by Sue Gee
Evening, a little cooler. They all remarked on it, deciding to eat in the dining-room because of it, lighting candles, seeing through the window the stars come out, pale at first, then bright as frost in a dark sky.
The children had eaten already; they hovered.
‘Can we stay up?’ asked the boys.
‘You can,’ Claire said to Jess.
She shook her head. ‘I don’t want to.’
They hugged each other; she went to her room, saying a general goodnight to the air.
‘She all right?’ Robert asked Claire, as the bedroom door closed.
‘I’ll tell you later.’
He shook his head, pouring more drinks for himself and Oliver as the women went to the kitchen. ‘Now what?’ he said aloud, and then, recalling how very subdued Jess had been all evening, and how quiet Oliver seemed now, said to himself: Oh, Christ. Now what?
Jack and Tom were beside him, pestering.
‘Can we stay up? Please?’
‘No.’ He looked at them, as if from some distance. Tom, always better after food, still seemed a bit –
‘You okay?’ he asked him. Was no one okay in this household?
Tom nodded. ‘I just feel a bit –’
‘Time he was in bed,’ said Oliver, sipping his drink at the table.
‘Yes. You, too,’ Robert told Jack. ‘Go on, both of you, up you go.’
The boys went up, and the women came back. Claire had made a casserole from a piece of pork bought when the butcher was open, and frozen since. She served it with rice and the peas Jess had shelled in the morning, and they ate it appreciatively, hot food for once, making conversation, now they were all together, about nothing very much, thinking of separate conversations held earlier in the day, about everything.
Early morning, cool. Dark grey skeins of cloud dissolving above the mountains, the light growing paler, paler. Tom, deeply asleep, got out of bed, and went walking.
Dawn came into the house through the cracks in the shutters; down in the village the first shutters were being opened and pushed back, the first kettles filled. Dogs got up from the steps and shook themselves, old men spat, a cock crowed. Tom went slowly downstairs.
It grew lighter. Down in the village Guida’s father and uncle sat at the table in the corner of the kitchen, drinking from chipped mugs of coffee, dunking their maize bread, taking their time.
Tom reached the bottom of the stairs. He stopped, and went on again, into the kitchen, with its faint smell of gas. He crossed it, bare feet sticking on the worn brown lino; he came to the door, and went bump. Outside, sleeping beneath the steps to the garden, the dull-furred cat heard the sound and woke. She came up the steps to the door and miaowed, rustily. Tom heard her, a little less deeply asleep; he tugged at the catch, and the door swung open. From the threshold, the cat looked up at him. The air was cool and fresh. He went out, and past her, to the edge of the steps she had climbed, with their sheer drop down to the garden. His foot went forward, on to air; it came back again; he stopped, and went on again, turning aside, climbing the long flight of steps ahead, beneath the vines to the water tank and the upper path. It grew lighter; the cock crowed again.
Guida’s father and uncle picked up their things and came out of the house, and down the steps at the side. They went round to the front and walked down the hill, three or four paces to the old plank door set beneath the house. They pushed at it, shifting dark sodden piles of straw, and went inside. There was a grunting, a food bowl was rattled. One of them brought in a bucket. One of them brought in a knife.
Tom bumped into the white iron table, and stopped; he walked on, brushing the tendrils of the vines, reaching the end of the path. He came to the bottom of the short flight of steps to the pool, and stopped; he climbed them; the cock crowed again. It grew lighter. The air above the pool was cooler: he sensed it. He woke.
How had he got there? What was he doing out here in the open? Right by the pool, where he might have fallen. He drew back, looking at the greenish water, and away. Far across the valley stood the mountains. It was still very early, but they were growing lighter, and greener, and the sky went paler and paler as the sun began to rise. It was nice: a beautiful morning. What was he doing out here?
From down in the village came noises: doors opening, greetings, mats being shaken. And then something else. They heard it up in the house, too, and stirred in their sleep.
A hideous noise came up from the village: a squealing, an agonised squealing, and shouts. Stop it stop it stop it. More squealing, louder, and higher, desperate. A shriek.
And at that sound the lid in his head yawned open so widely, so horribly, that he couldn’t possibly close it, no one could – wider wider help help the whole of him was opening no no no he reached out clutching for something to hold but there was only air and air couldn’t hold you help and then he was gripped in a vice and he fell –
into the water help help and then nothing and down down down.
Oliver, who always woke early, had woken, and heard it again. He got up and went to the window, opening the shutters.
Dawn. An animal in agony. A splash.
He frowned. He went to the boys’room.
He ran.
Along the corridor, down the stairs, through the kitchen, the open door, a terrified cat leaping out of the way, up the steps and along the path and up the steps to the pool. Where he saw him, twitching and jerking and thrashing and flailing, and dived in, shouting, and hauled him in to the side. He heaved him out, and put him on his stomach, he pumped and pumped. Tom’s face was blue, and the thrashing had stopped; his teeth were clamped tight and he did not move. Oliver went on pumping and sobbing and shouting; up in the house doors were flung open, and people flew down the stairs.
Tom lay still. Except for the ordinary, everyday noises, everything down in the village was quiet.
Chapter Nine
Footsteps, racing along the path.
Up the steps, stopping dead, seeing him lie there no no no –
‘No! No!’
‘He’s alive.’ Oliver was shaking from head to foot. ‘He’s alive.’
She flung herself down beside him.
Tom’s face was blue, and his teeth were clamped shut, but he was breathing, just. There was foam on his lips, flecked faintly with blood, but no water came up and Oliver had stopped pumping, turning him over, pressing his ear to his heart, which was beating, just.
He stirred, the beating grew stronger. The vice on his teeth unlocked abruptly: his jaw went slack and a little more blood and a lot of saliva came out, on to the concrete. Oliver saw a swollen tongue, frilled all round the edges.
He stirred again. Oliver and Frances gripped each other’s hands. Behind them, Robert and Claire and the children crowded on the steps, still and silent, waiting. Tom’s feet moved a little on the concrete; his head moved a little; his eyelids fluttered, and opened, and closed again.
‘Tom – darling, darling –’
He tried to speak. He tried again. He opened his eyes and said: ‘Mum –’ and pee went everywhere.
They carried him down to the house. They dried him and put him in Jessica’s bed, the nearest room, cool and dark.
‘He went walking,’ said Frances, white-faced, covering him up. ‘He heard the pig and went walking – or the other way round … He slipped and fell …’
‘Much more than that,’ said Oliver.
She looked at him. ‘What do you mean?’
Robert ran down to the village and knocked on Guida’s door. It was half-past seven: she came to the door in concern, pointing to her digital watch. She never came up to the house before eight.
‘No,’ he said, panting, thumbing the dictionary. ‘Doctor – we need a doctor.’
She looked at the little worn book and led him down through the village. They passed her uncle’s house, where the door set beneath was half open. Blood was running away down the cobbles from a bucket tipped up on its side; Robert, glancing, saw two
men in shirtsleeves bending over something. He looked away.
They came, on the other side of the village, to a small house with a paved garden, a fig tree, a sleeping cat. They woke up the doctor, a small man, who spoke a little English. He came, bringing his bag, and his own dictionary, larger, with medical terms. He covered three villages, he told them, making conversation as they hurried back to the house; he had learned his English in Lisbon. Robert nodded, barely listening.
In the house, the doctor looked at Tom, who was sleeping; he listened to Oliver’s description. They sat in the broad airy sitting-room and he turned the pages of his dictionary. Childish convulsion – fit, if you liked. Possibly the heat, possibly a high temperature. He had been running a fever? Nobody thought that he had. Possibly more than that. Perhaps to do with the sleepwalking, perhaps not. Had they noticed any … He went through the pages. Any absences? Times when he seemed to –
Yes, said Claire, there were often –
He dropped things, said Jessica. He dropped things and stood there.
There was something in the family? No history? No … epilepsy. The word, in his thick foreign accent, hung in the air. It was possible, yes. They must take him to a specialist in London.
They saw him off; he would come back, later, when Tom had woken. They sat in the dining-room in silence, drinking the coffee Guida had made them, heavily laced with brandy.
Tom slept and slept.
Claire and Jack and Jessica sat on the swing-seat. Peaches dropped to the garden below with a thump: one, two. Jack ran to pick them up.
‘We can have them for lunch,’ he said, bringing them up the steps. ‘Tom can have this one.’ He tried the other: it was tasteless, and hard as a rock. He spat it out, grimacing, throwing it over the parapet. ‘Ugh.’
‘Never mind,’ said Claire. ‘It was a kind thought.’
He wandered over to the doors, looking inside. ‘When’s he going to wake up?’
‘In a bit. He might have a headache, the doctor said.’
‘He was nice, the doctor.’
‘Yes.’
He came back, and sat down beside her. They rocked to and fro.
‘When are we going home?’
‘On Saturday.’
‘When’s Saturday?’
‘The day after tomorrow. We’re going to drive back across Spain, remember?’
‘Mmm.’
They went on rocking.
‘What’s going to happen to him?’ asked Jess.
‘He’ll go to a doctor in England.’ Claire looked at her. ‘Are you all right now? Getting over it?’
Jess shook her head. ‘It was horrible.’
‘Yes. Don’t cry again.’
‘I can’t help it.’
Claire’s arm went round her.
‘I still don’t understand it,’ said Jack. ‘I can’t work it out.’ His sandals scuffed on the tiles; he looked down, frowning.
The swing-seat creaked as it went back and forth, shadows from the leaves of the lemon trees played on the canopy. Robert appeared at the door, and saw them.
‘How are we all?’
‘Not very good,’ said Claire.
Frances sat on a low chair in the corner of the room, watching him. He was breathing steadily now, not stirring or twitching, his face pale but his limbs deeply relaxed. The sleep of the dead – her stomach turned over: wake up wake up. She went to him, bending down, her hand hovering above his thatch of hair, dark-circled eyes, lips closed on the bruised and bitten tongue. Tom’s chest rose and fell. She kissed him, and went back to her chair.
A cup of coffee, undrunk, gone cold, sat on the floor, with her cigarettes beside it, but although, while waiting for the doctor, and while he was here, she had smoked all the time, it hadn’t crossed her mind to do so now: she had brought them in without thinking. The sash window was open at top and bottom; tendrils of dense creeper stirred. She leaned against the long-backed chair and shut her eyes. Dora, she wrote, Tom has nearly died –
Footsteps along the wooden corridor.
‘Frances?’
She opened her eyes. He stood in the doorway, nodding towards the bed.
‘I think he’s all right. I’ve just checked him.’
Oliver went over, bent over as she had done. He sat on the chair by the bed; he took Tom’s hand, and held it, quiet and still. He looked at her.
‘Come here.’
Dora, I –
She got up from her own chair and went over. He held out his other hand, and she took it, and kissed it, and sat on his lap. His arm went round her, she rested her head on his shoulder. Footsteps came across the sitting-room. Robert appeared in the doorway, looking round.
‘Oh. There you are.’ He smiled. ‘I think we’ll push off for a bit, if that’s all right with you. The children need a break … Or do you want us around?’
‘No,’ said Oliver, ‘we’ll be fine, we’ll wait for the doctor.’
‘Right, then. See you about five, I should think. We’re just going to go for a drive, find somewhere for lunch …’
‘Have a nice time,’ said Frances. ‘Thank you for all you’ve done.’
They looked at each other, and smiled.
‘Give Tom our love when he wakes up.’
‘We will.’
He went out again. Oliver swung the door to with his foot.
Frances and he sat kissing and kissing, hearing the others leave, the car doors slam and the house go quiet; waiting for Tom to wake.
He sat on the edge of the bed, and the doctor asked him to do things. To follow a finger, as it moved past his eyes and away. To reach out and touch other fingers, each hand in turn, to wiggle his toes. His knee was tapped with a nice little hammer: his leg flew into the air. The doctor seemed to think that was good, but it was nothing to do with him, it just did it. The doctor looked into his eyes with a little bright light: could he see the lid in there? He had to shut his eyes, and touch his own nose with a finger – well of course he could do that, if you couldn’t touch your own nose there must be something wrong with you. Very good, very good, said the doctor, and had he got a headache. He had got a headache, but it was his tongue that bothered him: it hurt and felt funny all round it. He stuck it out, and touched it; he slid off the bed.
‘Tom–’
He went to the chest of drawers and tried to look into the mirror; he pulled it towards him, moving a jumble of boxes and bottles, Jessica’s things, and stuck it out again. Ugh. How had it got like that?
‘Tom, it’ll soon be better –’
It reminded him of something, it made him think of something horrible. He frowned, prodding it. Ugh. Ugh.
‘Leave it, darling, leave it –’
He leaned forward, right up to the mirror, sticking it out as far as it would go, seeing that funny dangling thing at the back of his throat get bigger. His elbow nudged something; one of Jessica’s boxes, a little brass box with a hinge, fell to the floor and flew open, scattering beads –
He knew what it was, his tongue. The pig had had a lid, and when it opened, which it did very slowly, inside you could see –
something had happened to the pig –
stop it stop it stop it
He picked up the box and he threw it –
‘Tom … Tom …’
Nobody shouting. Everyone being nice. They held him and held him. He cried and cried.
They drove to the cathedral town and parked in a side-street on the outskirts, near a funfair they remembered from last year.
‘Can we go to it?’ asked Jack. ‘Can we go now?’
It was very hot. Petrol fumes made airy rainbows in and out of whirling spaceships.
‘Later?’ said Robert.
‘Now? Please.’
‘I think this morning they can have pretty much what they like,’ said Claire. She shaded her eyes beneath the sunhat, and took out her sunglasses.
‘True. Okay, then, who wants to do what?’
‘Everything,’ said Ja
ck. ‘Let’s do them all.’
Shrieks came from thirty feet up: the roller-coaster rattled and swooped, and slowed down.
‘That one. That one!’
It came to a halt, the engine whirring. Only two people per car.
‘Want to come with me?’ Robert asked Jess, digging escudos out of his pocket.
She looked away.
‘You don’t have to.’
‘It’s okay.’ She climbed in with him, Claire and Jack behind. Jack bounced up and down.
‘Wick-ed.’
‘Hold on to the rail –’
They were off. Slowly, slowly, whoosh.
‘Wheeee!’
‘Heeelp!’
Faster faster faster. Their stomachs were left on the ground.
Jessica buried her head in Robert’s shoulder; his arm went round her.
‘Heeee-eeeelp!’
It was brilliant, it was like flying, it was fast fast fast.
‘You all right?’ A bellow.
Her face pressed into him: she nodded, just.
They slowed, they were slowing, they stopped. He hugged her, she hugged him back. It was nice, but it wasn’t the same.
‘Phew.’
‘Help me.’ Claire was staggering, weak with relief.
‘Wick-ed! Can we go again?’
‘No.’
He helped Jessica out; she was laughing. They went across to the carousel. Snorting horses rose and fell, golden and white, with different-coloured reins and lovely music.
‘Which one are you going to have?’ Robert asked her when it stopped.
