by Louise Dean
She shrugs.
After only a few minutes of sitting there, at the end of Nick’s hotel towel are two terrier-like holes, the wet sand churned like toffee where his heels have dug. He is looking at the couple again, she sees. What’s wrong with him? She takes a look. The young couple are using each other’s bodies like furniture, with casual intimacy. The boy has the girl’s lower tummy as his headrest, lying at a right angle to her; he is smoking a cigarette while she talks.
Nick gets up. Shaking his towel with disregard for the irritation he causes, he rolls it briskly and stows it under his arm.
‘Going back to the room,’ he says. It takes him a couple of goes to get up the wall. He makes his way up round the Fountain of Arethusa, leaving Astrid behind, open-mouthed, her paperback in her hands.
She looks at the couple again, lying alongside each other, facing one other, touching fingertips to fingertips, soft as fruit in a bowl. She leans back on her hands and closes her eyes to feel the sun and thinks of him, of Nick, her last love. Your body is like a garden – I know its quarters, the brush at your upper chest, the soft moss on your lower back.
When she opens her eyes, the tears in them smart like sea-water; still she smiles as hard as she can.
Chapter 19
When he came in, just after five, he found her reading in the room, and she looked up to see his scowl – a deep furrow in his brow gone maroon in the sun.
‘I came here to spend a week with you, not on my own,’ he said.
The irony made her gag. ‘Why don’t you just fuck off, Nick?’ He sat down on the bed. He picked up her book and looked
at it, then put it down.
‘I must tell you . . .’ he addressed her as if she were a client, ‘on Saturday, I met an old school friend here, a girl – well, a woman now, but I knew her when we were young.’ He cleared his throat. ‘I took her virginity. She was very vulnerable, because her parents had died, and I let her down pretty badly, as it happens. I ran into her when I left the restaurant. I brought her to meet you but you were gone. Anyway, all I’m saying is the conversation was uncomfortable, to say the least. I can see now that I could be accused of being rather callow.’ He looked at her. ‘Do you know what I mean?’
‘Yes,’ she said through gritted teeth. ‘I know what fucking callow means. I wish you’d stop using your words like you get a triple letter score every time.’
‘This girl, this woman, she set me straight about the kind of person I am, unfortunately, and it’s hit me quite hard.’
‘How do you mean? What on earth are you on about? What does she know about you? You were just a teenager when she knew you.’
‘I don’t have a mother and father. Not because they died, but because I cut them out of my life. People hate me. This man burst into my office last week and called me an arsehole. He said it was thanks to me he’d had a heart attack!’
She made a face. ‘I had this woman once who said I’d ruined her sex life with a bob. People just want someone to blame.’
‘He said to me, If I ever see you crossing the road, I’ll run you down.’
‘Oh, I don’t suppose he will, Nick.’
‘He came up the stairs, shouting, Where’s that cunt . . .’
‘I bet a few heads popped up then.’
‘Astrid!’
‘Well, quit your job then! Do something nice, fuck you.’
‘That girl, Morwen . . .’
‘Moorhen?’
‘Morwen.’
‘What kind of a name is Morwen when it’s at home?’
‘Welsh.’
‘Welsh! You slept with someone Welsh?’
‘She’s not Welsh.’
‘But you did sleep with her?’
‘Twenty years ago! I told you! Look, she was in love with me. She said I was her first love. She said she’s been trying to find me ever since . . .’
‘Stupid cow.’
‘But she couldn’t find Gary Goodyew of course, because he doesn’t exist any more. She went really nuts when I said I’d changed my name. She flew off the handle. She went on about how I’d been untrue to myself and just about everyone else. And she’s not far wrong.’
‘Well, you haven’t been untrue to me, have you?’
He stood looking out across the harbour, his back to her. He didn’t answer.
After a while, he turned round, his eyes small, and said, ‘She’s down there, on the beach.’
Astrid pushed past him and leant over the balustrade, holding it tight, and saw a single woman, on a towel on the beach in a navy-blue swimming costume, meditative pose, legs crossed.
‘That the one?’ He nodded.
‘Is she waiting for you, or something?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe. I mean, in a sense she was always waiting for me.’
He hung his head and sat on the little tin chair on the balcony, looking out to sea. He didn’t hear the door close.
When he looked across to the beach, he saw Astrid, taking the steps down past the fountain two at a time. She hopped off the wall on to the sand. Morwen looked up as Astrid approached. There must have been something of Artemis in her expression, for Morwen stood up. They faced each other, hands on hips, then first Astrid then Morwen looked towards the balcony at him.
He did not think a wave would be appropriate.
There was some conversation. Morwen folded her arms across her chest and put a leg out to one side. Mistake. Astrid slapped her. He could see it was hard because Morwen reeled. A man stood up, but didn’t move further. Astrid clambered on to the wall and went back up the stairs.
He retreated quickly from the balcony, closed the double doors and stood in the dim room, feeling his cheeks burning. He heard the swagger of the elevator, then the ping of its bell, followed by the sound of her flip-flops slapping the marble floor, coming closer and closer. When the door opened, he saw a wild woman, nothing like the girl he’d met in the spa.
‘She said the wrong thing,’ she panted. ‘I asked her how she felt qualified to ruin my holiday with her half-arsed opinions, and she asked me what my problem was and – well, as you’d say, I’ve never liked that expression used that way.’
She went to the minibar and helped herself to a can of beer. She was shaking.
‘I can’t believe you just did that,’ he said.
‘I’m tired of being good,’ she said, and then she drank.
Chapter 20
It’s a hell of a threshold to cross.
‘Come on then, Ken.’ She uses her thumb like she’s hitching a lift. ‘You wanted to see an embalming, you said.’
Ken baulks at the double doors. He gets a grip and follows her through. The mortuary is a large open space with a triple-doored fridge to the rear and three rolling tables, all of which are occupied. The incumbents are each covered by a sheet. On the wall is a chart with names, weights and dimensions written in marker pen. There is a kitchen-like instalment of wall and floor cupboards, and a counter with a steel sink and a flush sluice.
He stands just inside the doors, rubbing his hands together.
‘Parky in here, innit?’
‘You wouldn’t want it hot, Ken,’ says Audrey, uncovering the body closest to him to reveal a corpse in a paper gown, to all appearances a wax dummy with sparse hair. The old girl’s face is aghast, mouth open and eyes open. Her limbs are withered like twisted cabbage stalks; her yellow feet have curled toenails and the toes overlap. The luggage-like label with her name on is poked between two toes for safekeeping.
‘She looks like she fell in the fat fryer, don’t she?’ he says hoarsely. ‘She looks like she was bracing herself for something? She’s like . . . it’s coming, it’s coming . . . you know? Why do they want her embalmed then?’
‘The sister’s in hospital. Otherwise I wouldn’t do it. What they’re after is a pre-deceased appearance, but . . .’ she pulls a plastic apron out of a dispenser, ‘well, it’s like so many things. It’s all about keeping up the illusion. For the living
.’
She takes plastic gloves from a drawer and puts them on, blowing into each to make a balloon hand.
‘My older son’s gone off to Italy on his holidays, Audrey.’
‘Has he? Lucky man.’
He looks at the dead woman and his jowls sag. ‘We didn’t have much of it in my day, that’s all.’
‘Well, there you go then,’ she says amiably.
On the counter is her open briefcase; it contains a rolled velvet bag, its ribbon loose, a large container of Elnett hairspray and a large grubby make-up bag branded Boots No7. She gives a five-litre Hozelock spray a pump once or twice.
He looks at the woman’s name tag: Barbara Bailey. She has sandy-coloured curls, permed at the front of her head, slightly unkempt and stringy now; the rest of her hair is short and pressed flat, like a lawn trodden down. Audrey passes her gloved hands through the front of the woman’s hair, tenderly. ‘All right, love,’ she says. ‘Here we go.’
‘With my Pat, see, I’m glad the way it went.’
‘Oh yes, that was a good one.’
‘This lady resembles her, Audrey, don’t she?’
‘She does a little bit.’
‘Just didn’t know how it was going to get me,’ he says quietly.
‘She’s gone, though, ain’t she, Audrey? This here Barbara. You can see it’s just the shell of the person, ain’t it? There ain’t nobody there. It’s like a suit of clothes, innit? She looks like she was a nice lady, don’t she? Neat and tidy. Her hair was always done nice, Pat’s was. Thursdays was wash and set. Must do my ’ead, she liked to say. And she did her baking the same day. Did her cleaning on a Friday morning. She was very regular in her ways. Just dragging the duster about, she’d say, but she’d do it proper . . . My shirts always smelt good.’
‘You were very fond of her.’
‘Cor, I should say. She weren’ ’alf good to me.’
Audrey goes over to a small CD player and presses play. She waits for the first notes of the piano to knell. She takes away the paper hospital gown to reveal a green inflated stomach ripe with putrefaction. She puts the gown across the woman’s private parts for modesty. The ribcage is high and almost apart from the stomach, like a large chicken carcass. She goes to the taps and runs warm water into a plastic basin in the sink. She puts in a squirt of liquid soap and takes a large bath sponge and squeezes it, then she begins to wash the body, starting with one arm, going to the other, and from top to bottom she wipes down each limb and then the torso, going gently over her neck and breasts and giving the lightest of touches to her stomach.
He wants to make a break for the door, but instead he stands teetering.
Audrey squeezes the sponge out between each limb and before she does the face. There are wispy stray hairs about the chin and upper brow, and the cheeks are sunken, the eyes open and yellow and grey. She dabs at the poultry neck. The head is so far back that she props it with a small pillow. Audrey takes the bowl down to her feet next, unhooks the label with her name on it, and washes the feet, over and under and with a small smile forming on her lips, goes between the toes as and where she can.
Ken puts his fist over his mouth.
Next, from the velvet roll, Audrey withdraws the aneurism hook, the separator and scissors. On the right-hand side of the lady’s chest, above the bone, she cuts the skin and separates the tissues to find the carotid artery that is like an elastic band. In behind it she slips the separator and, using thread, ties off the artery either side. She pumps the handle on the Hozelock spray another time. Bending over Mrs Bailey, she says, ‘All right, dear, here we go.’
‘All right, dear?’ Ken seconds her, gawking at the dead woman with all the false cheer of a game-show host. ‘Jesus Bleeding Christ!’ he says, when Audrey makes a nick in the artery and inserts the end of the tubing from the Hozelock into the woman’s neck. ‘Bloody Nora! You’re sure she’s dead, a’n’t ya, love?’
Audrey gives two or three hefty pumps, then she picks up a bottle of hand lotion and squeezes an amount on to her hands and rubs Mrs Bailey’s hands in turn.
‘There we go,’ Audrey says, turning them over to see them becoming pinker. ‘That’s good,’ she says, ‘we’re on our way.’
‘’Cause you want to be sure, don’t you, love? I mean, you’d want to ’ave done all the necessary just to be doubly sure, wouldn’t ya?’
From the sink she picks up the trocar, a three-sided hollow steel instrument, triply bladed, and approaching the gurney, she jabs it with confidence into the stomach just above the belly button.
‘You’d want to be sure of it, wouldn’t you!’ he cries in a high voice.
Audrey turns on the hydroaspirator that whirrs and hums and draws the excrescence into a bell jar. A sickly flatulent smell is released. ‘Cancer,’ she says. She thrusts the knitting-needle-long trocar about here and there inside the woman, vacuuming her stomach. Checking backwards over his shoulder, he sees the waste is running into the big jar container. She places a hand over Mrs Bailey’s ribcage and feels about as she aims higher.
‘Sorry,’ she whispers as she feels the ribcage collapsing, bones being fractured and the vital organs being punched each in turn, last of all the heart. She puts her forehead into her upper arm, on to the checks of her cotton shirt, and wipes it there. She looks down at the container once more and watches the blood hitting the sides of the jar like scarlet fireworks, leaping and making patterns.
‘You all right, Ken?’
Ken is swaying like a carnival inflatable on a rope. ‘I’m all right, dear. You carry on.’
The left side of the woman’s face has become lifelike. Audrey reverses the direction of the tubing into the carotid artery, now towards the head, and keeps an eye on the right side of the face, even as she continues to vacuum about inside the ribcage.
‘That’s looking better, Barbara.’
She turns off the motor, and empties the waste into the sluice.
‘We’re all done, Ken. You still with me, are you?’ she says, snipping the thread at the neck.
‘I’m just feeling the blood return myself,’ he says. ‘Bit rough, ain’t it?’
Audrey takes a small four-pronged comb from the briefcase and tends to the lady’s hair, teasing out the permed curls as best she can. She picks up the photograph that has been leant for reference. She hands it to Ken. In the snap, Barbara Bailey is in her fifties in front of a Christmas tree. She is wearing an Austrian-style skirt and jacket, and smiling with the glee of a child, holding a tiny sherry glass with two hands. She has redeye. He turns it round and sees, in the genteel cursive script of her generation, the inscription ‘Christmas 1994’.
‘I’m gonna have to part ways with my June, Audrey.’
‘Oh dear. That’s a lot to bear for both of you.’ She cleans the inside of Mrs Bailey’s mouth with a small piece of sponge and, using tongs, puts a long wad of cotton wool down her throat, then she packs her nose too. ‘You know, you can’t blame your son for wanting a holiday, Ken. It’s all most of us think about, really: escape.’
‘In all my life I never done what you do, Audrey. I never done nothing ’ard, like this. Nothing for others, you know. I tell you, Audrey, you do a marvellous job, you really do. I couldn’t do it, myself.’
‘Thank you, Ken.’ She takes the needle and thread and stitches Mrs Bailey’s mouth together, going behind the lips into the gums and up through the septum of her nose. Once trussed shut, she presses it into a softer look with her fingers. She pulls Barbara’s eyelids over the plastic eyecaps. ‘You die alone but, if you pass through kind hands, well, that’s something.’
She applies a beige cream foundation to Barbara’s face, putting a dollop on each cheek and her nose and brow and rubbing it in, particularly around the nostrils, then rubs lipsalve forth along her cracked lips, puckering her own as she does.
‘There you go, Barbara. Remember me when I come into your kingdom. A dab hand with the make-up brush.’
‘You done her proud, lo
ve,’ he says. But a corpse can never resemble a woman with a sherry glass by the Christmas tree. He looks at the photo again. Barbara Bailey is showing teeth in the photo, and there’s something about the narrow hunch of her shoulders in the shot; it’s as if she’s guarding the moment with her life.
Ken looks at Audrey and wishes for her all the things she deserves and a good man to love her. He wishes it as hard as he can.
One eye comes open. The hands fall away from the sheet suddenly. They hang either side of the table, swinging. Ken clutches his chest and steps backwards.
‘It’s not the first time that’s happened,’ says Audrey hastily, giving him a reassuring smile, putting the eyecap back in its place and folding the woman’s hands across her chest.
Chapter 21
On their last night they sat on the most populous promenade, in need of other people without having spoken of it, and drank wine and ate pasta, crammed in between tables of couples, elbows tight to their sides. This was where the hoi polloi came for their suppers, the citizens of Syracuse and suburbs. This suited them so well they soon they fell into their old happy way of denigrating the people around them.
‘I can’t stand goatees.’
‘No. They’re either effeminate or pretentious.’
‘Or fat men use them to make a chin where there isn’t one. Sometimes you have someone more or less bald and they have one, and you sort of want to turn them the other way round.’ He’d felt that the past was like raised fist, ready to strike. But now he felt better. He had someone who believed in him so much, she’d fight for him.
‘Oh, Jesus. He’s wearing one fingerless leather glove, Nick! Don’t look! Can you see it? Oh shit, it’s got studs on the knuckles too.’
‘That’s Italian men for you – not afraid of looking gay!’ As their coffees were settled before them, he said, ‘I might have been clever at school, but I was a complete duffer when it came to . . .’
