by Luan Goldie
‘I been in here so long now,’ he explains.
‘I know, it’s like a jail sentence.’ She laughs.
‘This must be how people feel when they get out of the army.’
‘Are you saying the hospital has institutionalized you?’ She laughs again and her great chest jiggles in a way that cheers Tristan up.
Her tray is filled with lined-up cups of tap water and the tepid orange juice he has spent the last month drinking. He stretches from his bed to grab a cup.
‘One for the road.’
There’s that hollow kind of feeling again, the one that makes him feel like everything in his stomach has burnt out. He takes a sip, then pours the rest into the tomato plant Elvis brought.
‘Don’t worry, you’re strong, and that brother of yours,’ she shakes her head, as if searching for words, ‘I’m sure he’ll take care of you. And don’t forget you’ve still got stuff here.’ She nods down towards the bedside unit, where he’s been dumping the revision guides Harris keeps dropping off.
‘Olisa,’ he whines, ‘you know I can’t reach down there.’
She bends over to get it out and slams the pile of books onto his bed.
‘Nurse,’ a voice calls from behind the curtain. ‘Nurse, come quickly,’ the disembodied pain in the arse calls.
‘Olisa, let me whisk you away from all this.’
‘There’s my smart aleck.’ She puts her soft hand on his shoulder and whispers, ‘You’re through the worst of it. Just keep going forward.’ Then she moves on, humming ‘In the Air Tonight’.
But how can he move forward if he can’t remember the last bit of his old life? Also, Dr G keeps banging on about him still being an outpatient for the next year.
At the end of the ward he spots Malachi and Harris. They always seem to come in a pair at the moment. Harris pulls one of those tartan shopping trolleys every woman seems to acquire upon hitting sixty, for the sole purpose of smacking into everyone’s legs on market day. Malachi has on another ugly brightly coloured sweatshirt, emblazoned: Tigers Basketball Camp. Who would buy such a thing? Tristan refused to wear any of the crap Malachi brought him from the relief centre. As if he would put his body in someone else’s old garms.
‘Right, this is it.’ Malachi comes forward and slaps Tristan’s palm. ‘I just got to sort this paperwork first.’ He beams as he holds the green hospital notes above his head, a fat booklet that details each of the four operations Tristan has gone through since arriving. Tristan had flicked through it once, but it was all jargon about lacerations and recovery and was way too impersonal to be interesting.
‘May I?’ Harris asks before he puts Tristan’s collection of magazines in the shopping trolley. ‘Enjoyable reading, were they?’ he asks, indicating the revision guides.
‘Yeah, riveting,’ Tristan answers, but then spots the crusty yellow letter as it falls from within the pile. Harris picks it up. It’s obvious that he clocks the name written on it and looks at Tristan for an answer. Tristan fractionally shakes his head and hopes it’s enough to put Harris off. It’s not his business, anyway. Slowly, Harris hands it to Tristan, who folds it back into a magazine.
Doctor Gonorrhoea comes over and talks with Malachi. Tristan is now the only one in the group without a full-watt smile on. It’s all a bit too happy. He doesn’t know how to feel. He shakes the doctor’s hand, this woman who saved him. He wants to thank her but doesn’t know where to start. He hopes he won’t cry, but right now it’s all he wants to do. It’s overwhelming.
‘You’ve done brilliantly,’ she says. ‘Really, well done. So I’ll see you back here next Thursday. Your brother’s got it all written down.’ She turns to Malachi and they small talk for a bit. Tristan misses most of the conversation as the buzz in his left ear loudens. Finally the doctor shakes Malachi’s hand, but holds it longer and stronger than she did with Tristan, and they leave.
He hasn’t been outside the hospital gates since that day and everything seems too bright, too busy and too loud. He hopes Malachi and Harris don’t look down at him as he wipes his eyes. Luckily they occupy themselves with chat about the logistics of their departure: who will run the wheelchair back and pay the parking ticket. Tristan is put out by how comfortable they are together, this relationship that has sprung up from nowhere and seems to have replaced all others. He looks around the car park and realises he doesn’t even know what car they are looking for. The wheelchair bumps down a curb and his heart beats fast at the involuntary jerk, the clank of metal against brick. It brings to mind a memory he doesn’t want to deal with, not now at this moment. They stop by a bronze Escort. Tristan wasn’t sure what kind of car Harris would have, and he wouldn’t have guessed it would be something so girlie.
Malachi opens the back door and helps him into the seat. It smells like Harris, like cigarettes, spicy food and the bars of pink soap you only find in school toilets. But his body is grateful for the way the caved-in padding holds him. Harris and Malachi fuss with the radio up front and Tristan begins to pull the seatbelt across himself, but then lets it reel back up. The odds of surviving a plane crash only to be killed in a car crash must be very low. Surely the odds of anything tragic happening to him ever again are minimal. It’s a pleasing thought.
‘Mind my plant, Mal.’
‘Sorry, sorry.’ He cranes his neck and flashes a big smile into the backseat. He always looks off when he smiles like that, like it’s hurting his face. ‘You all right, Tris?’
‘I’m always all right.’
‘You got enough room?’ He inches his seat forward till his lanky legs are crushed in the front with the tomato plant on his lap, but the smile remains.
During the short drive, Tristan zones in and out of the conversations about traffic, dinner, and a morning meeting with the council. He looks out of the window but can’t make up his mind about whether he wants to see it or not. He spots Barton Point and Seacole Point in the distance. Then the blackened stub of what must be Nightingale Point, burnt out and being taken apart by two large yellow cranes on either side, exactly like in the newspaper. He feels relieved as it disappears from view again and they carry on driving into a small close of single-storey houses, each one with a brightly painted door and no metal security gates. Harris drives as close to his green front door as possible and Malachi helps Tristan out and onto his crutches. He takes him straight through to a narrow, pastel-coloured bedroom.
‘I know how you like stuff clean and Harris is pretty messy,’ Malachi says, ‘so I spent some time clearing it out yesterday. Probably not quite to your pristine standards,’ he swipes a finger along a surface, ‘but I tried.’
The room is bare, except for drawers, a wardrobe and a single bed. The creases from where the sheet was folded in its packaging still show; they didn’t even wash it first. Tristan lowers himself onto the bed and the sun hits his face, which causes Malachi to rush over to the window and pull at the slatted blinds. He stands there for a bit, a slight wheeze from his chest, before he pulls his pump from his pocket and shakes it.
‘You all right, Mal?’
He nods and takes a few puffs. There had been a story in the papers about an upsurge in asthma and chest problems from people that breathed in the smoke that day. Does Malachi sound raspier than usual, or is it just noticeable because everything else is so quiet? No thump of children running wild in the flat upstairs or neighbours having a domestic, or televisions blaring or people whistling outside.
‘Shit,’ Tristan says, ‘it’s creepy silent round here. Reminds me of a horror film or something. Can’t believe this is only a bus ride away from Nightingale.’
‘Quiet is not a bad thing. It’s a nice area.’
Tristan clocks a bowl of what looks like dried flowers on the drawers. ‘I know what this place reminds me of … The Burbs – remember that one? We must of watched that a hundred times when we were kids.’
‘You knew all the words; used to drive Mum crazy.’
‘He’s a stranger in an ev
en stranger land,’ Tristan says in his best American accent. The memory makes him smile as he leans his crutches against the bed. The pain in his left ankle is searing and it’s a few hours before he’s allowed another round of painkillers.
‘You think Harris would be okay with Elvis coming over?’
‘Course.’
‘I think he’s finding everything a bit overwhelming. Be good to keep an eye on him. Don’t you think?’
Malachi nods and smiles.
‘And Mal, I never said it before in the hospital, but I’m really sorry about Pamela. It’s proper sad.’
He nods.
‘Do they know if she …’ He’s not sure how to say it, or if he even really wants an answer. ‘Like, died straight away or if she suffered?’
Malachi sits on the bed and leans his elbows on his knees. ‘I don’t know.’ He uses his hands to shield himself. ‘Like I said to you, I didn’t even know she was back in London. I wouldn’t have believed she was in the block if I hadn’t seen her dad. It was horrible. He was broken.’
‘Who cares how he feels? He was the one that locked her in.’
Malachi snaps up, his forehead creasing, and he holds Tristan’s gaze for too long. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘What?’ Tristan can’t think of a time he’s ever lied to his brother and got away with it. He’s not sure if it’s because Malachi can always see straight through him, or if he’s just a really bad liar.
‘What makes you think he locked her in?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t. Her dad was strict, right? It seems like the kind of thing he’d do.’ Tristan opens his bag and takes out his pill bottles, then begins to line them up on the little set of drawers by the bed. ‘But like you say, we didn’t even know she was back in London.’
Malachi is still staring at him, so Tristan turns away and lifts the bowl of rotten flowers and sniffs it. ‘You think Harris would mind if I put this outside? It proper stinks. What is it?’ Tristan feels as if he may blurt it out, what he knows. ‘Y’know, I’m kind of tired. And I’m talking shit now.’ The stitches around his eye hurt as he yawns.
‘You want to be left?’ Malachi asks.
‘It’s the pills, they turn me into a proper narcoleptic, man.’
Malachi gives him a sad smile and stands up. ‘I’ll let you get some sleep, then. I’m so happy to have you home, though.’
Tristan pulls off the one ugly trainer Dr G insists he wears while his foot heals and he practises to walk again. As Malachi closes the door behind him, Tristan mumbles, ‘Yeah but this isn’t home.’
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Chapter Thirty-Five ,Mary
‘Where have you been?’ Julia’s face is angry and overly made-up.
‘I told you. I needed a walk, to clear my head.’ Mary feels her daughter search her face, as if trying to work out if Mary’s tears are part of mourning or guilt.
‘Today of all days.’ Julia snaps her make-up compact shut. ‘You realise we’re leaving at ten?’
‘Yes, that’s why I am dressed.’ Mary knows what time they are leaving; the fact loomed over her all morning as she walked aimlessly through the Jewish graveyard in her black dress and tights. She keeps one hand in her pocket and rubs at the metal of her fob watch.
‘You can’t wear those.’ Julia stares down at Mary’s feet, horrified at sight of the stained plimsolls. ‘I bought you proper shoes. I told you to chuck those.’
Mary knows she will not throw away these shoes, her only ones. She will hide them under the bed along with Harris’s shirt and navy jogging bottoms and the newspapers she has been collecting with David’s name in them. Mary likes her things, no matter how worn, useless or neglected, to surround her always. Especially now, as she has so few belongings.
She follows Julia into the living room, where the four grandbabies sit in a line across the sofa. They look like morbid bridesmaids in their black tulle dresses, each of their thick-haired heads adorned with a black sequined bow.
‘I don’t think I can do this, Julia.’ But even as Mary says it she regrets laying it on her daughter.
‘We don’t have a choice,’ Julia says in emulation of one of Mary’s own lines. ‘We need to say goodbye. So please, go and change your shoes.’
Mary pads upstairs and collects the clunky black shoes and ugly plastic handbag Julia laid out for her. Inside the bag she finds two packets of tissues and a roll of mints. She sits on the top step and waits for ten o’clock to come, for John’s low voice to fill the hallway and for Julia to call for everyone to leave for the church.
Mary’s life with David had been nothing but goodbyes: every few months another show, another goodbye. It had begun weeks after their wedding, a gig he could not turn down, the chance to sweat in closely fitting polyester trousers, singing ‘Baby It’s You’ in hotel bars, while Mary laid alone in her marital bed wearing a lace nightdress. For the following fifty-three nights Mary told herself she was not mad at David. She knew the money would cover the costs of the recording studio he wanted to hire, for the breakthrough recording he had been dreaming of ever since he watched A Hard Day’s Night. Singing was David’s life but he also wanted to be a good husband, sometimes, so the day he returned, with a suitcase of clothes that smelt of tobacco and beer, he made the first, and only, completely selfless gesture towards Mary. He gave her the money. ‘For your ticket to London. I know you are short. Go and I will follow next year.’ So today, she feels she owes it to him to play the devastated wife.
The last time Mary was in a church with David’s family would have been her own wedding at St Joseph’s back in the Philippines. It was there, after eleven months of chaste looks, supervised lunches, and three sessions of quick, ecstatic sex at his house, that Mary and David were married. She had felt proud as she spoke the vows of ‘forever’, while glancing around at her smiling family and envious friends, many already married to men who were suffering premature balding and widening waistlines. Mary was the girl with the perfect catch and the glittering future abroad.
But now Mary is the woman with nothing: no home, no husband and children who feel like they don’t know her at all.
Her feet smart within the stiffness of the new plastic shoes as she walks from the church. Men talk loudly as they walk, reminiscing about David, the talent, the jokes, the larger-than-life character. Mary stays silent. What can she add to this? That he was an absentee father? That he was a terrible husband?
Finally they reach the plot, a mound of freshly turned-over earth and a large hole beside it. She thinks of the thirty-eight other people who died that day, the thirty-eight other funerals. There is no body to bury for David. But they decided on a casket and only the closest family members know the make-up of its weight. She imagines the lightness of the David’s possessions as they move about inside the bodiless box. His jewellery, his favourite cassette tapes – mostly his own recordings – and a series of headshots that, when lined up in order, chronicle how little he aged.
Despite the families wrangling about where to bury David, a will had been discovered, which spelt out his wish for British soil to be his final resting place. Julia and John are still angry about the will, the cold, legal document that said so little about them but contained lengthy details outlining David’s wishes for his own funeral: white doves, a full choir, a painting of Mother Mary on the inside lid of the casket. But even the generous abuloy, raised by members of the Filipino Snooker Club, was not enough to fund such a production.
The casket is lowered. The guilt returns and Mary feels her knees wobble with it. She prays that she will not faint here in front of all these people. She does not want to make a spectacle of herself, even though that is probably what David would have wanted, that someone faint with grief at his funeral.
Julia raises a clump of sodden tissues, marked with black eye make-up, to her face and John puts an arm around her. He whispers something in her ear, which brings a thin smile to her lips. David’s mother looks up at them from
her chair; suspicion of her foreign and least favourite grandchildren floods her eyes, fuelled by an old-fashioned fear of twins. David would taunt his mother with tales that the children could sense what the other was feeling when he would tickle one and get the other to laugh. Mary can suddenly no longer see all the hours David missed from their life but the minutes he spent bouncing a little Julia on his knee or swinging a pint-sized John upside down till he cried with laughter. Mary remembers the children’s happiness each time David would return home and her own despair.
Mary looks away to search for a face not running with tears, and it’s then she spots the tragic lone figure standing in an unoccupied clearing of grass. The floozy from the side of the stage.
Her hair is done up in an old-fashioned coiffed style, a whalebone hair clip in the side, a black skirt down past her knees. She is older than Mary imagined, nothing like the image of a young, laughing girl that has been etched in her mind for the last three decades. But of course, if this woman has been around since the start, then she would have aged, just as Mary has. This is her, the other woman. The real widow.
Mary tolerated the idea of David having a girl, several, even, but the idea that he had one other woman, one who loved him enough to cry this way and travel this distance to say goodbye, stings her. Mary wonders if this other woman has spent weeks sitting with red-rimmed eyes and dark bags, despite sleeping all day. She wonders if she too has been staring blankly at old photos. Or listening to records from The Mamas and the Papas and The Hollies, and remembering how disappointing the originals sounded after hearing David sing them first. The woman’s face is obscured by a white handkerchief, which she stuffs in a sleeve before walking away from the church. Then, a few steps later, she takes another look behind her at the man she never truly had because of Mary. The man she had now lost because of Mary.
