by Marian Keyes
‘Mrs O’Grady, I swear to you, Fintan really has cancer.’
‘And you’re not just putting sweet words in my ear?’ JaneAnn sounded suspicious. ‘Trying to spare my feelings?’
‘Hardly,’ Katherine said, on the verge of tears.
Fintan got very drunk that night. ‘Might as well.’ He laughed. ‘Could be my last chance for a while.’ He glittered with wild and bitter humour.
Tara, Katherine and Sandro also drank heavily in an attempt to escape the horrors, but never managed to get off the ground.
‘Jesus, cheer up, would you?’ Fintan complained, as three taut, white, miserable faces looked at him. ‘I mean, I’m the one who’s going to die.’
Now and again, the evening seemed almost normal. Almost, but not quite, everything was a bit skewed, tinged with nightmare. They could only think about it for a certain amount of time, before they stopped being able to process it. Like the lights in the hallways of apartment blocks, they worked for a while, then their mechanism just clicked off.
At about midnight, Fintan announced he was going to bed. ‘Big day tomorrow!’
‘See you in the morning,’ Tara promised.
‘With a pair of nice pyjamas,’ Fintan reminded her. ‘Try Calvin Klein.’
‘Consider it done.’
‘And if you can’t get Calvin Klein ones, try Joseph. Just get me something wearable, I have my career to think of. If I’m spotted in those dreadful hospital ones, I could be sacked.’
‘It’s in hand,’ Katherine reassured.
‘Do you mind?’ Fintan was suddenly anxious. ‘Will you get into trouble for taking time off work?’
They both looked at him, mute with exasperation.
Katherine summed it up. ‘Feck work,’ she said simply.
‘My God,’ Fintan murmured. ‘This must be serious.’
Tara and Katherine said nothing to each other as they left and got into the filthy Beetle.
‘Are you all right to drive?’ Katherine asked, anxiously, as Tara screeched away from the kerb.
‘I always drive better when I’ve a few drinks on me,’ Tara insisted.
‘You don’t, you just think you do.’
They both laughed, then stopped abruptly.
‘It’s strange,’ Katherine said, feeling her way through her thoughts. ‘That we can think something is funny at a time like this.’
‘I know.’ Tara sighed. ‘Tonight, in places, we had a laugh. Sometimes – and I feel really ashamed about it – but sometimes I felt almost normal. But in a parallel-universe kind of way.’
‘Maybe we’re in shock.’
‘Could be. It’s certainly a lot to take on board. Pity Liv isn’t here, she’d be able to explain what’s happening to us.’
‘Oh, God!’ They were both stricken, as they thought of Liv.
‘Who’s going to tell her?’ Tara gasped. ‘She’ll be devastated, she’s so fond of him. Can you do it? You’re better than me. Less emotional.’
And, though Katherine wouldn’t have agreed, she said, ‘I’ll ring her tonight. She’ll be up. Poor insomniac.’
They drove in silence.
‘I can’t stop thinking about that bone-marrow thing.’ Katherine said faintly. ‘It’s barbaric. Tomorrow morning’s going to be unendurable. Mostly for Fintan,’ she added quickly.
‘I just wish it was tomorrow lunchtime,’ Tara said, ‘because then it’ll all be over.’
‘But it won’t be,’ Katherine replied. ‘It’ll only be starting.’
‘No.’ Tara clasped the steering-wheel tightly and her face lit up with hope. ‘We mustn’t think that way. Maybe he’ll be fine.’
Katherine thought about it. ‘Well, maybe he will be,’ she admitted.
‘Attagirl!’
32
The following afternoon, JaneAnn, all four foot ten of her, flew to London, with a selection of her tall, silent sons.
None of them had ever been on a plane before. In fact, they’d rarely crossed over the Clare borders. In their lumpy, old-fashioned ‘good’ clothes, amid the bustle and gleam of the airport, they looked as if they’d just landed from another planet.
Even though Tara and Katherine didn’t arrive into work until lunchtime, they left again at four to meet the flight from Shannon.
‘There they are.’ Tara pointed at JaneAnn, Milo and Timothy, standing in a little huddle around their suitcase, like wartime refugees.
JaneAnn was decked out in an ancient black coat with an astrakhan collar. Milo, the eldest brother, wore a borrowed brown blazer over dungarees, while Timothy wore his one suit – a navy, pinstriped, wide-lapelled, flared ensemble that he’d been married in over twenty years before. It was so old it was nearly fashionable again. He’d put on some weight since the last time he’d worn it. Or maybe it was the thick jumper he wore under the jacket that made it bulge so.
Despite their unsophisticated appearance, the O’Gradys were unfazed by the mayhem of Heathrow. Still going at the same slow pace they employed in Knockavoy, they were amused when a young businessman tutted and pushed past them muttering, ‘Some people!’
‘It must be a matter of life and death,’ JaneAnn remarked.
‘Faith, no.’ Milo smiled. ‘By the looks of him it’s far more important than that.’
They drove straight to the hospital, everyone crammed into Tara’s Beetle. Milo and Timothy had to squash into the back with Katherine, because even though they were both enormous and JaneAnn was tiny, protocol dictated that the Irish Mammy sat in the front.
The mood was chatty. They swapped gossip from home and even shared the occasional laugh. Then Katherine would remember why she was sitting spooned into a tiny car with Fintan’s relations, and was stricken by how unfitting laughter was.
Tara couldn’t get the hang of things, either. She kept behaving like the O’Gradys were in London for a holiday.
‘That’s Kensington Palace,’ she pointed out, as they inched through the traffic on Kensington High Street.
‘And what goes on there?’ Milo asked politely.
‘It’s where Princess Diana used to live,’ Tara faltered.
‘Lord, she must’ve had ferocious heating bills.’ Milo winced, leaning forward for a good look as they passed.
Although the hospital looked more like a hotel than a place to house the sick and dying, none of the O’Gradys commented. Neither did they waste time buying sweets or magazines for Fintan. The mood had flipped and they were frightened.
Tension built as they travelled up in the lift, along the wide, linoed corridor and towards the room Fintan shared with five others. Outside the swing door, JaneAnn clutched Katherine. ‘How does he look?’
‘Fine,’ she said, her guts twisting. ‘Thinner than he was, and his neck is a small bit swollen, but otherwise fine.’
No need to mention that he hadn’t looked too hot earlier when he’d been brought back from having his biopsy. All the muscles in Katherine’s legs and the soles of her feet clenched at the memory of Fintan, his face grey, his eyes closed, as he’d whispered, ‘The pain was disgusting, I actually saw stars.’
Tara and Katherine hung back as the O’Gradys trooped towards the curtains around Fintan’s white, metal bed. Sandro sat meekly on a chair beside him.
‘God bless all here,’ Milo said, leading the clan.
‘Love the blazer, Milo,’ Fintan said weakly, as he lay on the flat of his back, in his new peacock-blue silk pyjamas.
‘Sure, I’m pure lovely,’ Milo laughed wryly.
‘Hello, Mammy,’ Fintan greeted JaneAnn.
‘Aren’t you the heart-scald,’ she complained affectionately, tears in her eyes, ‘worrying us all like this?’
‘Fair play to you, though, you picked a good time,’ Timothy said.
‘You waited till after the hay was in,’ Milo finished, ‘and before the lambing starts. That’s what I call decent.’
Sandro hovered with over-elaborate meekness as the family reunion took place. He was
very nervous. That morning he’d waited by the bed until Fintan returned from his biopsy and, as soon as he’d established that Fintan had everything he needed, blurted anxiously, ‘What if they don’t like me?’
‘Who?’ Fintan had croaked through a haze of pain.
‘Your family. What way should I behave with them?’ Sandro laid a beseeching hand on the recently biopsied hip.
‘Ow, ow, Christ almighty, ouch!’ Fintan twitched in the bed. ‘Do you bloody well mind? My poor hip.’
‘Sorry, sorry, sorry! My apologies, please forgive me. Anyway, shall I wear this suit or be more casual?’ A vision of Sandro draping a jacket over his front swam before Fintan’s exhausted eyes.
‘Who cares?’ he said, weakly. ‘Haven’t we more important things to worry about?’
‘I’m polishing the ashtrays on the Titanic,’ Sandro had replied.
Now Fintan summoned him from the shadows. ‘Sandro,’ he said formally, from the bed, ‘this is my mammy, JaneAnn, my brother Milo and another brother, Timothy.’
Sandro raised his hand nervously, ‘Ciao, hello, pleased to meet you… er…’
‘Sandro is my…’ meaningful pause from Fintan ‘… friend.’
‘You’re doing a line with Fintan?’ JaneAnn understood.
Sandro was horrified. ‘We never do drugs,’ he lied haughtily.
‘No, no, no,’ Fintan explained. ‘She means are you my boyfriend?’
‘Oh! Oh, now I understand! Yes, Mrs O’Grady, I’m doing the line with Fintan.’
‘And where is it you’re from?’ JaneAnn pressed gently.
‘Italy. Roma.’
‘Rome! Have you ever met the Pope?’
‘Mammy.’ Fintan flapped an arm at JaneAnn.
‘But I have met Il Papa,’ Sandro surprised him by saying. ‘Well, there were many other people there, but I heard Mass in St Peter’s Square with my mother.’
‘You’re blessed.’ JaneAnn stared at him. ‘Was it beautiful?’
‘Beautiful,’ Sandro confirmed, wondering should he expound on the gorgeous purple frock His Holiness had worn, but on second thoughts deciding it might be better not to. Things were going much, much better than he could have expected, so there was no point in blowing it.
Milo cornered the doctor-on-duty, in his office. He spoke so quietly Dr Singh could barely hear him.
‘I’m Fintan’s eldest brother,’ Milo explained, looking at his lap. ‘I’ve nearly been a father to him, I know about Aids. Just because we’re a crowd of Paddies from the bogs, don’t think we don’t know. And what’s more we’re well able to deal with it.’
Dr Singh was a busy man who had been on duty for thirty-two hours. He wasn’t inclined to be patient. By the time Milo returned to the ward, he was quite certain Fintan didn’t have Aids.
At about seven thirty, just as all six of them were preparing to leave and let Fintan go to sleep, there came the sound of running feet down the corridor. It was Liv, her long hair flying, her skin pink, her eyes intensely blue. She looked like a warrior queen. When she saw the throng around Fintan’s bed, she gasped to a halt.
‘Liv,’ Fintan called graciously from the bed, ‘come in, come in. That’s my mammy, that’s Timothy, my brother, and Milo, another brother.’
‘Hello.’ Liv sounded very precise, very Swedish. ‘How do you do?’ She shook hands with all three of them and when she got to Milo she stared.
‘Excuse me,’ she apologized. ‘I’m startled… You look so like Fintan.’
‘Faith, no, Fintan’s the handsome one.’ Milo shrugged, with a slow smile. ‘I’m just a poor imitation. I’m a… What do you call those things? A bootleg.’
‘Not at all,’ Fintan croaked gallantly. ‘I model myself on you.’
There was certainly a family resemblance – they both had dark-blue eyes and black hair, although Milo’s looked like it had been cut by a lawn-mower.
‘Any luck?’ Fintan asked Liv.
‘I got them.’ She handed a carrier bag to Fintan, who took out two exquisite goblets in lime-green and turquoise glass.
‘What are they?’ Tara asked.
‘I came here two hours ago and he was upset by the ugliness of his water-glasses,’ Liv explained.
‘And I’d seen these ones in Elle Decoration,’ Fintan took up the story. ‘So Liv, sound woman, went to the Conran Shop for me.’
‘Did you have to go far?’ Milo asked.
Liv pinkened. ‘They didn’t have them in the Michelin building, so I got a cab to the one in Marylebone High Street and they didn’t have them there either. But luckily – you’ve guessed it! – they had them in Heal’s.’
Milo, the man who’d barely been east of the Shannon before in his life, nodded knowledgeably. Yes, his nod seemed to say. Yes, but of course, Heal’s was the obvious choice, you did exactly the right thing.
‘Come on, we’d better go.’ Tara stood up and looked around at the others.
‘Sure, where’s your hurry?’ Milo teased gently and remained seated.
‘But we were on the verge of going…’ Then Tara understood. The O’Gradys felt it would be bad manners to leave straight after someone else had just arrived.
She sat back down and turned to Fintan. ‘What time tomorrow are they letting you out?’
‘They’re not,’ Fintan said bluntly.
‘Whaaat?’ What the hell had happened now?
‘It’s no big deal,’ Fintan said. ‘I’m after getting an infection in my neck, where they took out the lymph gland. They want to keep an eye on me till it’s better.
‘And I’ll be very cross if it doesn’t get better,’ he complained. ‘I’ll have to have my neck amputated. Then I’ll have no neck and I’ll look like a rugby player!’
‘How long will you be in for?’ Katherine croaked. This didn’t bode well. National Health beds were rare and elusive creatures. Only if the hospital staff were very worried about you were you permitted to have one.
‘Five or six days.’ Fintan shrugged, seemingly unconcerned. ‘We’ll see.’
Thirty minutes later they bade Fintan goodnight and trooped towards the door.
‘Katherine, Tara,’ Fintan hissed, calling them back. ‘Keep an eye on Sandro, will you?’ he murmured. ‘Not that it’s the same, but after what happened to his last boyfriend… I worry about him and while I’m stuck in here there’s not much I can do.’
Down in the car park Sandro took Katherine and Tara aside. ‘We must keep Fintan’s spirits happy,’ he insisted. ‘We must entertain him and keep him from worrying.’
The O’Gradys were to stay in Katherine’s flat. It was the obvious choice: she had a small spare room which the boys could just about fit into, a pristine master bedroom fit for an Irish Mammy and a decent sofa bed for her own humble needs. As Tara said, ‘They wouldn’t stay with me. I’m living in sin.’ No need to mention that Thomas had refused to let them.
JaneAnn went into paroxysms of praise about Katherine’s flat. ‘It’s pure lovely! Like something belonging to a fillum star.’
‘No, it’s not.’ Katherine shrugged. ‘You’d want to see Liv’s flat. Hers is like something belonging to a film star.’
‘She’s a fine, handsome girl,’ JaneAnn said. ‘All the way from Switzerland.’
‘Sweden,’ Milo corrected.
‘Sweden, if you want,’ JaneAnn conceded. ‘Wasn’t she a grand girl, Milo?’
‘She’d a fine set of teeth and lovely manners. Now where will I put these?’
Katherine looked, and to her surprise there was food all over the kitchen table. A boiled ham, brown bread wrapped in a tea-towel, rashers, black pudding, butter, tea, scones and what looked like a roast chicken wrapped in tinfoil.
‘Oh, you shouldn’t have brought food,’ Katherine wailed. That morning she’d gone out and bought acres of food in honour of her guests. They’d never get through it all. Her fridge hadn’t seen this much action, ever.
‘We can’t land in here on top of you and expect you to f
eed us,’ Milo said.
‘He’s right. We can’t.’ Timothy spoke. A rare event.
‘Will you have a sandwich?’ JaneAnn urged.
‘No, no, I’m fine,’ Katherine said.
‘But you have to eat something. There isn’t a pick on you. Sure, there isn’t, Timothy?’
‘Faith, there isn’t.’
‘Sure there isn’t, Milo?’
‘Leave poor Katherine alone.’
A few miles away, Tara had just arrived home.
‘Poor baby,’ she heard Thomas call from the kitchen. ‘Come here and be cuddled.’
Tara’s heart lifted and relief made her light. Thomas was being nice to her. Thank God. Only now that things were OK could she admit how tense and weird they’d been since – well, since they’d had that dreadful conversation about her getting pregnant. But what a shame that it took a crisis to fix things.
She rushed into the kitchen, just in time to see Beryl snuggle into Thomas’s chest. ‘Where were you?’ he demanded brusquely.
‘At the hospital.’ She was confused. What about her cuddle?
‘I asked you to feed Beryl this morning, and you forgot,’ he accused. ‘Poor baby.’ He stroked his face against the cat’s. ‘Poor hungry baby.’
With a cold, hard, little thump to her heart, Tara realized he’d been talking to the bloody cat all along. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said wearily, ‘but I had other things on my mind.’
Thomas sighed. ‘What do we think of girls who care more about their friends than feeding Beryl?’ he asked Beryl. ‘We’re not impressed, are we? No.’ He shook his head, and so, it seemed to Tara, did Beryl.
‘Oh for God’s sake,’ Tara exploded. Thomas’s insecurity had always been behind his unpleasantness to her friends, but this was going too far. ‘Fintan’s got cancer!’
‘Oh, really?’ Thomas asked, disbelievingly.
‘Yes, really.’
‘But think about it, Tara, his lymphatic system is part of his immune system. And he has a deficiency with his immune system. Maybe an acquired deficiency with his immune system…’
‘Thomas, Fintan doesn’t have Aids. He’s HIV negative.’
