A Song for Tomorrow

by Alice Peterson

‘He’s gone,’ I call up to them. I wish they’d give it a rest. It isn’t as if I hadn’t had any men in my bedroom before. Admittedly, however, it had been the first time Mum had come bounding in on the act.

  ‘O Romeo, Romeo! Wherefore art thou, Romeo?’ Rita says as she makes her way downstairs.

  ‘Tell me what you find out,’ Mum says.

  This is when I could really do with living independently, although nothing will dampen my mood this morning, not even their nosiness.

  ‘You found out quite enough, Mum,’ I shout back. ‘Anyway, there is such a thing as patient confidentiality,’ I joke.

  ‘That’s right, Mary, patient confidentiality!’ Rita approaches my bed wearing a fleece jacket over her navy tunic uniform, flat shoes, purple-framed spectacles and dangly earrings. ‘But you have to tell me, Alice, who’s in love with you now?’

  I can’t stop grinning.

  ‘It wasn’t Phil, was it?’ she asks, placing her medical briefcase and shoulder bag on to the floor. ‘Don’t say you’ve taken that ratbag back?’

  I shake my head.

  ‘Phew. Good riddance to bad rubbish.’ When she clocks the note along with my smile, she asks me, ‘Was it Tom?’

  ‘It was amazing, Rita.’

  ‘Tell me more,’ she insists, her smile big enough to rival mine.

  She collapses into laughter when I tell her about Mum and the panic button.

  ‘Oh Alice, you couldn’t make it up. You’re coughing more than usual,’ she adds as I reach for my inhaler on the bedside table.

  ‘I’m tired, that’s all.’

  ‘I doubt sleep was top on your priority list, was it,’ she says, holding a black lacy bra, before picking up the rest of my clothes, still strewn across the floor. ‘Don’t you worry, Alice, your slave is here,’ she says, neatly folding my clothes and putting them onto my bedside chair, before rearranging the pillows behind my back. ‘You just put your feet up, Princess.’

  I laugh.

  Rita unzips her black medical case.

  She comes to the house at least every other month when I’m on a two-week course of intravenous antibiotics (IVs) to take my bloods to make sure I’m on the correct dose. She also comes here between courses to check up on me.

  Today she’s here to flush my port, a bit of metal and silicon attached to a tube that goes into a vein near to my heart. Because I have to have so many injections, Professor Taylor persuaded me to have an operation to insert a venous access device under my skin. I chose to have it just above my left breast. When I need to go on an IV course Rita or I can insert a needle into the port rather than straining to find a vein that still works. Initially I didn’t want to add another CF reminder to my body, especially when I thought modelling could be a career, but it does make life a lot easier. It’s like a small lump under my skin. Phil flinched, of course, when he’d touched it. I think Tom noticed it, but didn’t say anything. I forget it’s there now, unless it’s being used. When it’s not, Rita has to flush it every four to six weeks to stop any blood clotting in the line.

  Rita opens the fridge close to my bed, which stores most of my meds, including heparin, a blood thinner. As she prepares the heparin-saline solution, she hums Shania Twain’s, ‘Man! I Feel Like A Woman’. The idea of Rita driving across London in her little purple van, listening to Heart FM or Magic, always makes me smile. ‘Been enjoying your easy listening for the over forties?’ Rita is forty-six.

  ‘Watch it.’ ‘How’s Emily?’

  One of the first things Rita said to me when we met many years ago was, ‘I’m a mother myself. My daughter, Emily, was born with bad hips and she’s had to wear braces from birth, so I know what it’s like being in and out of hospital.’

  Rita has raised Emily as a single mum. ‘Hubby didn’t hang around when the going got tough,’ she once said. ‘It still hurts. Always will. Not for me, but for Emily. Men can be so weak, apart from your wonderful dad.’ Rita has always loved my father from the very first day he opened the front door to her, wearing his maroon dressing gown.

  As she washes her hands in my bathroom next door, she calls out ‘Emily’s just landed herself a job in W. H. Smith, in the stationery department.’

  Perched on my bed, dressings prepared on a small tray, rubber gloves on, she feels for the port, holding my flesh between her fingers, pinching it, before inserting a thin needle. She puts the used needle into my bright yellow sharps bin. ‘There. Done. Easy as pie.’

  Next Rita asks me to cough into a pot. When I cough it’s a cavernous noise. If I didn’t bring up all this mucus I’d drown in my own phlegm, I think, relieved Tom isn’t here to witness the morning after. Normally I push boyfriends away before they see this side of me. Rita peers into the white plastic pot. ‘Too bogey green for my liking.’

  She decides she’ll send it off to the lab, just to make sure I don’t have any further infection. ‘I can’t take any risks with you, Alice.’ For all Rita’s fun and frivolity she is one of the best nurses I know, deeply conscientious with all her patients.

  ‘All this stuff,’ I say, giving her my hand so she can take my pulse. ‘It’s not sexy, is it?’

  ‘No illness is sexy.’

  I think of last night. Another thing Tom had asked me, in the early hours of this morning, after we’d slept together, was, ‘Why do you have a panic button?’

  I’d wanted to be more honest, but still I played it down, saying I’d only had to use it once. I couldn’t bring myself to tell him that sometimes I cough up blood, how frightening a bleed can be, that a bad one looks like a murder scene. Surely it would terrify him even more, and I didn’t want that, not when we’d finally got together.

  ‘Do your other patients worry about their bodies?’

  ‘Is the Pope Catholic! Everyone, CF or not, is body conscious. Look at my bingo wings.’ She pinches a wodge of fleshy fat under her arms. ‘And I’ve always wanted long thick hair and a good pair of pins like Julia Roberts.’ I look at Rita’s spiky red hair and short legs. She must only be about five foot two. ‘You have to be grateful for what you have, madam. The camera loves you and that bone structure. I look like Shrek in photos, and that’s on a good day.’

  ‘That’s not true. You’re beautiful.’ And I mean it. She is, beautiful, inside and out. Often I think she was sent down from heaven to look after me.

  ‘Enough. Now where were we . . .’

  I’m about to do the lung function test. I press my lips around the mouthpiece and blow out. ‘Keep on going!’ Rita urges. ‘Don’t stop! Come on! You can do it!’

  I finish, out of breath and coughing. Rita jots down the results. ‘What did Professor Taylor say about you swimming?’

  ‘He said I could give it a try, see how my breathing is in the water.’

  ‘Good. Keep on dancing and singing is all I can say.’ She touches her chest. ‘Anything jiggy jiggy to get things moving.’

  As Rita packs up her bag and clamps her briefcase shut, ‘Does sex count?’ I suggest.

  ‘Sure beats swimming lengths.’

  ‘She’s on great form this morning,’ I overhear Rita tell Mum on her way out.

  ‘Can’t think why,’ Mum says.

  ‘No, no idea why,’ Rita replies.

  19

  Mary’s Diary

  February 1999

  Nicholas and I were in the sitting room, Nicholas working on one of his court cases, when Tom and Alice joined us. Tom seemed resolved to clear the air, saying it was lovely to see me again. ‘With clothes on,’ Nicholas chipped in. He loves to tease. Tom said sorry for causing any embarrassment or alarm, but at least we knew the torch batteries weren’t dead. We like him already. After Phil, he seems charming and funny. I can see why Alice would find him attractive. He has the bluest of eyes. The only thing that concerned Nicholas was his job. ‘Working with computers?’ he’d said after they left, peering at me from behind his glasses. ‘What does that mean?’ He sounded just like Alice when he said that.

  20 />
  Alice

  ‘You like me – I know you really like me,’ I sing to Peter as I play my guitar, ‘don’t try to disguise that you want me, I know you really want me. I can see it in your eyes, I can see it in your—’

  ‘Stop!’

  I stop.

  ‘What the fuck?’ He stares at me.

  ‘It was only a first—’

  ‘Drivel. Safe, boring, what everyone else sings. Drivel.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘I’m being polite. You sound like Kylie.’

  What a compliment.

  ‘A bad version of her.’ Peter holds his head in his hands. ‘Didn’t you listen to me last week? Who are you singing to? If only more people listened to me, we’d have far more hit records. Right, we’re going to have to start from the beginning. Tell me about you, Alice. What did you do before all this?’ He takes a large bite of his Danish pastry, his reward for going to the gym this morning.

  ‘I was a model.’

  ‘Great. A walking coat hanger.’

  ‘There’s much more to it than that.’

  ‘A walking talking coat hanger. I had a girlfriend who modelled for a time but it was tough, she was always travelling, living out of a suitcase.’

  ‘That’s why I stopped.’ I can’t exactly call taking a bus along the Uxbridge Road ‘travelling’.

  He narrows his eyes. ‘I can see you’ve got that blonde feline thing going on, more edgy than the girl next door but approachable to other women. Men would find you attractive, sexy. Women would want you to be their friend.’

  To deflect his compliment, I tell him, ‘I’ve got funny feet.’ I register him looking at my hands again. ‘I have clubbing fingers too,’ I say. ‘ET phone home,’ I imitate, pointing a finger up to the ceiling, remembering how much it had made my classmates laugh.

  ‘So what did you do after modelling? A career in comedy?’

  ‘Ha ha. This,’ I shrug. ‘Music. It’s in my family. My brother’s in a band, he plays the guitar.’

  ‘What took you so long to start then?’

  ‘Demons.’

  He nods, as if saying he’s had his own demons to fight, too. ‘The thing about music, Alice, is that, unlike acting, you are yourself. There’s no mask on stage. There can’t be any excuses. In acting, it’s the director’s fault, or the script was weak. There’s plenty of room to be in a real turkey but still pull off an Oscar-winning performance next time around. In music you get one chance. If you write one bad album the bastard record company will drop you, or if you’re really lucky you get bottles of piss thrown at you at a festival. Happened to an act I was managing,’ he confesses. ‘They even had a wheelchair and a saucepan thrown at them too. This is why I need to get a sense of who you are. You’ve got to be real up there, otherwise you’ll be ripped to shreds. Did you work on your persona sheet?’ After our initial meeting, when Peter had agreed to take me on, he’d given me a profile sheet to fill in, explaining it was an exercise to think about who I was on stage and who was the audience I was singing these songs to.

  When I offer him my sheet, he declines to take it. ‘Tell me,’ he says, leaning back in his leather chair as if he’s looking forward to being read a bedtime story. I am confident, I put on a good act, but occasionally I get an overwhelming attack of shyness. ‘Alice,’ he prompts me, ‘if you can’t do this, how are you going to sing in front of a big crowd?’

  I clear my throat. ‘OK, stage persona, I’m intelligent, sensitive, shy, funny, dark at times,’ I read out, not looking up to see his reaction, ‘angry at times—’

  ‘At times? Don’t be scared to be angry. Anger is good; it can get a point across. And I love dark. Dark is interesting, moody, atmospheric.’

  ‘Musically I like a good beat.’

  ‘As opposed to a bad one.’

  ‘I like a lot of guitar, I like my music to sound real, organic, you know, acoustic with piano and strings.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Things I love are courage, kindness, humour. My influences are U2, Alanis Morrisette, Robbie Williams, The Beatles. I love Coldplay and . . .’ I hesitate. ‘Kylie. Sorry, but I love her.’

  ‘What’s not to love? She’s the princess of pop. Carry on.’

  ‘I hate weak guys, arrogant men, finding the loo seat up.’

  ‘You hate all men then.’

  ‘I hate selfishness, bullies, Dad’s Army, hospital, people who call me brave.’ I look up to find him grinning at that one. ‘I love laughing, rice pudding, clothes, going to the movies, listening to music, writing songs, takeaways, ET and . . .’ I hesitate again. I can’t say it. I can’t.

  ‘Don’t be shy.’

  ‘Dawson’s Creek.’ I hide behind my profile sheet. Dawson’s Creek is an American teen drama. It started just over a year ago and I’m hooked. Clearly I have too much time on my hands.

  ‘Don’t tell anyone, Alice, but I’ve been known to watch Ally McBeal. I blame my girlfriend.’

  We laugh as I put the sheet down. ‘If we’re going to work together, shouldn’t I know more about you?’ I suggest.

  ‘No one’s ever asked me that before.’

  ‘Well, there’s a first time for everything, isn’t there.’

  ‘My family weren’t musical but I knew by the age of four I wanted to be a rock star. Apparently I sang in my cot, using my toy elephant as my guitar. I earned cash in the school holidays by lending my services to long-suffering neighbours, washing their cars so that I could buy a guitar, but I was never able to afford lessons. No one could in those days. I’d listen, repeat, get an ear for music.’

  ‘That’s what I do,’ I say. ‘I’ve never had any classical training or teaching.’

  ‘My friends and I formed a band when I was fifteen, I was the lead singer.’

  ‘What kind of stuff did you do?’

  ‘Bad stuff.’ He takes out of his wallet an old faded photograph of four men and a girl with bright pink hair playing the cello. Peter looks unrecognisable in his gothic clothes and a tattoo on his upper arm. ‘We saved up enough cash to go to New York and knock on doors.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘The other guys pulled out. Last minute, they panicked and scurried back to college. I think their parents must have whispered into their ears.’ He shakes his head. ‘Who knows if we would have made it? Probably not, but I think they should at least have had the balls to give it a chance. Take a year out and then if no luck, go back to school. School is always there. Opportunities aren’t. They had no backbone.’

  ‘They probably think about it now. You always regret the things you don’t do.’

  ‘Maybe. Anyway, after that I didn’t want anything to do with music, I felt sick. All those years wasted.’

  I can relate to that. If only I were sitting opposite Peter now, three or four years younger.

  ‘Dad wanted me to go into bookkeeping, work in the family business, but I’ve never been good with my own money, let alone managing other people’s. I worked in bars, cinemas . . . I remember this one job, right, in a music shop. I wasn’t trusted to serve customers so was hidden in a back room putting price stickers on album sleeves. This one time, right, I was chatting away to a colleague about the Boomtown Rats when the deputy manager comes in and says, ‘You’re not here to talk, you’re here to work!’ So I say, ‘Yes sir. . .’

  ‘Yes sir, three bags full sir.’ I salute.

  ‘Suddenly he’s in my face, nose to nose, this weedy bespectacled man with Art Garfunkel hair. I stood up and he shoved me. I shoved him back. He went sprawling across the open boxes of records on the floor. His glasses fell off, his hair was in his eyes, he couldn’t see a thing.’

  Peter laughs as if he hasn’t looked this far into the past for a long time.

  ‘Anyway, I just walked out and never went back.’

  As we continue to talk I discover that given half the chance, Peter would have left school even earlier. ‘I believe life teaches you more than a textbook. If you want to
learn a language go to the country and speak it. You can’t learn music either,’ he says with passion. ‘You can’t be taught how to write songs. You either have it or you don’t.’

  I find myself telling him about Miss Ward.

  ‘That’s awful, Alice. I’m not knocking all teachers, some are great, but occasionally you’ll find one who is determined to pull you down, who doesn’t want you to dream or aspire to anything, someone who only cares about following the curriculum. If I ever have a kid I want them to go to school to be inspired, not spoon fed.’

  ‘So what happened after the band?’

  ‘I stayed in the music business and signed other people instead. That took me to America and then things went . . .’ He inhales deeply. ‘Things went a little mad. Now I’m back where I started. OK, enough chat . . .’ Clearly he doesn’t want to elaborate. ‘Sing me something else, and sing it thinking about that persona, about who you are.’

  I go over to the keyboard and play around with the notes and keys before singing one of my songs, ‘Nothing Is Forever’.

  ‘You’ve got a surprisingly powerful voice, considering,’ Peter says when I’ve finished. ‘We need to sharpen up the lines, though.’ He stands by my side, replays the tune. ‘Loosen the lyrics, they don’t always have to be grammatically correct.’

  ‘You think I’m too posh, don’t you, Peter?’

  ‘You’re not that posh. But for fuck’s sake call me Pete.’

  ‘Should I try another accent, Pete?’

  ‘What? A fake one?’

  ‘I can do cockney, I can sing Eliza Doolittle like.’

  ‘Don’t. Be you. Be Alice. All I’m saying is we don’t need some of these words.’ He sings his own version. ‘Hear it? Sharper, cleaner lines.’ He turns to me. ‘This song, it’s about an ex, right?’

  ‘Yes. I’ve met someone else now. It’s early days, but . . . I don’t know, at the beginning you’re always . . .’ Happy but riddled with insecurity. Will it last, won’t it? ‘You’re always thinking, is this the right person? Is this . . .’ I make finger quotes ‘. . . the one. Is it the right time?’