Lily Poole

by Jack O'Donnell

  Flipping over the page and starting on a clean sheet, he sketched from memory; pausing, looking into the middle distance, his crayon almost slipped from his grasp. Janine waltzed into the ward. She wore a loose-fitting man’s striped shirt and tan-coloured slacks. Her make-up was heavy on the walnut stain, which was good for a certain type of fence post, but not so good for a girlfriend. He held a hand up in greeting. She looked over and sneered, breezing past, leaving only a whiff of perfume. His mind did the jitterbug. He sat rocking back and forth, looking straight ahead, like a cat watching a bird feeder. His drawing pad fell from his lap onto the floor, bounced sideways, and settled face-up on the picture of Lily.

  John sloped back to his room. The ground beneath his feet tilted. Neat stiches, selvedge of stone and Gothic spires blurred into view, and he was aloft. Whispers of earth and hedgerow. Sound and scent of battle, flags flying. Cries of living and dying. Then the world tightened itself. His skin burned with a strange knowing. Somebody inhabited his chair at the window, the stub of a foul-smelling cigar in his mouth, studying far horizons from beneath narrowed lids. The old man kindled ­memories, a warlord of his dreams. He was wearing a different costume of a butcher’s apron, mottled specks of dried blood on the bib and rust-coloured cuffs, whether from dirt or blood it was unclear. On his feet, he wore black wellington boots. He unfolded himself from the chair with the speed of a slow-motion still. A scratch zigzagged across the back of his large hand, running rusty to his wrist; he spat the cigar out to speak. ‘You’ve been a busy boy then,’ he said in a low voice – part growl, part wheeze. ‘Getting up to all kinds of naughty tricks.’

  ‘Whit dae you mean?’ John hesitated, looking behind him at the shut door. His belly churned and his hands shook. He mashed them into his pockets to tether them. Standing by the bed his teeth chattered and his legs became wonky. He avoided looking at the wildfire of his visitor’s dark eyes and focussed instead on the space behind his shoulder. ‘You better leave and go back to your own room.’

  The old man stayed put. ‘Me and your mother go back a long way. A good little woman. Nice little tits. Long, longer than you remember. You’ve got a brother, you know. Dearly departed. A good boy. Not at all like you.’ He laughed, but it was a knotted, phlegmy honk and he sucked on the cigar for the longest time. When he breathed out there was no cigar smoke but the stench of putrefaction.

  John took a step back, not caring what anyone thought. Ready to flee.

  ‘Poor little Alison. She can never do anything right. She’d have been a real looker. Plenty of jiggy-jig in such a small body, but you’ll know all about that.’ He licked his lips. ‘Some folk just can’t wait.’

  John croaked, ‘I’m going to get a nurse to get rid of you.’

  ‘No need for that, John, my boy. My old cock. Nobody likes a tittle-tattle. Boy, could I murder a drink right now.’ The visitor stood up, facing him. A big man. A rook fluttered down and landed on the windowsill. Then another and another, flapping their wings, jiggling for space. ‘We could be friends, you know. Work together. This is no place for a man of your accomplishments. Men like us. We could be out of here in a second. Just say the word, my old son’

  He sucked on his cigar. John watched him with bitter fascination and found it difficult to look away – a fellow conspirator exuding an awful bonhomie and campfire-type wisdom.

  ‘Logos,’ he said, ‘words spoken from the heart. Calling into existence nameless voids. The force of your dreams and desires seeding the future. Take your Uncle Alistair. He finds himself a dive called The Captain’s Rest near the Times Building. After working a fourteen-hour shift he needs a bit of me-time. His wife Lottie is at home waiting, three bawling kids under five. That’s not what he needs. He’s still young – ruddy complexion, like you – got a bit of sap in him. Bit of a goer.

  ‘Now let me tell you about poor Deidre.’ He turned away from the window. ‘Perhaps you should lock the door. This could get a bit graphic.’ There was that laugh again.

  ‘I don’t want to hear about Deidre.’ John gritted his teeth so hard his molars hurt. He swayed his legs buckling , and he stumbled and fell onto the bed. ‘I want you to leave now.’

  The old man looked over John’s shoulder, past him, listening to something. ‘Perhaps you’re right. Poor old Deidre up from the sticks and wanting a good time. She sure did get it. Him and his pal Danny Boy, good old Danny Boy, they held her down, held her legs open. She sure did get a good time. Perhaps not the adventure she wanted, but an adventure nonetheless. All kinds of wonders waiting in the wings. Loving. The best kind. The kind you like. The rough kind, rough and innocent girls like your mum liked. A bit of cock-a-doodle-doo.’

  He strutted around the room, hen-toed, with jerky movements mimicking a cock. The rooks outside began flapping and cawing, their cries echoing off stone and ringing in John’s head. The visitor waited until they finished before speaking again.

  ‘That nurse is coming to get you. Looking for you. She likes you, you know. Karen, that fat nurse. Deary, deary, great pity you don’t like her. Doesn’t fancy herself much either, you know. And her husband – beats her for it. He can smell it.’ He crooked his neck and sniffed the air. ‘Look for the marks on her wrists. Son, there will come a time when you’ll be all alone in the world too. Just call. I’ll be waiting in the wings.’

  ‘Fuck off!’ said John. He rolled about the bed, holding his head.

  ‘Oh, touchy!’ said the old man. He unlatched the window, scattering rooks like gunpowder, and stepped out onto the windowsill. Corvine-like he crouched, cigar butt clenched between his lips, then stepped daintily onto uncut grass. A gust of wind banged the window shut.

  Karen stuck her head in the door. Her pale, anxious face was a reassuring sight. ‘You alright?’ she asked.

  John sat up. ‘Did you see him?’ He gestured towards the window.

  ‘Aye,’ Karen said. ‘Somebody in a uniform, was it? Probably a hard-working nurse trying to get some work done. Like me.’ She handed John his tablets and a plastic tumbler with lukewarm water in it. ‘Get that down you! I’ve been looking all over the place for you.’

  ‘You did see him, didn’t you?’ John put his medication in his mouth.

  ‘Course I did.’ She shrugged, made a face, turned to go, but turned back. She shook the window, checked it remained locked.

  Janine wanted to be touched. She wanted to be touched very much. She passed John in the day room a few times before he noticed her. She knew they had hit him with the old uppercut of Valium and followed through with a knock-out blow of Largactil. Thinking was not good for you. It was too much like work. The medicine trolley came round regular as an ice-cream van in Drumchapel. She had gone to the trouble of putting her make-up on specially for him and what was the bastard doing? Head sunk down and dribbling into his chest. He was young, strong enough to get used to being slowly poisoned. She had planned to take him back to her room, or even his room, but all the loser would want to do when he got there was get his head down – which was a good thing if it wasn’t to snooze. Loser.

  She did another tour of the ward, scratching around like a chicken let out of its cage and looking for worms; she met nobody but her designated nurse toting a brown leather briefcase like a placard at an evangelical convention.

  ‘Hi, Janine,’ he said in his poofy voice. No doubt he was on his way out to some very important case review or yak-yak-yak fest that would make him feel momentous.

  She didn’t bother answering him. He was only talking to her because he got paid for it. She’d wangled a swatch at her care notes a few times. Knew the kind of shite he wrote: I tried interacting with Janine this morning, but she showed some hostility and a marked inability to engage. Engage would be underlined three times and have an exclamation mark or two. Loser.

  Giving up on humanity, she slipped into the chair beside her erstwhile lover. His drawings were lying near her feet. She put them in her lap and started flicking through them. She thought they would be
childish rubbish, but was struck by his ability to show real things: an old motor car, the chassis sitting up on bricks, with wooden huts behind it; a phone box with a telephone pole growing out of it, the clouds behind – maybe that one wasn’t so good –but the last few of a little girl were quality art. The repetition was disturbing. She flicked between drawings. The girl wore the same school uniform; her hair was tied back from her face by kirby clips and coloured bands. In one of them she was wearing a hat and smiling. Janine’s hand trembled. In the final drawing her eyes were black-crayoned, childish scrawls. She flicked back a page, then two. Despite the cloying heat of the ward, she shivered. The little girl’s eyes were the colour and shape of her own. The same as her dad’s. The same as her sister Lily’s.

  She snaked her hand into his lap to see if that would wake him. Her fingers began circling round his zip. It woke part of him, but his eyes remained closed. They suddenly fluttered open. The horny bastard had been faking sleep those last few minutes.

  He caught her wrist as she tried to sneak her hand away. ‘Geez a kiss,’ he said. Leaning over, his hair brushed the side of her cheek.

  ‘No chance.’ She pulled away from him, her hand up as a barrier between them. ‘Your breath’s absolutely minging. I think when you’ve not been drooling on your T-shirt all morning, you’ve been chewing dog-shit.’

  He cupped his fingers a few inches from his nose and breathed into them. ‘It’s no’ that bad.’

  ‘No’ that bad if you like the smell of doggy poop.’ She playfully pushed his arm. ‘Go and brush your teeth or something.’

  He shook his head and his eyebrows slanted down. ‘I mean, I’ve hardly ate anything . . . Maybe that’s what it is.’ His voice gained traction and ended on an upbeat note.

  ‘Nah. It’s your meds. That Valium. It rots you from the inside out.’ She shook her head in dismay. ‘All your teeth will probably fall out by the time you’re twenty. And your tongue. And your hair . . . Nah, your hair will be alright.’ She slapped him on the side of the face as if he was a dumb animal. ‘Stick your tongue out.’

  He stuck the tip of his tongue out. One look at her stern face and he stuck it out further, tried looking down at it.

  ‘You fit right in here,’ she sniggered, ‘looking like that.’ Sitting straight-backed in her chair, as an example to him, she reverted to her semi-serious tone. ‘Could tell just by the way you were speaking. Doormat tongue. Feels like your tongue’s swollen up and doesn’t fit in your mouth.’

  ‘How’d you know all that?’ There was admiration in his voice.

  She didn’t want to admit she was a few years older than him. ‘Been there. Seen it. Read the fucking book.’

  Her eyes stayed fixed on his. He was first to look away and first to speak.

  ‘But how . . . how can I . . .?’ He didn’t know how to put it and his body slumped into the chair. He stared at the swept floor in defeat.

  The music from the telly swelled behind them. Janine picked open the cellophane in a ten-pack of Silk Cut. His eyes followed the fan of her fingers as she put the fag in her mouth. ‘Give me a sec,’ she said, ‘I’ll need to get a light.’ She turned her head to check who was working.

  Jocky, one of the care assistants, slouched down lower than a gut shot in the row of chairs behind them. His stomach was a beach ball under his shirt and he had a honking laugh that rose above his surroundings. He sat among those who watched telly as a therapeutic activity. Patients could turn to him with the meanest dog-end and he would give them a light, even if it was nipping their lips.

  Janine draped herself over the side of his chair to get his attention. She knew he fancied her, but he wasn’t her type. Not that she had a type. But if she did have a type, he wasn’t it.

  She lifted her chin, stretched her neck and leaned forward to show him what he was missing. ‘Thanks,’ she said, after getting a light. She blew him a little kiss, knowing he would be checking her ass as she returned to the seat beside John.

  John seemed more upbeat. She figured the day might not be totally wasted and huffed out a smoke ring, ­letting it float between them. ‘You ever watch those American cop films where all they seem to do on stake-outs is eat doughnuts?’

  ‘Yeh.’

  ‘Well, it’s a bit like that in here. They don’t really give a shit what you do. The only thing they’re interested in is watching themselves get fatter and fatter.’ He looked confused. She patted his hand, deciding to put it a bit more simply. ‘You don’t need to take your meds. Nobody checks. Nobody’s interested. Just hide them, and if you’re pushed stick them under your tongue.’

  ‘Whit will I do with them after?’

  ‘Give them to me. I love tranks, but I’m not that keen on Largactil. Doesn’t matter. I’ll give them to somebody.’ She shooed him away. ‘Now that’s settled. Go brush your teeth.’

  Watching his plodding step, she took another drag of her cigarette. There was stiffness around her mouth. The fag dropped from her fingers, the lit end bounced on the floor. She opened her mouth to yell, to call him back, but her body was shaking and she could not breathe. It felt as though she had a pincushion in her throat. Suffocating. The blackened eyes of the little girl in the picture looked up at her and she was grinning in a familiar way.

  There was a kerfuffle in the day room. A crowd of patients gathered round somebody, reminding John of backs-to-the-wall school fights in crowded smokers’ corners. The stench of cigar smoke alerted him to the presence of the old man. His butcher’s apron was piss-yellow with age and splashed with blood. His head turned and he grinned as he faced John. His eyes were sump holes. But the old man scuttled away through the throng. Rushing forward, he bumped past one of the taller patients, bent-back Alice, giving John a straight path through the loose circle of onlookers.

  Janine was on the ground. A stained cushion was propped against her head, but she jack-knifed forward, rattling and wheezing, her mouth working like a goldfish and her eyes glazed, looking up at him and begging for help. He crouched behind a care assistant, as wide as he was tall – John could never remember his name. His hippopotamus feet bruised the drawings and in a gruff voice he coached Janine in the art of living.

  ‘Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.’

  With a choking sound she did, her head falling forward onto her chest, eyes closed, nodding and quietly sobbing.

  ‘Good girl,’ the care assistant said.

  He turned his attention to Alice who was making a fuss, bawling at her, ‘Shut-the-fuck-up!’

  Patients and staff drifted silently away like cigarette smoke. John edged forward towards Janine. ‘You OK?’ She flung her arms around one of his legs. ‘You’ll be alright.’ He helped her to stand. She glanced around the ward and seemed to regain her strength, shaking off his hand.

  ‘Fuck that,’ she said. ‘Thought I was going to be a gonner there. Let’s go for a good drink.’

  John pulled her in closer and gave her a peck on the cheek. ‘Where?’ he whispered. Not sure what she was talking about, imagining her brain had been dunted about, her reasoning circuits scrambled.

  ‘The pond.’ She spoke emphatically.

  Behind them the usual crew had returned to their seats and the second part of the afternoon matinee. He glanced at the care assistant, the telly droned on and he was too far away to hear their conversation.

  Janine gripped his arm and squeezed. ‘You alright?’ She changed tack when he delayed answering. ‘You’re looking at me funny.’ She patted the tan primer round her nose and cheeks. ‘Is my make-up alright?’ Her eyes gleamed. She ran a hand through her long hair, searching for tugs.

  He kept it casual. ‘Aye. It’s just I’d love to go to the pond for a drink, but I’m no’ so sure I’ve brought my pocket money.’

  ‘Silly.’ She hung onto his arm. ‘I’m paying.’ Grinning, she swung his hand up with hers and let it fall in a childish game.

  He let her drag him by the arms towards the entrance of the day room.

  �
�Hing on.’ He scurried back and picked up his drawings, which were scattered over the floor. He plonked himself down on the nearest chair, sorting them out.

  He briefly looked up at her. ‘I’ll no’ be a minute.’ His tone was morbid. The drawings were torn and ruined. He heard her soft shuffling across the floor and felt the nearness of her body as she stood over him.

  ‘They were really good.’ Her voice was encouraging, as light as her perfume. ‘I’m sure you can redo them.’ She sat next to him, her knee nudging against his. Her voice had a nervous edge to it. ‘That girl, reminded me of somebody, was that your wee sister?’

  He laughed. ‘Nah, that’s Lily – she doesn’t exist. So I keep getting told.’ Janine made drawing, or art, sound like some kind of jigsaw puzzle, where you just put back the same pieces again. ‘Aye. You’re right. They were rubbish.’ He jumped up and stuffed them into the nearest bin full of douts, plastic cups and plastic bags.

  ‘I didn’t say that.’ She lit a fag. He flung himself back down in the seat beside her. ‘They were really good. That good that they scared me. Reminded me of somebody.’ She turned away from him, her hair shielding her face.

  ‘Scared you? I come in and you’re lying there dying. Next thing you want to go for a drink and a swim in some pond.’ His voice had grown louder and harder, making other patients turn and look at them. ‘And then, all of a sudden, you become an art critic.’

  ‘Fucking grow up.’ Her elbow was on the arm of the chair, her fag halfway between hand and mouth. She took a drag and the swirl of smoke created a pause between them. Her eyes looking into his were unblinking, like a lizard’s. ‘For your information, The Pond is a hotel. It sells alcohol. I was offering to take you there because, yes, my nerves are shattered and, yes, I need a drink. Now. Not later. Or tomorrow. Or the weekend. Now. And yes. Your drawing did scare me. Something about the eyes, reminded me of something I didn’t want to remember. Brought on a panic attack. Satisfied?’