As You Were

by Elaine Feeney

  Her back was soaked in sweat. I offered her a drink.

  Margaret Rose woke and began touching her bruised eye socket and poppy temple.

  ‘Eventually, I must have passed out,’ she said, sobbing.

  ‘Jesus, Jane.’

  ‘I came around in the dispensary. You see, frightened with what he did, he had taken me to a doctor. I was so glad and I thought it was for some stitches in my head. But they paid no heed to my head, as Tom blurted out the whole tale, the doctor gave me an injection into my arm as he held me again, tight, and told Tom to bring me in every day for a week. We were only staying at the guest house for a night, but Tom booked me in for the entire week, brought me every morning, then back to the guest house, put me to bed. I slept for most of that week. I don’t remember much. It made me sleep all the time. And after the week of injections he gave me tablets to take home, back to the house I’d live at, a big country house, with his mother, until she died. I said I wasn’t taking them, but Tom said he’d crush them down my throat if I didn’t and the doctor agreed, and he’d help Tom if needs be. Tom said it was OK, he’d make sure his mother gave them to me, if the need arose.’

  ‘Oh, Jane,’ I said.

  ‘They were friends, you see, himself and the doctor, and he knew the guest house owners, they were all the one parish, and sure I hadn’t a friend left, they were friends from primary school, and I never went to the doctor ever again without Tom by my side. Everyone in the parish knew. I wasn’t allowed to visit a doctor alone, they said. It was about trust. And I took the tablets. For ever. For here,’ she said, pointing her ring finger at her head, ‘but I’ve been his wife, you know, in that way a woman can be a wife, and I’ve taken them every day since, but now sometimes I forget. Sometimes I’m always forgetting, you know. Did I tell you that they told me if I didn’t take the tablets I couldn’t be around my children? I’ve nine, you know. That it would allow me to be . . . allow the children to be near me.’

  ‘Ah, Jane. Jane . . . sorry.’

  Margaret Rose was awake now, with the flannel on her forehead and a huge bruise around her eye.

  Alex was always so gentle.

  Something about him not having written down the food order and reading it back to me was new. And unnerving.

  And if he never arrived back on the Ward, I would never blame him.

  Chapter 19

  Jane had fallen asleep beside me, and was eventually put back to her own bed and remained quiet for the evening.

  ‘How’re ya feeling?’ Margaret Rose asked me.

  ‘Nice to see you up and about,’ I said. ‘Shit, nasty bang though.’

  ‘Only a bang sure. Poor Jane. What’d she hit me with?’

  ‘Your hairdryer,’ I said and Margaret Rose laughed, and then coughed gently, moving towards my bed.

  ‘Look, Sinéad . . . loveen –’ she was awkwardly hovering – ‘OK if I . . .?’ I patted the bed and she sat. ‘I’m so sorry about, ya know, yar scan and all. Maybe ya need ta tell me ta mind my own business, but it’s just, ya hear everything in here. But I’m rally sorry.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘I know it’s impossible not to hear. This place.’

  We both rolled our eyes.

  ‘It’s vary unfair, and yar young family. I’m so sad far ya. I knows yar not a praying woman. I wish I could do something more. But please, ya canny be keeping news like this ta yarself, ya need people around ya . . . yar mother, someone ta help.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I said again. Utterly lost for words.

  ‘They find your husband?’ I asked.

  ‘Ah, that lad, he’s never lost, not rally. Just disappears. He’s off with another woman. State of them.’

  ‘I know, I’m so sorry.’

  ‘Ah, I’m used ta it. But ya know yarself. It’s so shameful. I’ve a plan . . . of sorts.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘What are ya going ta do? You canny just lie in here like this, hope it’ll all go away, because it won’na, ya know?’

  ‘Not much I can do, really,’ I said.

  ‘Well, that’s not true.’ She leaned over me, talking faster. ‘They said ya cud do something ta give ya longer, ya should think about it, rally. Yar kids’ll need time with ya, ’tis a terrible shock on everyone. Look, love, I have not a right ta interfere, but yar in shock . . . yar not thinking straight, love. Ya need ta think long and hard about the choices yar making.’

  ‘I know,’ I said, ‘I just can’t think straight. It’s too much.’

  She stared at me, fidgeting with the bed sheet, took a sharp breath. ‘I think ’tis afraid of living ya are. No?’

  ‘What? That’s unfair,’ I said, uncomfortable now.

  ‘Is it?’ she said, lowering her chin and lifting up her eyes.

  ‘You don’t know anything about me.’

  ‘Maybe,’ she said. ‘But tell ya what I think . . .’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I think ya need ta get down off the cross and use the wood. Come on, yar poor boys, and that lovely husband. Ya have it all really. Ja know that? And ya shouting at him about eggs. It’s not right, shouting at him . . .’

  I groaned.

  ‘Look. I knows things can be very tough. And the past never laves us in much peace. I rally do know. Look, life is life. And while ya have it, ya canny be messing with it. It’s not a game.’

  She hugged me tight and I grabbed her, desperate.

  *

  Alex returned later that evening, wearing a denim shirt and black jacket, carrying a plastic bag of takeout and two bottles of Tempranillo. Lamb.

  ‘Supper.’ And he smiled widely.

  I pushed off the bedclothes.

  ‘Anything exciting since I left?’

  ‘Don’t ask . . .’ I lifted my legs out and felt for the tiled floor.

  ‘Shit, what’re you doing?’ Alex said.

  ‘Ah, here, I can’t go to a restaurant without doing myself up a little. I’m showering.’

  ‘No need, it’s just me, and this . . .’ he pleaded, lifting up the pink-and-blue striped plastic bag and looking about him. The bottles of wine were rolling along on the bed.

  ‘Please,’ I said, ‘please leave it, just let me.’ I smiled again, at him. ‘But you can help. Grab the black skinny Levi’s in here –’ I motioned to under the bed. ‘There’s a white shirt too, the one with the triangle diamonds on the front.’

  Nothing was going to upset my focused mood. I would have a meal. Nicely dressed.

  ‘But the food will go cold . . .’

  ‘We can microwave it at the Nurses’ Station.’

  ‘’K. Wear this,’ he said, lifting a pretty turquoise bra from the bag and hanging it on his wrist. I had forgotten I had it. I felt a surge of guilt for Jane and the Wonderbra. A dark red ribbon weaved through the cups and the straps had a muted cream trim.

  ‘Oh!’ I said.

  Alex handed me his suit jacket. ‘This any good to you?’

  ‘Great,’ I said, ‘I can be like Madonna or Diane Keaton in that movie, what was that movie?’

  ‘Manhattan?’

  ‘No, not that one, the other one . . .’

  ‘Annie Hall?’

  ‘Yes, her. Tonight . . . Matthew Kelly . . . I will be Annie Hall . . . mwah . . . mwah.’

  I would prove to Alex I could make it home. I’d eat all the food, whatever it was, saag and almonds and something with garlic, a garlic and coriander naan maybe.

  ‘You can dry my hair after,’ I said, as he linked me to the loo.

  ‘I’m not so sure this is a good idea. Please, just . . . just let me come in.’

  But I eventually locked the door behind me, locking him out.

  Alone.

  I placed the toilet bag and the bundle of clothes on a large towel on the ground. I laid out a razor, purple shampoo, and conditioner. I turned on the shower and I sat down on the white-yellowed plastic seat, the long red cord waved back and forth, it made me feel safe and terrified. I wondered how many others had
sat on the chair, taken a shower, died. At first it made me fainty, the thought of bare arses before me, and thinking of how their thigh skin caught in the dodgy edge, as the water got hotter and hotter. I closed my eyes and drank from the faucet. I let it run on my hair and down over my breasts.

  The heat of the water burned me. I wanted it to burn me. I wanted it to hurt. Fuck You All the water said, I am alive. I am alive. I am. And I will stay alive. But I knew it was no use, water, oxygen, pills, blahdeblah, all of it, none of it was any use, but maybe would I give them all more hope if I just sat with a mask on my face and stayed in Hospital and pretended to fight it? I dried my body off with a towel too fluffy to be useful, another gift from Margaret Rose, and I let it fall to the wet ground. I stood in front of the narrow shaving mirror. I thought about her advice.

  I touched my damp shoulders. I felt my hot earlobes. I touched my gums, ran my finger across all of my teeth. I squirted blobs of pink body cream onto my hands and I touched my shinbones. I touched my breasts, empty and saggy. I felt between my legs. I held my head and dropped it forward. It made me dizzy. I bent my wrists and then rotated them. All these parts of me, that somehow made me, all these odd bits, that sometimes looked nice and more often didn’t, when I pieced them all together, even if I didn’t feel connected to them, they were essentially me. I breathed in as fully and as deeply as my lungs would allow, in through my nose, out again, square breaths, don’t collapse, in – hold and out – hold. Don’t cry. Do not cry. Do not cry. You are only made of air and water. You will not survive. No one will and you are OK. You have survived till now. I ran a list of all my achievements through my head. I was an OK mother. I was trying to accept this. I made Alex laugh sometimes. I didn’t have a big gang of friends, or a wild network of people. I was a dutiful daughter for the most part. Do not cry. I loved my mother. He won’t stay another night if you cry. I sponged some make-up onto my face and blended it in under my chin. I drew my eyebrows in. But nothing would stick. It was too hot. I was too wet.

  Fuck achievements.

  You are OK. You have definition now.

  I had three little ripples where my stomach turned over on itself and standing up or lying flat made them disappear. Some wiry black hairs sprouted from my right breast.

  *

  I returned from the bathroom, slowly, feeling more Michael Keaton in Batman, but Alex and Molly and Margaret Rose and Michal had grouped together and they clapped. And I winked with both eyes.

  ‘Ah, darl, nice to see ya up,’ Molly said, leaning forward and linking me to Alex’s chair. I sat on it. Weak. Alex began brushing my hair and rough-drying it.

  ‘Proper boutique we have here, now,’ Jane said, looking out the window. ‘Great set-up.’

  ‘I want them, y’naw, kids?’ Molly said to Alex, as she shouted over the sound of the dryer. ‘But I couldn’t do it without a lot of encouragement, and I don’t know, Bobby just feels it’s time, but I think we’re too young.’

  ‘Well, we’re mad about our scuts,’ Alex offered, tapping my shoulder. ‘They’re great, well, they’re grand, you know . . . they’re there, I guess,’ he said as he reduced our children to ornaments.

  ‘I guess,’ she smiled, and left. Alex turned off the dryer and put some mousse in the roots of my hair, massaging my head with the tips of his fingers.

  ‘I so wanted you to ask how they were thinking of doing it?’ I whispered when Molly walked off.

  ‘How what?’ He looked at me, mousse bottle in his hands.

  ‘How they are thinking of trying to have the kid, you know, like how they’ll do it?’

  ‘Do it?’ he asked, alarmed.

  ‘Conceive the baby, ya twat?’

  ‘Oh, oh God, oh, that’s none of our business.’ He waved the bottle in front of me. He was a useless gossip. He’d never survive the Ward, Hospital.

  ‘Now don’t you look just gorgeous?’ he said, and laughed, neither of us convinced, but I took his word for it. He tidied up and I stayed sitting out on the chair. It was a pleasant break. The feeling of clean hair was unworldly. Someone came in and reattached my leads and the telemetry monitor and complained how the shower had fucked it all up on them, but I didn’t care. It was glorious to be clean.

  I grabbed on to Alex with my two hands. ‘Look, no one would know I’m a patient now, would they?’ I waved my hands over my Batmanesque costume.

  ‘Maybe?’ he said, doubtful. ‘But they’d certainly think you were fucking crazy.’

  ‘If you love me . . . you’d kidnap me.’

  ‘That’s blackmail,’ Alex said. But he didn’t say no. I was about to explain that people don’t blackmail for their own kidnapping, not usually, when Jim arrived on the Ward.

  Chapter 20

  ‘Well, Mags, so gud ta see ya,’ Jim Maughan said, arriving nervously back on the Ward, and greeting his anxious sister, gauging her reaction.

  ‘Jim,’ Margaret Rose said, quietly.

  He leaned in slowly over her and kissed her cheek, gently. ‘And look, Michaela’s here too. Hi, how’re you, love? Lovely ta see ye both.’ And he kissed his niece in turn. ‘Now look . . .’ he said to Margaret Rose. ‘I came as fast as I could . . .’

  ‘Right,’ Margaret Rose said, eyeballing him. ‘What’s wrong, Jim? What’s happened?’

  ‘It didn’t go so . . . so smoothly . . . sorry.’ Jim nodded at her phone.

  Margaret Rose knew it was all gone belly up with

  Niquita’s absconding.

  ‘Is there more, Jim? Tell me.’

  Jim opened up the top button of his shirt, and spread across the collar with his large hand. He shoved his wheelie case into the corner. ‘Now, plays, don’na be alarmed.’

  ‘What? What is it?’ Margaret Rose said nervously, and grabbed Michaela by the shoulders.

  ‘Well, we managed ta bring them back, but he’s, they’ve . . . well, they’ve followed me . . .’ he said, breathless, playing with the collar, ‘here . . . I asked them not ta, but he won’na listen. Now . . . are ya up ta it?’

  It was a warning more than a question.

  Paddy Sherlock was returned.

  ‘Have I a chaice?’ Margaret Rose said.

  ‘Well. No, not really,’ he said, shooting his eyes downwards towards the bed, ‘but be . . . warned. He’s like a fucking lunatic.’

  Michaela Sherlock grabbed her mother’s black rosary beads.

  ‘Well . . . well . . . well, now, would ya look here? Rosary beads. Rosary-fucking-beads. Well, I’ve seen it all now.’ The shout was rather ineffective, something uncertain about the way the man landed himself into our space, but land Paddy Sherlock did, banging his hip off the bin. Then he focused without blinking on his wife. ‘I canny fucking believe ya, Margaret Rose Sherlock.’ Michaela sat up straight on the bed, and played with the caviar balls of the rosary beads, clacking them inside and outside of her fingers, quickly.

  ‘Look at ye all praying with the saints?’ he said, eyeing up the Ward’s elaborate grotto of religious knick-knacks. He glanced at Alex and then me and looked somewhat disappointed. Taking a long in-breath, Paddy Sherlock then turned his attention back to his wife. ‘I canny believe what yar after doing to our Niquita . . . ya know something? Yar nothing but a bitch. How ja think ya could keep me away from helping her just like that? I have rights, ya know?’

  ‘I rang ya . . .’ Margaret Rose offered, quietly. ‘Many times.’

  His large belly was housed in a blue Adidas zip top. He bent over and rubbed down the front of his shiny black slacks, a strange time for vanity. Niquita appeared behind him, banging into the bin also, and then helping Paddy upright as he groaned and rubbed his lower back. Jim put his head in his hands. The defeated. ‘Well, Mammy,’ Niquita said, cheekily, as she fawned over her father, rubbing down his arm, and thrusting herself about this way and that, giddily.

  ‘Nick, ah, love, it’s good ta see ya, don’na be like this,’ Margaret Rose pleaded; she remained motionless all the while, like a queen on a chessb
oard, taking her time, considerate or considering.

  ‘I tells ya what . . . yar an absolute thundering bitch, Margaret Rose, an absolute wan,’ Paddy said, ‘. . . and I’m, I’m disgraced to death with . . . ye all. All da cousins in Glan knows what she did too.’ He put his large head into his hands and ran them back along his hair.

  Margaret Rose shot Niquita a wounded look.

  ‘What ya looking at her far? Bit late like . . . shir, she’s only gone and blabbed it to everywan she saw yesterday, and she came ta me and tells me all about it and how sorry she was,’ Paddy said.

  ‘How ja get to Birmingham from Manchester, Nick?’ Margaret asked her daughter calmly, her voice deadly serious.

  Jim began to pace the length of the bed.

  ‘I like left da hotel and took a bus, like. What’s ja take me far? A fool? That’s all – a bus. Don’na be cross at me just because you got a bad slap.’

  ‘How ja let this happen?’ Margaret Rose asked Jim.