“Your head.”
“What about my head?”
“Hho, look at your head. Go on, look. In the bathroon, bath room, look in the mirror there. Go on and look. Oh, I haven’t seen anything like that for . . . how long have we been here?”
I wanted to make it very clear that I was aware you should use a mirror when you wanted to see yourself. But I didn’t have the energy for explanations. When I stood up again, my neck seemed incredibly weak, like wet paper, distressed cloth. I had to prop myself up with my hands as I walked.
“Oh, you’ll laugh when you see it. You will. Oho, you’ll laugh . . . How long have we been here?”
The bathroom was furnished with a two-thousand-watt bulb which seemed excessive and dangerous. For safety’s sake, I used only one eye to peer at myself.
“Fuck.”
My closed eye was sitting, perfectly normal, in my usual face, the one I had come to expect of me.
“Fuck.”
“Hahn! Told you.” I could hear Robert drumming his heels on the floor and beginning to hoot.
My open eye was squinting out from a bloated mass of greenish white. I had no cheek, no ear, no lips, only this puffy surface with an eyebrow perched across it like the kind of jokey finishing touch you’d slap on to a snowman. I looked like half a snowman. “Fuck!”
And this is precisely the kind of thing to send you shouting and packing and shouting some more on your way out of the room and so you do this—fighting into your coat while your companion is turning sensible, patting you softly, sympathetically, but still laughing. So you shout yourself clear out of the hotel and into the street and then you bellow for a cab. You do not let anyone else in to travel with you.
Back at the dreadful airport, you mutter your way through requesting a ticket change, your cheek beginning to limit your jaw, everything seizing. You pay the surcharge with £8.73 to spare. Dubliners smirk as they pass you, liking your disappointment and staring until it crests into despair.
You wait for one standby, miss it, wait for another and finally shamble aboard, strangers now helplessly fascinated by your dreadful face.
During your journey, lack of air pressure, or increased solar radiation, or whogivesafuckwhat causes you to swell still further, to solidify, and to suck down four brandy miniatures between your gritting teeth.
In the end, you have to go and see a doctor.
And I do have one: we just don’t know each other well.
“So . . . Dear me. What have you been up to?”
“Uh cnt upn m mth.”
“No, I can see that.”
He isn’t a great GP, isn’t someone I could like, but he doesn’t require you to make appointments—all you need do is to show up feeling appalling and then queue. He demands no forethought whatsoever—that always seems to outweigh any shortcomings he might have, medically speaking.
“GgNNph . . .”
“Yes, yes . . . but I am going to have to look down your throat, you know.”
He dibbles in his desk drawer and then stands up, brandishing a tongue depressor and a tiny torch. I don’t, as I’ve said, really know him, but he still seems different today—either more or less real, I can’t say. I can’t say anything.
“Ull ths ht?”
“It might hurt a bit.” The pallor of his hands is almost blinding and I have to close my good eye as they come too close. He squints at me, appraising. “You do seem very stiff . . . That’s . . .” He tries my jaw, less than gently. “Now . . . I’m sorry, but I do have to.” I have the impression that he’s adjusting for better grip. “Just try to relax.”
I suspect that I am dribbling, slavering like a hound and then—
“FfffAA.”
A boiling jab lances down the left side of my neck as he cranks my jaws apart, levering at me with his spatula and his torch.
“Uuun.”
I am waiting for him to say, “Open wide,” before I kick him.
His own mouth seems extraordinarily wide, his chin almost slapping down against his chest. “Soon be done . . .”
I can hear his jaw whistle as it swings through one dangerous curve after another. And his consonants are peculiar—they sting me, perhaps in my limbic area, although I don’t know what that is, but when I imagine it, I feel wounded.
“No, don’t close up again . . . don’t.”
I haven’t intended to move at all, but my face is rejecting his intrusion and has decided to take charge. “Surru.” My molars snuggle in towards each other unstoppably.
“All well and good being sorry, but I think your throat is closing, swelling shut—you know? Not something we’d want.” If he’d only stop talking, I’d feel less at bay. “Which means I will need a better peer round than that. So hold still. I do know that it hurts.”
He doesn’t. He couldn’t begin to guess.
His clammy fingers prod about—I can feel them on those portions of myself which still notice sensations. He is trying to get a purchase. There is an odd smell to him, a dying, leaf-mould scent and his breath lands in a way that seems infectious and the spatula and torch are lunging at me, larger than they should be, which may be an effect of perspective, but usually perspective doesn’t confuse me. “Ah. Here we go. That’s it . . . Now.”
There is a pop or crack from somewhere important inside me and then a red-coloured blank and then I realise I am staring at my doctor’s ankles. “Fckr. Fckr. Bstd. Fckn bstd. Fck.” I am on the floor and tightening like someone else’s noose.
“Sorry about that . . . Not so good, eh? Had to be done, though.” His foot taps softly in front of my nose, perhaps a little embarrassed. “Tell you what, just stay there and have a rest. Catch your breath. I’ll see another patient in Room Two, nip back in and check on you in a while. Hmm?”
“Bstd.”
I hate him very much, but also I wonder if he is a mirage, a hallucination. And I suspect that a good, real doctor might want to commit me now, because I suspect that he may not be a good, or even slightly real doctor. He may not be a real doctor. He may just be a figment of my puffy, green brain. But he may want to commit me, all the same. I’m not sure.
His toecap withdraws, unmistakably bashful. “I had students yesterday. Shame they missed this. You’re something unusual, you know. That’s cheerful, isn’t it? Something to be glad of? I mean, I’ve never exactly seen this before.”
“FFfff.”
Time passes rather slowly once he’s gone—either out of my mind, or into Room Two—and the whining in my ears quietens. I hear various feet, far away, going in various directions.
Eventually, I locate the legs of my chair and edge towards it, then work myself up to sit. When my doctor bustles in again, he looks happy to see me hunched in front of his desk. I try to seem as threatening, but sane, as I can.
“Good. Feeling more yourself. You were perfectly safe there, of course—in the recovery position. Now I want you to take this note down to the hospital.” He gives me a tangible note, in a genuine envelope, which crumples when I grip too tight. “They’ll examine you there, perhaps do some tests, and you may have to be kept in at least overnight. Because of your throat. Once that’s closed, you’re in trouble. You understand?”
Of course I understand. It’s only my mouth I can’t operate—I don’t think with that—not always.
“Sss. Udustd.” I pocket the envelope.
“Fine. And let me know how you get on.” I think he wants to wave as I leave, but then reconsiders, while I lurch up into a standing position and back away from his shining, his hissing, his sweeping teeth. He makes do with nodding his head. “Great. Take care now. Off you go. Quick as you can, I’d say. Quick as you can. Great . . .”
You may have to be kept in at least overnight.
I do understand that I am unwell and may not recover without help. I am even afraid about this. The mass and the ache of my head set me slewing across the pavement and it is difficult to walk, but some of this is also caused by simple anxiety.
A hospital, though. In overnight. You can’t do anything in hospital— it’s like joining the army: all waking at dawn and hats and by-laws and statutory shouting.
And in a hospital, you can’t drink.
I slew towards a bin and throw away my doctor’s letter. This makes me feel very lonely as soon as I do it, turns my bones slightly more frail, but I am also relieved. I don’t thrive under imposed restrictions and a hospital is nothing but.
Anyway, you go in with one thing wrong and come out with four or five others. I’ll be safer at home. I just need to get there and I’ll be sorted, I’ll have a nice lie down.
“Simon.”
“Hello. Who is this?”
“Is Simon there?”
His wife sets down the receiver with a theatrical sigh. I can make out the sound of her calling, “I think it’s your sister,” with a barb of irritation. I close my eyes, because that aches less and wait for Simon. He’ll do something about this. He’ll get me better. He’s a doctor. He’s my brother. He’ll pay no attention if she complains. He shouldn’t be with her, anyway—he should be with me.
“Yes.”
“It’s Hannah.”
“What’s the matter? I can hardly hear you. Look, we’re having dinner . . .”
“I’m not well. There’s something the matter with me. I’m . . .” And I cry because by now I am very scared and because I want to be with him this evening, the two of us together, eating toasted cheese and wearing our pyjamas and being glad that we’re indoors—outside it’s raining—and maybe our father will come in, his hair sparking with raindrops after a run across the garden from the greenhouse and he’ll stand in the doorway quietly and watch us, as if we might have slipped away while he was out, or changed—but here we are, ourselves and not lost, turning in time to see his face and know that he loves us to the point of pain.
“Hannah? Hannah, have you been drinking?”
“Simon. I’m not well. Please. I don’t know . . .”
“Where are you?”
“I’m, I’m at home.”
“Then stay there.”
“No, I . . . please, I need—”
“Stay there and I’ll come and get you . . . All right? I’m coming to get you.”
“Simon, I—”
“Just shut up and stay there. It’ll take me . . . I don’t know two, three hours. Will you be okay by yourself for that long?”
“Yes, I, I think th—”
“Fine.” He mumbles something back to his wife, I don’t catch it. “I’ll be there as soon as I can. What’s the address?”
I tell him and I try to keep him talking a while longer, but he is determined now—once he makes his mind up, that’s that with Simon. So I try to thank him and he won’t let me and then I have to say goodbye.
But he will be here—two, three hours and he will be with me.
So I’m going to be all right. I can stand this until he gets here, because I know he’s on his way, and when he arrives I’ll do whatever he tells me, I’ll listen to what he says. He was a good boy and now he’s a good man. As long as he’s coming to get me, I’ll be fine.
And I’m so grateful that I start to cry again, which is difficult, it makes me strain at muscles I can no longer move. I hold my jaws. I moan. I stop.
Simon, he’s always there for me, truly. Whatever happens, he cares.
Except that now I’m sure he does care and that he’s driving and missing his dinner for my sake and I won’t be on my own with this much longer—that’s when the drinking voice starts, the one that’s seen my soul. It understands me.
Fooled him.
Anything to get him here—that’s it, isn’t it? Any emotion you can fake.
Well, isn’t it?
You fooled him and you weren’t found out. Your own brother. Anything to get your way.
Why couldn’t you have saved him all this trouble? Why couldn’t you have died?
VI
“This smells like a primary school.”
“Well, let’s find out if it tastes like one. Open up.”
I don’t open up, being unsure what this means, but a hot press of something gluey does indeed make me part my lips and suddenly I am eating without my consent. “Ffm?”
“Just swallow it, will you, I really don’t have time for this.” I’m eating and hearing my brother’s voice. My good, kind, beautiful brother who makes me feel guilty by being here, by being good and kind and beautiful.
“You’re the one who brought her home.” This in my brother’s wife’s voice—the lovely Gillian, a woman who renders any guilt ridiculous. It is impossible to think of her badly enough. “Look, if you don’t want to do it, let me. There’s no point getting angry.”
“I’m not angry.”
I’m not angry, either—but I don’t say. This is between the two of them.
“Fine.” And here the sound of the lovely Gillian’s lovely feet clacking out into the passageway, unhappy. A door closes emphatically.
And then another spoonful of whatever it is accosts me.
“Why can’t you bloody feed yourself? . . . Jesus, Hannah . . .”
“I can—” I pause, because I sound so unfeminine and slow. Try again, “I can feed myself.” Not much better—not really good enough for Simon.
Although he seems unsurprised, now that I can see him.
I have come into focus while propped up in a bed and staring past my brother to a chest of drawers, on top of which are two motionless but living cats. I recognise them: they’re Gillian’s: glassy-eyed little monsters and hideously fat. They look like a pair of fur duffel bags with cats’ heads sticking out.
“What are you laughing at?”
“Am I? . . .” I’ve forgotten how I would tell. “Nothing.” I’m checking around in the crook of my head for any signs of aching, illness, queasy turns, but there are none. I am only billowy and light-hearted and without especially noticeable pains. If Simon weren’t frowning at me, I would guess I was dreaming, or dead.
“Yes, that wouldn’t surprise me.” Simon shifts his weight where he’s sitting on my bed. The motion makes me rapidly uneasy, which I didn’t expect, and when I have caught my breath, I flinch up to see him staring into a bowl of what is clearly porridge. I recognise it now—the sight of it, taste, smell, all the clues provided.
I haven’t eaten porridge since we used to have breakfasts together at home. He’s made it thick with a little milk added and a touch of dark sugar on top, melting—the way I used to like it then.
And the thought of him taking this care for me rushes a violent shade of some intensity up inside my chest. “Oh.” It turns me weightless for a moment, but then I sink again.
“What?” Simon stares at me as if I’m an unnecessary accident. “What? ”
Something about the way that his face changes makes me guess that he’s watching me cry—which means that I must be crying. I’m not aware of being sad or, indeed, happy—but I can tell that I’m forcing him to hate me for being not as I was. I am not his sister, or not the sister he remembers, or not the sister that he wants.
“Hannah . . . fuck.”
“Sorry.” I put out my hand to him, because I have made him swear, but he stands and steps back, still holding the bowl. I think he’s no longer aware of it.
“No.” He pushes at his temple with the heel of his free hand, as if this is a habit, although I have never seen it before. “No, you’re not sorry, you never are.” I really don’t know him the way that I used to.
And I find it hard to talk, because of my crying. “But I—”
“Hannah, just shut up. And sleep. I really think that you should sleep. Go back to sleep. Please. If you wake up and it’s dark, check the time before you come through and bother us . . . Try not to break anything.” He gives me his back and walks towards the door.
At least my jaw feels easier, more free. That can’t be bad. “Thank you.” This pauses his progress. I try to work out a meaning in the angle a
t which he is frozen and simultaneously realise that I now have working nerves in the whole of my face. So I’m starting to be a going concern again—and the billowiness that fills me keeps gentle and soothes. “Simon? Thank you.”
“No. You don’t do that either.” And Simon is almost going to leave, has his hand on the doorknob, but then he turns and is freshly bewildered by the sight of me. “You don’t even remember the doctor being here, do you? Does it interest you that you’re going to be okay?” He winces into a smile, a cold one, the kind that no brother of mine should have learned. “I mean, that you won’t die this time—I don’t mean that you’ll be okay. You can’t be okay.” As he opens the door, “Of course, she can’t be okay. What was I thinking.” He steps off into the dark of the passage. “She’ll never be okay, she doesn’t want to.”
The cats flick their attention back to me, settle themselves on their stomachs, fold their paws close under their chests and blink, malevolent.
Well, what else did he expect? Coming to help me—did he think I wouldn’t guess the way he’d help? I was there when he learned to walk— I know everything he’ll do. He is always just obvious.
So, of course, he was going to come, as he’d promised, and rescue me. But what was he going to do before we left, while he still had access to my flat? Search the bags, the cupboards, the shoes, the storage jars, the drawers, the toilet cistern, test every possible suspicion, until he’d found my bottles and then he’d open each of them and empty it away. It would have been a compulsion—one he couldn’t resist. But I would have been wrong to allow it—not waste on such a scale: it wouldn’t have been ecological. Or moral—more like breaking and entering, or some similar crime, and if you love him, you can’t let your brother commit a crime.
Which meant that I had to drink all of it first, before he got there. He made me.
It wasn’t easy, either. I put things aside for safe keeping and emergencies and sometimes I forget that I still have them and sometimes I over-cater, because I’m in need of comfort—who isn’t in need of that?—and sometimes there are other reasons and as a result I had a large and mournful volume to get through before he arrived. My Cointreau, my bison-grass vodka, my absinthe, my little ceramic leprechaun full of whisky: I mean, each of my friends and acquaintances, the ones that should welcome me home, my special treats and interior outings to see me through troublesome times, or to just be there in a guaranteed way for me: I had to swallow every ounce of every part of them. Face solidified and my teeth creaking and far too much stress in my system as it was, but I still had to sit on my kitchen floor and rush down the whole of my stock without having the time for a proper goodbye. That’s what my brother drove me to.
Paradise Page 13
