Me neither,’ said Martin.
She kissed him before she got out of the car. His breath was starting to smell like the hospital; his kiss was a cold, chemical little offering, like a mollusc after the tide has gone out.
Elizabeth leant over Ross’s body, feeling their skin brush together, and picked up the phone. It was Martin.
‘Where are you?’ said Elizabeth, sitting back against the wall. Ross turned over.
Martin’s voice was thin, flattened. ‘In the hospital. Intensive care. Hang on,’ she could hear his voice through his hand over the phone, ‘I had two at four o’clock.’ His voice came back clear, ‘They keep trying to give me Panadol. For cancer!’
‘What happened?’ said Elizabeth. She let her free hand drop on to Ross’s back.
‘My lungs collapsed. You know how I couldn’t breathe? I had all this fluid in the sac thing around my lungs. It was squashing them.’
‘Jesus.’
‘I feel okay. I had a blood transfusion too, which is great. You feel all – unpoisoned.’
‘What now?’
‘I’ve got to stay here. Well, they’re going to take me up to Oncology, and I have to start the full-on chemotherapy.’
He talked and talked and Elizabeth tried to relax, her bare back against the cold wall. Ross slept. There were sparrows in the plane tree outside the window, hopping from leaf to leaf, scraping and chirping. Elizabeth agreed to go into the hospital after work. The seven am light was cool, and faintly blue.
The reception area of the hospital was cavernous, its walls made of a crumbly, chocolate-coloured brick. It was full of people, mostly visitors who clutched bags and flowers and even balloons. Patients moved among them like shades: a pyjamaed man pushing his drip, step by agonising step, towards the doors, as though slowly making a break for it; a short, grey-faced woman who sat on a plastic bench in her nightie, watching the to-and-fro; a hideously pimpled teenage boy lying flat on a trolley just outside the doors, smoking. His girlfriend stood beside him, turning the packet of cigarettes in her bony hands, over and over.
Elizabeth caught the lift up to Oncology with a group of anxiously smiling people, carefully arranging their faces in get-well expressions. Shutting her eyes for a second, she realised she was doing it too.
She stepped out of the lift and followed the arrow down a shiny lino corridor, past an open area with fat, vinyl-covered chairs and a sign that said Chemotherapy Bay, until she reached the heart of the floor where the nurses sat. They were laughing about something as Elizabeth approached.
‘Excuse me?’
They all turned to look at her, faces creased with laughter and tiredness.
‘I’m looking for Martin Kellner? He came in this morning.’
A nurse with apricot-coloured hair directed her towards Room Seven, three doors up on the right. Elizabeth strode up the corridor and then stopped. She had come so quickly that she had not allowed herself time to think.
She stood at the entrance to the ward. Martin was in a bed by the window, looking out. He was wearing headphones. One hand moved idly over the surface of his phone. From the westerly windows behind Elizabeth, the late-afternoon light poured and filtered and flooded. Her back felt warm. The mirrored buildings that Martin stared at were like columns of fire.
She stood still for long enough to hear her shoulders start to sing with pain, then allowed herself to breathe. And was distracted shortly, beautifully, by the way the air moved. She breathed out and it became a glittering kaleidoscope. She moved her arm and the motes of dust formed tails of gold, dragged by her fingers. The silent chaos she caused. The disturbance she made, could make, with just a breath, a step.
Only two of the beds Elizabeth walked past were occupied: one by an old man whose thinning hair could have simply been a sign of age, another by a man of about thirty. He watched Elizabeth from the heap of his bedclothes, eyes beaded and dark.
She reached Martin’s bed and put a hand on his shoulder. He started, and turned to face her, and pulled the headphones off. They both smiled.
They had cut a hole in his chest for the drip. His skin was dark and bruised around the puncture mark; he winced if he moved too quickly and the tube of the drip snagged on his pyjamas. His face had more colour than it had had for weeks; in fact it was flushed red, like a gouty old man’s. He said that was the effect of the blood trans
fusion.
‘Has your dad been in?’ asked Elizabeth.
‘Yeah. He’s driving me insane.’ Martin heaved himself up to sitting. His dyed yellow hair stood on end. ‘He keeps talking about western medicine.’
Elizabeth grimaced.
‘Either me or the nurses are going to kill him.’
‘Poor thing. He must be really worried.’
‘I made him go home. I’d had enough.’
There was a silence: they both looked out of the window at the fiery buildings. The old man began to snore.
Some days were desperate, and others were not. Sometimes it was fun, and the two of them sat by the window, talking. Martin told her about the wig library they had at the hospital for people undergoing chemotherapy.
‘Do you think I should get one?’
‘What colour?’ she asked.
‘Red. And long.’
She smiled.
‘I wonder what they do if your wig’s overdue?’ said Martin, and she laughed and laughed.
She rang up and said, ‘What did you have for breakfast?’ and Martin answered, ‘Blue chemotherapy on toast.’ He joked about docking at Chemotherapy Bay.
Once they talked on the phone for three hours.
‘That writer – that Japanese writer who eviscerated himself,’ said Elizabeth.
‘Mishima, you mean?’
‘That’s the one.’
‘He didn’t eviscerate himself,’ said Martin. ‘He committed hara-kiri.’
Elizabeth sat up so that she could see out of the window. A parrot landed in the palm tree, swung itself upside down to get at the fruit. ‘That’s what hara-kiri is,’ she said, and made a movement with her fist across her stomach, as though with a knife. ‘Gutting yourself. Eviscerating yourself.’
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