The Swan Song of Doctor Malloy

by Robert Power

  Back in the car park at Jack Straw’s Castle, I sit on a bench and smoke a cigarette. The pub is long closed. Men are still entering the pathway from where I have just emerged. They are furtive, secretive. The occasional taxi pulls up, but mostly it is quiet now. It will get busy again when the gay clubs turn out. There’s one car in the far corner of the car park with its lights on. The full beam comes on, the engine fires up and it moves slowly towards where I sit. It pulls up alongside me and the driver’s window unwinds with a gentle whirr. Looking directly at me is a man in a trilby, wearing an expensive camel-hair coat and a gaudy American nineteen-fifties tie. He stares at me for a moment.

  ‘I’ve just been on the phone to Mary Foster,’ says the man, without any introduction. ‘She says she wonders what Lottie might make of her father’s nocturnal activities on this part of the Heath? Not to mention afternoons spent with drunken prostitutes. Oh, and she says, make sure you’re all packed and ready for next Friday as planned. Just in case you were having any second thoughts, that is.’

  The window whirrs up and the man drives away. I watch the car as it turns left towards the Spaniard’s Inn. In the silence I can hear my heart beating, my breath shortening, my mind almost shocked into sobering up. What has Caitlin got herself into? What have I got myself into?

  A couple stagger across the car park, laughing, kissing. Two young men without a care in the world. My heart drains into the gravel of the car park. I am caught up. I am no longer in control of my life. I am without choice. And I cry out to the night that I am drunk. I need to find a taxi and another bottle of whiskey.

  When I come to I am still fully clothed. The room spinning around my head is my bedroom. My face and hair are caked in blood and my left leg aches. In my hand is an empty bottle. Strewn on the bed are dozens of daffodils, fully intact, bulbs with stringy roots, clods of soil all over the sheets. A vague memory emerges of standing in a garden, crying for the tulips I had bought for Lottie and Matilda, and then ripping handfuls of daffodils from a beautifully tended flowerbed. I roll away, hoping there is no more to the memory, and see the answering machine is flashing on the table by the bed. I throw an arm towards it and a smeared mirror and paper wrap fall to the carpet. In my drunken stupor I must have wasted Mary Foster’s gift of cocaine.

  ‘Daddy, where are you? All I get is your answer phone. Are you still coming?’ says the first message.

  ‘Daddy, it’s eight-thirty, we’re starting dinner without you. See you soon,’ says the second message.

  ‘This is John. Remember me? We met at the Friary and spoke on the phone the other day. I gave you my number. Well, you called last night. From a pub somewhere. Kilburn, I think you said. Anyway, you sounded in a bad way. If you can manage not to drink or drug today, I’ll see you outside the one o’clock Meeting in Hande Street. It’s just off Charing Cross Road. I will be there from twelve-thirty. Call me if you want. Take it easy. And remember, if you don’t drink you can’t get drunk. Bye now and God bless.’

  ‘Anthony, this is Matilda. Damn you to hell. Lottie has gone to bed. She was really looking forward to seeing you. She was hoping things would be different. I can hear her crying in her bedroom. She told me she’s crying for her grandparents. Your mother and your father. You heartless bastard. You are truly unbelievable. Anyway, I need to speak to you. I’ll meet you at Benito’s tomorrow after I get out of work. Be there at four. Don’t you dare be late.’

  There is a click, followed by a terrible silence. Deep sadness and remorse flood over me. I fumble and set the alarm for eleven-thirty. Then, covered in blood, dirt and uprooted daffodils, I fall back into a state that vaguely resembles sleep.

  7

  Experience, strength and hope

  I get to Hande Street by twelve-fifteen and stand on the opposite side of the road from the Meeting venue. I can see some likely candidates gathering on the steps of the church hall. They are chatting and smoking and looking generally happy and at ease. I am thinking how much I envy them when John suddenly appears at my side.

  ‘So, hi, Tony, how are you?’

  ‘Not so good.’

  He gives me a big smile. ‘Don’t worry, if drinking is your problem then you’re in the right place.’

  ‘I’ve been drinking and I took some cocaine, though I don’t even remember the cocaine part,’ I say, looking away from him, down at the ground. ‘Just yesterday.’

  ‘What happened?’ he asks. His eyes are sparkling, his skin sickeningly fresh.

  ‘I don’t quite know. I was out shopping and I stopped at a pub. I looked inside. There was a woman standing by the juke box. It seemed so inviting. Next thing I know, I’m drinking a pint of Guinness and the world looks great.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘Then things got bad and I don’t remember too much.’ An overturned table, a walk on the Heath, and the daffodils all flash through my mind. ‘It’s all a horrible blur.’

  ‘It’s okay,’ John smiles. ‘You’re here now and you can start all over again. You need never drink again. That’s what I’ve found. I don’t have to do any more research. Alcohol is poison to me and I haven’t had a drink since my first Meeting. One day at a time.’

  He puts his arm around me. I flinch, as much at his jolly enthusiasm as at the intimacy.

  ‘Everything will be alright,’ says John reassuringly. ‘It’s not the elephants that get us, but the mice.’

  Inside the Meeting hall there are slogans and banners on the wall. I read them to avoid eye contact with anyone around me. A shudder goes down my spine as I recall my meeting with Mary in Brighton and the Latter-Day Saint clones I had felt so superior to. How far we fall.

  ‘Can we have a moment’s silence to remember why we are here,’ says a voice from the front.

  A lot of what follows goes over my head. Passages are read from pamphlets and books. I am told that if I am new I should relax and listen out for the similarities in the story each speaker has to tell rather than the differences. I start to feel more at ease. This is a format I feel comfortable with: the speaker at the front and no likelihood of surprise audience participation. And the monologue is bewitching.

  The man who speaks does not wear a dirty raincoat. He doesn’t look like my image of an alcoholic. In fact, when I look around I notice most people are well dressed and clean. The speaker is about my age and tells a story that could be my own. A childhood home of empty promises. A father who taught him to drink; and then an adulthood of drinking and blackouts, police cells and therapy. He tells how his father was always threatening suicide, even attempting it, but never succeeding. The audience laughs when he says he once offered to help by taking him to the top of a tall building. I look around at all the chuckling faces and wonder if this is a home for the mentally ill. As if reading my mind, the speaker goes on to say the Meeting is a place where we laugh ourselves better. It strikes a chord with me. I’ve not been laughing much recently. Towards the end of his monologue he relates how the Meetings saved his life. How he had ‘hit rock bottom’ and the last two years of sobriety had been the best of his life. I think of diving into a deep, deep ocean, swimming down, losing my breath and then crashing into the hard smooth rock of the sea floor.

  For the rest of the Meeting members of the audience respond by telling how the speaker’s experiences hold a mirror to their own. John, who is sitting next to me, is the last to share his story.

  ‘Jim, thanks for what you said,’ he says. ‘I always thought I never wet the bed. Well, I didn’t. I pissed in the wardrobe instead.’

  There is a titter of laughter and identification. Then John tells some battle stories from his drinking days. He was something big in the city, and things finally came to a head one Christmas dinner when he got horribly drunk and told the CEO’s wife exactly what he thought of her husband before trying to kiss her. As he recalls a catalogue of appalling behaviour, of self-destructiveness, a trigger is flicked and a tape rewinds in my own memory: similar stories, different characters and sett
ings, same outcomes.

  An hour later, in the cafe across the road from the church, I recognize some of the faces from the Meeting. John and I are sitting at a table by the window. I’m glad he suggested we sit alone and not with the others. I’m not quite ready to join in the jolly banter around me. I’ve taken to adding sugar to my coffee. I stare into the cup, watching the sugar as it dissolves into the froth of my cappuccino.

  ‘It’s the most natural thing on earth for an alcoholic to drink and an addict to take drugs,’ says John, filling in the silence. ‘But you don’t have to. You can have another chance, another life. If you stick around you’ll hear every story under the sun. People who have lost everything. Houses, jobs, marriages. Who have had children die on them. Still they didn’t drink. And then they went out drinking because the washer went on a bathroom tap. Remember what I said,’ he adds with a smile, ‘it’s the mice, not the elephants, that get us.’

  He eats his second doughnut and I light a cigarette.

  ‘I’ve got to go away for work,’ I say.

  ‘Do you? You should put your sobriety before everything else.’

  ‘I have no choice.’

  ‘You can do anything other than drink.’

  ‘I know that one from the Friary,’ I say.

  ‘But do you know it in your heart?’ he says.

  ‘I have no option but to go on this trip.’

  ‘Okay, but there are Meetings everywhere. You should call the regional office and find out where they are in the countries you visit.’

  ‘That’s a good idea.’

  ‘And, Tony, you can call me anytime, anytime at all. Day or night.’

  I take his phone numbers again. He gives me a big bear hug as we get up to leave the coffee bar. It feels awkward, but not as bad as waking up to a bed littered with someone else’s daffodils.

  Then he hugs me again and holds me hard against him, as if making sure I don’t fall apart.

  ‘Thanks,’ I say. ‘I appreciate your concern.’

  ‘It’s how it works – we look after each other,’ he says, waving goodbye, walking off up the street. ‘Give it away to keep it,’ he shouts. ‘Give it away to keep it.’

  I watch him disappear into the crowd and feel good and bad and lonely all at once. And here I am again. On my own on the street. I cross the road, toss a pound coin into a young beggar’s paper cup, and then head south to Soho where I can wile away an hour or so before my rendezvous with Matilda. On the way down Rupert Street I stop at a phone box and dial Mary Foster’s number. I am relieved to get her voicemail.

  ‘Mary. This is Anthony Malloy. I’m ready to begin our collaboration. The sooner we get on with this the better.’

  It is not a good day to be at Benito’s. Francesco Benito, the proprietor, drinks a glass of wine while I nurse a mineral water.

  ‘Mister Tony, I tell him one more time, one more trouble, and he’s out the door.’

  Alfredo, the Head Chef (the only chef, if the truth be known), took too many liberties. It was one thing to take pastries home and drink more than his share of wine, but quite another to have people queue out back on Monday mornings for cut-price chickens and lamb chops. This morning Benito arrived unexpectedly early and there was Alfredo running a cash and carry from the kitchen door. Benito and Alfredo both have fiery dispositions, so all hell broke loose, with feathers and wigs (Benito wears an appalling hair-piece) flying through the air.

  The upshot of this is there is no chef today.

  ‘You must excuse us, Mister Tony,’ explains Benito, wiping his chubby hand across his red face. ‘I tried to get a replacement, but my one cousin says yes and then his wife goes into labour half an hour ago. Of all days to give birth … may it be a safe one,’ he says, crossing himself, repenting his selfishness. ‘I’m counting on Giovanni. I’ve left a message with his son. You remember Giovanni? He has his leg. You know Giovanni’s leg?’

  ‘Of course, how can anyone forget Giovanni?’ I say, remembering the famous incident with the bottle of brandy and the balancing chairs.

  ‘Ah, Senora,’ says Benito, his arms outstretched, a smile directed over my shoulder.

  It is Matilda. She looks tired. She is wearing a loose blue sweater and blue jeans. Around her neck is a cashmere scarf that looks like the one we bought together when she was pregnant. It reminds me of a happy afternoon long ago: choosing a scarf, placing it around her neck, kissing her gently on the cheek. Benito stands up and gestures to Matilda to sit down.

  ‘I hope we can offer you a good meal,’ he says, and leaves for the kitchen.

  Matilda sits, looking confused.

  ‘What does he mean? The food is always good here.’

  ‘The chef.’

  ‘Again?’

  ‘Again.’

  ‘You have a real talent for being in the wrong place at the wrong time,’ says Matilda, casting me a look that triggers a dozen scenarios from our recent past.

  ‘You like salad,’ I say, trying to lighten things up.

  ‘That’s not the point. Anyway, I’m only staying for a drink. Lottie is upset. Really upset. That’s the only reason I’m here – to let you know how your daughter feels. She doesn’t trust you anymore, Anthony. You can’t be trusted. She loves you, still, but she can’t rely on you.’

  I feel a sense of hollowing, deep in my stomach. A hole so large you could put a fist through it. It is raw and weeping. An empty space where my spirit should be; where my love should be. Matilda looks at me and sees the sadness in my eyes.

  ‘Last night …’ I begin, unsure as to what I have to say.

  ‘Anthony,’ she says firmly, ‘I don’t want to know. I don’t care. It’s one thing to let me down. You’ve only been out of treatment for ten minutes. It’ll take time, even if you don’t drink. You can’t expect her to really trust you. Not yet. Not after all the madness of the last four years. Not after pulling stunts like last night.’

  ‘What did she say to you?’ I ask sheepishly, turning the glass in my hand, my voice high-pitched, my eyes lowered, set on the cutlery.

  ‘Last night, after you phoned drunk …’ she says. I look up at her and I know she knows I don’t remember any phone call. I stay silent; there is no need for words. ‘When she realized you weren’t coming and you were drinking again, she told me she felt that you don’t care about her. You don’t care about what is important to her.’

  Matilda reaches her hand to the middle of the table as if she’s about touch my hand. But then her hand recedes like a wave sucking back on the shoreline.

  ‘You can’t be surprised,’ adds Matilda, ‘not after all the other times. The birthday party.’

  Our eyes meet as the shared memory sweeps back into the room like an icy draught. The fight on the stairs, the overturned birthday cake. Children all sent home. The sound of the police sirens turning into the drive, then the police station, then me throwing the typewriter at the desk sergeant, banging my head rhythmically against the wall of the cell. Peter arrived, then Dr Le Frais. Let’s call it stress, he’s overworked, they agreed, as they arranged for me to go to the Friary, an exclusive and confidential rehab for those in the medical profession. ‘Don’t worry,’ said Dr Le Frais, ‘we’ll have you back on your feet in no time at all.’ Twelve thousand pounds for two weeks and then they tell you to go to Aftercare Meetings in cold church halls.

  ‘She says she’s terrified of that dead look in your eyes, the way your voice sounded last night. It horrified her,’ says Matilda, bringing me back to the present. ‘She’s really perceptive. She’s had to grow up so quickly. Too quickly, with all this insanity around her.’

  Benito arrives from the kitchen, all in a flurry.

  ‘Good news. Giovanni is here. He has a bad bone in his leg, but otherwise he’s fit. Now what can I get you to drink?’ he asks, licking his pencil.

  After the drinks arrive I take a deep breath, knowing what I have to say next will only cause more upset. Better get it over with and face the medicine.
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br />   ‘Matilda, I’m sorry but I have to go away for work pretty much straight away. I can’t look after Lottie when you go away to Macaroni Wood with your kids.’

  She looks at me in disbelief, her wine glass poised between the table and her lips. I’m sure for a second she considers throwing it at me. But she places it back on the table and fixes me with a scary glare. ‘Have you learned nothing? Have you listened at all?’

  She gets up to go.

  ‘You tell Lottie,’ she says, barely keeping her anger in check. ‘You tell Lottie you’re to miss her recital. You’ll see her tonight. Believe it or not she still wants to stay at your house tonight. She thinks it’s better she’s with you than not. So you tell her. Tell her how much you care. It’s not what you say, it’s what you do.’

  Matilda leaves the restaurant without turning back. The door to the street slams and the full glass of dry white wine jumps from the table to let me know it’s there. Benito’s eyebrows rise in my direction. I stare at the colours refracted in the glass. It’s the first drink does the damage, I remember. Just as well, I think, as I drain the glass. I look at Benito. If you had my problems you would drink too. Sobriety will have to wait until I sort out this mess of my life.

  As I turn the key in the door, Matilda’s words swim through my mind. As I enter the hallway the sounds of the flute tell me Lottie has beaten me to it and is home from her after-school music practice. Ever since my separation from her mother, treatment-cum-retreats aside, Lottie stays with me every Wednesday night and alternate weekends. It is as much her decision as anyone else’s and part of her vow to herself to love both her parents equally and to show no partiality.

  When I enter the living room she puts down her flute and blows me a kiss.

  ‘Last night …’ I say, fumbling over the words for the second time this day, as if I were the child and she the parent.