Fifty-Minute Hour

by Wendy Perriam

  He zigzagged down the hall, searching for a dog collar, maddened now by the constant Tannoy messages which were telling other people where they were (and who); giving them instructions, clear direct instructions about flights and routes and schedules; finding things they’d lost; making them feel wanted, loved, secure. No one wanted him, or regarded him as important enough to call him to the desk, present him with a dossier confirming all his vital personal details: his name, his job, his blood-group, the colour of his eyes.

  He trailed back to the Plaza, still nervous and confused, found his Mother studying a placard which offered a full English breakfast at a price so wildly high it must include diamond-studded eggs, and caviare to start with, instead of Sugar Puffs. He tried to steer her past the notice, ignore her anxious questions about why he’d been so long, why they’d summoned him at all.

  ‘Oh, just a business matter. BRB find it hard to cope when I’m not there to man the office. Now, I think it’s time we … we … changed some money, Mother.’ He had changed it twenty times – sterling into lire, then back again, when his panic got so all-embracing he’d decide to cancel the whole holiday and claim on his insurance. Then hotfoot to the bank once more, praying for a different clerk who wouldn’t recognise him when he passed the form across (again), requesting – yes, more lire.

  ‘But we haven’t had our breakfast, Bryan.’

  That was his fault, too. He’d insisted they depart the minute they were dressed; had booked the car for dawn.

  ‘And that restaurant looks quite pleasant, dear.’

  It looked far more than pleasant – it looked completely ruinous. He could see it from the entrance, black with bowing waiters, jungled with exotic plants, which were bound to go straight on the bill, under ‘cover charge’ or ‘extras’.

  ‘It’s never wise to eat before you fly, Mother – nothing heavy, anyway.’

  ‘How d’ you know? You’ve never flown.’

  ‘I read it in a book.’

  ‘You read too many books, Bryan. That’s half your trouble really. Reading softens the brain. It isn’t natural. Animals don’t read. And it’s mining your sight. You’ll be wearing glasses before you’re thirty-five – and losing them continually, if I know anything about you. “I’m sure I put them here, Mother.” Or there. Or …’

  He felt a wave of sweet relief. His Mother was becoming her old self. He’d reward her with a cup of tea, a bun. He swept her past the blue-chip, five-star restaurant into the self-service one beside it, cringing as he saw its name; ‘CHOICES’. The choices were impossible: a dozen different counters with a hundred different foods – even the drinks baffling and exotic. Every sort of tea from his Mother’s standard brew to herb teas, fruit teas, and a range called ‘Speciality’, which included names like ‘Sunrise’, ‘Country Way’ and ‘English Garden’ – all fecund rural names reminding him of Mary. The sandwiches were hers, as well, crustless and refined; the fresh fruits plump and swollen like her breasts. He arrived at the cash-desk with Mary in his mind still, but nothing on his tray.

  ‘Aren’t you hungry, Bryan?’

  ‘Er, no.’

  ‘You’ve not been eating sweets again – in secret?’

  ‘No, Mother.’

  ‘Let me smell your breath.’

  He exhaled into her face. She frowned and sniffed, then nodded grudgingly. ‘All right. But don’t start complaining you feel hungry in just an hour or so. You know the dangers of eating between meals.’

  He glanced at her own tray in shock. She’d chosen foreign foods – cappuccino, when she never touched anything but Typhoo, and a Swiss-French croissant oozing melted Gruyere. He felt totally disorientated. This was not the Lena that he knew, the one who stuck to sliced white bread, Tesco’s English Cheddar. His eye caught the Children’s Menu tacked above the till – Hungry Bears’ Bumper Burger and Snoopy’s Dream Ice Cream. He longed to be a toddler strapped in his highchair, Mary bending over him, squirting in Dream Breast Milk.

  No, he’d never keep it down; never eat or drink again, judging by the churning in his stomach. There simply wasn’t room for food with all that terror clogging up his gut. They were sitting by the window which looked out on the runway and he could see the planes close-up now. Terrifying monsters which seemed far too big and lumbering ever to fly at all. He knew suddenly he’d die. By six o’clock this evening he’d be foundering at the bottom of the Channel, or impaled lifeless on a mountain peak. His Disaster Scrapbook was packed in the blue case. He should have kept it in his hand-luggage, so he could check up on the crashes – though half the gory details were already screaming in his head: Lockerbie, of course, and the British Midland horror just a shocking fortnight later, and the jumbo jet which crashed into a mountain range, killing all its passengers, and that other fated Boeing which mistook the M4 for the runway in conditions of dense fog. He peered outside again. It was already slightly misty. By five o’clock that touch of mist could have thickened into an out-and-out peasouper.

  He fumbled for his pillowcase, removed his snake, clutched it in both hands. Okay – let people snigger – he no longer even cared, not with Death looming by their table, handing them his black-edged calling-card. Anne would die, as well – a case of callous murder. He should have left his snake at home, not dragged it into danger. He used its tail to wipe his clammy hands, felt wildly fiercely hot, as if he were escaping from the charred and burning wreckage, flames leaping at his hair, licking round his ankles. He mopped his streaming forehead on a paper serviette which wished him a good morning in bouncy yellow script. Good morning? Were they mad? This was his last morning with the living. He was about to plunge into the sky on a jet-powered death-machine; then hurtle down and down again until he hit the Void.

  ‘Well, if this is what Italians eat, I’d rather have my usual toast, thank you very much.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Don’t say “what”, say “pardon”, Bryan. I’ve been telling you the same since you were six.’

  He jerked up to his feet, Anne in one hand, steak-knife in the other, as if he were warding off some imaginary opponent, defying Death Himself. ‘Mother! We’re not going.’

  ‘Not going where?’

  ‘To Rome.’

  ‘Don’t be silly, dear. You’ve always been too highly strung. You get that from your father. Now put that knife down and drink this milky coffee. That’ll calm you down. Cappuccino? They can keep their cappuccino. It’s just a cup of froth, and at the price they charged, that’s 15p a bubble.’

  ‘Mother, we’re about to die, and you’re fussing about bubbles.’

  ‘I don’t intend dying, dear, except in my own bed and with a nice pot of tea beside me. You’ve gone too long without a meal, that’s all that’s wrong with you. I’ll go and get your Coco Pops and you’ll feel completely different with something in your stomach. Now, promise not to move, Bryan. I don’t trust you on your own. While I’m gone, you can look out of the window and watch all those lovely planes.’

  Chapter Twenty Eight

  ‘Help, help! We’re going down. We’re crashing. Quick, jump out of the window, break the glass, get out! Oh God, the smoke! I can hardly breathe at all now, and the flames are … This is it – we’re dying! Mother, Mother, hold me. I don’t want to die alone. Not you, you fool! Let go of me, get back. Mother, please, where are you? I love you, Mother, honestly, don’t want you to die. Get off, you brutes, I said. You’re blocking all the exits and … Hurry, someone, hurry! The flames are getting closer. Let down the escape-hatch, ram open those two doors. Christ! Too late. We’re dead.’

  Chapter Twenty Nine

  I killed myself last Friday. I had to. I couldn’t stay alive with John-Paul dead himself. I lost a lot of bone and flesh, arid parts of my insides just crumbled into dust. I never got them back. I’m much smaller now and lighter, take up far less room. I’ve also lost my voice, but that’s just a cold, a bad one. I don’t need a voice, in any case. There’s nobody to talk to.

  I m
op my nose, blow on my numb fingers, walk slowly round the cemetery through spiteful sleety rain, stopping by my favourite of the gravestones. ‘Quis separabit,’ it’s asking me, as usual, though I never give an answer. There isn’t any question-mark, and anyway I presume it’s just an irony, like most of the inscriptions all around me – ‘Resting’, for example, or ‘God Wanted One More Angel’. The only angel I can see has lost her nose and hands, and has obscene graffiti daubed across her wings. All the graves look old and tired, leaning on each other, or listing to the right or left; once-preening marble now choked with ivy, clawed by vicious brambles; everlasting granite chipped and stained.

  I squat down on the ramparts of a showy mausoleum, stroke its fur of moss. I come here every day now, since it’s obvious I belong. I should be underground with all the other inmates, where it’s warmer and less lonely, but I somehow failed to make it as a corpse. I suppose if you fail in living, it’s not all that surprising if you also cock up dying. I can’t claim it as my resting-place, so I use it as a park instead, a sort of recreation ground, without the recreation. At least it’s quiet and empty – empty save for bones.

  I read the names of all the bones inside the mausoleum, which are inscribed in fancy Gothic script into stone plaques on the sides. They’re mostly D’Acre Laceys, which sound far too grand for a cemetery in Bermondsey. ‘Thomas D’Acre Lacey, called to rest 1852’, ‘Alice D’ Acre Lacey, wife of the above.’ Etcetera, etcetera. Until Simon D’Acre Lacey, who died last year, aged two. I had a brother once – or so they tell me. He died of meningitis the year I was conceived. I was intended as a substitute, but failed to measure up, even failed to be a male. I never told John-Paul. I knew he’d make too much of it, dig the poor kid up, do autopsies and inquests, disturb his peace, and mine. Some things are best left buried – maybe everything.

  Yes, John-Paul is dead himself now, or dead for me, at least. I’ve traipsed back to his vacant tower fifty times, a hundred; gone at one-ten, two-ten, three-ten, even midnight; sworn at that dumb entry-phone, sobbed to it, implored it, but he’s obviously decamped. I expect his other patients received notice of his new address, but he didn’t want me back, just struck me from his diary, gave all my precious lunch-times to Beata. He’s been telling lies for weeks, inventing trips abroad, so he could cancel all my sessions, threatening to increase his fees because he thought I couldn’t pay them and would have to stay away.

  I struggle to my feet again, blowing my sore nose, then trudge towards the gate; the rain following – and frantic – flailing at my shoulders, stinging in my face. It’s a wrench to leave the cemetery, as always, as if I’m leaving home, or friends. I envy those snug dead. There was just one fleeting moment when I died – a quite astounding moment when I felt myself slipping from my body, letting go, letting go, deeper deeper deeper, like the most fantastic orgasm which I’ve only ever fantasised, imagined; never actually experienced with men. I was freed at last from body, or mind and thoughts, or gender, freed from everything, just floating soaring nothing. Annihilation, like my name.

  It was awful coming back. The vomit and the stench, the constant retching, retching; the slow dull creeping knowledge that I’d failed. No one found me, ‘saved’ me. I found myself – and hated it – but didn’t have much choice. I’d no more pills, nor strength for knives, or drowning, or jumping twenty storeys. And you can’t catch meningitis just to order.

  I’m much better now, in fact – stronger altogether, can even walk and shop. I’ve been out since six this morning, window-shopping, wandering, seeing who’s around on Christmas Day. No one much, apparently, but that’s because it’s wet again. (It was always raining, wasn’t it, even when John-Paul was still alive – save for one strange burst of spring?) Scores of people have wished me Happy Christmas: radio announcers, television chat-show hosts, jokers in advertisements, Christmas cards in shops, the recorded Christmas carols in my local launderette. Well, not so much today, of course, with shops and laundries closed, but all last week continually. Christmas is a prison. The bars squeeze tighter, tighter, for several days before it, then snap completely shut on Christmas Day. Solitary confinement. Most other normal people are eating, drinking, jollying; part of some huge family – daughters, mothers, nieces, aunts – joined by genes and tinsel. I was once a daughter. I was even once a son, but things never last that long.

  I turn right at the corner, trail down the grey deserted street until I reach the public library. That’s locked and barred as well, though it’s shouting ‘Happy Christmas’ still from all its lower windows, and has sagging drunken paper-chains looped across the ceiling. I dropped in there two weeks ago, not the lending section, but the solemn stifling reference room, asked a girl to point me out the medical register. I turned straight to the S’s, to confirm what Zack had told me. John-Paul wasn’t listed – nor any of his family, those brothers, cousins, nephews, whom Zack assured me were all doctors. The name just wasn’t there, let alone the strings of letters after it. I asked the girl to double-check, in case I was mistaken. She was kind and took some trouble, but she finally agreed with me there was no one of that name.

  ‘Are there any other books?’ I asked, ‘Where I’d find a doctor listed? Or any separate sort of directory for medically trained psychiatrists?’

  ‘No point checking them,’ she smiled. ‘You see, this one is the Bible, so to speak. Every single doctor, psychiatrist or otherwise, has to be included in this register, which is updated every year and fully comprehensive. Are you sure you’ve got the name right?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Completely sure.’ I know his name, for God’s sake. It’s tattooed across my body, engraved on all my organs.

  I didn’t leave immediately, just sat down where I was, among the damp old men and shuffling sad illiterates who use the library for its heating rather than its books, and wondered why Zack lied. Oh, I know everybody lies. I do myself, continually, so why should I complain? Yet somehow I keep longing for the truth, like I used to long for soul-mates, or God, or happiness – all things I’ve just let go now. Perhaps Truth is blurred and multiple, and we’re wrong to give it one pompous abstract noun, but should think in terms of demi-truths (like demi-gods, who never promise much at all, and lose their capital). John-Paul was a demi-god and a con-man both at once, an artist and a doctor, married and a corpse. I’ll never know him anyway – only just his name, and even that might be a fabrication. He could be in that register under Brown or Smith (or Freud), or churning out bad pictures as Jane Priscilla Steiner. Does it even matter now? I doubt it.

  I drag on down the street, dodging all the puddles. It’s almost twelve o’ clock, getting close to lunch-time. I’d better go back home and eat my Christmas dinner – a fag or two, an aspirin, half a bar of Twix. There’s not much in my room these days. I’ve been trying to cut down – not just on food, on everything. I’ve thrown out every outfit I ever wore when I went to see John-Paul, which means almost all my clothes – burnt the ones I bought specially in his honour: the frilly ‘female’ dresses, or pretty pastel colours which wouldn’t bite or scream at him. I’ve also stripped the shelves, trashed my books, which used to mean a lot to me, killed off all their characters. Most homes bulge for Christmas – presents, new possessions, fridge and larder crammed. I no longer see the point. It all rots and dies by January, joins the other corpses – dead Christmas trees, dead tinsel, dead happiness, dead truth.

  I stroll across a huge main road, which is usually so clogged with cars you risk your life attempting it. Now it’s silent, listless, just three bedraggled pigeons warring for a crust. The rain is easing off, at last. It’s only semi-drizzling, though still leaden, very cold; the sky leaning on the buildings as if it’s so weary and dispirited it needs a solid shoulder to support it. Everything is grey – clouds (and clouds in puddles), the wan faces of sick buildings which close me in, mock my dragging footsteps; the cracked uneven pavement which tries to trip me up. I toil back up the hill, stop from time to time to rest my feet (o
r breath), or decide what magic gift I’d choose from the windows of the toy-shops, if I were still a child, or still had parents who knew who or where I was. I select a large boy doll which says ‘I love you’ when you wind it up. Imagine getting love from just a few turns of a key.

  I avoid a tide of litter, crumpled dirty placards from some march or demonstration, now flung into the gutter or left shouting at the pavement: ‘SAY “NO” TO BOMBS AND DEATH!’ How wrong they are, at least about the death.

  I wish I hadn’t walked so far. I’m feeling weak and faint, my legs cold and stiff and aching as I turn into my own street, start hobbling down the steps.

  I suddenly dodge back. There’s someone at the bottom, an intruder and a male one, a tall but stooping figure, standing with his back to me, powerful shoulders hunched. Fear lasers down my spine. Christmas Day is the perfect time for break-ins, with so many folk away, the police careless or half-pissed. He could be armed and dangerous, so if I try to dart away, he’ll hear me and swing round, maybe knock me flat. I stand transfixed with terror, just staring at his back, praying to the God I don’t believe in.

  ‘Help me, God,’ I whisper, and He does so instantly. The man slowly straightens up, half-turns his head so I can see his striking profile – though he hasn’t noticed me yet. I know that face, that profile, that dark hair black with rain; even recognise the duffel coat, its middle toggle missing, one pocket torn and stained.

  ‘Seton?’ I call desperately, but his name sticks in my throat, seems too large and rough for it. I’m glad he hasn’t heard. I’m terrified he won’t know who I am, simply look right through me, like that shaming time in hospital. That was several weeks ago, so he could be even worse now; forget we shared a boat – and life – one brief but vital fortnight. And I probably look much older, so he’ll be still more confused. (I aged a lot while searching for John-Paul; lost whole decades scraping his dead cells off the streets around the tower, bottling his dead breath.)