Thanks For Nothing, Nick Maxwell

by Debbie Carbin

  Over there, upside down and scattered, is the set of books Sarah’s granddad carried home on the bus last weekend after spending two hours shopping for something that would look as if it had cost more than the ten pounds he could afford to spend. Here’s the screwed up T-shirt Sarah’s aunt and uncle bought because they thought Jake would like the picture of a zebra on the front. Pens, pencils, plasticine and various other craft materials have been discovered and discarded, dropped carelessly on the floor in favour of the next parcel. Jake himself is nowhere to be seen.

  He’s an ungrateful little shit, isn’t he?

  See that man, just getting up from the sofa, looking very pleased with himself? That’s Hector, the Mobile Man, and he’s just finished talking to me. He looks quite nice, doesn’t he, in an early thirties, stubbly, slightly dishevelled kind of way. There is definitely a chance that this is the guy who gave me his trolley at Sainsbury’s, and whom I was then rude to, but I’m not going to examine that too deeply.

  ‘Thanks, Sarah,’ he calls out, picking his way through the debris on the floor. The way he does that reminds me of Nick, picking his way through our abandoned clothes.

  ‘Did you manage to get through all right?’ Sarah comes into the room, dragging a bulky black plastic bag behind her. She looks a lot better now, doesn’t she? Oh, wait a minute, is that a large glass of wine in her free hand? Yes. No wonder she’s chilling.

  ‘Yes, fine thanks,’ Hector says, taking the bag out of her hand and crouching down on the floor to begin scooping up the rubbish. ‘Why don’t you sit down and put your feet up, Sarah? Glenn and I can do this. Least I can do.’

  He sounds as if he feels guilty about something. Let’s go back five minutes and see if we can find out why.

  Here he is, five minutes earlier, inserting the corkscrew into a bottle of wine. Sarah is standing by, holding an empty glass. ‘Oh, Sarah,’ he says casually, twisting the corkscrew in, ‘would it be all right if I quickly borrow your phone in a minute?’

  ‘’Course,’ she says, extending her glass towards the open neck of the bottle.

  ‘Oh great, thanks. I really need to make this one urgent call and I didn’t have time to do it before I left the office to come here.’

  She shrugs. ‘OK.’

  ‘Obviously, getting here for my nephew’s birthday was more important, and I thought you wouldn’t mind lending me your phone when I got here.’

  Do you think he’s laying it on a bit thick? I mean, she agreed straight away, didn’t she? There’s really no need to keep on and on.

  Clearly, she hasn’t noticed, anyway. Her eyes are closed and her mouth is clamped on to the rim of the glass, sucking down chardonnay.

  Let’s move forward again, back to where we were. So he pretended it was an important business call, but he was actually calling me, a complete stranger, so he could have a bit of a laugh. And, let’s face it, do a bit of flirting. He must have tried to ring earlier from his office, but of course I didn’t answer it then and he had to leave it until he got here this evening. No wonder he’s rushing round clearing up now – apart from stopping every so often to stare off into space and grin a lot.

  ‘What are you grinning about?’ Here is Glenn, now that most of the work is done. ‘You must really enjoy clearing up after kids.’

  Hector looks up at his brother. ‘No, not really. I’ve just managed to set up a meeting on Thursday that promises to be really rewarding.’

  Glenn does not look pleased about that, does he? ‘Christ, you never bloody stop, do you? Even on my son’s birthday you’re setting up meetings, making deals. What’s the matter with you?’

  Hector stops mid-scoop. ‘I’m sorry, mate. I realize it’s his birthday, but this one was fairly crucial. I couldn’t do it from the office because I wanted to be here with—’

  ‘Oh whatever.’ Glenn looks at his wife, who is scraping a squashed Fondant Fancy off the sofa, then says casually, ‘Oh, Hector, could you come into the kitchen for a minute, please?’

  Hector is tipping a plateful of apparently untouched food into the bin bag. ‘Yeah, in a minute, I’m just—’

  ‘Please, Hector.’ The tone in Glenn’s voice makes Hector pause. ‘I want to ask you something.’ Glenn glances quickly at Sarah, whose face is blank as she takes a large glug of wine, then he whispers, ‘In private.’

  Glenn walks out of the room towards the kitchen. Hector gets up to follow. ‘Fancy a cup of tea, Sarah?’ he asks at the door.

  ‘No thanks,’ she says, holding out her empty glass. He takes it from her with a smile and heads to the kitchen.

  Sarah and Glenn’s kitchen is huge. But it’s a terrible mess here too. On the countertops are yet more paper plates of food, most of it barely touched. There are crisps all over the place, on the floor, the table, the counter. Cups of squash are scattered around, more than one tipped over with its contents forming a purple pool on the floor. In the middle of the table is the birthday cake – a huge fort constructed of chocolate fingers and white marshmallows – looking now more like a pile of kindling. On the wall by the table are some brown smudges that look suspiciously like little fingerprints. Let’s hope they’re chocolate. Glenn is standing by the sink, staring into the garden.

  ‘What is it, mate?’ Hector asks as he picks up the wine bottle.

  ‘I’m sorry, Hector, but I need to borrow some money.’ He doesn’t hang around, does he?

  Hector stops what he’s doing and turns to face Glenn. ‘What?’

  ‘Look, I’m desperate. I need some cash and you’ve got loads. You know I wouldn’t ask unless it was really important.’

  Hector looks down at the bottle again. ‘Well, of course, Glenn, but what’s it for?’

  Glenn clenches his fists. ‘It doesn’t matter what it’s for, does it? I’ve got myself into a little bit of debt and I’d really appreciate some assistance, if it’s not too much to ask.’

  Hector continues to focus on refilling Sarah’s glass. ‘So what does Sarah . . .?’

  ‘Hec, I’d really appreciate it if we don’t tell Sarah about it. It’s quite important.’

  ‘Why?’

  Glenn looks down at the countertop. ‘To tell the truth, I’ve been an idiot. Spent more than I should have, told Sarah we were doing OK. I don’t want to worry her, you know? Plus . . .’

  ‘Plus?’

  He shrugs. ‘Plus, I don’t want her to know that even now that I’m thirty I can’t manage to support my own family without getting help from my big brother.’

  Hector puts the bottle down on the table. ‘Why don’t you take this through?’ he says, holding out the now full wine glass. Glenn hesitates, then takes the glass out of Hector’s hand and walks out of the kitchen. Hector puts his hands on the table and hangs his head. From the living room comes the sound of Sarah thanking her husband for the wine he has brought her. Almost imperceptibly, Hector shakes his head.

  Glenn reappears in the doorway. ‘Oh come on, Hec, it’s not that bad. I’m a loser civil servant on a crappy wage, that’s all. It’s not like I’ve gambled it all away or something. You don’t need to despair over me.’

  ‘I’m not despairing, Glenn, not at all. And you’re not a loser. It’s just that other people on crappy wages seem to manage. Why is it so difficult for you?’

  Glenn shrugs and reaches a glass down from a shelf. ‘You ought to try being me for a while, then see if you can go round being so bloody nice all the time.’

  Hector watches as Glenn pours the last of the bottle into his glass without offering any to his brother. ‘But what’s so awful about being you? You’ve got everything, lovely wife, a healthy, intelligent son, beautiful home . . .’

  Glenn snorts. ‘Oh, just listen to yourself. Beautiful home. Hah! This is a hovel compared to your place.’

  Hector frowns but it is not anger, it is bewilderment. ‘No it isn’t, you idiot. So my house is bigger, so what? You’re the one with the family. Don’t you realize how lucky you are? To come home from work eve
ry day to this, your home, your wife, your child? I come home to . . . Well, you know what I come home to.’

  ‘Here we go.’

  Hector shakes his head. ‘No, no, Glenn, here we do not go. I am not complaining, you know that. I have never, will never, complain about having Mum there. I wouldn’t have it any other way. Of course she must live with me, you’ve got Jake and Sarah to think about. But sometimes, sometimes, I just wish I could come home to something warm, something giving. Don’t you think that I wouldn’t give all the money and possessions in the world, just to have . . .?’ He trails off.

  ‘I don’t need to hear that, OK,’ Glenn spits. ‘You don’t have to try to make me feel better. You have this massive, successful business worth millions, and I have . . .’ he glances at the door, ‘I have Sarah and Jake. Yeah, well, much as I care about them, big deal.’ He takes a deep drink of the wine. ‘I am just asking you for help, Hector. Do you want me to get down on my knees and beg you? Because I will. I have got no pride left.’

  ‘No,’ Hector says quietly, ‘I don’t want you to do that. I’ve said I’ll help you and I will. Of course I will. How much?’

  Glenn relaxes visibly, his shoulders slumping, and a small smile of relief appears. He claps his brother on the arm. ‘Oh thank you, Hector. I really appreciate this, mate, honestly.’ He looks a bit sheepish for a moment. ‘I’m sorry for being a bit snappy – it’s just the worry.’

  Hector nods. ‘So how much . . .?’

  ‘I think five grand ought to cover it.’

  ‘Right.’ Hector takes out his chequebook and fills one in, tearing it out and giving it to Glenn.

  ‘Thanks, bro,’ Glenn says, taking the cheque and pocketing it. ‘Just remember, not one word to Sarah, OK?’

  Hector nods but as his brother returns to the living room, he can’t help thinking that he and Sarah are being deceived.

  Chapter Seven

  FOR THE NEXT few days, I stay at home. You can see a path in the carpet, like one of those sheep paths on mountains, from the sofa to the bedroom and from there to the bathroom. If I’m honest, I wasn’t really thinking it was flu, or a migraine by now, but I didn’t want to admit to myself what I suspected. I was just waiting for the doctor to tell me for sure on Thursday.

  I have spent my days watching loads of daytime telly. For the most part, they’re about silly young women getting pregnant accidentally and sobbing about their predicament in front of a live studio audience. Nothing like sharing your awful dilemma with four million faceless and indifferent strangers to make you feel better.

  Can you believe I have missed four days of work? I haven’t had a day sick from Horizon the whole time I’ve been there. I give the odd thought to my position in the tables now, but it flits away quickly. I can’t see myself ever going back there at the moment. Right now, I can’t see beyond the end of each day. I feel like I am in suspended animation until Thursday’s appointment.

  On Wednesday afternoon, Sarah arrives with Jake, and a slab of cake. ‘This is the one I made myself,’ she announces proudly. ‘I didn’t want to give it to all those ungrateful kids at the party, so I hid it. Here, try it.’

  She unwraps a paper serviette, peeling it away in the places where it has stuck to the contents, and spreads it out in her hands like precious treasure. Nestling there in the centre is a lump of brown cake coated in bright orange icing and some random green nodules with fat yellow heads.

  ‘It looks lovely,’ I say, eyes watering and mouth filling with saliva. I manage a weak smile at Jake.

  ‘It’s Bulbasaur,’ he says, meaninglessly.

  I nod and smile, assuming this is kiddie speak.

  ‘I had the vinewhip,’ he goes on.

  ‘Oh,’ I say, not sure whether I should be happy or sorry for him. Is it some repulsive infection he picked up at the party?

  ‘And Bulbasaur evolves into Ivysaur, and then Ivysaur evolves into Vinesaur, but only if he wins loads of battles.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘And in Safari Zone one, you can catch a Nidorhino, already evolved. Normally you have to catch Nidoran and wait for it to evolve, which takes ages. Although you can evolve it with moonstone.’

  He’s not actually looking at me when he makes this announcement, which only adds to my confusion. For all I know, he’s been possessed by some ancient and malicious evil spirit from Sarah’s housing estate and is speaking in tongues.

  ‘Is he all right?’ I whisper to Sarah.

  She nods, unconcerned. ‘It’s Pokemon,’ she says adeptly. Either he’s not possessed or she is too. ‘He’s fine. Go on, try a bit.’ She’s looking at the cake. ‘The icing’s got fresh orange juice in it.’

  After I vomited up the mouthful of cake that I did try, Sarah took Jake and left.

  So here I am, hunched in my doctor’s waiting room at quarter to six on Thursday afternoon. It hardly needs saying that surgery is running late. The waiting room is stuffed with old people in slippers, swollen legs wrapped in bandages, painful twisted fingers holding on to walking sticks and handbags. I’m glaring at them through slitted eyes. Surely some of these people just need a hot drink and a good talking-to. The last person that shuffled off towards the consulting-room door has not been seen for fifteen minutes. I’m beginning to wonder if she’s died in there. How frustrating if she has, taking up the doctor’s time for nothing. She might as well have not bothered coming in at all, and left the consulting room free.

  At five to six, I go in. Dr Kanthasinapillai is really nice. He always makes me feel like he’s really listened to my problem, thought carefully about it and taken time over sorting it out for me, while rushing me in and out of his surgery at maximum speed. He looks up from his desk, where he’s typing up notes with one finger, and smiles.

  ‘Won’ keep you a minnid, Rachel,’ he says. In fact, it takes him three minutes to write up the notes from his last patient. I want to bat his silly slow finger out of the way and do it myself, but I resist the impulse. Eventually, he turns to me. ‘Well, Rachel, you’re looking a bid pale. Whad is the madder?’

  While I’m telling him all about the nausea, the fatigue, the odd dizzy spell, I try not to think about what it all seems to be adding up to. It’s got to be stress or depression. ‘And I broke up with my boyfriend,’ I add at the end, just to make it a possibility.

  ‘Oh, I see,’ he says. ‘You had a boyfriend.’ Damn. He immediately latches on to the part of my statement that adds in very nicely with everything else. That’s why he’s a doctor, I suppose. ‘And when was your lasd period?’

  I knew this would be coming. I have completely avoided working it out before now. I close my eyes. I can remember the day: I was at the pool with Susan. ‘I’m on,’ I’d said, ‘swim’s off.’ We went clubbing instead, which is probably better exercise. That was the last time I spent an evening with Susan before I met Nick, but the exact date still eludes me.

  ‘Here, can you urinade into dis please?’ Dr Kant is saying, handing me a tiny plastic pot with a very narrow opening. ‘You can use the toiled.’

  I finger the pot and wonder for a second whether or not he’s got a funnel in his desk drawer.

  Five minutes later and he’s smiling as he shows me a small white plastic rectangle. ‘Dis is de condrol window, which dells us dat de tesd has been carried oud correc’ly.’ I peer over the desk at the thing he’s holding. There’s a little blue dot in the window. My eyes leap to the other window, even before he says it. They work like a microscope, zooming in on the window, magnifying what they’re seeing there so that my entire field of vision is filled with an enormous window, white on white, and nestling right in the centre of this area, curled and sleeping, apparently harmless but full of potential, is a big, fat, blue dot.

  ‘And dis is de resuld window. Congradulations, Rachel, you’re going do have a liddle baby.’

  Freeze. Hold it right there, right at that moment. If you look all round me, you can see that not one hair, not one molecule stirs. Suddenly it fee
ls as though, for an elongated fraction of a second, the thick layer of nonchalance that coats me and forms a safety buffer between me and the outside world is stripped away and all my senses are magnified, intensified. I take everything in. Even the grinning GP in the consulting room is silent, unmoving.

  While the doctor and I sit frozen in our seats, let’s take a look and see what the other interested party is doing at that same, seminal moment. The news has been launched that Nick is about to become a parent and take on the unfathomable, miraculous and incomparable role of being someone’s father, and here we find Nick himself close to tears. No, not with the overwhelming emotion of that incredible moment; it’s something much more basic.

  Look, there he is, in the kitchen, his left hand held, palm inwards, in front of his face, his right hand tightly clutching his left wrist. In front of him on the counter is a chopping board with half an onion chopped up on it. The other half has been abandoned, as has the large and apparently rather sharp knife, on the counter next to it. If you look more closely, you can see a large red dewdrop forming on the end of Nick’s left thumb.

  ‘What is it, what happened?’ his mum asks breathlessly, rushing into the room. ‘I heard you scream.’

  Nick sinks towards her, holding out his injured digit, his mouth turning down like a clown’s. ‘I cut my thumb.’ He squeezes his eyes shut as tears leak from them. ‘These bloody onions,’ he mutters, dragging his forearm across his eyes.

  ‘Oh, Nicky, let me see. Oh, darling, you poor thing. Come here.’ Helen Maxwell wraps her arms tightly around her wounded son, and gently rubs his back, talking into his hair. ‘And you were trying to get the tea ready for me, you little love. Any better now?’