Heartswap

by Celia Brayfield

  Dillon got it. They were firing him and trying to give him the bum’s rush on compensation. Now it was happening, it did not seem such a bad thing.

  ‘Well, goodbye then,’ he said cheerfully, shaking Donna’s hand. She seemed a mite wrong-footed for long enough to return his matey squeeze.

  ‘My colleague will see you out,’ she told him, indicating Human Resources.

  ‘Very kind of you,’ Dillon assured them.

  At his desk, he found cables disconnected and a new anorak busy with a screwdriver. ‘Any files in the system are the property of the company,’ Human Resources mentioned. Dillon took his gym bag, his picture of Flora and Merita Halili’s catalogue. As he left the building a flush of pure delight spread out from underneath his tie.

  Dillon pulled off the tie and stuffed it in his jacket pocket. He took off his jacket and let it hang over one shoulder from one finger. He felt like lunch, a sort of flashy Italian, posh pizza lunch with a lot of rocket and Montepulciano. Flora was not answering her phone as usual. Des was showing properties all day. His mother was girlishly flattered but on her way to a hair appointment with a stylist who had a three-month waiting list. The man in the gallery was delighted. Dangerously close to that dangerous woman, of course, but the best offer Dillon could get: Anyway, he would have masses of time now to give Flora all his attention.

  ‘There is nothing to worry about,’ the secretary of the Sir Rudolph Trippitt Retirement Home told Georgie. ‘Your father is absolutely fine this morning. But he had a little fall in the night and the doctor wants him to go to hospital for an X-ray to make sure that everything’s all right. They’ll keep him overnight,’

  ‘Is he in pain?’ she asked. The home never called her unless there was at least a 5–1 chance of her father dying.

  ‘Doctor gave him a little something for it,’ she was told.

  ‘How did he manage to fall?’ Her father’s condition made it very difficult for him to move about in bed. Two nurses went in to his room twice a night to turn him from one side to the other and make sure that he did not develop bed sores.

  ‘We don’t know,’ the secretary admitted.

  Georgie loaded a couple of days’ work on to Great Lats and called Felix. ‘You’ll need the car then,’ he said magnanimously. ‘I’ll leave the keys at reception for you.’

  Flora seemed to have gone quiet for a few days, but Georgie felt she ought to call her again. ‘My father’s had a fall,’ her message said. ‘He’ll be in hospital for a couple of days. Seems like a good reason to take some time off. Be in touch when I get back.’

  ‘Of coursh they don’t know. Who knowsh anything?’ Her father was looking radiantly unconcerned. He had been propped precariously against his pillows, wearing new navy-blue pyjamas with white piping and his initials monogrammed on the breast pocket. Georgie thought he sounded drunk, but alcohol made him pink in the face; his skin was very white and it seemed to have thinned to the point where it was almost translucent. In the veins on the inside of his bad arm the blood showed blue.

  ‘What are you on?’ She looked at his chart but could not understand it.

  ‘I don’t know, but itsh wonderful,’ he giggled. ‘Shall I ask for shome for you? She’s a shweetie, the little nursh. A poppet. Do anything for me. And they’re going to shend me a massheushe.’ He turned his head to wink at Linnet, who sat regally at the other side of the bed, fingering her graduated pearls.

  ‘A masseuse?’

  ‘For his bad arm,’ Linnet explained. ‘Help the circulation. He was getting himself a drink, if you ask me.’

  ‘Why shouldn’t I have a drink?’ her father asked in a rhetorical tone. ‘Doctor hashn’t told me I can’t. It helpsh me shleep.’

  ‘I didn’t know you were having trouble sleeping.’

  In his glory days, her father had been said to have the most eloquent eyes in the British cinema. The lids were now wrinkled and the corners red, but they were still the rich, sincere, spaniel-brown that had melted the hearts of the girls who had gone reluctantly to the flicks with their boyfriends in the fifties to see the films full of gunfire and heroics. He turned his eyes on her and let them say that he had trouble doing everything, that every normal process of living was a struggle and on top he made the effort not to let her be aware of that, because he loved her and there was nothing anyone could do about it.

  She squeezed his good hand, gently. It felt fragile.

  ‘I bet this is costing you an arm and a leg,’ he cackled, nodding at the calm, sweet-smelling room, the professional flower arrangement and the reproduction Regency chairs and table. He had made this joke at six-month intervals ever since she had taken out private health insurance for him, but it always made her laugh.

  ‘I must be getting on. Bye, bye, Georgie. See you later, Alligator,’ said Linnet, not without jealousy. She stood up on her stiletto heels, gave the patient a sloppy kiss and tip-tapped out of the ward.

  ‘Read me shomething, shweetheart. They let me bring the book but we sheem to have forgotten the paraphernalia.’ At the home, her father had a silver-handled page-turner and a book rest, which made it possible for him to read a book by himself. He still had a taste for the history of the war he had fought with exuberance in real life and a grave face on the screen. The book on his table was two inches thick and probably too heavy for him to lift by himself with his useful hand.

  For some years, Georgie had been aware that her father’s insouciant take on life was camouflage for the unglamorous qualities of foresight and practicality. The thick book said that he expected to be in the hospital for some time.

  ‘After the failure of the harvests in the Ukraine in the summer of nineteen-forty …’ she began. The memory of reading with him in her childhood rushed upon them both. He had worked less and less as he grew older and there was less call for heroes, so every script had been an excitement. Playing opposite his characters, Georgie had read the parts of generals, spymasters and master criminals. It had been a real bore to take drama at school and be simpering Cordelia or idiotic Gwendolyn.

  The masseuse bustled in half an hour later. As Georgie left the ward, a nurse called to her and she found herself smoothly ushered into the office of a doctor on the floor above.

  ‘I wanted to have a word with you about your father,’ the doctor said, covertly checking the file that lay open on her desk. ‘We haven’t seen him here for a year or two so I thought it would be a good opportunity to assess his condition.’ She paused, searching for words.

  ‘It’s not good.’ Georgie helped her, wondering how long her father was expected to live.

  ‘No fracture, he was lucky there. But I am concerned about his heart,’ the doctor continued, looking at her warily. ‘It has had more work to do since …’

  ‘Since he’s been paralysed.’ Because her father’s tragedy had probably been the result of medical negligence, no doctor ever liked to talk about it.

  ‘Yes, since then. The arteries can’t help so much in moving the blood around the body. There is no real disease, as such, but there are signs that his heart is wearing out.’

  ‘He’s very brave, but he is seventy-nine,’ Georgie said, hoping to put over her father’s belief that he owed God a death and would be happy to settle up soon.

  ‘In the absence of an actual illness, people can go on like this for a year. Sometimes even two years. You would probably be safe to make plans for Christmas, anyway. All our results will be copied to the matron at …’ She sneaked another look at the file. ‘The Rudolph Trippitt Home. I’ll recommend that we see him every month from now on so we can monitor his condition.’

  Two years, tops, Georgie translated to herself as she searched for Flat Eric in the car park. Felix had not yet met her father. She told herself that Felix had been too busy to take out the time while he was getting his project up and running. In fact, that was what Felix had told her when she suggested it.

  The sun slanted through the windows at 17A and warmed Flora’s back while
she was meditating. She noticed it and allowed the sensation to slip away like blossom petals falling on a river. It was great to get her head back. Dillon had been crowding her ever since the end of the Heartswap affair. She needed to get away from everybody and be with herself for a while. That insight also was released and allowed to float away.

  Serendipity was just your karma working and wishing to remain anonymous. Flora found she had a client to see in the afternoon in Notting Hill. Before she left she checked her messages just in case the client had cancelled. Her meeting was confirmed and Georgie was going to be away overnight. One should learn to honour the workings of circumstance.

  The client was a sensible woman who understood that she could transform her life if she employed Flora to transform her house. Her husband had recently left her. She had already thought of a water feature for the front garden and a lighting scheme for the back. Flora gave her a rhodochrosite crystal to start the healing process and recommended demolishing the utility room in her marriage area and replacing it with a mirrored alcove displaying paired objects. The washing machine was to be moved to the bathroom, which would be painted red to mitigate its tendency to wash helpful people out of the owner’s life. The client was delighted with all these ideas and gave Flora a cash deposit on the spot.

  Cash made Flora think of shopping. The sun made her think of a new dress, a frivolous flowery sort of dress. Precisely the kind of dress she had in mind was displayed in the window of a boutique which she had to pass on her way home. The shop was quite near Georgie’s flat. Very near it, in fact. It was late in the afternoon. Flora went into the shop and asked if they had the dress in her size. They did not, but their sister establishment in Chelsea did and the manageress was eager to keep the shop open until it could be sent over by taxi. Flora accepted a cup of strawberry tea and sat down to wait for her dress to arrive.

  Her energy had definitely changed. Events just fitted themselves together as sweetly as the stars fitted into the sky. It was very bad karma to resist the flow of life when it was so strong. One had to learn to accept the lessons that the universe offered.

  The dress arrived and fitted perfectly. She couldn’t resist trying the pink sandals that matched it. While she was standing in the body of the shop doing a twirl in front of the long mirror, she absolutely felt Felix walk past in the direction of the flat, but she was very good, she did not look up or try to catch his eye. Although she did see a fragment of his head reflected in the corner of the mirror. But there were lots of blond men on the street, it could really have been anyone.

  It was when he walked back a few minutes later, while she was seeing how the sandals would look with a much shorter skirt, because she had shorter skirts and she liked to be sure that she could get good value out of her clothes, that she got a really good look at him. He could have seen her looking, that was possible. Flora decided that the sandals would be too much of an extravagance. She kept the dress on and had the happy manageress fold up her old one and put it in a bag.

  And there he was, sitting outside the Brazilian cafe, reading some American newspaper. There was no getting away, he saw her as soon as she stepped out of the shop.

  ‘Hello,’ he said.

  ‘Well, hell-o,’ she said.

  ‘This is a surprise,’ he suggested.

  ‘Isn’t it?’ she agreed.

  ‘Have you got time for a coffee?’

  ‘Why not?’ she asked.

  The man was suave, 22-carat suave. He could have written the book on suave, which Flora found somehow natural, right and relaxing. She realised that Dillon was suave only occasionally. Felix, despite the debacle of the previous Saturday morning and the fact that she hadn’t called him since, was utterly cool, and acting as if he had never even noticed her in that shop. He was behaving, in fact, as if meeting her was nothing more than divine serendipity. Which of course was all that it was.

  He said he owed her dinner, which was only the truth, and suggested a charming little restaurant around the corner. He knew the designer of her dress, which was understandable since he had probably walked past it in the shop window every day for a week, but flattering all the same. He never made her feel that he needed any money from Pforza Pharmaceuticals; in fact, he was perfectly comfortable talking about personal things all evening. Flora’s personal things, her spiritual beliefs and her love of travel. He knew a lot about Hinduism. He wanted to go to Barcelona to see an exhibition of sculpture from Kerala.

  In truth, she did not intend to go back to the flat with him, and when she got there she really did intend to leave. But she liked being there. There was nothing of Georgie in it to feel discordant. It was quiet, it reminded her of Donna’s living space. The token resistance was something she sort of fell into once he made his move. They performed the whole thing as exquisitely and with as much respect for tradition as a pair of Thai temple dancers. Then he swept her off her feet and carried her into the bedroom. It was all just perfect. She adored linen sheets.

  In the morning he made her an espresso with lemon zest. The way he pared off the skin of the lemon, the precision with which he twisted it and sent a little spray of citrus oil over the black surface of the coffee, the whiteness of his impeccable hands. It was exquisite, a ritual to welcome the new day.

  As if preordained they returned to the shop where she had bought her dress and he insisted that she try on the pink leather sandals, for, he implied without the slightest hint of sleaze, his own pleasure as well as hers. And then he bought them for her. Flora felt for the first time in her life that her special unique individuality had been recognised.

  17. May 6–8

  The goat stood in the centre of the lane, chewing on a hank of vegetation. It was a young one, its white sides contrasting smartly with its brown back, its muzzle a fresh, pale pink. The spiky horns looked as if they had never been used. Beneath its dainty hooves a ridge of grass grew up the centre of the crumbling Tarmac, showing that very few vehicles ventured up this gentle Somerset hillside.

  ‘Shoo! Piss off!’ Des suggested, leaning out of the window of his car and waving his arm.

  He sounded his horn, an effete, urban bleat which disappeared in the wild hedges that enclosed the narrow track in walls of blackthorn and foxgloves. The goat cantered a few paces uphill, away from the car, then turned around and lowered its horns.

  ‘Oh, for Christ’s sake.’ The goat appeared to change its mind, pulled up its head and resumed chewing. It was still dead-centre in the lane. Des sounded his horn again. The goat lowered its head again and made a practice run at the car.

  ‘Stupid fucking animal.’ Des stopped the car and opened his door. The bitter wind from the downs stung his cheeks. It was a tempestuous day. Huge clouds howled across the sky, randomly threatening a storm.

  The goat skipped sideways and butted the car door with all its weight and the advantage of the slope. There was a loud bang as its skull rammed the coachwork and a squeal from Des as the edge of the door slammed into his leg.

  ‘You STUPID fucking animal,’ he repeated, in pain. The car door was dented. The goat tripped around in a circle and resumed its stance in the centre of the road. ‘Fuck off! Just fuck off!’ He clapped his hands, another sound that was instantly muffled by the surrounding plant life and whipped away by the wind. The goat put its head on one side and appraised him with its diabolical yellow eyes.

  Des knew more about goats than most people imagined. The more he advanced on this one, the more aggressive it was likely to become. He was not at all sure that his insurance covered the car for assaults by ungulates. As it was probably his parents’goat, the best thing to do would be to catch it and take it home with him. Most goats were principally interested in eating. He had half a giant chocolate chip cookie in the car.

  ‘Here, have some choccy bikkie,’ he tempted the animal, holding out the cookie. The goat rushed forward, snatched the biscuit, made a pass at him with its horns and retreated to its original position before he could make a move
to grab it.

  ‘Sod you!’ said Des, losing his temper. He made a run at the goat, a move that it had not anticipated. Alarmed, it bounded sideways to the left. He leaped forward, holding the middle of the road, his arms widespread. In panic, the goat jumped as high as it could to the right and tangled itself in the hedge.

  ‘Gotcha!’ Dodging the horns, Des embraced the goat around the top of its legs and dragged it triumphantly out of the blackthorn. In the process of climbing out of the hedge he fell straight into the ditch but kept hold of his prize. The goat, which had consumed the half-cookie in one gulp, snatched a good mouthful of grass as he staggered to his feet, causing him to fall over again. The animal struggled and tried to stab him with its horns.

  ‘Make my day,’ he growled, heaving them both back on to the road. Which was empty. His car was not where he had left it. It had rolled back down the slope and run into the ditch on the corner, somehow breaking off the driver’s door as it went.

  ‘Buggeration.’ Keeping a firm grip on the goat, Des turned around and walked the remaining fifty yards to his parents’farm, following the clashing of windchimes and the smell of the herd. What exactly was supposed to be so restful about a weekend in the country he did not understand.

  ‘Wowie!’ his father called out from the smithy as Des shouldered through the dilapidated gate and into the farmyard. This was not an exclamation but his family name. At a dewpond on the downs twenty-five years earlier, Des had been baptised Worldpeace. They called his sister Endofhunger. Growing up, they had been known as Wowie and Endie.

  ‘Love, son.’ Des put down the goat and tried not to flinch at the smell as his father gave him a hug and a kiss. ‘Wowie’s come home for Beltane,’ his father called joyfully into the barn where. Des saw his mother and sister were standing by a row of aluminium vats.