Lily Poole

by Jack O'Donnell

  A wailing cry of ‘Lily!’ came from outside his body and from his open mouth. The damp, cold pavement compressed an ear and stiffened the side of his face. Dry lips formed her name again. In the sparks a fire-bright lust burned, branding his soul; he became she, being plundered and ploughed and raped by a posse of strangers, and she became he, lying prone on the pavement. A cudgel blow came from nowhere and the tendrils of plants wound and poked through his rib cavity and hers. He understood Lily’s body was calling him, calling her, back to the dry earth. Their bodies fused inside the tomb of a dark cellar filled with coal. Others who came before him were showing him the way, holding flaming torches in a clear winter sky, inviting him like an honoured guest to uncover the burning bowels of the earth. Light flooded through his arteries and veins. His mouth unlocked, opened too wide. He cried out for his mum at the light filling and spilling out of him, bleeding into the drizzle.

  ‘Make sure you get his tongue. You don’t want him swallowing his tongue.’

  ‘Get something in his mouth.’

  ‘He’ll bite his tongue off,’ shouted a dark shadow, screeching into a walkie-talkie for an ambulance.

  The school bell rang. He felt a kiss on his cheek and looked up into Lily’s face. A kaleidoscope of luminous colours hovered above the halo of her hair. Dark energy sputtered and reformed in shifting and pulsing patterns, covering each of the adult faces pressed close to his own, like a monk’s cowl. Hate was an absence that dulled their eyes. Wetting the corner of his lips with the tip of his tongue, he mumbled, urging her away. ‘Run, little girl. Run for your life.’

  John dreamily lifted his head and watched her go back through the school gates. Her blue blazer merged with the damp colours of other coats, disappearing through the double-doors of the main school building.

  Auntie Caroline bustled forward, breaking through the crowd of onlookers that surrounded him. ‘You should be ashamed,’ she said to the cop who had handcuffed him. ‘Scaring the boy like that. He’s never done anyone any harm in his life. Now, because you’ve got a uniform, you think you can go around beating up innocent young boys and bullying them.’ She grabbed hold of John’s hand to help him stand. ‘Shame on you.’

  Bent Nose looked as if he was going to say something, but the other cop’s voice butted in with an officious tone meant to settle grievances. ‘There’s an ambulance on the way.’

  John had peed himself. He sloped his back against the pavement as if hurt, glad of the distraction.

  ‘Are you alright, son?’ Rain slicked Auntie Caroline’s fluffy hair and stole colour from her face. She smacked of Vincent Price emerging from a twilight crypt, but it sounded like his mum speaking. The familiarity of her voice could have made him weep. He turned away with undignified haste.

  ‘Aye, I’m fine. I just want to go hame.’ He heard the wheedling, boyish note in his voice as he looked round at the policemen’s faces.

  The sharp-featured cop spoke to John, but he was really speaking to the other policeman. ‘I’m sure that would be fine, but it would be best if you waited for an ambulance. We can’t force you to. We’ve not formally charged you with anything, but you understand we’ve had a few complaints from the headmaster of the ­school about your behaviour.’ He looked at Bent Nose for reassurance.

  Bent Nose spoke bluntly. ‘One of the top nobs has taken a particular interest in the case. You probably read a bit about it in the papers, or even seen it on TV. All those young schoolgirls going missing.’ He looked across at his colleague to help explain it better, before blustering on. ‘I’m not for a minute saying he’s got anything to do with it, but better safe than sorry.’

  An ambulance with klaxon and flashing lights cleared the streets of slow-moving traffic as it hurtled round the bend of Park Road, splashing up close to the kerb beside them. The passenger side window wound slowly down, allowing the medic to flick his dout onto the road before starting work.

  ‘Where’s the patient? Where’s the hurry?’ The am­­bulance driver was a balding, stocky man. He spoke in a jocular tone, looking from face to face, before settling on the sharp-faced cop.

  The other medic, a small man with a short-back-and-sides, looked a bit like a soldier. He went round the back of the ambulance and swung open the doors. The bent-nosed cop nodded in John’s direction.

  A helping hand onto his back ushered John towards the waiting vehicle. ‘I’ll go with him.’ Auntie Caroline fashioned herself into a prim lady, not showing too much leg, as she stepped into the ambulance.

  John screwed his face up and shook his head. ‘Nah, I’m not goin’,’ he said. ‘I feel fine now.’ But looking over at the cops’ faces and double-checking, he decided the alternative might be worse.

  ‘Best get you checked.’ The ambulance driver ducked his head to get a better look at the patient over squarish glasses clouded by condensation and rain.

  John allowed the medic to take his arm and guide him up the steps and inside. He perched side-saddle on a trolley, its wheels rolling towards the door. Auntie Caroline sat opposite him on another. The army-type medic got in beside them. ‘Best if you lie down,’ he said. ‘It might get a wee bit bumpy.’ John’s body stiffened as he was strapped in. He looked with amusement at his black Doc Marten boots, the criss-cross stitching of yellow laces and his feet sticking out at the end of the trolley.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Auntie Caroline as the back doors banged shut.

  He didn’t. He dozed, his body shuggling sideways with each corner the ambulance took. He felt the childish security of being firmly buckled in. No siren sounded. Fag smoke filtered through vents from the front of the ambulance, reminding him of his mum leaning over his pram, but with a whiff of danger as if they were balanced on the serrated edge of a cliff.

  The ambulance men wheeled him on the trolley into Accident and Emergency, Auntie Caroline stalking behind them. The casualty officer had been arguing with somebody, another doctor, when they arrived, but the anger bleached away from his voice, blending in with a bouquet of strong disinfectant. He directed the am­­bulance men, with a wave of his arm, towards the corner cubicle.

  John sat to the side of the bed, reading a Daily Record discarded on the chair, as if he was a visitor. A nurse pulled the wraparound curtains round the bed, but a man-sized gap was left pegged open on the waiting room side for him to escape through. Those who had travelled by public transport or car had already failed the first test of triage. They smoked and chatted, waiting on banks of seats bolted to the floor. Auntie Caroline stood near the vending machine chatting to a woman with an ill-fitting crepe bandage over one eye. The old man in the next bed coughed, and spat into a cardboard tray shaped like an upturned hat. John felt he’d throw up in response.

  The houseman, a nervous-looking man, not much older than John, arrived with a swish of curtains. A nurse dogged his footsteps, a piece of crinoline confectionary perched on her head in the shape of a bonnet, signifying the position of matron.

  ‘Does this light bother you?’ the houseman asked, propping John’s eye open with splayed fingers and shining a light into it.

  He was in too much of a hurry to wait for an answer. He turned to the nurse, ‘We’ll send him for EEG. Keep him in overnight. Keep an eye on him.’

  John was shunted into a wheelchair, not allowed to walk. A shaggy-haired porter sporting a dark dustcoat pushed his wheelchair to the lifts and took him up to his ward on level eight. Hospital corridors with their sharp turns were his world. He talked about Scottish football, by which he meant Glasgow Rangers. John nodded now and again, to show he was listening, though he noticed the porter had not bothered looking at his name tag. It seemed pointless telling the porter he supported Celtic.

  The porter expertly parked his patient close to the partition window, across from the nurses’ station, in a ward with five geriatric patients. They were shocked. John was shocked. The matron snatched his hospital records from the porter and snorted, ‘You’re meant to be seventy-one.’ John thought
she was going to box his ears. She insisted the porter take him to the men’s ward on level four.

  He shrugged. ‘Sorry, Matron.’ With practised impudence he slouched away and round the corner towards the lifts.

  A student nurse with long brown hair tied tightly back and black-rimmed glasses shuffled into the ward to get John settled. When Matron left she tugged the curtains on their rails round the corner bed. She allowed him two minutes to get undressed and put on a gownie with drawstrings at the back that covered everything but his bum. When he was decent the student nurse went to get him a cup of tea.

  ‘What are you in for?’ the man in the bed next to him asked. His eyes were bright, greyish-blue, with one eyebrow arched. He was corpulent and baldy with a piercing stare.

  ‘I think I’d some kind of fit,’ said John. ‘At least that’s whit I was told.’

  There was a straining of ears from the three beds facing them. Then everyone relaxed into their own ailments, which they wove into the throw of their conversation. He was given lunch that seemed to him like a school dinner with mashed potatoes and custard for dessert.

  Patients in the other beds made a fuss when the student nurse came back after lunch and tentatively held out a plastic bottle for him to give a urine sample. The grey-haired man, who was always getting up onto spindly legs and smoking out the window or sucking and clacking on endless peppermints, shouted: ‘She’ll soon be wanting more than a sample.’ The other patients cackled together in appreciation. The student nurse’s eyes slid away from John’s and focussed on the extension-arm of the reading lamp at his head. A flush rose from his toes and sweat prickled under his arms. The red beacon of his face matched the student nurse’s, provoking a ‘hoo-haa’ of delight among the older men.

  After lunch, the day settled into a routine. A doctor arrived at his bedside to take blood. John did not know why he was doing it, nor did he ask. The doctor put on the tourniquet and John presented him with his flexed arm, but the whitening of his skin seemed to confuse the doctor and he was unable to find a vein. It took five attempts before blood swirled into the syringe, un­­naturally purple, even black in the strip lighting. The doctor withdrew the needle before releasing the tourniquet and blood dribbled down John’s arm. The doctor dabbed at the blood with a Steret swab and pressed down on the puncture wound with a ball of cotton wool. He indicated that his patient should keep pressure on it, before putting the syringe on a metal tray and hurrying away, leaving John’s arm extended and smelling as if it had been lying in a medical cabinet.

  ‘I don’t like Paki doctors,’ the ginger-haired man two beds along from John said. It was the first time he had heard him speak. He had spent much of his time sleeping with blankets wrapped around his head. Unlike the other patients, who were quick to discuss their ailments, he was clueless as to what was wrong with him.

  The man in the next bed to John looked up from his book before his gaze dropped and his eyes scanned the page. His expression was neutral. John could tell he was irritated by the way he flicked through the pages a bit too quickly. The man caught John staring and his face coloured, but not nearly as badly as when they were teasing him about the student nurse. He covered it up with a question.

  ‘Good book?’

  ‘Pretty good.’ He showed him the cover, To Kill a Mockingbird.

  ‘I read that at school.’

  He had worked out from listening to the ebb and flow of conversation that there was something wrong with his neighbour’s fingers or toes. They tingled too much or too little and made him feel a bit stupid.

  ‘It was a good book,’ John said.

  ‘Yeh.’ He looked fixedly at the page.

  John knew not to say more or ask any other daft questions. The ward was suddenly crowded with an influx of friends and relatives at visting time but nobody came to see him, or the man in the bed next to him. He was constantly referred to as the youngest geriatric in the world, and grandchildren, less circumspect, stared directly at him. He took to hiding his head under the blankets, feigning sleep.

  One of the nurses rang the hand-bell in the corridor outside as a signal that visiting time was over. John heard a muffled voice.

  ‘Hiya,’ Mary said to the man next to him. ‘I hope he’s not sleeping.’

  John’s blankets were wheeched back and his mum’s lopsided, smiling face loomed above him. She set up base camp on the portable bedside cabinet with crisps and sweeties. He knew he was ill when she brought the bottle of Lucozade out of her plastic bag.

  ‘Sorry,’ Mary explained, ‘the buses were murder.’ She settled herself into a padded seat beside his bed and unbuttoned her coat.

  ‘It’s stifling in here,’ she remarked to the man in the bed opposite him.

  While other visitors drifted towards the exit, Mary and his neighbour talked over his head for few minutes. He picked up from their conversation that the man’s name was Bert. Mary was always embarrassing him like that, making friends with total strangers. Even when the nurse came in to shepherd visitors out, Mary sweet-talked her into letting her stay for another ten minutes.

  Mary was a good mimic and she kept him – and the other patients – entertained with tales about what was happening at home with Da and Jo. John felt as though he had been away for weeks and not just a few hours.

  ‘Little Ally’s got a new imaginary friend,’ Mary said.

  John laughed even before she got to the punchline. Ally always had imaginary friends whom they had to feed with balled bits of paper and make cooing noises at. Her worsted bear was worn thin and looked as if it had been chewed by a pack of hyenas, but O’Mally, as his Da called the bear, led a more charmed life than a sackful of cats.

  ‘Oh, for God sake,’ said John, laughing. ‘Whit’s her new friend called now?’

  ‘Lily,’ replied Mary, chuckling. ‘She’s quite the bee’s knees. And even goes to the same school as her.’

  The matron looked over the glass screen dividing the corridor from the ward.

  ‘Got to go,’ said Mary, kissing his forehead. ‘See you tomorrow.’

  John was stung by what his mum had said and couldn’t settle. He turned over the possibilities like face cards, trying to figure if the Lily he knew was the Lily his wee sister knew. Then he felt like a busted flush, bored, not tired, but in the muggy heat of the ward, with mute lighting and the nurses talking in scratchy whispers, he must have dozed off. He dreamed he was back home, sitting in the chair near the living room window, his legs tucked up under him to keep his feet warm. Ally was sitting scrunched up on the rug near the fireplace, playing hide-and-seek, her face comically buried in her hands, as she counted down: ‘ten, nine, eight, seven . . .’

  Lily, who was hiding under John’s bed, put her finger to her mouth to shush him into not telling where she was. In his dream, he could see them both clearly, even though they were in different rooms.

  Ally’s voice rose as she closed in on the chase. Her hands fell from her face, and she looked across at him, willing him to count down with her. ‘Three, two, one, ready or not, coming to get you and you’ll get caught.’ She raced towards the door, hands flapping in excitement.

  He got a whiff of cigar smoke, but could not spring off the soft chair quickly enough. Ally pulled open the living room door and flames engulfed the hall. His mouth opened to scream her name. A frothing river of water poured out instead, making him gag, but it was too late to quench the flames. His feet kicked and legs thrashed and he sat up in bed, the smell of cigar smoke lingering.

  ‘It’s not just me then.’ Bert’s voice was low. He was smoking a fag, and the muted lights seemed to isolate him, make him seem more vulnerable and less adult. ‘That can’t sleep,’ he added with a smile.

  ‘Sorry.’ John was sure he had shouted something, but the other patients in the ward showed no sign of being disturbed as they settled into the bruised silences of sleep.

  ‘Don’t be daft.’ Bert began coughing. ‘It’s just the smoking,’ he said, speaking through
the hawking fit and taking another drag. ‘That’s better.’ He sighed and edged closer, so he could whisper, ‘It’s just when I can’t sleep, I smoke.’

  ‘That’s OK,’ he said.

  ‘I’m sweating like a pig.’ He fanned his face and the smoke with a hand. ‘I toss and turn. Go to the toilet. Have another cigarette. Go to the toilet. Tell myself I’m going to kill myself if I don’t get to sleep. Then in the morning, when everybody’s getting up, I don’t want to kill myself, I just want to get some sleep.’

  ‘Can’t you get something from the doctor?’ John glanced at the patient in the bed opposite. He was sleepwalking, muttering gibberish, and searching for some-thing in the bedside cabinet. His striped pyjamas had a wet stain at the groin and his cock twitched and snaked through the cotton flap. John blinkered his gaze and locked it onto the patient in the bed across from him.

  Bert shook his head. ‘I don’t like to bother them.’ His voice adopted a jaunty tone, ‘But what about you? You’re young, how come you can’t sleep?’

  ‘I can,’ he said, adopting the same devil-may-care tone. ‘I’ve just had a bit of a nightmare.’

  Bert asked what it was about. John tried telling him as best he could about Ally and Lily and his sister and his family, and everything that had happened. He knew he was talking far too much, but Bert didn’t seem to mind. He asked questions, dotting their conversation with the light of one cigarette lit off another.

  ‘I’d a little girl too,’ Bert said, watching his reactions.

  He confided in him just before the changeover, when the dayshift drifted in and settled themselves at the nurses’ station, screeching chairs over the once-shiny floor, a war party round the desk, getting ready to hear the nightshift’s handover.