by Declan Burke
It would be even more correct to say nothing at all and let people decide for themselves.
People bring mud into the hospital on their shoes. They carry in dust, dog-shit, germs, saliva, acid rain, carbon monoxide and blackened chewing gum. But they’re not allowed to smoke in the overflow car park.
I ask about the possibility of wearing a facemask while I’m mopping, so I won’t inhale the second-hand pestilence of human perambulation. Because I am a porter this is regarded as facetious insubordination. Only surgeons get to wear facemasks, although the official line is that this is for the patient’s benefit as opposed to that of any surgeon concerned about the invisible dangers wafting up out of a diseased and freshly sliced human being.
A man is standing in the middle of the tiles, so I have to mop around him. His shoulders are slack. There’s a looseness to his stance that suggests his elastic has stretched a little too far this time.
‘Excuse me,’ I say. ‘Could I ask you to move to one side, please?’
But he turns to face me. His eyes are huge, round and too dry. He says, hoarsely, ‘My daughter just died.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ I say. This would be hypocritical if it weren’t true, but I find his words offensive. I wonder why people always seem to think their pain is interesting. I wonder why people only share their pain these days. If the guy was standing in the middle of the carpet munching on a bag of toffees, it would never occur to him to offer a toffee to the guy vacuuming the carpet.
‘She was eight years old,’ he says.
‘Think of her as a mosaic,’ I say. ‘Think of your daughter as an amazingly complex mosaic who had become as beautiful as it was possible to be. Imagine that she’s been swept to one side so that she can begin to be formed into another beautiful mosaic. Maybe it’s already started. Go upstairs to the maternity ward, you might even see her smile, that twinkle in her eye. Get there while the new mother is still fretting about how long it should take the maternal bond to kick in and maybe you’ll get lucky. But she might be a boy this time, so think outside the box. And can I ask you to step to one side, please? I’ve had an official warning.’
He stares at me, uncomprehending. Then the round dry eyes begin to water. Tears roll down his pudgy cheeks. He shudders, gasps, and then he seems to fold in half. He bawls.
‘Nothing lasts forever,’ I say. ‘These days even agony has a sell-by date.’
But he’s not listening.
Cassie rings and asks me to rent a DVD on the way home. We snuggle up on the couch, sip some wine, smoke a joint, watch the movie.
‘You know what’s really scary?’ Cassie says. ‘That a shark could take stuff personally.’
‘Apart from a wayward meteor,’ I agree, ‘being stalked by a shark is the worst of all possible news.’
‘Like, really hating you.’
‘See, that’s where Jaws falls down. Sharks are older than hate.’
She frowns. I say, ‘Hate is unique to mankind, which has been knocking about for roughly a million years. The shark’s been around for four hundred million years.’
Cassie is stoned and thus intrigued. ‘No shit,’ she says.
‘Seriously. And it’s hardly changed in all that time.’
‘How do they know?’
‘Subterranean architecture.’
‘There’s actual buildings?’ She sniggers. ‘Like, shark museums?’
‘The fossil record.’
I tell her that the true history of the planet is a gallery in stone. From the fossil record to the Parthenon’s columns, the perfect math of the pyramids to the geometry at Cuzco, the molten rock that trapped Pompeii to the cuneiform etched in the base of pillars. ‘If you want to be remembered, Cass, work with stone. Moses didn’t come down off Sinai with commandments daubed on papyrus.’
‘True.’
‘Think of all the great civilisations. They’re cast in stone, their prejudice and their buildings. The Coliseum. The Sphinx. Newgrange. The Acropolis. Angkor Wat. Macchu Picchu. Knossos. Stone upon stone upon stone.’
‘That’s amazing,’ Cassie says, rolling her eyes as she gets up. ‘I’m making a decaff. Want one?’
‘It’s only a matter of time before sharks learn to build bridges,’ I warn. But the kettle is boiling and she can’t hear me. Besides, she’s not listening.
•
‘That’s better,’ he says. ‘Although it’s not exactly Jane Austen, is it?’
‘Maybe it’d sound more like Jane Austen,’ I say, ‘if it was supposed to sound like Jane Austen.’
‘Hey, no offence meant.’
‘Listen, I’ve been thinking. If Karlsson is changing, the way you want him to, then his relationship with Cassie is bound to be different too. Right?’
‘That’s what I’m kind of hoping for, yeah.’
‘So maybe you should write all the Cassie stuff,’ I say.
‘Really? You wouldn’t mind?’
‘Not in the slightest. Go for it.’
‘I might just do that. Listen,’ he says, encouraged by the olive branch, ‘I’ve been thinking too, about the hospital.’
‘What about it?’
‘Things have got a lot worse since you wrote the first draft. Super-bugs, the two-tier health system, all this . . . They’re misdiagnosing ultra-sounds now, you know that?’
‘So I hear.’
One thing I’m impressed with is Billy’s dedication to character. He appears to be genuinely angry about what’s happening to the health service, its entirely appropriate death by a thousand cuts. Except, as Billy says, they’re using a machete instead of a scalpel.
If they continue to follow their own logic and momentum, he reckons, then by the end of the EU’s austerity programme they’ll be funnelling patients in one end of a rented Japanese whaling ship and feeding the resulting product to those subsisting on what’s left of the dole.
‘Maybe you should go for a recce,’ he says, nodding up at the hospital on the hill, ‘spend a day with me. We’ll get you a porter’s uniform, you can just stroll around soaking it up.’
‘Won’t anyone object?’
‘Not if you keep your head down. I mean, don’t go wandering into theatre to try out brain surgery or anything.’
‘No, I mean . . . You’re still, uh, working there?’
‘Sure.’ He pats his pockets, comes up with his plastic ID. ‘Card-carrying union member, c’est moi.’
I’d been wondering where he goes after our early morning sessions, how he fills his days. But by the looks of things, redrafting the Karlsson character is the least of Billy’s commitment to the cause.
‘I don’t want to invade your space, Billy.’
‘Not a problem. I think you’d find it really useful.’
‘Yeah, okay. When?’
‘Tomorrow morning. I start at nine, but if you get there about eight-thirty, the porters generally have a quick toke before they get into it.’
•
I stroll past the nurses’ station on the third floor carrying a mop and bucket. The trick is to hide a full dustpan the night before and empty the sweepings into a bucket of water first thing the next day. This is good for an entire morning’s aimless wandering.
The ward sister calls to me from the station, beckons me across. I put the bucket down with a workmanlike clank and march over.
‘Karlsson,’ she says, ‘would you mind tucking in your shirt?’
She’s an attractive woman for forty-plus, still working the hair, the eyebrows.
‘Mopping’s hot work,’ I say, wiping my dry brow with the back of my hand. ‘This place is like a sauna.’
‘I appreciate that,’ she says, ‘but we need to maintain standards.’
What she means is, we’re flying on elastic bands and bent paper clips here, so don’t give anyone a reason to think about what’s really going on. The rabbit hole lurks in the gap between a belt and an untucked shirt. A straight line exists between a flapping shirt-tail and a class act
ion suit for negligence. An untucked shirt is a hook for the weight of public opinion and crumbling facades can least afford a slovenly dress code.
I reach around to tuck the shirt tidy. Her eyes flare. She glances up and down the corridor. ‘Not here,’ she hisses. ‘Can’t you go to the bathroom to do it?’
‘Sure thing.’
I walk away. She calls me back and points. ‘The bucket, Karlsson.’
‘Right.’
This sluices five whole minutes off the map.
I slouch down the hall to the men’s room, lock the cubicle door, open the window and smoke half a jay. Then I go on the nod. A pounding on the cubicle door wakes me. It’s my supervisor. He sniffs the air suspiciously.
‘You were supposed to be up on the fifth floor twenty minutes ago,’ he says. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘Orders,’ I say. ‘The ward sister told me to fix my shirt.’
His eyes narrow. ‘Okay,’ he says. ‘But get up to the fifth floor. You’re late already.’
I climb the stairs, untuck my shirt and push through the double doors onto the fifth floor. The ward sister calls me over to the nurses’ station. I put my bucket down with a workmanlike clank and wipe my dry brow with the back of my hand.
‘What can I help you with today?’ I say.
•
‘Well?’ he says.
We’re in the stairwell between the fourth and fifth floors.
‘I don’t remember you being this polite to people in the first draft,’ I say.
‘Softly-softly catchee monkey,’ he says, tapping the side of his nose. A door opens above us. ‘We shouldn’t be seen together,’ he says, picking up his bucket. ‘Meet me in the car park at five, I’ll give you a lift home.’
Karlsson rode a motorcycle. Billy rides a moped. He reckons it’s easier on gas, more environmentally friendly.
‘Don’t I need a helmet?’ I say, climbing on behind him.
‘Not unless we crash.’ He revs up and we take off but there’s a bottleneck at the eastern exit. A two-car collision, a Passat wedged at a right angle in a crumpled Fiesta, nose buried deep into the driver’s side. There’s a cop trying to direct traffic. My first thought is for my lack of helmet but the cop has better things to do.
Still, I slide off the moped and stand beside Billy. When he cuts the engine we hear the screams.
‘The incidence of accidents outside hospitals is five times that of any other public building,’ Billy says. ‘Anyone who works in a hospital knows to take it slow coming to work.
‘Take that guy, the one whose daughter just died. He’s a hazard. Reflexes dull, his peripheral vision full of cherubic faces. All he can think is how he wishes it was him laid out. Except in the back of his mind he’s agonising about how he has to ring his mother-in-law and confess that he never imagined his life could be such a colossal failure.’
There’s an abrupt waaa-rooo from behind. Everyone turns to watch an ambulance inch past the stalled traffic, two wheels up on the verge. A young fair-haired priest riding shotgun, tense, grey-faced.
‘This guy,’ Billy says, nodding down the hill, ‘he pulls up to the junction here. He edges out, maybe indicating, maybe not, and for a split-second his hand-eye coordination locks into a memory of pushing a swing. He hears the squeals of a child. Squeals of delight segue into a screech of brakes.
‘Crunch,’ he says.
The paramedics swarm the vehicles. Hoarse shouts relay orders. The priest, uncertain, hangs back. If he jumps in too soon, he’s a nuisance. If he leaves it too late he’s a waste of space.
‘Someone loses a leg,’ Billy says. ‘A son loses an eye. A mother gets paralysed from the waist down. A father dies, maybe even the father who was on his way back in to comfort the mother fretting over the unnatural lack of a maternal bond with her new daughter.
‘Such things,’ he says, ‘are spoken of in hushed tones and called tragedies, which is shorthand for the entirely avoidable consequences of human fallibility. Such things prompt people to wonder if God really exists.’ He shrugs. ‘Every cloud has its silver lining.’
By now Billy’s monologue has heads turning in our direction.
‘Keep it down,’ I mutter.
But he cranks it up a notch. ‘The priests,’ he declaims, ‘say that such things are sent to test us. If true, this is a cruelty so pure it verges on the harsh beauty of an Arctic sunset.
‘Could any god really be so insecure? “Hey folks, your kid is dead – do you still love me?”’
The frowns and disapproving glares become audible as shushes and hisses.
‘A question like that,’ Billy tells the nearest hisser, ‘should cause its asker to spontaneously combust in a shame-fuelled fireball.’ He shakes his head. ‘Except priests deal in shame. They’re emotional pornographers. Priests are up to their oxters in the pus-filled boil of your fear, groping for the maggots they placed there before your birth. The concept of Original Sin,’ he says, ‘is an evil so pure it verges on genius.’
A man whose fists are already clenched turns and strides towards us, his stiff-legged demeanour leaving no doubt as to his intentions. Billy slips his helmet back on, flips up the visor.
‘Even the paedophiles,’ he crows, ‘wait for the child to leave the womb.’
The Polish security guard on the gate barely glances at my ID as I badge us back in, although, being an officious jobsworth with little else to do, he does ask that we dismount from the moped, switch off the engine and walk it up the long drive, for fear of disturbing the early-evening still.
‘We should write about him,’ I say as we trudge up the tree-lined avenue, midges off the lake dive-bombing us like so many tiny Stukas.
‘The security guard?’
‘Maybe not him specifically. But the idea that an artists’ retreat needs a security guard, to make sure the hoi polloi doesn’t get in among the artists and infect them with any kind of reality.’
‘Maybe he’s there to keep the artists in,’ Billy grins. ‘Maybe artists’ retreats are all a government plot to keep the thinkers away from the proles, so there’s no danger of any sparks flying.’
‘Billy,’ I say, ‘there’s a four-piece interpretive dance troupe using one of the studio spaces, they’re writing a free-form jazz ballet for trees. I’m having a hard time seeing those guys storming any barricades.’
‘Cassie has her book club tonight,’ he says. ‘Fancy brainstorming a jazz ballet on how the barricades come to life, reconstitute themselves as trees and march against the fascist lackeys?’
‘Not tonight,’ I say. ‘Debs is out with the girls, it’s someone’s birthday. Anyway, I’m babysitting.’
Billy finds this hilarious.
‘What?’ I say. ‘You think I can’t take care of Rosie?’
‘It’s not that,’ he says. ‘Just the phrase, “babysitting”, it’s something teenage girls do when they can’t get a date on Friday night. I’m pretty sure a parent doesn’t babysit.’
‘So what would you call it?’
‘I dunno. “Being a father”?’
Billy’s niggles are starting to piss me off, especially when I have the guilt to deal with, the fact that Debs isn’t just working all her normal hours while I’m on sabbatical, she’s also doing most of the parenting with Rosie too.
‘And suddenly you’re this expert on being a father,’ I say.
‘Hey, there’s no need for––’
‘Come back to me when you’ve changed your first nappy,’ I say, ‘and then we’ll get pedantic about the language of parenting.’
‘Jesus Christ, you’re a moody bugger.’ He swings a leg across the moped, starts the engine, revs it into a thin whine. ‘Enjoy your babysitting,’ he sneers, then wheels around and clatters away down the avenue.
Debs is pacing the floor when I get inside the chalet, Rosie on her shoulder and already tucked into her Igglepiggle baby-gro. The little girl is rosy-cheeked but her eyes are dull.
‘Everything okay?’
I say.
‘More or less,’ Deb says. ‘She’s been doing a lot of coughing, though. I think she might have picked up a bug in crèche.’
‘Have you given her anything?’
‘Some Tixylix, yeah. But I don’t want to overdo it.’
‘She’ll be grand,’ I say. ‘You go ahead, I’ll take care of it from here.’
She nods uncertainly.
‘Look,’ I say, ‘you’ve earned tonight, and you’re entitled to enjoy it without worrying. So just go.’
She hands Rosie across, kisses the crown of her head. ‘Ring me later,’ she says, ‘just so I know she’s okay.’
‘I’ll text you,’ I say, ‘but it’ll be fine. Go.’
I get Rosie settled on the couch and make soup, a sandwich, get out that day’s pages and a green pen. By nine-thirty Rosie’s cough has worsened and there’s an audible wheeze from her chest. I ring my mother.
‘She’s already had some cough syrup,’ I say, ‘so I don’t want to overdose her on that.’
‘Would you like me to come over?’ she says.
‘No, you’re grand. I just want to ease her coughing.’
‘Try some warm honey,’ she says. ‘That worked with all of you. Do you have any honey over there? I can––’
‘You’re fine. There’s some in the fridge.’
‘Well, let me know how it goes.’
‘I will.’
I put a spoonful of honey in a pot, warm it on the stove. Add a little milk. Then, because Rosie is getting fractious, the cough hacking her awake whenever she manages to doze off, I break open a sleeping pill and carefully measure out a quarter of the dosage. This I stir into the milk-and-honey.
By ten-thirty Rosie is sleeping peacefully in my arms. No cough, and I can only hear the underlying wheeze if I put my ear to her chest. I tap ‘All quiet on the Western front’ into the phone, text that to Debs and then my mother.