Two Wrongs

by Mel McGrath

  On the way to Wychall’s, Amanda’s home from home for the past year or so, he stops briefly at the twenty-four-hour shop on the northern fringes of Clifton to look for her favourite petticoat tail shortbread and, finding only shortbread bars, picks up a pack and makes his way to the till. Outside it has started raining hard and on his dash to the car rivulets of ice-cold water make their way down the back of his neck, adding to his general resentment. Caught between two demanding and unreasonable women. He turns the keys in the ignition. Terrible, jarring music blares from the radio. Hadn’t he left it on a classical station? He presses buttons until he reaches someone talking on the BBC World Service about Greek myths which gets him pondering which of the women in his life is best described in which myth. He decides that on a good day Veronica is Helen of Troy but on a bad day she can turn into an absolute Harpy. Amanda is a Furies-slash-Sirens-slash-Medusa mash-up. He tries to picture her with snakes for hair and the thought makes him laugh out loud.

  On the drive over he has to pull in for an ambulance, lights flashing, but no siren at this late hour. He taps on the dashboard, watching it go before gliding out into its slipstream. At Wychall’s, he pulls into a parking spot, makes his way to the locked entrance and rings the night bell. One of the nightshift carers (Maura?) bustles over and opens the door.

  ‘Oh Professor Cullen! We were expecting you a little earlier,’ Maura says, with a smile.

  ‘Yes, of course, I’m so sorry. Admissions season at the university. Horrible workload,’ Cullen says now.

  ‘She refused a sleeping pill. She’s still saying she’s been kidnapped.’ Maura smiles kindly. ‘She’s in her room. I’ll bring you both a cup of tea.’

  Cullen creeps along the peach corridor to room 24 where he finds Amanda sitting up in bed with a scarf tied around her head. There has been an attempt at make-up, which gives her the air of a panto villain. He goes over and takes her hands. The skin is papery thin with plum-coloured patches.

  ‘I am very unhappy Christopher,’ she says, as though stating something momentous, the discovery of a new planet, or the start of World War Three. ‘This is not the sort of hotel I’m used to. I’ve complained but they’ve kidnapped me so they won’t do anything.’

  Cullen lets go of her hands and settles himself into the winged armchair opposite the bed.

  ‘Who exactly has kidnapped you, mother?’

  ‘Never you mind. I’d like you to take me home.’ Her voice falls to a whisper. ‘Have you brought the money? Otherwise I’ve no idea how I’m going to pay them to let me go.’

  ‘Funny you should say that, mother, I have no idea either. You might just have to stay here,’ he says, spitefully.

  He watches Amanda’s nostrils flare and a tiny tear appear in the corner of one eye as she looks away, and hates himself a little.

  ‘There, there, it’s all right. I’m only joking. I’ve got it, don’t you worry.’

  When she turns back to him, all trace of upset is gone. How much of this is early dementia, he thinks, and how much is Amanda yanking his chain?

  ‘Oh but I do worry. I’ve always worried about you, darling.’ A faraway look appears on her face. He’s no longer sure whether she’s talking to him or to his long dead father. Perhaps there will come a time when she forgets about him altogether. Liberation day. ‘Where will you sleep? Not in here. You snore dreadfully. Do they have another room?’

  To his relief, Maura bustles in carrying a tray on which are balanced two canteen-style cups and saucers.

  ‘Here, let me take it,’ Cullen says, thankful for the interruption but eager, too, for the visit to be as truncated as possible. He puts down the tray, picks up both cups and hands one to his mother. He watches Amanda rising up against her pillows as if she’s about to storm the battlements. His battlements, inevitably.

  ‘My son was very clever,’ she says to Maura, as if he were no longer in the room.

  Here we go again.

  ‘I’m still very clever!’ he says. Maura shoots him a sympathetic little smile. His mother closes her eyes and doesn’t respond. Why does he let her get to him? His mind has slipped back a quarter of a century to a drizzly afternoon in his uncle’s static in Llandudno, his mother fussing over the salty wind ruining her hair, his ten-year-old self doing his best to demonstrate the Golden Spiral using a shell from a rockpool, and his uncle, patting him on the head like a beach donkey, saying, ‘Another time lad.’ And later, his mother lying beside him in the tiny bed, stroking his head and saying, ‘My darling little boy, if you show your uncle up again, he won’t invite us.’

  ‘I brought you some shortbread,’ he says, pulling out the packet from his jacket pocket. He puts down his tea and comes over carrying the packet before him as if it were some treasure and he a courtier currying favour at a medieval court. He is willing her to open her eyes and respond to him now but they are if anything more tightly shut and she’s humming a tune under her breath.

  ‘I am wondering what we can do to make you feel a bit more settled,’ he says, ‘only I do have a rather early start tomorrow.’ He checks his watch – nearly one o’clock.

  ‘Petticoat tails?’ she asks.

  ‘No, they only had the bars.’ He watches Maura retreat and feels a stab of envy.

  ‘Oh,’ Amanda says, turning her face away, ‘I won’t bother then.’

  ‘It’s the same stuff, Mother, just a different shape.’

  Amanda blinks. She takes a sip of tea. He watches her throat rise and struggle a little in the swallowing.

  ‘Come and give me a kiss,’ she says.

  He goes over and, kneeling beside her, presses his lips into her cheek. In turn she strokes his hair, a dreamy smile on her face.

  ‘My darling little boy. If only you hadn’t grown up.’

  He closes his eyes and tries to think himself back to his early childhood without Llandudno or his uncle getting in the way. He wants the moment to last forever and knows that is impossible. How can it be that he still longs for his mother to be someone else, someone he once thought he knew.

  ‘I’m still your little boy,’ he says.

  Instantly, he feels her stiffen, her hands cease their movements. ‘When did you last wash your hair?’

  And there it is. He is Adam being expelled from the garden all over again. He pulls away and rises, brushing down his trousers.

  ‘I’ll be off then.’

  Maura meets him in the hallway. ‘Before you go, management asked me to tell you that we’re still waiting for your payment for February.’

  The phone in his pocket buzzes. He lets the call go to voicemail.

  ‘Of course. Just an oversight.’ This is not the truth. For a while he paid Wychall’s fees from what remained from the sale of Amanda’s home once her debts were cleared but that money has long since gone. He’s talked about moving her to a more affordable facility – more convenient was the way he’d put it to her – but she refused to countenance the move. There’s nothing he can do to force her. She has him exactly where she wants him. What she holds over him, what she knows.

  He sits in the car in Wychall’s car park gripping the steering wheel and shouting, ‘Fucking fuckety fuck’ at the windscreen, before heading back to the house he can’t afford, most likely soon to be occupied by a child he has no idea how he’s going to support.

  Chapter 7

  Honor

  Honor spots Nevis’s pixie crop and Breton tee from the hospital entrance. There’s the old, familiar echo of Zoe, the friend she’d loved like a sister, in the way Nevis holds herself, as if she were not quite there. A woman she does not recognise sits beside her daughter. They don’t appear to be talking. She approaches without being spotted and lays a hand very gently on her daughter’s head. Nevis starts and twists to look at her mother. Her face is shockingly white, the green eyes drained of all colour, the expression fixed, like that of someone startled in death. It has been months since they have seen one another, months in which Honor has agonised over what
she has done to hurt her daughter. Now is not the time to ask about such things.

  ‘What happened?’ A text had arrived from a number Honor didn’t recognise saying that Nevis was not hurt but to meet her at the Bristol Royal Infirmary. The number, she guesses, belongs to the woman sitting beside them whose name, she discovers, is Sondra.

  ‘I’m so glad you’re here,’ Sondra says. She glances at Nevis, inviting her to speak, and when she does not, she goes on. ‘Nevis’s friend Satnam collapsed on the Clifton Suspension Bridge tonight. We thought she was going to…’ she stops and flashes a look at Nevis, ‘…well, you know, but she collapsed before she could do anything drastic.’

  The news is bewildering and for a moment Honor doesn’t know what to think. The Satnam Honor knows, the one who came to stay on the boat last summer with Luke, is full of life, kind, loyal, joyful and, above all, stable. The last person you would expect to do something so self-destructive, so dramatic.

  ‘How is she?’

  ‘Upstairs in intensive care. The nurse said she’s in a coma. That’s all they’ve told us.’ Sondra fills Honor in on the events of the evening but still it seems so abstract and unlikely. ‘Had she been drinking or taking drugs?’

  ‘Both, according to the police, but I’m not sure what,’ Sondra says, craning to look at Nevis who is sitting beside her with her head hung low. ‘Perhaps you know more?’

  Nevis’s jaw begins to wobble and the sinews in her neck flex and pulse. A tic starts in her right eye. She is biting her lip so hard that a bead of blood appears. Honor takes her daughter’s hands. The palms sit limply in her own for a short while before Nevis withdraws and angles herself away, arms clutched tight around her chest.

  ‘Now you’re here I should go,’ Sondra says, rising. ‘I have to get my kids off to school. It was me who texted you so you’ve got my number. I don’t think there’s anything… but feel free to call me any time.’

  Honor thanks her and waits for her to leave before turning to Nevis. ‘How are you darling?’

  Nevis meets her eye then looks away. ‘Did you drive Gerry here?’

  Sometimes, when Nevis was small, Honor would empty out the van and stick a mattress in the back of Gerry and they would go out to the countryside and wild camp on the edge of some wood, as far away from people as they could get. Whenever they had a falling-out or Honor got too sad about Zoe, and Nevis was old enough to leave the boat on her own, she would take the keys and clamber inside Gerry, perching among the machine parts and offcuts of marine timber. Nevis had always found things more comforting than people.

  ‘You want to sit in the van?’

  ‘Maybe. In a bit.’ She rubs her eyes.

  ‘You must be exhausted.’ Stretching out her hand so their fingertips just meet. ‘Shall I drive you back to the flat?’

  Nevis turns her head and blinks. ‘Why are you wearing pyjamas?’

  Honor pulls her coat tightly around herself. ‘I left in a hurry. It’s OK, Nevis, it’s not a problem, I promise. Half the people here are in pyjamas.’

  How she wishes she could just hold Nevis in her arms right now, but Nevis will not like it, would not have liked it even when they were on better terms.

  ‘I’m struggling to understand why Satnam would have done this.’ Nevis’s response to Sondra’s question leads Honor to believe that her daughter knows more than she’s saying. ‘Is Luke still in the picture?’ Satnam’s boyfriend came to the Kingfisher a couple of times last summer, when Satnam was staying with them. For the most part these were happy visits. They cooked spag bol and laughed and Luke and Honor shared a spliff on the towpath. The shadow of Satnam’s parents’ disapproval hung over the young couple but it was evident that they were in love. But Nevis insists that Luke ended the relationship in November. It can all be pretty intense and erratic at that age, she supposes. Not that Honor knows this first-hand because romantic love isn’t something she has allowed herself to feel. Loss will do that to a person. So will dealing with all the busyness of bringing up a kid alone.

  ‘And how did Satnam feel about that?’

  ‘Fine. She said it was for the best.’

  To Honor the chances that a young woman who has already faced the disapproval of her parents in order to carry on a relationship with a man she loves feels ‘fine’ about being left seem pretty slim. But Nevis can be quite literal in that way. If Satnam said it was ‘for the best’ then Nevis would have believed her.

  ‘Maybe they’ll let us see her now. Shall we go and ask?’

  Nevis shakes her head.

  ‘Do you mind if I go and report back?’

  Reaching the second-floor corridor Honor is momentarily blindsided by the smell of illness. Checking the signs on the wall she turns left through a set of double doors and down a corridor towards the intensive care unit. There, a tired looking woman with a scraped-back ponytail and a smile left over from the start of her shift explains that Satnam’s parents have not long since gone and they are restricting visitors to close family ‘for the time being’. Honor has no desire to run into Narinder or Bikram Mann and the feeling is almost certainly mutual. When Satnam came to stay on the Kingfisher last summer Honor had found herself caught in the midst of a family dispute, with Satnam refusing to speak to her parents and Bikram accusing Honor of turning their daughter against them. Not long afterwards Nevis received a call from Narinder asking her to reconsider sharing a flat with their daughter on the grounds that Nevis was ‘unsuitable’ and Narinder found her ‘strange’.

  The last part stung, not least because Honor had heard it so often and because she knew that this was part of the reason Satnam liked her. So much so, in fact, that one evening last summer on the boat, Satnam had found Honor alone and told her that Nevis ‘might well be the best person who ever lived and it is the great wish of my heart that we’ll be friends for ever’.

  The great wish of my heart.

  How could you not love a girl who spoke like that? And how could you not worry that such a girl found so little in her life to love that she was prepared to end it?

  When Honor persists the tired looking woman blinks then sighs and calling her colleague Becky over explains the situation.

  ‘Very very quickly, then,’ Becky says. ‘Follow me.’ They move through the waiting area to a corridor and from there to a smaller wardroom labelled ‘Pine’. At the door Becky turns and says, ‘Satnam is unconscious. We’ve intubated her so the respirator is doing her breathing for her. Five minutes max, please.’

  At the cubicle curtain, Honor hesitates, her mind tunnelling through time, to a memory, a single point inhabited now only by darkness and by Zoe. Steeling herself she raises her chin and slides between the curtains. The young woman looks dreadful, her skin grey-brown, her face and arms such a tangle of pipes and tubes that it gives her the appearance of something not quite human. Someone, one of Satnam’s parents, Honor supposes, has left sweet pastries on the table, a gesture whose tender optimism moves her so much that she finds herself having to bite back tears. It’s not going to end like this, with sweets and sympathy. Whatever happens to Satnam now the Mann family will never quite recover. Nevis will never quite recover. No one will ever be the same.

  At that moment the curtain parts and Nurse Becky appears. She takes a step into the cubicle, acknowledges Honor with a hurried smile, pulls the curtain and goes over to the figure on the bed, where she checks the tubes and the stats on the machines.

  ‘The breakfast trolley won’t be round for a couple of hours but I can get you a cup of tea if you fancy?’

  ‘Thanks but don’t worry.’ She watches Becky going about her business. ‘Is she going to be all right?’

  Nurse Becky presses her finger against her lips and gestures for Honor to step outside. Once they are beyond the cubicle curtains, she whispers, ‘People in comas can often hear voices.’

  ‘Of course, I’m sorry.’

  ‘The situation is really unpredictable. She’s stable for now, but the combination of
alcohol and drugs is… If the organs begin shutting down it’s really difficult to reverse. And she could go into cardiac arrest. Terrible really. Such a lovely young woman.’

  The nurse bites her lip then reaches out and rests a hand on Honor’s arm. ‘You might keep an eye on your daughter for a week or two?’ Nurse Becky glances at her watch. ‘Now, I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to leave. We need to run some tests.’

  Downstairs, the cafe counter has opened and breakfast is being served. Nevis is sitting at a table eyeing her phone.

  ‘How was she?’

  ‘Peaceful.’ Honor touches Nevis very lightly on the hand, ‘I know things have been difficult between us. I’ve done something to upset you and I wish you’d tell me what.’ Her eye is drawn to the double doors leading into the kitchen. A trolley appears and, following it, a woman in a hygiene cap and overalls.

  ‘Not now,’ Nevis says, withdrawing her hand and turning her attention to the kitchen porter as she stacks the trolley with used cutlery and crockery.

  Honor wants to say, ‘Turn back to me,’ but her courage fails her. And besides, Nevis is right. Now is not the time.

  ‘I want you to know that I’m sorry. And whatever it is, we can fix it.’

  Honor watches the double doors swinging back, the force of momentum creating a tiny pendulum motion before they finally close. ‘We should get something to eat.’

  At the counter she orders Nevis poached eggs and one of those expensive coffees everyone seems to swoon over, and contents herself with tea and toast. She puts the tray on the table and puts the eggs and coffee in front of her daughter.

  They eat in silence for a while, then Honor says, ‘I’d like to remain in Bristol for a bit just till you get through this. I wouldn’t have to stay with you. I could find somewhere to crash for a few days.’ Where, though, she wonders. Bristol is an expensive city and Honor has no money. Still, she will have to find a way. Get in touch with the bargee community, pick up some work readying boats for the summer season. Whatever.