‘Exercise, exercise,’ he said brokenly. ‘Do this. Try that. Watching your face, Korky, as you realise how hopeless it is. I can’t even stand – let alone walk.’
‘It’s not hopeless,’ she said bluntly. The kettle was whistling. ‘As for standing, how do you know? They haven’t really tried, have they. They give you all that crap. They say you’ll fall down.’ She turned and shouted: ‘Shut up, kettle.’ It continued to whistle and she stalked in to turn it off. She strode back into the room. His face was to the television again. ‘All right,’ she said as calmly as she could. ‘Let’s see if you can.’
She took two paces and switched off the programme. Aghast Savage turned away from the blank screen. ‘Can what?’
‘Stand,’ she said determinedly. ‘Stand up on your feet.’
‘But . . . I . . . they . . .’
‘Never mind about “I” and “they”,’ she retorted. ‘It can’t kill you. It can’t set you back because you haven’t gone forward anyway.’
Their eyes were locked. ‘All right,’ he said quietly. ‘What do you think we should do?’
‘Oh, Savage. Well done,’ she breathed moving forward and stroking his hands on the arms of the wheelchair. ‘Come on. Let’s try it.’
‘What should we do?’ he repeated.
With suppressed eagerness, she turned the chair on its axis. ‘If we get it at the side of the settee,’ she said. ‘Give yourself just enough room for your feet and hold on to the arm for support, then I’ll try and lift you from the back.’
‘Can you do that?’ He was anxious to try now. ‘Perhaps we should get Tomelty to help.’
‘Let’s just see if we can do it ourselves first. If you feel yourself falling try and flop yourself over the arm of the sofa. Tomelty will tell everybody.’ She looked straight at him. ‘I think this ought to be just the two of us. If it all goes wrong then there’s nobody else to see. It’s private.’
‘Right,’ he nodded solemnly. ‘We’ll do it between us.’
She kissed him on the cheek. ‘First,’ she decided, ‘I’ll push the sofa to the wall to steady it.’ She did it as she spoke. Her gerbil rustled within the sofa. ‘Shut up, John,’ she said. When it was against the interior wall she glanced around. ‘Ready?’
‘I’m ready.’ He propelled the carriage so that his projecting knees were touching the sofa. ‘Let’s go,’ she almost whispered. ‘Put your hands out on the arm.’ He did so. ‘Your knees will work. You’ve done plenty of exercises with them.’
‘It’s the rest of me I’m worried about.’
‘We’ll soon find out.’ She climbed on to the sofa and after a single glance, began to pull his hands, gently but with increasing strength. ‘Come on. Come on, Savage. You can do it.’
He almost did. His knees taking the strain he cranked himself out of the chair. His face sweated, he gritted his teeth. She was sweating too. ‘It’s coming. You’re doing it,’ she encouraged pulling on his arms. ‘Wait, wait. Hold it there. I’m going to push.’ She clambered quickly from the couch holding on to him and getting behind him, tried to add support to his back. The invalid chair was in her way. She kicked it backwards. ‘There,’ she panted. ‘You’ve got to stand up now.’
Savage almost got there. But then the sofa shifted and he fell forward. She tried to save him but failed. With a shout of alarm he rolled sideways and fell heavily to the floor. Korky bent to him. She began to cry, he was cursing, his fist pounding in frustration. The gerbil emerged from the crack in the sofa and scampered to safety.
Savage and Korky lay together on the floor as though they had surrendered. She hugged him and he tried to pat her. They cried together, their tears seeping into Mr Kostelanetz’s carpet.
‘Oh, hello. This is Paul Fenwick. Is that . . . Kathleen?’
‘It’s me, doctor.’
‘Is Frank there?’
‘He’s in the bathroom.’
‘Good. I really wanted to talk to you. He has told you that he wants to be readmitted to hospital?’
‘Yes, he told me,’ she responded quietly. ‘We talked it over. I’m really upset, doctor, but I’m trying to understand. He’s not getting any better and it’s playing on his nerves. And he thinks it’s getting on my nerves.’
‘Is it?’
‘No, I can take it. I told him I can. But he wants to go back and that’s all there is to it. We’ve tried; he’s tried and I’ve tried. It’s not been easy. It’s been very hard for him. I tried to get him standing, just standing.’
‘He didn’t tell me that. What happened?’
‘He fell over, that’s what happened. And now he’s scared stiff of trying anything. He doesn’t even like me wheeling him out in the street any more. He’s got some idea that people are laughing at him.’
‘I can see that happening, the sort of person he is.’
‘Well, he wants to go back to the hospital and there’s nothing I can do about it. I’m just very upset, that’s all. After everything. It makes me want to cry.’
‘Don’t cry,’ he said gently. ‘It may all come right in the end.’
‘You don’t really think that.’
‘It could happen. But he has to do it himself. Without being afraid. People have walked again when every doctor had given up hope. When it happens it’s like a miracle.’ He paused. ‘What will you do now?’
He could hear her sigh. ‘I don’t know,’ she confessed. ‘I haven’t thought about it much. He’s taken up all my time for the last few months. I suppose I’ll have to get myself sorted out somehow. The usual things, get a job, get a roof.’
‘You . . . you won’t go back to living . . . like you were?’
‘Rough? On the streets?’ Her laugh was hard. ‘Not likely. I know better now. There’s better ways of being by yourself. I can always go back to Mr Furtwangler. I worked in his shop and he gave me somewhere to live.’ She waited. ‘When . . . when will you come for Savage?’
‘At the end of this week. We’ll send an ambulance. You’ll come and see him, won’t you.’
‘Yes, I’ll come.’
‘Even if it’s difficult and he has nothing to say and the time drags while you’re here?’
‘I’ll come.’
‘You’re a good girl, you know.’
‘Thanks. I just wanted to help. He’s a good man.’
He was in the chair looking from the window. If he sat upright he could get something of a view, plenty of sky and its moving aeroplanes, a fringe of treetops. Sadness filled him because he thought this would probably be the last time he would see it. It was spring again and evening. Tomorrow he was going back.
Korky was out shopping. She said she was going to cook them something special that night. She was brave and jokey but her eyes glistened. He watched the pigeon-coloured sky and the descending planes, his heart full.
They had talked, they had argued, they had shouted, they had quarrelled and cried together, but now it was settled. He was going back where it was best for him. They were sending the ambulance at eight thirty.
Savage swore to himself and turned the chair sharply away from the window. The word processor sat dumb. He did what he had so often done over those months; he swivelled in front of the television set and picking up the remote control switched it on. It was five thirty. The screen flickered; it was a very old film, a comedy in jerky black and white. Harold Lloyd, with his startled glasses and his unmovable straw boater, was being pursued by a vengeful gang. In silence the chase jolted across the screen. Savage watched dull-eyed. Soon Korky would be back. Soon he would never see her again. He would stop her coming to see him. His life would be without her. It would have to be.
Harold Lloyd opened a window and climbed out above a busy American street of seventy years before. Far below were moving people and traffic. There was a narrow ledge. The baddies were coming. To escape he would have to get along the ledge somehow, to a distant window. One poked his head out of the window but failed to see Harold, clutching his boater and pressed flat agai
nst the wall.
It came to Savage like a revelation. Harold Lloyd began to work his way along the ledge. It was only wide enough to accommodate his feet. Underneath, insect figures moved in the street. He slipped and recovered. His eyes squinted sideways from behind his glasses. Face to the wall he pushed himself tight and, arms flung out for balance, began to shuffle, inch by perilous inch, along the ledge. Two hands against the brickwork, two forearms, two elbows, two upper arms pressed flat; body tight against the surface, face turned to the side, legs splayed.
Savage found himself staring at the image, his face solid, his eyes unblinking. An intrusive commentator’s voice joined in the drama: ‘What will our hero do next?’ Cut to the street below. ‘It’s a long, long, way down.’
Savage licked his lips. He moved away from the television set. Carefully he revolved the chair and propelled it towards the kitchen. To the left of the door, the longest wall of the apartment extended to the bathroom. In the middle, alone, was their small map of the Isle of Wight. With an almost animal grunt he moved the chair so that it was as close as he could get it to the side of the kitchen entrance. His face worked, he felt himself sweating. He wiped his palms on his shirt, calculated the distance between his hands and the jamb of the door. Then slowly, so slowly he feared for his resolve, he moved to grasp the door frame. He tested his grip as a climber might test a rope. Then he tightened his hold.
He began to do it. Alone, as he needed to be. He made himself do it. Slowly, agonisingly, he pulled and pulled himself away from the chair. His legs trembled, his stomach churned. God, it was working! It was happening! Desperately he wanted to fall back to the safety of the chair again but he would not let himself. His feet felt the ground and then stood on it. ‘A . . . ttention . . .’ he muttered. ‘A . . . ttention.’ He was bent like a bow but, sweating streams and keeping his terror just at bay, he pulled and pulled. He had purposefully not applied the brake of the chair and now, as though making a decision itself, it rolled back away from him. Now there was no going back.
But he was almost standing. Almost standing! Steadying his strength he gradually straightened his back; straight and straight and straight. It resisted, pain shot through his spine, but he ground his teeth and kept rising. Now he was standing to attention. God Almighty, he was standing! To attention! His face was soaked and his lips were working, almost blubbing; he tried to stop his body shaking. But he was standing, face and body against the wall, one hand still holding the door jamb and the other flat against the wall. Just like Harold Lloyd. The commentary still drifted from the direction of the television. If Harold Lloyd could do it, he could do it. Do it by himself. He swallowed his fear. His legs were quivering. ‘Stop it, stop it, you bastards.’
He remained like that, like a police suspect being frisked, for a full thirty seconds. His legs were aching, weakening. Again he moved. Just like Harold Lloyd. He moved his left leg a couple of inches to the left. It did as he instructed. ‘Not too much. Steady. Not too much.’ Now he had made six inches sideways. Six inches! He had walked six inches! ‘Left . . . right,’ he grunted. ‘Left . . . right.’ Another six inches.
The door opened and in came Korky.
‘Oh, my . . . God.’ It began as an exclamation and finished in a whisper. ‘Oh, Savage. Oh, Savage.’ She dropped the shopping. ‘Don’t fall. Don’t fall now, Savage. I’ll help you.’
‘I did it myself,’ he almost choked. Then: ‘Korky, I’m stuck.’
‘Don’t panic. Don’t worry.’ She was half-crying, half-laughing. She pushed herself against his back. ‘Hang on, I’ll keep you up. We’ll do it together.’ He swayed a little away from the wall but she was not going to let him fall now. With all her lean toughness she guided his body sideways. Reaching out she caught hold of an upright chair. ‘Get to this chair,’ she panted. ‘You can do it. It’s only inches.’
To the astonishment of both he was able to half-swing from the wall, so that he was only supporting himself with one side of his body and one arm and hand flat against it. With the other arm he fiercely grasped her shoulder. She almost squealed. Gritting her teeth she took his weight and they slowly revolved from the wall.
‘You’re not going to fall, Savage, no way.’ It was an order. ‘Not this time, mate. You’re just not going to fall.’ She was babbling. She was trying to get some support from the wall herself and her hand knocked the map of the Isle of Wight askew. At that moment he was standing free of the wall held up only by his own legs and her failing strength. Korky held him up with her hands and shoulders. Her face was contorted with the effort. But he was standing, he was moving! She was holding him, shifting him towards the chair, revolving him. They were face to face, his hands on her slender shoulders, hers around his body. Their expressions were alight, alive, ecstatic. Together they were laughing hysterically.
‘Oh, Savage,’ she cried. ‘We’re dancing again. One, two, three. Plonkie, plonkie, plonk. Savage, we’re dancing!’
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