by Stephen May
And so Daniel carries on with his story, and Polly smiles and nods encouragingly and murmurs in the right places and generally gives no sign that she’s heard all this before. About how when Daniel got back from the fighting-kite festival he got his manservant to find a kite-maker that he could apprentice himself to. In the day he’s organising the laying of pipelines – shouting, giving orders, sacking the lazy and the dishonest. Hectoring, cajoling, coaxing the workers while at the same time fending off nonsensical questions from the bean-counters in head office in London who know nothing about the realities of working in a place like India. Doing all that and then three evenings a week he goes and sits at the feet of the kite guru and learns about flight patterns, about paper, about design, about the discipline you need if you really want to castrate, fuck, kill.
Daniel says that he’s sure it helped him in business. Polly says that she can believe that. And then she smiles and says that she doesn’t really want to castrate, fuck, kill if it’s all right with him.
And Daniel says neither does he any more, that he’s a bit embarrassed by the man he used to be. And then he asks what Polly does want and she can’t believe her own reply. Her own reply is the absolute God’s honest truth and it’s a thing she’s never told anyone before.
‘A baby. I want a baby.’ And she puts a hand over her mouth. And Daniel looks at her calmly and says, ‘Well, that doesn’t sound impossible. Easier than making a kite that flies anyway.’
Five
NICKY
The next bit – the beginning proper – is all much, much easier than we expect, but then beginnings are, aren’t they? In love, in work, in life: beginnings are always the easy bit. It’s endings that are hard.
I’ve told myself, promised myself, that if there are any problems at all, then we’ll get out immediately. And Sarah agrees. Yeah, she says, no unnecessary risks. We can always bail.
At 8 a.m. that morning – five hours after I’ve found him – I phone 911, tell them my guest over from England has collapsed in my bathroom and that he isn’t breathing. It’s no problem to sound panicky. The minute I give his name – my name – I feel asthmatic with terror. But it’s done now. No way back. The operator is steely as she tells me that she really needs me to stay calm right now. I take a breath. Try to concentrate on her questions.
No, I’m not sure when exactly, some time ago. Last thing I remember is him getting up to go to the bathroom. I’d fallen asleep in my chair. We’d been having a catch-up, see. Drink, smoke, what have you. We’re old friends and it’s my birthday. Fifty. A proper milestone. So yes, he’s been drinking. Wine, beer, whisky. Proper whisky. Glenmorangie. A nice single malt. No drugs. At least I don’t think so. He’d just gone to the bathroom which is where I’ve found him. Just now. Not the one in his bedroom, but in the guest bathroom. Yes, the bathroom. The Bath Room. I’m pretty sure he’s, you know, gone – but please hurry. His wife’s here.
And the voice stays cool. Unsympathetic I think. Stern. She’s saying that she understands that I’m feeling a little shaken up right now, but it’s important that I stay focused. Sir.
Do I imagine that or is it real? A tiny disrespectful pause before she says Sir?
But I don’t have time to dwell on it, because she’s talking again. Where is he now, sir? And I have to take another breath, count to five just so I don’t scream out that I’ve told her already. He’s in the frigging bathroom. Bent over. On the floor. Like he’s praying. Or about to get shafted. One of the two.
She tells me to go to him and check his pulse again, explains how to do CPR, the kiss of life, all that stuff. I say, yeah I’ll do it, but actually I go to join Sarah at the window again. And together we take a long look at the city stretching and yawning. I take advantage of the brief silence the operator allows to concentrate on the vapour trail of a passing jet. Sarah squeezes my hand. It’s still bloody early, the heat in the city not fierce as yet, but I’m sweating. Shaking. I sit down as the voice makes me go through everything again. Where is he now, sir? The bathroom the bathroom the bathroom. The can, the john, the restroom, the loo, the lavatory, the fucking bog. Christ, how many more times? Stay with me, sir. Stay calm.
Why is she saying that? Am I gabbling? Does she struggle with the accent? Is it a trick? Is she trying to catch me out, expose some inconsistencies which an attorney could use to put me away at some future court date? Is she retarded? Or is it just procedure? No, it’s fine. We’re fine. Relax. Breathe. Just breathe.
I’m careful to go slowly now. To speak clearly and distinctly, biting out my Ts and my Ds, to get as close to the voice of Hugh Grant as I can, and, by the time I’m finished, I can hear sirens and I break off mid-sentence.
I look at Sarah. She pulls her oversized, over-fluffy towelling robe tighter around her. She’s looking even paler than usual today, the skin on her face thinner, faint lines appearing like invisible ink beginning to give up secret codes in the lemony morning light. Still, you can’t ever say she looks bad exactly. Still catches me out after all this time, just how fine she looks.
She frowns and tells me she’ll be upstairs if I need her. I nod and go to open the door and two tough-looking black women in neon-yellow hi-vis tabards over acid-green jumpsuits hold up lanyards, introduce themselves as Claudette and Soraya, and bustle their way inside. Just before I close the door I see some early morning jogger standing practically in the driveway, gawping at the ambulance. She sees I’ve spotted her and stoops to pretend to fiddle with the mini iThing on her wrist, clearly embarrassed to be caught in such a blatant piece of rubbernecking. And so she should be. Bloody ghoul.
I take the paramedics straight to Russell and they tell me they can take it from here and that the best thing I can do is to go back into the living room and let them do their thing. Their whole unhurried manner tells me they’ve seen he’s dead at a glance. As far as they’re concerned this is no longer an emergency. Instead it’s an unexpectedly gentle and unhurried part of their day. A moment of reprieve.
They come into the living room after five minutes and suggest that I sit down and Soraya disappears into the kitchen and does some clonking around that suggests the making of tea, while Claudette takes my hand, looks me in the eye very seriously and says that she’s sorry but that my friend has been called home. There’s a pause to make sure that I take in this information. It’s all in some manual somewhere no doubt. Some online training programme. Managing the newly bereaved: a new vision for field practitioners. Something like that.
Called home.
I resist the impulse to say, ‘What? He’s been called back to Bedford? Summoned back to Plover Way?’
She goes on.
She understands that this is a difficult time for me but they do need some information. And so, yes, there are forms, just as I’d known there must be. There is also an explanation of the need for an inquest which is nothing to worry about – the state of California does that for any sudden death however straightforward – and Mr Fisher was British right? Like yourself? And so Claudette thinks that I might need to inform the embassy or at least the consular officials. And I say of course, I get that. Totally.
And Claudette is already moving forward through the programme. Is there anyone who could come over, sit with me awhile? His wife’s here I say. Upstairs. And they nod. That’s good. Neither of us should be alone right now.
‘You should get some sleep, sir,’ Claudette says. ‘Let Nature start the healing process.’
‘Sleep that knits up the ravelled sleeve of care,’ I say. She looks confused. So then I’m apologetic.
‘English major. It’s Shakespeare. Sorry.’
Claudette doesn’t say anything. Almost certainly puts this fresh weirdness down to a combination of shock and being foreign.
And it’s easy to give them all the details they want, plus some background that they don’t ask for, like the fact he was only over here because I’d paid for his flight. I tell Claudette’s kindly face how I’ve spent more or le
ss every birthday with Nicky since we were both kids, though for some reason we’ve missed the last couple. ‘Because of business stuff, you know how it is.’ And she is looking at me with those nice brown eyes and I feel like crying but I can’t because I have other, more pressing concerns. Like whether I got the name right. Did I say Nicky or Russell? I’m pretty sure I said Nicky. I must have done. Surely? Fuck. Fuck. And now I’m shaking again. And Claudette strokes my arm and I turn it into a hug and I feel the doughy warmth, the soft rise and fall of her breasts beneath the plastic crackle of her tabard, and I want to kiss her. But I don’t. I don’t. Thank Christ.
And then Soraya is back with tea which is way too milky because Americans never get that right, and Claudette pats me on the back as if to say enough already and I disengage and try for a watery smile. And I sit and Claudette sits, and she squeezes my knee and asks again if there is anyone they can call, but they are relieved when I decline. No, I say, you’re busy professionals. And they swell up a little, look at each other and smile. Yes, we are. Look at us. Professionals. And busy. You betcha.
Everyone thrives on praise. Everyone needs recognition for what they do.
Soraya murmurs that Mr Fisher died quickly – brain aneurysm she thinks, though she can’t say definitively of course. Claudette says he died without too much suffering or panic or pain. I wonder, but not out loud, just how much suffering, panic or pain is too much. I’m of the opinion that any suffering, panic or pain is too much. But Soraya is talking now, saying that Mr Fisher died among friends, on holiday and in America too. And the unspoken assumption is that there is no better place to die than the land of the free, home of the brave. And I think what she’s really saying is that Mr Fisher should be sorta grateful for his good luck. Lots of worse places to die. And a lot of worse ways to do it. It’s not something to get too hung up on. And I find myself getting angry. And it’s an effort to keep my voice level as I explain about the promise unfulfilled. The waste.
Nicky Fisher was not even fifty, I tell them. He still had time to Do Something. To Be Someone. To be the best that he could be. It wasn’t too late. He was a great writer. He could play guitar. And he was so quick-witted. He could have been a stand-up. I take huge offence on behalf of my discarded self. And Claudette sees that emotion is getting the better of me and offers to pray with me and I say no, Nicky wasn’t religious. And when they ask about my own faith I find myself babbling stuff about thinking that there might be some spirit, some force, and I catch Soraya blinking in a way that seems meaningful while Claudette seems to try, unsuccessfully, to hide a sudden smirk as if I’ve said some really stupid thing. But she gives me a card with a number of someone people often find helpful ‘even if they aren’t conventionally religious’. And then Claudette and Soraya go back into the bathroom, and there’s that fucking terrible zipping sound.
And when they come back with Russell he’s all bagged and tagged.
It’s a surreal scene. Horrible too. It’s like Claudette and Soraya are, for some reason, carrying a newly purchased M&S suit on a stretcher. The body bag looks as neatly synthetic, as grimly cheap as that. Russell doesn’t look human. Which I know is the point. But I didn’t expect him to look like so much packaging. So much rubbish. He looks like nothing anyone could care about. He looks like he’s never been. And clearly, Russell, lean from the gym, the cycling, all those triathalons is no weight to carry. No bother to anyone. Claudette and Soraya don’t even get out of breath.
I see them out to the ambulance and that is pretty much that. We all shake hands and I promise to take care now and there’s more sad smiling. Everyone manages to refrain from saying have a nice day. And they drive off with both the old Russell and the old Nick sharing the one body bag in the back of a shiny California Crusader. The new force in the type-two ambulance market. No turning back now.
Fifteen minutes tops. That’s all it takes to move from one dream of life to another. Unless you count the interview with a diffident cop, which happens twenty-five minutes later and takes another quarter of an hour. And that’s an interview Sarah sits in on holding my hand, exuding sorrowful dignity, and I think it’s that which makes the cop so nervous that he can’t wait to leave.
And that’s it. All that’s needed. Almost all. We have to email work – mine and Sarah’s – and, more importantly, someone will have to let the people at Sunny Bank know so they can break the news of my death to my dad. And we still have to work out the details of what to tell Scarlett but it’s a big bold start. We’ve begun.
Sarah can see I’m suffering with the strain of it all and so she makes me a proper cup of English builders’ tea, as richly brown as autumn leaves piling up on a London street. Then she gets me to speak about our hopes, dreams, all the things we could do, the things we could see, or own even. The First Folio, the Aramaic Bibles, Paul Weller’s guitars, handscrawled first drafts of Dylan songs. We could put Tracey Emin’s infamous bed in our second-best spare room if we wanted. There’s beautiful stuff out there, all of it waiting for a man and a woman of taste and discernment. Plus, she reminds me, there’s the good we can do. Yes, there’s that too. She strokes my cheek. And I feel the tension slowly leave my face, neck, shoulders, back – all the places it collects.
It’s the tranquillised afternoon British time, and the heavily accented Eastern European girl who picks up is clearly grateful for any interruption. She clucks briefly at the news that nature has gone wrong again. That a man in his summer years has died while his poppa hangs on and on disgracefully through the epic ice age of decrepitude. She tells me that in her opinion Mr Fisher is too out of it to be reached by anything, even the death of his son, but that nevertheless someone will tell him. Or at least, someone will speak the necessary words in his general direction. Probably Polly will do it when she comes on shift. Polly is good at things like that. And I wonder about Polly and how you get to be good at things like that and what good at things like that even means. And I wonder if it is too early to drink.
Sarah comes back into the room. She’s been checking on Scarlett.
‘Still asleep?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Probably jet lag.’
‘Probably. Everything all right at Sunny Bank?’
‘I think so.’
‘You haven’t seen him for ages anyway, Nicky.’
‘I know.’
‘He wasn’t such a great father, Nicky.’
She comes over, stands close to me and presses my head against her chest.
‘I know, I know.’
‘It’ll all be fine, Nicky.’
‘Yeah. I know. I know.’ And I make the decision not to be irritated by the way she keeps using my name like this. I wonder if it’s an old HR trick. Something they teach on courses about managing difficult conversations. There’s probably research somewhere that shows people are comforted by hearing their name spoken aloud.
But who cares if I’m being ever so slightly line-managed here? It’s probably what I need. I put my arms around her. Sarah and Scarlett – the family I never expected to have. All the family I need.
Six
CATHERINE
Catherine Baker despises joggers but there’s no better way of moving around the city and staying invisible. Especially if you’re middle-aged. Women joggers in their perimenopausal years are everywhere and so no one notices them. You can go anywhere and not be seen. It’s important you keep your pace sedate of course, it wouldn’t do to actually run properly. That would attract attention for sure. Catherine Baker can do a half-marathon in one hour eleven and keeping herself to the wobbly tippy-toe stumble of the average evening jogger is irritating to say the least.
And just how has running become so popular a pastime with middle-aged, middle-class ladies? Catherine Baker is forty-four years old and can’t remember there being joggers when she was a little kid. If you did ever see anyone out running in Ipswich in the 1970s then they were serious, tiny, bony men in old T-shirts and shorts – not chubby book-group
types in designer shades.
The book group. They are meeting in three days and Catherine hasn’t even started this month’s yet. Still, there is a long plane journey ahead tonight, she’ll probably get through most of it then, though she’s also meant to be writing a book of her own. She’s had this great idea for a kid’s story. A young girl accidentally stumbles into the cave where King Arthur is having his enchanted lie down with all his knights, and she wakes them up and they go on to save England from various menaces. At the same time of course the young girl – Heidi – has to guide them through all the complexities of the modern world. It’s a good idea she thinks. Funny, exciting, quirky, and could easily stretch to a series. It isn’t a J.K. Rowling kind of idea, it’s not on that scale, but she thinks it might have legs.
Maybe she can do both. Some writing and some reading. It’s twelve hours back to the UK after all. She just hopes she isn’t stuck next to a baby. On the flight over the baby next to her had alternated between vomiting and crying. And her screen had been broken so she couldn’t even distract herself with some mindless action movie. She’s going to write and complain, not that it will do much good but she just might get a £100 discount off her next flight and that’ll be something. She’s going to Abkhazia in a couple of months and those flights aren’t cheap.
And that’s another thing, when Catherine was growing up air travel had been glamorous. Catherine had even wanted to be an air hostess. When she went to Spain with her family the stewardesses had seemed impossibly beautiful. Sleek, gracious, like people from some future where stress, hustle and ugliness had been outlawed. They had been these exquisite angels, dispensing inner peace along with crisps and light refreshments. Now they were just snotty waitresses. And she’s sure the planes had been bigger then too, the seats wider, the toilets cleaner, and the airline meals not only edible but tasty. And you could get from London to the States in ninety minutes on Concorde. Hard to believe now. When Catherine was growing up, anything was possible. People played golf on the moon in the seventies. Bloody golf. On the moon. And the music was better too; then there was Abba and the Bee Gees. Now there is, well, that’s the thing, Catherine doesn’t even know what’s around now. K-pop? Is that a thing? Pimba? She’s fairly sure she’s heard someone talking about that on her travels. Where’s that from? Angola? Thing is, she doesn’t care that she doesn’t know. Who can be bothered with keeping up with music now?
