The Scent of You

by Maggie Alderson

  They weren’t there and she felt a stab of pain. Not now. She wasn’t going to think about him now. She had enough on her plate.

  After grabbing a pair of sheepskin mittens of her own, she rushed back down to Lucas.

  He’d managed to crawl forward a foot or so, and as she put the hall light on, she saw it flash off a large shard of glass, right in front of his face, dangerously close to his left eye.

  ‘Don’t move!’ she yelled, and jumped down the last step, glass crunching beneath the boots. Crouching down, she carefully picked up all the pieces of glass that were closest to his head – not easy in the bulky mittens; it felt like some kind of sinister party game. She put them in a pile next to the wall behind her, working back and outwards, until she couldn’t see any more.

  Lucas groaned again.

  ‘Fing killing me . . .’ he managed to croak out. ‘Issa playing fing . . .’

  She looked back at his left hand and saw it was the pad of his middle finger that was cut. Not good for a bassist.

  ‘Hang on,’ she said. She ran into the kitchen grabbed a roll of kitchen paper, then wound a piece tightly round the cut.

  Using what felt like superhuman strength, she somehow managed to get him onto his feet and half-dragged him into the sitting room, where he fell back onto the sofa. She glanced at the scrap of paper towel round his finger and was alarmed to see it was already soaked with blood.

  Taking it off very carefully, she flinched when she saw how deep the cut was. It definitely needed stitches. She’d have to take him to Emergency. Oh, joy. But how the hell was she going to get him there? Should she ring an ambulance, or was that overdramatic?

  It was a bad cut and he was losing blood, but it wasn’t an artery and the Whittington Hospital was so close it would be much quicker to drive him.

  She shook his shoulder to rouse him but he just groaned.

  ‘Lukie,’ she said, crouching down next to the sofa and stroking his dear head. ‘Lukie, my darling, you have to wake up, I’ve got to get you to hospital. You need stitches in that finger.’

  He just mumbled and turned his head away, then gasped with pain when he tried to roll on his side and knocked his cut finger.

  Looking down at the bulk of her son, over six foot of him, Polly knew she couldn’t do it on her own. He would need practically carrying to the car. She urgently needed help, but who the hell could she ask? Not her nearest neighbours, that was for sure. They were very grumpy people. If only Lori still lived around the corner . . .

  For a moment she felt something like blind panic. Should she ring Clemmie to get a calm, sensible opinion – with some medical knowledge thrown in? But what use was she in Cambridge?

  Then she had an idea. Shirlee. She lived pretty close, and Polly had a gut feeling she’d be good in a crisis. It was a big ask to ring anyone at that time of night – morning – let alone someone she hardly knew, but there was something about Shirlee. She just felt she could.

  Polly brushed Lucas’s hair away from his face, out of some kind of weird maternal instinct – what good was that going to do him? – then went and grabbed her phone from the bedroom. She tapped Shirlee’s number and crossed her fingers. ‘What the fuck?’ said a very groggy-sounding Shirlee.

  ‘What’s up? Who is this?’

  ‘Shirlee,’ said Polly, feeling a bit sick, ‘it’s Polly. I’m so sorry to wake you up like this, but it’s an emergency. I need your help.

  There was a rustling noise.

  ‘What’s happened?’ asked Shirlee, all dopiness gone. ‘Keep talking, I’m getting my Ugg boots on. I’m coming right over. Do you need me to call the police?’

  ‘No, it’s just I have to get my son to the hospital. He’s passed out drunk and cut himself badly and I can’t get him into the car on my own.’

  Somehow she could say it straight to her. She knew Shirlee wouldn’t judge her.

  ‘I’m already walking out the door,’ said Shirlee, and hung up.

  Five minutes later – the whole of which time Polly moved restlessly back and forth between Lucas and the sitting-room window – Shirlee’s car pulled up. Polly rushed to open the front door.

  ‘Thank you so much,’ she said breathlessly. ‘It’s so good of you to do this.’

  ‘Don’t sweat it,’ said Shirlee, putting her arm round Polly’s shoulder. ‘Show me where he is.’

  Polly led her through to the sitting room and was horrified to see that the blood from Lucas’s finger had seeped out of the kitchen-roll bandage to make a large, bright-red stain on his shirt.

  ‘Holy shitola,’ said Shirlee. ‘We gotta get this kid to the hospital. OK, here’s what we’ll do.’

  Shirlee managed to get Lucas into a slumped sitting position, then, issuing instructions firmly but calmly, showed Polly how they could haul him up off the sofa onto to his feet. With his arms over their shoulders, they managed to drag him out through the hall and onto the street.

  ‘Do you think he’s unconscious?’ asked Polly, when Lucas didn’t seem to stir, even as the tops of his shoes dragged along the pavement to Shirlee’s car, which she’d left with the back door wide open.

  ‘I think he might be,’ said Shirlee, ‘but more likely from the booze than the blood loss.’

  With some effort, they managed to get him onto the back seat. Polly tried not to cry as she had flashbacks to all the times she’d strapped him safely into a car seat as an adorable little boy.

  She ran back to the house to grab her keys and close the front door, then jumped into the car, which Shirlee already had revved up, ready to go.

  ‘OK,’ said Shirlee, handing Polly her phone before releasing the hand brake and shooting off at an alarming speed. ‘Just hit the number that’s up on the screen and you’ll get through to the Whittington. Ask for Emergency and tell them we’re bringing in an unconscious adult male and we need assistance on arrival. Five minutes max. Lucky it’s so early, I can shoot a few lights.’

  Polly did as she was told, while Shirlee drove rather terrifyingly, but got them safely to the doors of the Emergency Department, where two porters were waiting with a wheelchair.

  ‘Hey!’ called Shirlee, and they came straight over – getting Lucas out of the car, into the chair and through the doors of the hospital at what seemed like lightning speed to Polly, who was starting to feel a bit light-headed.

  ‘OK, kiddo,’ said Shirlee, linking her arm through Polly’s and patting her hand. ‘I’m gonna look after you now. Let’s do the name-and-address stuff and then I’m gonna get us some coffee.’

  The routine felt all too familiar to Polly as she sat in an uncomfortable plastic chair in the waiting room, while Lucas was being assessed.

  She looked round, remembering the brutal lighting of the place, like something from Stasi-era East Berlin – and the smell. Gallons of disinfectant waging a losing battle against the sheer press of humanity coming through the place in all manner of ugly messes. The almost unbearable staleness of a densely occupied area with no windows, where the smallest breath of outside air only came in when the automatic doors opened.

  You could come in there in perfect good health, she thought, and get ill just from sitting in the fug. She pulled the front of her jumper forward to release a welcome waft of The Darkest Hour. Pungent fragrances had their advantages.

  On top of the general unpleasantness of the surroundings, she was reminded all too vividly of the times she and David had brought the kids here after falls in playgrounds and bangs to the head, and one memorable time when Lucas had plunged his tiny hand into a saucepan of boiling spaghetti. One time it had been David who’d slipped on an icy pavement right outside the house and broken his wrist.

  Well, fuck him. Not only had he left her alone to cope with this crisis, in her opinion he’d also caused it. She was convinced the crazy drinking was Lucas acting out his distress about his father’s unexplained absence.

  There’d been the usual teenage gallivanting before, with Lucas learning through painful ex
perience why people generally don’t drink cider, beer, wine and cherry brandy in the same glass – and not just because of the awful taste. But she’d never known him to get so drunk so often.

  Had one term at uni made him into a serial binger? You heard about student excess, but this seemed beyond that. There was a sense of commitment to it.

  Then, remembering those childhood visits to that waiting room, she started to stand up. Shouldn’t she be with him? Hadn’t they always stayed with the kids while the doctors assessed them and did any necessary stitching or bandaging?

  ‘Where are you going?’ asked Shirlee coming round the corner carrying a cardboard tray holding two paper coffee cups, with various other things precariously balanced on it. ‘Sit down and drink this. You’ll need to have your brain in gear when they tell us what’s up.’

  Shirlee sat down and passed Polly one of the coffees, followed by a Kit Kat.

  ‘Eat it,’ she commanded. ‘You’ve had a shock. You need some sugar, or you’ll faint on me, and I’m not up to hauling another unconscious body around tonight.’

  She snapped a finger off her own Kit Kat and chewed it up with the speed of a rodent.

  ‘I just spoke to the sister and they’re still checking him over,’ she continued. ‘They’ve done the stitches but they just want to make sure he didn’t bang his head, or something like that, when he fell. Ah, sugar, don’t you just love it? The white lady.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Polly, breaking off another piece of her Kit Kat. ‘Nothing like it. And caffeine – cheers!’

  She raised her coffee cup to Shirlee, who tapped hers against it, grinning broadly.

  ‘I don’t feel like a NutriBullet barf drink and a quinoa muffin right now, do you?’ she said, her chest shaking with laughter.

  ‘No,’ said Polly, ‘or any of that appalling banana bread.’

  ‘Christ, that stuff!’ said Shirlee, ‘I needed dental after one bite. How did we ever kid ourselves?’

  ‘Mass hysteria,’ said Polly, then she put out her hand and squeezed Shirlee’s. Her tone became more serious. ‘Thanks so much. You really saved my life tonight – well, Lucas’s. I don’t know what I would have done if I hadn’t had you here. I somehow knew I could call on you and you were really there for me. It means a lot.’

  ‘Ach,’ said Shirlee, ‘it was nothing. I’m happy to be useful. Glad all that training was worth it.’

  ‘Training?’ asked Polly. ‘I could see you knew what you were doing, but I didn’t realise you were actually trained. Are you a doctor? A nurse?’

  ‘Neither,’ said Shirlee. ‘When I was living in Israel, I did National Service and learned army first aid: hauling half-dead people around.’

  ‘Did you ever have to do it for real?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Shirlee, ‘and not always half-dead. There were a couple who were fully dead.’

  ‘Blimey,’ said Polly. ‘I had no idea. That must have been very difficult.’

  ‘Well, it grew me up pretty fast,’ said Shirlee. ‘I didn’t have to do much of that kind of thing back in Queens. It’s why I moved here.’

  Polly raised her eyebrows, waiting for Shirlee to say more. It didn’t feel like the moment to come rushing in with a reply.

  ‘You see, I went home after being in Israel and there were all the same people – the ones I’d been to high school with, the children of my parents’ friends, my cousins, my goddamn sister – but I just didn’t feel I could slot back into that life.

  ‘Don’t get me wrong, they’re good people, I love them. But after doing the dead-body thing and the bomb thing in Israel, I was a different person and I couldn’t go back to my old life. So I came over here to stay with my aunt – she and my mom were British, well, they came here with the Kindertransport from Austria – and it felt like I could start again as the new person I’d become and I stayed. Best decision I ever made.’

  ‘Wow,’ said Polly, ‘I wondered why a native New Yorker was living in North London. When did you come?’

  ‘In 1981,’ said Shirlee, her face splitting into one of her Fozzie Bear grins. ‘Thirty-five years and I still sound like Harvey Keitel’s little sister, eh?’

  Polly smiled back at her and was about to ask her how often she went home when a nurse came over to them.

  ‘Mrs Masterson-Mackay?’ she said to Polly. ‘Would you come through, please? The doctor would like to talk to you.’

  Polly looked up at the nurse and then over to Shirlee, who was already getting to her feet.

  ‘Can she come too?’ asked Polly.

  ‘I’m family,’ said Shirlee, heading for the door into the consulting area without waiting for an answer.

  Polly heard Digger whimpering with impatience before Clemmie had even got her key in the front door and ran down to the hall to greet them.

  ‘Oh, my baby!’ she said, throwing the door open and enveloping Clemmie in her arms, wondering how she could ever have been so angry with her. ‘I’m so happy to see you, and it will really cheer Lucas up to have you here.’

  Lucas and me, she thought, as Clemmie gave her mum’s shoulder a squeeze, then ran up the stairs to see her brother.

  Polly felt Digger’s wet nose pushing insistently against her hand.

  ‘Hey, you,’ she said, dropping to her knees, then sitting back on her feet so she could look him in the eye and make a fuss of him. ‘How did you enjoy your Cambridge mini-break? Did you meet any brainy lady dogs? Did you discuss the great issues of the day with them? Oh, I bet you did. Sausages, treats, biscuits . . .’

  Digger seemed to be literally jumping for joy, licking her face and prancing back and forth over her knees, his tail whipping against her in his excitement. Polly got him in a clinch and hugged him, kissing the top of his doggy head.

  ‘Well, who knew?’ she said. ‘Who knew how much I would miss a stinky mutt like you? Come and get a treat and then you can give your toys a good savaging.’

  Soon Polly was sitting at the kitchen table with a mug of tea, absentmindedly watching Digger monstering his favourite rubber pheasant and wondering if it was wrong to feel so happy to have both her kids home when it had taken such a trauma to make it happen.

  Clemmie returned from upstairs.

  ‘He’s going to have another sleep,’ she said. ‘Best thing he could do. He’s had a hell of a shock.’

  ‘And he’s got a hell of a hangover,’ said Polly. ‘Would you like some tea?’

  Clemmie nodded and Polly filled the kettle, grabbing another extra-strong English Breakfast teabag for herself. She found she was yawning uncontrollably.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said. ‘Can’t help it. I’ve been up since 4 a.m., when this all kicked off, and I think I’ll have to have a nap soon, but I want to talk to you first.’

  ‘There’s no rush,’ said Clemmie. ‘I’m going to stay here for a while, Mum, to help you look after Lucas.’

  ‘That would be sooo lovely,’ said Polly, ready to squeal with delight. ‘I know how conscientious you are, my love, with your studying – you’re just like your grandfather . . .’

  And your father, she thought, but decided not to say it.

  ‘It was thoughtless of me to dash off like that after Christmas,’ said Clemmie, looking so guilty that Polly’s heart clenched. ‘I can do my revision here perfectly well. In all honesty, I think I was running away from the whole Dad situation. It’s easier not to think about it when I’m away from home. But you need me and Lucas at the moment. We need each other.’

  The kettle boiled and Polly was glad of an excuse to turn away, not wanting Clemmie to see the tears in her eyes.

  ‘Thanks, Clem,’ she said, sitting back down at the table and pushing the mug towards her daughter. ‘It’s true, I do need you. I’m feeling pretty messed up, but I’m still sorry I overreacted like that in the restaurant. It just freaked me out so much, the thought that your father would sneak into the house when I was out.’

  ‘It’s fine, Mum,’ said Clemmie. ‘You had every right t
o freak out. It was outrageous of him. I should never have told him when you were going out, but I felt . . . I feel . . . so torn.’

  She put her face in her hands and shook her head. Polly reached over and stroked her hair, as she’d done when Clemmie was a little girl.

  ‘Hey, honeybun,’ she said, ‘it’s all right. We’ll get through it, but I’m furious with him for doing this to you. And to Lucas. He was blind drunk, Clemmie, practically unconscious. That’s how he cut himself. He fell over the hall table, smashed the vase and the key bowl, and then fell on top of it all. It could have been much worse, though. There was a huge shard of glass right next to his eye.’

  Clemmie winced.

  ‘So you think he’s drinking because of Dad,’ she said.

  Polly nodded.

  ‘I’m sure he is. You know what Lucas is like. He’ll rant and rave about some stupid little thing, but when he’s really upset about something, he doesn’t say a word, he just goes quiet. I can remember when he was little he’d refuse to eat his dinner, then disappear to his bedroom and scoff down a whole packet of biscuits and be sick, and I’d only find out later – sometimes not for days – that it was because some kid at school had called him a thicko, because of his dyslexia. Once he ate most of the ingredients for a Christmas cake.’

  Clemmie laughed.

  ‘I remember that,’ she said. ‘His stomach swelled up like he was pregnant.’

  She looked thoughtful for a moment and then spoke again.

  ‘So when it was something that really bothered him,’ Clemmie continued, ‘Lucas wouldn’t talk about it, he’d just clam up and act weirdly?’

  Polly nodded, taking a sip of her tea.

  ‘Who does that remind you of?’ asked Clemmie.

  It took a moment for Polly to understand what she meant, but then it struck her and she felt her eyebrows shoot up.

  ‘Omigod,’ she said, ‘you’re so right. He’s exactly like his father. Why didn’t I make that connection?’

  ‘You didn’t make the connection because you’re living in the middle of all this weirdness,’ said Clemmie. ‘And it must be very hard to think clearly about anything.’