The hospice Ball. Priya had mentioned it. Ruth sighs inwardly, rehearsing the usual excuses, I’ll be the only single one there, I’ve nothing to wear, if I drive I won’t be able to have a drink, but her friend is so warm, so non-judgemental that suddenly without warning, or justification, she feels the tears welling up and begins to weep.
Val, measuring the space between sympathy and resolve, waits for her response.
It comes, a full sixty seconds later.
‘Okay, count me in.’
‘That’s my girl. I’ll get you a ticket. It’ll be just like old times.’
5
Dominic
The Rose and Crown, at the top of the High Street, is tucked away behind the Co-op car park.
It’s three or four years since Dominic’s last visit and, during that time, it’s undergone an extensive refurbishment. The snooker table and juke box have gone, replaced instead by distressed oak floor boards, low lighting and exposed beams, in a contrived attempt to make the place look old. This lunchtime the place is packed, full of workers from the nearby trading estate and pensioners enjoying their two-for one deals. The lounge bar smacks of warm beer and fried food. For some, life goes on.
He spots Mike, sitting in the corner, bent over the crossword, his pint hardly touched. Mike looks up, his face breaking into a broad grin.
‘Good to see you, mate,’ says Mike.
Dominic places his pint of lime and soda on the table and draws up a chair.
Mike screws up his nose. ‘Sorry, I’ve just realised. You’re off the booze. Bit of a crap idea of mine to meet in the pub.’
‘Don’t be daft. Although one of us will need to stay sober.’ Dominic smiles, taking off his single-breasted wool coat and laying it over the back of the chair. He removes a set of keys from his back pocket and places them on the table with his phone. ‘Anyway how are you?’
‘Yeah, not bad. I should be asking you that. It was a lovely service by the way. Standing room only at the back of the church. Sorry I had to slip off without coming back to the house.’ He gives a weak smile. ‘Baby duties’ he adds, as if an explanation is required. He takes a long swig of his beer, and wipes the froth from his mouth with the back of his hand. Dominic tries to weigh up if that’s the real reason why he sloped off from the church without speaking to him. They sit in silence for a few seconds.
‘I’ve made some progress with the portfolios,’ says Mike, fidgeting with a beer mat. ‘Once you get the Grant of Representation we can meet up again and go through the division of assets. I think you should put some in a trust fund for Isabella, and I’ve got some ideas on that.’ He takes another mouthful of beer then raps his glass down at an angle on the table and foamy liquid swills over the side. ‘But I guess you’ve probably already thought of that. Also, a tip. Lucky Pagoda, emerging Chinese telecoms company. One to watch. Apparently they’re looking at buying into Formula One.’
Dominic picks up a plastic cocktail stirrer and swirls the ice cubes round and round in his glass. He thinks about all the friends they used to have. The sicker Madeleine got, the less they wanted to see of her. Towards the end both she and Dom preferred it that way. They didn’t want to be reminded of what life might have been for them if fate, and illness, hadn’t intervened. He’s aware of the lull in conversation.
Mike’s eyebrows arch. ‘Guess it’s a bit too early to even be thinking about that, isn’t it?’
Dominic studies his friend’s face. He can’t decide if the lines which criss-cross his brow are ones of commiseration or impatience.
‘Listen, mate,’ says Mike, ‘there’s no hurry to do these things but I’m more than happy to suggest some investments for you when you’re ready.’ He pulls two menus across the table top. ‘Let’s order some food, shall we?’
Dominic isn’t hungry. He picks the first thing he sees.
‘Just like the old days, eh,’ says Mike, later, reaching over to spoon tartare sauce over greasy batter, ‘when we would nip out to Deacons on Cannon Street?’
It was true, they went back years the two of them. He remembers the first day they met. Amidst the frenetic activity of the Stock Exchange trading floor they mingled like counters on a Ludo board, Mike, in his red trader’s jacket and Dominic, wearing the blue jacket of an Exchange official.
‘I hear that’s closed now,’ says Mike, in between mouthfuls.
‘Deacons?’
‘Yeah. And the College Press. And the City Harvest.’
‘Christ, now you’re making me feel old.’ Dominic tries to remember these eateries but he can’t place them.
‘Probably turned into noodle bars, or take-away coffee shops.’ He swallows a mouthful. ‘By the way, Val says she’s sorry she couldn’t collect Bella later.’
Dominic shrugs. ‘Oh, no worries. I managed to sort it with a babysitter. Maybe another time, eh?’ He clears his throat. ‘How is she, by the way?’ Dominic can picture the last time he saw Val, standing outside the library, heavily pregnant and with a two-year-old child in tow. He had slowed down to a stop at the traffic lights and strained to get a better look. Disappointment replaced curiosity as he took in the oversized sweatshirt and leggings, the wayward hair, the distracted look. He’d retracted his head behind the sun visor and she hadn’t seen him, being diverted by the toddler who was pulling on her hand. The lights changed and he’d sped away.
Mike pauses his cutlery. A muscle twitches in his cheek. ‘Good, thanks. Another five months maternity leave left, then back to the practice. She’s hoping to stay on there and maybe get a partnership eventually. There’s a few retirements coming up in the next three years or so.’ There’s a strained silence for a few seconds. Mike shifts in his seat, his eyes now focussed on his plate. ‘She’s really sorry she didn’t make it to the funeral but Ollie was ill. Hope you understand.’
Dom purses his lips and nods. The strains of a familiar Kylie Minogue tune can be heard in the background. Mike may be intuitive with share indices but thank God he was short-sighted in other aspects of his life. Anyway that was all in the past. A mistake. He’d got away with it.
Mike yawns. ‘Before I forget, I want you to have this.’ He reaches into the inside pocket of his jacket and flicks a card down on the table, then hastily retracts it from the wet table top. ‘It’s a ticket for the hospice Ball. March the twenty fifth. We’re getting a table together. Val told me not to give it to you. Said it was too soon, but I think it would do you the world of good to join us.’
Dominic nods. ‘I’ll think about it,’ he says, scrutinising the ticket, then tucking it in his coat pocket. ‘God knows, it’s for a good cause.’ He glances at his watch and signals to the surly-looking waitress. ‘This one’s on me,’ he says as he taps his PIN into the machine, and they head off to the Probate Registry.
Dominic is glad to get home. He shuts the front door behind him, blocking the extraneous noise of traffic. From the wintry gloom of the hallway he trudges upstairs and pushes open the door of the study. Within minutes of switching on the electric heater the smell of singed dust challenges his apathy. He hadn’t expected to feel so emotional in the Probate Registry. Cool, calm collected Dominic. Used to overseeing deals worth millions of dollars without as much as the acceleration of a heartbeat or tremor in his voice. Yet when he was invited to place his hand on the Bible and utter the oath it was as if he had a large pebble in his throat.
He picks up a yellowed business card with the words Dominic Peterson, Senior Pit Official, LIFFE. He runs it along the line of desiccated flies on the windowsill, flicking them onto the pencil shavings curling in the wastepaper bin.
This used to be Madeleine’s room. She would sit at her desk when she researched and wrote her articles, hoping for a publication in The Lancet or Frontiers of Immunology. In the early days this was an aspiration she achieved with remarkable regularity, but latterly she was content if her theories and reas
oned arguments made it to the Letters page.
Sitting on the floor, and leaning back against the wall, he stretches out his legs on the carpet. A newspaper, its pages unfolded at the obituary notices, lies draped on top of a shoebox brimming with receipts.
‘Cancer specialist’s life cut short at 38.’ The Guardian
‘Cancer cure setback as top doc loses own battle.’ The Daily Mail
And there was a wedding photo of them, taken in 1998.
Ironic that the papers wanted to focus on her cancer work when, all these years, she had been hoping for a cure for multiple sclerosis.
He wonders what his own obituary would say about him. That he narrowly escaped an IRA bomb at the London Stock Exchange in 1990? That his great-grandmother fled the Armenian genocide in 1916? ‘You’re a Petrossian, Dom,’ his father used to say, ruffling Dominic’s thick, dark hair. ‘That’s where you get your good looks from.’ He remembers recoiling under his father’s leathery touch at the time, but he was right. Women seemed to find him attractive. And at least he could thank his great-grandmother for his strength of character and defiance of authority.
He stands up and adjusts the creases on his trousers. His outline, reflected in the glass of Madeleine’s framed certificates, belies someone in his early forties. But, if she was here now, she would be teasing him to have his hair cut, to smarten up a bit.
‘Why do you have to be so bloody maudlin all the time, Dom?’ she would say.
But she couldn’t say that now.
Madeleine was dead.
She died peacefully five weeks, four days and eleven hours earlier. But only the last twenty four hours were peaceful. Or were they? Maybe he’s fooling himself. Instead, how many days had been punctuated with misery, as gradually she became more dependent on her walking stick, on her wheelchair, on her feeding tube, on him? His eyes prick with tears at the unfairness of it all.
The enormity of his task overwhelms him. Exhaustion consumes him like an encroaching mould. The heaviness in his chest, present since the day of the funeral, is still there. A leaden weight, which restricts his breathing. His migraines have been getting more frequent too. He knows what to do.
He goes down one flight of stairs to the bathroom. The little shot glass should be at the back of the cupboard. Swinging open the mirrored cabinet door, and taking care not to look at himself in the process, he rummages around impatiently. Pill packets and tablet bottles, which crowd together on the glass shelves like jumbled teeth, now tumble and spill out all over the floor.
Sinking down on to the cold lino he surveys the mess. Blister packs of yellow capsules, white and orange capsules, pale blue tablets, and bottles containing non-descript white discs clatter on the floor looking like a sweet shop’s pick and mix selection.
He grabs a smattering of silver strips and sifts them through his hands. The cold enamel of the washbasin pedestal presses against his back, as he reads the labels: Gabapentin, dantrolene, oxybutynin, tizanidine, diazepam, baclofen. It’s a cocktail that had kept a diseased body going for several years. How many of them would it take to end a healthy one? But what about Bella? Poor little sod. More importantly what about him? Nobody understands his own pain. The twitch starts in his chest and he fights against it but gradually his shoulders start to convulse and tears ensue.
He hears the clash of the front door and Courtney’s shrill voice, ‘Hi. We’re back!’ Dominic scrambles to his feet and goes out onto the landing.
‘I’ll be down in a minute,’ he shouts, from the top of the stairs. Gathering the spilt medicines into a pedal-bin liner, he takes it into his bedroom and secretes it as far as possible out of view, under the bed.
‘Daddy!’ cries Bella, her arms outstretched, as he descends the stairs.
‘Hi, Bella,’ Dominic says, scooping her up in his arms. ‘Have you had a good day?’
‘Look what I made at school.’
‘Oh that’s lovely, darling,’ says Dominic, trying to decipher the slashes of colour on the tracing paper.
‘Look,’ Bella says, her innocent face bursting with enthusiasm, ‘there’s the clouds, and there’s the sun, and there’s Mummy in her stripy top, in heaven.’
He exchanges glances with Courtney, who hunches her shoulders.
‘Daddy?’
‘Yeah?’
‘You see this bit at the bottom? That’s a very, really long ladder.’
‘That’s a lovely picture, darling.’
‘Tell Daddy what else you did today, Bella,’ says Courtney. ‘You went on a nature trail didn’t you?’
But Bella isn’t listening. She lets go of the picture and it floats, like a feather, to the ground. ‘Need a wee wee,’ she says and she disappears in the direction of the downstairs loo.
Courtney picks up her bag, inclines her head towards Dominic and lowers her voice. ‘Sue Ford asked me to pass on a message.’
‘Sue who?’
‘Sue Ford. Bella’s teacher. She wants to know if you can go and see her after school collection tomorrow. For a chat.’
‘Whatever the hell for?’ Dominic can picture the scene. Being summoned into a classroom, by someone nearly twenty years his junior, and being invited to sit on a small chair, whilst she offers advice on parenting. How bloody condescending. The nerve endings in his skin prickle with indignation.
‘Well, obviously, she wouldn’t say anything to me. But I’m sure she’s only trying to help. She said the class were making Mothers’ Day cards today, so one of the teaching assistants took Bella on a nature trail instead.’
Dominic takes a pan from one of the kitchen units and strikes it on top of the cooker.
‘I’m coping perfectly well. Surely you can see that.’
‘I can. Of course I can,’ says Courtney, extracting her car keys from her shopper. ‘Listen, Dom,’ she says, sidling up to him and causing him to lean back against the worktop. ‘Don’t be offended if I do things sometimes, without being asked. Things aren’t easy for you.’ She moves forward and gives him a hug, the faint odour of stale tobacco almost disguised by the citrusy smell of her hair. She releases her grasp. The moment is gone. ‘Well I better get going. I’ve still got the supermarket shop to do. Do you need anything?’
He stands back, inwardly congratulating himself at his self-control, and dismisses her with a light tap on the arm. ‘I’m fine. Honestly. Thanks. See you soon.’
After she’s gone he slumps in quiet contemplation at the kitchen table. Bella’s not been herself recently. But that’s hardly a surprise. The poor appetite. The tummy aches. The sickness. It all adds up. She’s lost her mother. What the fuck do they expect? He knows how she feels. Is this what’s meant by shock?
He was told he had shock after his accident. ‘Four pints of blood they gave you, son,’ said his father, standing over his hospital bed when he recovered consciousness. ‘Four pints. You were in shock.’ Somehow this doesn’t feel the same.
There’s a movement at the corner of his vision. Bella has re-appeared and she’s changed into her pyjamas.
‘Ready for bed already, darling?’
Her lower lip quivers. She turns and heads back out of the room, quickening her pace, but Dominic is on his feet and catches the tail end of her pyjama top.
‘I’m just going to cook some tea, darling. Are you hungry?’
She turns towards him. ‘I. Sorry,’ she sniffs.
Dominic strains to hear what she is saying.
‘Accident, Daddy. Sorry.’
‘That’s okay, sweetie. You stay here and Daddy will sort it out.’ And with teeth clenched and a slight flare of his nostrils he gets on with the next task in hand.
6
Dominic
March 2005
Dominic changes his tie for the third time. First the black, then the kingfisher blue. He settles for the peacock print. It complement
s his Liberty silk waistcoat to perfection.
The theme tune from ‘Eastenders’ resonates from the living room. He wants to stand at the top of the stairs and shout, ‘Turn the fucking noise down,’ but resists the urge, as Bella is asleep. Her allergy medicine should settle her for the night. Too bad Courtney couldn’t babysit this evening. She’d sounded so irritated when he said he was going to a dinner dance, but at least she’d been able to send this seventeen-year-old substitute instead.
‘Don’t mind me, Mr. Peterson,’ said the plump adolescent, as she humped a large rucksack over the threshold. ‘I’ve brought my course work with me, so I’ve plenty to do this evening.’ Then she collapsed onto the sofa and reached for the remote control. Lazy cow. A nice little earner for her, as she has sod all to do this evening. Bella won’t be a problem.
He takes a swig from his hip flask and flicks the switch on his radio. The haunting melody of Khachaturian’s Violin Concerto in D minor cloaks him. Memories of ducking the fists that rained down on him, after his father’s drink-fuelled evenings. His jaw muscles tighten. His father. That sophisticated, smooth talking, lying bastard. The father who would lavish gifts on him when he returned from his long haul destinations. The toy aeroplane was his favourite. He must have spent hours ramping the wheels along the carpet, before flying it round the room on top-secret missions. Until the day his father walked out, when he crashed it into the wall, crumpling its wings.
‘One day you could be a pilot, Dom, just like me,’ his father said.
Just like him? His eczema prickles the back of his neck as he recalls the arguments, the phone calls from other women that made his mother cry, the bits of broken glass embedded in the pulps of his fingers that still send shocks through his hands. Of course his father took no responsibility for that. The accident was Dominic’s fault.
He pulls up the stiff collar of his dress shirt, until it digs under his chin. Then he passes the bow tie round the back of his neck. Even all those years since the fall, it still makes him wince to raise his right arm behind his head. With slow, careful movements he folds the long side of the tie over the short, then passes the material up through the back and centre, tightening the noose against his Adam’s apple.
Love Until It Hurts Page 3
