by Mick McCoy
A smile spread across his face. ‘Good enough for me.’
Ruby poured a nip. ‘Can you drink it?’
‘Why not?’ Conrad held the whisky inches from his lips. ‘What more could I ask for?’ He took a sip. ‘But this will be enough.’
Alex cleared his throat. He needed to say something, anything, it didn’t matter what. ‘I told Mum you were too sick to drink whisky.’
‘Too sick not to,’ Conrad said, taking another sip. ‘My voice. All the gravel gone. And … louder?’ He swallowed. ‘Perhaps I should have more?’
‘Dad, you’ll get drunk.’ Alex smirked.
Conrad held out his glass. ‘Another, please.’
Ruby poured another shot and he downed it in one. Alex thought about the last time his father had been drunk. He gazed up at the pale light bulb dangling from the paint-flaked ceiling as if it were the bright Australian sun, full of warmth and breathless tranquillity, but the image didn’t take hold. He wasn’t ready to believe in such a happy ending.
RUBY
It wouldn’t have been more than ten minutes before Conrad was asleep, courtesy of Valentin’s whisky, the paraldehyde and the lack of oxygen in his blood. Ruby and Alex were still talking to him when he drifted into a doze. He coughed, nudged and pulled at his nasal tube, and let out insipid sighs that sounded like a football deflating. Sadness lingered in Alex’s eyes throughout their lunch.
At least having his father in the room, even if he was asleep, had been enough to encourage Alex to talk to her about idle things, comfortable chatter. But the moment they left the hospital room he was as silent as a monk. Ruby could have initiated conversation, but she was afraid of what she might say. And anyway, she was too absorbed in her own loss.
They walked to the station, stood on the platform and waited, all in silence. It was only as the train left the station that he spoke. ‘What are we going to do about Peter’s ashes?’
‘I’ve been to the crematorium three times now. Last week they said the ashes were being processed.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘I don’t know.’ Ruby didn’t want to talk about it. The old lady across the aisle watched them, listened to them speak English.
‘Doesn’t that worry you?’ Alex was in a window seat, talking to the glass.
‘They said I should come back in a couple of weeks.’ Ruby smiled at the woman before saying to Alex, ‘Maybe we should talk about this at home.’
‘It’s been six weeks since the funeral,’ he said. ‘Have you taken them vodka?’
‘Why don’t you try that?’
‘I will,’ he said, and they both fell silent again.
Ruby closed her eyes, letting her body sway with the train. As it slowed, she opened them to find the old lady smiling at her. ‘Christmas?’ she said in English. Her accent suggested she knew few other words.
‘Christmas,’ Ruby replied. Very few Russians celebrated it, although their fondness for New Year’s Eve more than made up for it.
‘Merry Christmas,’ the old lady said, leaning forward to pat Ruby’s knee.
‘Spasibo,’ Ruby said, ‘thank you,’ before adding in English, ‘Merry Christmas.’
The woman patted Ruby’s knee again. ‘Spasibo.’ The seat beside her was empty. Apart from a small string bag, she carried nothing. No parcels, no basket, no picnic remains. Her smile lingered, full of goodwill and an easy stillness.
‘I really wanted to have Peter’s ashes by his birthday,’ Ruby said, a tear in her eye. ‘So I’m disappointed, but I’m not worried.’
‘I wasn’t blaming you, Mum.’
‘Your father would’ve appreciated it too,’ she said.
Back at the flat, Alex went to his room and shut the door. Ruby curled up on the couch to listen to the BBC Christmas service on the radio. The Queen’s Christmas message was only a few lines old when she fell asleep.
Radio static hissed when she jolted awake an hour later. Conrad was dead, she felt it surely. Alex’s room was empty. She grabbed her coat and shawl and bag and ran from the flat. The morning’s fine weather hadn’t lasted, the open square above the Metro station windswept and bitterly cold. She kept on running, taking the stairs two at a time down to the platform. After disembarking she didn’t wait for the lights but threaded her way through the traffic on Leninski Prospekt, and at the hospital she headed straight for the fire escape stairs.
‘I thought you were dead,’ she said, from Conrad’s doorway. Her face was crimson from the cold. Her shawl still wrapped her head and neck, tucked inside the collar of her thick coat, buttoned to the top. She was breathless.
‘What?’ Conrad said. ‘Why?’
‘I was at home, curled up on the couch listening to the radio, and I felt you leave.’
‘Well, I’m still here.’
She kissed his lips, tenderly.
‘I could feel you stop breathing. It was awful, like your lungs were mine.’ She unbuttoned her coat and stripped the shawl from her head. ‘My chest tightened up and, try as I might, my ribs just wouldn’t expand, my lungs wouldn’t inflate.’
‘They’re working fine now,’ he said.
Ruby gathered up Conrad’s hands. Strands of hair clung to her cheeks.
‘Are you all right?’ he asked. ‘Have you been crying?’
‘An old lady on the train home made me shed a tear,’ she said. ‘With a kindness. A merry Christmas in terrible English.’ She wiped a finger across each side of her face. ‘She seemed very alone.’
It was how alone the old woman seemed to be, rather than her kindness, that made Ruby teary. Her lack of another. It made her realise that ever since she’d been told Conrad had so little time to live, she’d been waiting for him to go. Just passively and hopelessly waiting, because there was nothing else she could do. She still didn’t believe in the cancer but that mattered little because Conrad did and he was preparing himself. Expecting to die. The frustration and anger and sadness that she couldn’t help him and, for such a long time, hadn’t helped him, drove her to this. She couldn’t look at him without seeing a helpless young child and an indulged old man, as well as her husband. Her loved husband.
‘Where’s Alex?’ he said.
‘We went home when you fell asleep,’ she said.
‘Why?’
‘There was no point staying.’
‘But I might not see him again.’
‘He was crying too. After you went to sleep there was always a tear in his eye.’ Ruby took a chair from the foot of his bed and sat beside him. ‘When you were asleep he sat by the bed, in this chair, in this position.’ She paused. ‘He’s said his goodbyes.’
‘Is he at home now? Why didn’t he come back with you?’
‘He’s gone to see his girlfriend, I think.’
‘He has a girlfriend?’
‘You’ve forgotten,’ Ruby said. ‘Sinead. He met her on the bus. I’ve heard him tell you the story.’
‘I don’t remember.’ Conrad slid his fingers along the respirator tubing, from the tip of his nose to as far as his arm would stretch. He rolled onto his elbow, trying to sit up, before Ruby lifted him with one arm and plumped up the pillows with the other. As she repositioned him, she brushed over his fragile ribs. Irritation flashed across his eyes. He would hate being so dependent on her. He would hate her having to touch his withered body.
‘Have you had any more of those nasty stomach cramps?’
He shook his head. ‘Just that one. I’ve been pretty good today.’
‘I’m pleased to hear it.’ She wondered at how low his expectations had fallen for him to be so terribly ill yet assess his health as pretty good.
‘Is that whisky still here?’ he asked.
‘You’ll fall asleep again,’ she said, opening the drawer of the bedside table to retrieve the bottle and the shot glass.
‘You don’t mind?’
‘Not at all.’ She smiled. ‘If you don’t.’
Conrad tilted the glass to his lip
s and closed his eyes as the alcohol slid down his throat. ‘Another?’
She filled it again. He held the whisky up to his eyes, turning it appreciatively before drinking it in one. ‘Oh Lord, that’s good,’ he said. ‘Even though it drains down a different pipe, it makes this horrible bloody tube in my nose almost tolerable.’
‘I won’t put it away,’ Ruby said, screwing the lid back onto the bottle. ‘About Alex – I’m afraid he hates me. He blames me for most things and himself for the rest.’
She watched her husband’s face through a long silence.
‘When you arrived this morning,’ he said, ‘it seemed like you two had been fighting and you’d won.’
‘We haven’t fought,’ she said, ‘not really. But he has been angry with me. I’ve said some stupid things about him and Peter. I didn’t intend to be hurtful, but I was stupid. Things that came out the wrong way, and things I don’t mean, even if I once did.’
‘About Peter being your favourite?’
‘Yes,’ she said. She hugged him, her head against his chest, seeking a rise and fall, a sign that his lungs were doing any work to keep him alive. There was nothing other than the gurgle, and the constant trickle from the respirator.
‘He was going to find out someday, Rube.’
She lifted her head from his chest. ‘Don’t start that again, please.’
‘We should have told him years ago because it’s too late for me to help you now.’
She gazed out the window. ‘You’re right, it is too late for you to help.’ That smothering grey sky made her think of leaving. ‘And since it’ll be left to me, I’ll deal with it my way.’
‘Let’s not fight,’ he said. ‘I don’t have the energy.’
‘What else can we talk about?’
Conrad didn’t hesitate. ‘About you going back to Australia.’
She stood from the chair and went to the window. ‘Why did you wait so long to reach that decision?’
‘What on earth is out there to distract you so much?’ he said. ‘Could you come back, please?’
‘A year ago would have been enough. None of this would ever have happened.’
‘Ruby, …’
‘A year is so long,’ she said, pushing the chair aside and sitting with him on the bed. ‘It’s like waiting forever. Or for never.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘You only agree to it now because you don’t have to go back yourself. If you had more Christmases in you, you’d make us all stay.’
‘You’re right,’ he eventually said.
‘But I’ve forgiven you,’ she said. ‘Conrad?’ His eyes were open but glazed over. She touched his shoulder. ‘Conrad, are you listening?’
‘Yes, yes,’ he said, sounding frustrated with himself. ‘I was going to try to defend myself but you’ve heard it all before and it’s wrong.’
With two fingers under his chin Ruby lifted his sagging head.
‘Thank you, Rube,’ he said. He closed his eyes as he began to drift away again. She listened to the regularity in his shallow, sipped breathing.
CONRAD
Late at night there was a knock at his open door. Four glasses of whisky across the day had twice sent Conrad into precipitous, comatose sleep, but with his eyes open he felt instantly and piercingly hungover.
Despite the knock he found an empty room. It didn’t matter, he knew who it was. ‘Valentin?’ he called. ‘Eto ty? Is that you?’
‘Konrad, moy drug. Conrad, my friend.’ Valentin’s frame filled the doorway. ‘What’s all this bullshit I hear about you worrying your family?’
‘It is bullshit,’ Conrad agreed. ‘Most certainly.’ As he pushed himself higher up his pillows, the throbbing in his temples deepened. He felt nauseous, but mercifully free of the painful abdominal cramps and the sweats and chills.
‘You’re worse these last few days, Ruby tells me. That’s very inconsiderate of you.’
‘How do I look?’
‘Worse, of course,’ Valentin said. ‘Your wife is wise and I am honest.’
‘That’s why you –’ he swallowed – ‘procured the medicine?’
‘Medicine, you call it? Has the cancer eaten away your brain? There is no other explanation for being so inconsiderate about my gift.’ He stood in the middle of the room as if it were a stage.
‘I am brain dead,’ Conrad said. ‘But please stay.’
‘You don’t deserve it.’ Valentin unbuttoned his coat and draped it across the empty chair. ‘But I will.’
‘Ne dolgo, vy ne budete. Not for long, you won’t.’ Conrad’s favourite nurse strode through the door. She was Valentin’s type: practical, assertive to the point of being bossy, full-figured. She had a lot in common with Ruby.
‘Don’t start acting bashful now that I’m here,’ she said, motioning for Valentin to sit. ‘Didn’t you come to talk with your friend?’
‘I will not take this chair until we have been properly introduced,’ Valentin said.
Hands on her hips, she tapped her foot against the floor. Conrad chuckled. ‘Valentin Alexandrovich Zakrevsky,’ he said, ‘may I introduce you to Galina Romanovna, my angel of the midnight bedpan.’
Galina offered her hand and Valentin took it, touching his lips to her fingers. ‘It is an honour,’ he said. ‘How is it we haven’t met before? I have visited President Murphy so often but never seen you.’
‘You don’t know whose arse I have wiped with that hand,’ she said, withdrawing it. ‘Sit up,’ she said to Conrad. With her back to Valentin she winked at Conrad while she rearranged his pillows. ‘What kind of greeting is this for your loyal friend? You are slumped in your bed like a beggar.’ She smoothed the blankets over his emaciated legs. ‘A drunk beggar.’
‘I could be that,’ he said.
‘You can get closer to him,’ she said, to Valentin. ‘What he has isn’t catching. Most of it.’
Valentin did as instructed and the nurse pressed his chair closer to the bed. ‘I feel like I’ve been seated at a fine restaurant.’
‘This is a hospital,’ Galina said. ‘And you’re not staying long. But you can tip me on your way out, if you like.’ She stopped at the door. ‘But no more whisky. No alcohol, not with your medicine.’
‘I’ve told her a few things about you,’ Conrad said, once she’d left.
‘I’m in love,’ said Valentin.
Conrad laughed briefly then coughed for much longer. ‘Consider the introduction my Christmas gift,’ he said. ‘And I’m still drunk from your whisky, but it helps me talk. Perhaps we should finish it off?’
‘Didn’t you hear what your nurse just said?’
Conrad shrugged.
‘Wait,’ Valentin said, twisting to pat down the coat he’d laid across the back of the chair. He slipped his hand inside the breast pocket, whatever he retrieved concealed within his palm. ‘I have two more gifts,’ he said. ‘You may prefer one over the other, I don’t know. There is no accounting for taste, especially with an uneducated foreigner such as you.’
‘Get on with it.’
Valentin went to the door to check for anyone who might interfere, or perhaps to see if a particular someone might have liked to join in, then returned to Conrad’s side. ‘The first is a humble cigarette. One of your Salems,’ he said. ‘I assume you haven’t seen such a thing in some time?’
Conrad shook his head. It hurt. But he desperately wanted the cigarette and didn’t suffer the slightest twinge of guilt. ‘Match?’
Valentin cleared his throat. ‘Yes, but I also have something more appropriate for a man of your exulted position. Recipient of the Badge of Honour, liberator of ignorant Russians and, most importantly, very good friend of the renowned mechanic and benefactor Valentin Alexandrovich Zakrevsy.’ He revealed a cigar and held it up for them both to wonder at. ‘I’ve been saving it for the right occasion, but it’s not only for you. I intend on sharing it with you, right now.’
Conrad raised his eyebrows.
‘Will you
look at this thing?’ Valentin enthused. ‘A genuine Cuban Cohiba. Do you know how privileged you are?’
‘It’s becoming clearer.’
‘Look at the fine craftsmanship. Look at how thick it is. Thicker than your member, I wouldn’t doubt.’
Conrad’s face was part scowl and part smile. More coughing followed.
‘Those lungs,’ Valentin said. ‘They’re so far gone that this delicacy can do no further harm.’
‘Couldn’t agree more,’ Conrad said, when finally he could speak.
Valentin produced a penknife from his trouser pocket and, with a single movement, cut away the cap of the cigar. ‘The Canonazo Especial, produced only for Cuban government officials. No one else. Except now, you.’ He held it up again so that Conrad could confirm the precision of his work, then slid it under Conrad’s nose. ‘Can you do without that tubing?’
‘Best it stays in.’
Valentin shrugged, gently tucking the cigar between Conrad’s lips.
‘Never smoked a cigar,’ Conrad said.
‘I’m no longer surprised by your ignorance and inexperience, but it’s never too late to start.’ He struck a match. ‘In honour of your decadent and sentimental traditions, I wish you a merry Christmas.’
Conrad bit down on the cigar as best he could, to stop it falling to the bed, and watched the lighted match approach the cigar’s tip.
‘Don’t puff at it, let the tip light,’ Valentin said. ‘Roll it with your fingers, half a turn.’
Conrad did as he was told. ‘Ready?’
‘Ready. But don’t inhale like a cigarette. Just hold the smoke in your mouth. Taste it.’
Conrad let the smoke wash in, savouring it, however muted his senses. He took the cigar from his lips and watched the smoke creep over the cigar’s gently glowing foot, managing not to cough. He passed the cigar back to Valentin. ‘Can I ask you something?’
‘Anything,’ he said, ‘although I’m curious why you think you need my permission first.’
‘Will you take care of Ruby and Alex?’
‘Yes,’ he said, without hesitation. ‘Of course.’ He brought the cigar to his lips and closed his eyes.