Losing It

by Ross Gilfillan

  Carole, the big one with the dirty laugh and the range of colourful thongs, spots this immediately and brings it to the attention of the two slightly dumpy blondes and the cute little red head. She says something to Clive, which I miss, as I’m saying something consoling to Diesel, but I’m fairly sure it’s an observation highlighting the anomaly of Clive’s lifestyle choice being at odds with the attention he’s paying to a member of the opposite sex.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Carole asks him. ‘Your boyfriends over there not giving you enough cock?’

  Carole’s cronies think this is very funny. One of the dumpy blondes says, ‘Couldn’t find an English girl to do it with, could he?’ and they all erupt again, squawking like agitated parrots. Faruk is clearly angry, but like me, isn’t sure how to react when the tormentor is a woman.

  Clive has gone scarlet but his ‘Fuck off, you slags’ sounds neither witty nor intimidating. It’s looking like a clear victory for the mouthy schoolgirls, when Poon Tang grabs Diesel’s tomato-shaped ketchup dispenser and the plastic bottle of mayo too. I think I know what’s coming but I still can’t quite believe it when she aims both bottles at the blondes and squeezes hard.

  The blondes both scream and stare down at their sauce-splat-tered tops and scream some more. The cute little redhead escapes under the table and bolts for the door. But Carole’s not having this, not from some ‘foreign slapper’ and she stuffs her chocolate éclair with extra whipped cream down Poon Tang’s blouse. The girls scratch and they grapple, nails break, seams split and plates smash while, variously, we – watch appreciatively (Diesel), shout at Faruk to bloody well do something (Clive), or just sit there screaming (the two blondes). Me, I’m the detached observer, crushed against the window, outside which there’s a growing crowd of interested spectators.

  By the time the combatants have at last been forcibly separated by a furious Deniz, Poon Tang has ruined her clothes and will have to go shopping again, the girls will have a lot of explaining to do when they get home and Faruk will be cleaning the caff until this time next month, I expect. It has not been an elevating afternoon. But as I leave a larger than usual tip on my saucer and get up to go. I’m thinking that Diesel has at least been well and truly cheered up. For the moment, at least.

  CHAPTER 19

  Take Me Bak ‘Ome

  It’s not hard to see why Big Noddy Liversage is called Noddy when his proper name is Nigel. Not if you’ve seen videos of Slade in their heyday. Roger Dyson has the lot, by the way, everything from Gudbuy T’ Jane, to Mama, Weer All Crayzee Now. It’s not that Noddy Liversage is the dead spit of Noddy Holder, but rather that he tries really hard to be. And as you enter the public bar through the big old swing doors like me, Diesel, Lauren, Clive and Faruk did earlier tonight, the chances are that your ears will be assaulted by damagingly loud renditions of Get Down And Get With It or ‘Coz I Luv You (there’s nothing on the juke box later than 1974), and the first thing your eyes will fix on will be Noddy’s own gigantic physique and balloon-red face, which is curtained by enormous mutton-chop sideburns.

  If you’re lucky, the landlord of the Queen’s Head will be wearing his replica Noddy Holder top hat, the one with the little round mirrors and his tartan suit – though he prizes this and generally only gets it out for special occasions: Noddy Holder’s birthday, the anniversary of the first time Dave Hill wore that silver outfit with the stacked heel boots and so on. But that’s just the landlord. Look around you in the public bar of the Queen’s Head and you’ll see that the whole place is a time capsule. The decor hasn’t changed in decades, the Wurlitzer plays vinyl 45s and Roger reckons you can still get Aztec chocolate bars and hedgehog flavour crisps from behind the bar.

  ‘Orrlroight, ow-er Broy-yan,’ Noddy says as I return our glasses to the bar. ‘Foo-arr moo-er points of Krownenbee-urg for yow, eez eet?’

  I tell Noddy that I think his Black Country accent is coming along a real treat. It’s Noddy’s ambition to be able to talk just like his heroes, who define a ‘kipper tie’ as a hot drink with milk and two sugars. I tell him that I think his accent is so good, in fact, that it’s probably safe for him to try it out in Wolverhampton itself: I’m almost certain he won’t get beaten up this time. His pub might be a museum piece with hygiene standards and a blocked toilet which both pre-date the Health and Safety at Work Act, but it’s the one place in town which doesn’t ask for ID from obvious minors. ‘Oi can’t be bothid with all that,’ Noddy says. ‘Them’s orrl forged on the int-init innywhy.’ Which is why the Queen’s Head has been the pub of choice for the Four Horsemen this last year.

  We’re here tonight at Diesel’s instigation. Lauren’s not drinking, of course, but Diesel is letting his hair down – not drinking like every pint might be his last, which is probably what I would do, but drinking like he has something to celebrate. The mood is infectious. Clive is knocking back dusty bottles of Cherry B and Babycham and going on about Poon Tang, whom Roger has taken out tonight. Lauren has never looked happier and we discover she can be very nice and quite funny, when you let her.

  It’s when Diesel and I go for a quick spliff in what Noddy calls the toilets and his customers call the Fatal Swamp, that I find out what this is all about. ‘She’s all right, isn’t she?’ Diesel says, skinning up on the broken hand-dryer. There’s only a single low-wattage bulb in here and it’s all a bit gloomy. But Diesel isn’t. I can see he’s smiling from the way his teeth glow in the yellow light. I’m saying, sure she is, Lauren’s a nice girl and wondering what’s brought about Diesel’s change of mood.

  ‘It’s not going to be easy, I know that,’ Diesel says now. ‘I’ve talked with people who’ve got kids and I know pretty much what to expect. Basically, when you have a kid, you’re no longer the centre of your own universe. You’re just a satellite orbiting around Planet Kid. And it’s a full time job. And there will be a struggle with money and it’s all going to be stressful for the first few years and I won’t get to do loads of the stuff I wanted to. But you know what?’

  ‘No?’

  ‘I’m cool with all that.’

  ‘You are?’

  ‘I am,’ Diesel says, and passes me the spliff. ‘I mean, can you imagine me and Little Diesel kicking a ball in the park, me passing on all my old skills…’

  ‘What skills?’

  ‘Don’t be funny. And taking him for his first Big Mac? And watching all my old DVDs with him? He’ll be watching Back to the Future like it’s new. And going fishing with him?’

  ‘You don’t fish.’

  ‘Not yet I don’t, but there’s going to be so much stuff I’ll want to do just so I can share it with him.’

  ‘Or her?’

  ‘I’m just saying. Of course, or her. Little girls these days, they like the same stuff anyway. And hey, what about the first time I take him in a pub? And he buys his old man a pint? How cool will that be?’

  And, over the noise of a man with amazingly long hair hawking phlegm as he noisily uses the urinal, Diesel tells me what Lauren nearly did which made him see his predicament in an entirely new light. Partly, it was his fault, too. He should never have given her that leaflet about terminating a pregnancy, he says. Perhaps I’ve noticed, he says, that Lauren hasn’t been her usual, bubbly self these past few weeks.

  ‘Neither have you,’ I remind him. ‘You’ve been a right miserable twat, in fact.’

  ‘He’s got a point,’ the long-haired man says as he zips up and stumbles back to the bar.

  ‘There is a kernel of truth in what you say,’ Diesel says. ‘And Lauren saw I was miserable and I suppose she saw that this was never going to work, not if I always thought I’d been forced into a life of fatherhood. I’d resent it, she told me. She said that sooner or later, I’d resent her. Which is why she set the ball rolling to have our baby terminated.’

  ‘What?’ I can’t believe Lauren would do such a thing. We talked of it as a possibility, as you do, but the reality is too terrible even to consider. ‘But she was dea
d set on having a kid,’ I say.

  ‘She was dead set on us being happy together, too,’ Diesel says. ‘And so was I. But the baby was coming between us. So that mad little brain of hers decides that the time just isn’t right. She’ll get rid of this baby and we’ll try again further down the line, when we’re settled and more…’

  ‘Mature?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So what happened?’

  ‘I found out what was happening when some idiot from the clinic left a message on the call minder. I should’ve been happy. It was what I’d wanted her to do from the start. But now that it was actually going to happen, everything changed. All those plans she’d made, the ones I thought I was only going along with very reluctantly. All the stuff we’d bought, the cute mobile with the frogs on it that I’d chosen myself. I don’t know, BJ, I don’t really know what happened. All I do know is that I suddenly realized that I’d been wrong and that what I wanted more than anything, was for us to have that kid.’

  ‘Wow. I suppose one of us had to grow up sooner or later. Just glad it wasn’t me.’

  We talk about the anticipated joys of fatherhood for a while longer, finish the spliff and go inside, where Noddy is offering an impromptu a cappella version of Take Me Bak ‘Ome, while Faruk stumbles about the place, slurring his words and telling other customers that he really, really loves them. This week, I found out that he really, really loves Rashida, the other half of the marriage arranged for him when he was ten. This year, determined to resolve the confusion he felt about the matter, he started corresponding with Rashida online, meaning to tell her how he felt and see if there was a way out. He wasn’t expecting to fall in love with her, he just did, he says. She’s going to come and see him later this summer. But now, he says, if they are ever going to get married, it will be on their terms and at a time of their choosing.

  Diesel sits down next to Lauren and drapes his podgy arm around her shoulders. ‘This won’t stop us going out,’ he says. ‘Lauren says the secret to a happy marriage is that we both get on with our own social lives. She’s got her friends and I’ve got you lot.’ Which, we all agree, is just how it should be. It’s been one of those evenings I know even now that I’ll look back on and think, those were the days, when we had real friends, when we all stuck together and were four against the world. That or some similar bollocks. This is what I’m thinking just before Someone notices that I am enjoying myself and the phone in my pocket starts buzzing.

  ‘Suup?’ I say, slightly drunkenly. And then realise it’s Dad.

  ‘It’s your grandmother,’ I hear Dad saying. ‘I’m sorry, Brian, but she’s not good. She’s unconscious. I think this might be it.’

  ‘Oh, fuck, no,’ I say.

  ‘What?’ Dad says.

  ‘Where is she?’

  ‘She’s in the hospital. But that’s not where she should be. I do understand that now.’

  ‘Can’t we get her out of there? Back to Narnia? GD must be going mental.’

  ‘I’ve spoken to the doctors and they won’t release her. It’s not in the best interests of the patient, they’re saying. So unless we do something, she’ll die in hospital while Arthur probably dies of grief in his chair.’

  ‘Unless we do something?’

  ‘Wait there,’ Dad says. ‘I’m coming to get you.’

  We stop the camper van in a pick-up point across from the bright glare of the hospital entrance. Faruk is to stay with the van and be ready for us when we come out. He keeps the engine idling and tries not to look like a getaway driver outside a bank. Garcia, who had jumped aboard when Dad wasn’t looking, is curled up in the well of the passenger seat. The hospital’s automatic doors whoosh open and Dad and I cross the newly waxed lobby, where an officious old man in a shabby dressing gown is loudly complaining to the nurses at reception. ‘This is not good enough,’ he’s saying. ‘This will not do.’ He’s telling the nurses what isn’t good enough and what will not do while a tired-looking woman in a supermarket tunic waits patiently behind him with her two children, who are both in their pyjamas. A porter wheeling cylinders of gas crosses the path of two young female doctors who are heading towards the food court.

  Dad walks briskly across the open space, like a man with a purpose. We both know where we’re going, but never having visited Nana at such a late hour, and coming on such an unusual errand, the hospital feels strange and not a little threatening. We pass down a corridor where most of the side wards are in darkness, though there’s a reading light on here and there and hooded lamps on the ward desks. Dad, surprising me again, has swiped a clipboard from an empty bed and stuck it under his arm. When we see anyone approaching, a tired ward sister in one case, an over-worked doctor in another, he taps it with a pen and tells me quite loudly to take care of myself and not to go overdoing it in future. With his old suit on and a row of pens in his pockets, he can just about pass for a doctor, though not a doctor who can afford a stethoscope, or a good suit.

  The lift Dad used on his previous visit is out of order, so we walk quickly down a long corridor until we find another, which we take to the fourth floor. Before the doors open, we’ve run over the plan of action one more time. Dad tells me that though he made it clear that he now wanted to take Nana home, some prick of a registrar bluntly refused, telling him that to remove her now could have the most serious consequences for Nana’s health. Dad argued with him, pointed at her unconscious form and demanded to know just how much more serious it got than that?

  Luck appears to be on our side as we approach the mixed ward in which Nana’s bed is parked. The other patients seem to be asleep and there are no doctors or nurses. We draw the curtains around her bed and switch on the bedside light. She looks terrible, her skin a bluey grey in the artificial light, lying there with the cardiograph beeping and a tube up her nose. Dad looks at me and I nod. He switches off the machine, carefully removes the tube and then the patches on her arms and chest. I empty her bedside cabinet of the few items GD had sent with her: the photograph of them as young people, a book of her poems, her spectacles, toothbrush and a spare nightdress, and put everything in a carrier bag.

  ‘All ready?’ Dad says.

  I nod and take the brakes off the wheels of the bed. We hear a pair of heels clicking down the corridor and wait until whoever is wearing them has gone. Then Dad pops his head from between the curtains, sees the coast is clear and quietly draws them back. I start to push the bed out into the corridor. Then my heart stops. There’s a disturbance behind me, as a lamp clicks on. I’m ready to run, bed and all, but it’s only another patient, an old man who seems to be smiling at us. ‘Good luck!’ he whispers, with a wink. The bed creaks and the wheels squeak like a labful of tormented mice as I push the bed slowly towards the swing doors at the end of the passage. I’m trying to look like I do this all the time and it’s all a bit of a chore and I’m looking forward to my break and a cup of tea. Halfway down the corridor, we pass a nurses’ station which looks onto a small side ward.

  The nurse on duty puts down her magazine. She regards us with some surprise, or is it suspicion? A doctor she’s never seen before is removing a patient against the express wishes of Mr Ryan, the registrar. And the new porter isn’t wearing his coat. But before she can turn any such thinking into questions, Dad has demanded her name, inspected her desk, said that it’s a wonder she can find anything on it and told her that efficiency depends on order – and might he suggest she brings some to it without delay? While the flustered nurse bustles about the desk, we arrive at the end of the corridor only to find that the lift is out of order. It’s the wrong lift, an easy mistake to make in the circumstances, but one which could ruin everything. Awkwardly, we now have to pass the nurse at the desk one more time. I can’t read her expression as she watches us approach – the game may be up. But Dad stops by the desk again and points out a crisp packet stuffed in an open drawer. He tells the nurse to remind maintenance about that broken lift. I’m quietly impressed.

 
On the ground floor, we slide the bed into a bay where there’s an empty stretcher on wheels, which Dad had pointed out earlier. There’s no way we can take a bed across the lobby without inviting questions, he says, but a gurney might just be heading towards the ambulance station. And so, with great care, we lift Nana from her bed. She is much lighter than I expect and seems to feel nothing as we lie her down on the stretcher and cover her with a sheet. The corridor is empty, apart from a patient in pyjamas who shuffles by, wheeling an intravenous drip bag on a stand. ‘Now,’ Dad says.

  I push the stretcher out into the lobby towards the front entrance. Dad looks at his clipboard, I watch the chequered tiles passing under my feet. We’re almost at the doors when a voice behind us calls out, ‘Doctor!’ It’s one of the nurses at the desk. ‘I’ve no paperwork on this patient?’

  ‘That’s quite all right, nurse,’ Dad says, waving his clipboard. ‘All taken care of, all under control.’ And then we’re out in the warm summer night. Faruk is waiting with the van doors open. The inside has been configured as a bed which will accommodate Nana nicely. She gives a little moan as we transfer her to the van. Dad jumps in the passenger seat while I squeeze in next to Nana. The nurse from reception is at the doors waving at us as Faruk guns the engine and the campervan lurches forward. Faruk drives off, checking his mirror like he thinks we might be followed.

  I hold Nana’s hand as the caravan leaves the hospital grounds, swings through the outskirts of town and joins a ribbon of traffic heading in the general direction of Derbyshire. I’m still bursting with adrenaline but I can’t help smiling. Dad turns around in his seat and asks how Nana’s doing? I tell him I don’t know, but she looks comfortable. As we pass under a streetlight, I can see he’s grinning at me and now (he knows how to do this?) he offers me a high five. Amazing!