The Amateur Science of Love

by Craig Sherborne

  ‘No.’

  His face unfrowned.

  ‘But I’d like to be.’

  He frowned again. ‘There are two things I would say about that. Firstly, a pregnancy could very likely speed your cancer on. It would also make treatment more limited.’

  ‘So you’re saying I can’t have children, ever?’

  ‘I would advise against it, ever,’ he said firmly, then tried to soften the blow. ‘The other issue is the social implication. There are certain social issues, which I’m sure you can imagine.’

  Ever was too much of a cobweb word for her to continue the conversation. She waved it from her face and convulsed into a hunchback of tears. Becky and I scrummed her shoulders and uttered useless comforting. ‘It’s all right. It’s okay.’ We kept it up for several minutes, language empty of truth or reason.

  Becky began crying. I was not, which made me feel I was misbehaving. Crying is a measure of emotion, or else why do it? It was a measure of love for Tilda given her circumstances, but I could not cry. The miserable wonder of her suffering had me frozen, overawed. To touch her sobbing shoulderblades was to touch death close-up. I knew cancer was not contagious but I wanted to take my hand from her body and stand alone, at a safe distance. Then maybe I would cry.

  To compensate I became practical. Roff had caught my attention with a slow nod of his head. He said there were certain questions he would like to ask Tilda and obviously this wasn’t the time. He folded a sheet of paper—a questionnaire—into an envelope for my safekeeping. The questionnaire covered many of his queries, he said. Queries relevant to research, of establishing ‘links and causes’ and ‘correlating patient history’.

  I was relieved to have a helpful role. He passed me pamphlets on preparing for a mastectomy; the side effects of the operation, physical and mental. Emotional side effects, the sense of womanhood being challenged. If I could make sure Tilda read them he would appreciate it. ‘Keep her spirits up,’ he said. ‘The next few weeks will test her spirits beyond the ordinary.’

  Chapter 37

  ‘Social issues,’ Tilda said with a contemptuous snort. ‘What have social issues got to do with me?’ This was back at her parents’ place. They were out grocery shopping or getting their crying done in their car without upsetting Tilda.

  But Tilda was not upset. She was whistling and laughing. She had turned the TV on and flicked channels for a distracting program. She was fine, she said. Fine. She just wished she knew what exactly was meant by social issues. She stared at me for answers. I tried some I don’t knows to avoid the subject. She was no fool. She had worked out what Roff meant. She was looking for an argument, not answers.

  ‘He means, if I die, I would leave a motherless child behind, doesn’t he? He means I’m definitely going to die, doesn’t he? He means there is no hope, doesn’t he? My death would be like abandoning a baby. I would be guilty of abandonment. It is so fucking cruel, Colin. Why is this happening to me? I do not deserve this happening to me.’

  She paced the lounge room, yelling and pointing at east, south, west, north. At all the women in the world in all directions. ‘Why not that woman or that woman or that woman instead of me? Thousands of useless, ugly bitches breeding like farm pigs to ten different men. Why not them or women in prisons? Give them cancer. They deserve it. Give it to them and take it from me.’

  She knelt in a corner of the couch. She wept herself silent. Then wept herself angrier: those vile, revolting tits of hers, they were to blame. She always hated them. Now one was being taken from her. ‘Good fucking riddance to it,’ she punched a couch cushion. ‘Men are lucky. Men don’t have tits.’ She laughed that soon she would be part man. She laughed that she might as well start practising: could I get her a beer, please? Wine is much too feminine for men. She slapped her thigh as if making a manly decision, spoke with her voice forced down an octave: she was going to stop wearing makeup and not wear bangles or shave her legs.

  ‘My hair will probably fall out from the drugs, won’t it? I’ll be very masculine, very bald.’ She put her hands on her head like a finger cap to tuck her fringe away. ‘What do you think? Will it suit me?’

  She got off the couch and came up close to me, peered into my face, my eyes. She let her finger cap go. Her fringe sprang out and pounced at my cheek she was so close. ‘Why don’t you cry? Not so much as a single tear. Everyone else has, but not you. Not a drop.’

  I thought it part of her funny male performance. ‘Men don’t cry,’ I smiled.

  It was no performance. Her nostrils flexed open and closed with snotty breathing. ‘I know very well why you’re not crying. You’re not crying because you don’t really love me.’

  ‘Not true.’ I leant sideways to escape her gaze. I may be six foot three but her questioning was intimidating. Plus, if someone has cancer they have privileges over you. You can’t just tell them to settle down or shut up or be reasonable. They have a licence to glower and rage.

  Tilda touched my cheekbones. I couldn’t lean sideways any further. ‘Not a hint of wet,’ she said quietly, with an offended gaping of her mouth. ‘Not a single hint of wet.’

  ‘There’s been so much to take in. I’ve been holding back crying.’

  ‘Cry now. Go on. Do it now.’

  ‘I can’t cry on demand.’

  ‘All I am to you is servicing, aren’t I?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Not love, just servicing.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Say you love me, then.’

  ‘I love you.’

  ‘I don’t believe you.’

  ‘I do.’ It was true enough—remember my alterations. I repeated three I love yous. Tilda refused to hear them. She shook them from her ears.

  ‘Do you want me dead?’

  ‘Dead? Of course not.’

  ‘Is that why you don’t cry? You want me dead so you don’t have to bother with this?’

  ‘No.’ The only words she would believe were her own. I could have pledged no, no, no a thousand times but as far as she was concerned I was a liar.

  ‘I’m damaged goods now, aren’t I? What man wants a one-titted woman?’

  I touched her shoulder to rub it, pat it. She slid away from me.

  I had the idea of putting water on my face. If my not crying was troubling Tilda then rubbing tap tears on might placate her. I said I needed to go to the toilet. She said, ‘Do what the hell you like.’

  She flicked TV channels again. A Hogan’s Heroes rerun came on with a burst of canned laughter, which Tilda took personally. She switched the set off. ‘Why are they so fucking happy?’

  I closed the bathroom door and leant against it a few seconds, grateful for the peace. I dug water into my eye sockets, creating a damp, bloodshot appearance. Not so damp that water would stream falsely down, but damp enough to look like raw feeling. I tilted my head back to look as if I was trying to stop tears from welling. I stepped into the lounge.

  Tilda was sitting cross-legged in front of the TV. She had turned it on again and was watching a newsbreak. She held her hand up. ‘Shsh.’ She pointed to the screen to a girl in jodhpurs mounting a pony. I sniffed and cleared my throat to keep my acting going but got the shush treatment. Three years ago the girl had been given two months to live, and look at her now—happy and healthy; her cancer, to the amazement of doctors, was gone.

  ‘Gone,’ cheered Tilda. ‘Gone.’ She leapt to her feet, skipped a few strides and flung her arms around my neck. She kissed me with such butting suddenness my top lip was squashed. She had never been so exhilarated in her life, she cheered. All this talk of Roff’s, this cancer talk, his social-issues jabber, the gloom and fear and panic of it all, and there was a little girl who was expected to die and instead was riding her pony to Sydney for charity. ‘Don’t you think it’s exciting?’

  The water was drying tightly around my eyes. My performance
was past its peak. Tilda skipped and laughed as if all her woes had vanished and her lumps had gone into remission by television. ‘Don’t you think it’s wonderful? What’s wrong with your eyes?’

  ‘It’s the emotion. It’s all coming out.’

  ‘Don’t be like that. Don’t spoil this moment. How can you be upset when there’s such hope from that little girl? It’s like her story is my story, or will be. You should be happy for me.’

  ‘I am. I am.’ I switched to smiling. Tilda held her arms out for me to lift her and dance a triumphant jig.

  Chapter 38

  Dear honesty box,

  With regards to the president-servant principle. From that night on its balance became different. The president side was tilted towards Tilda. I was more servant now—it was part of her privileges. No great discord was created by the tilting, not at first anyway. In fact, quite the opposite: I felt privileged myself. I felt important, called upon in someone’s hour of desperation. To be used in the service of someone’s very survival, to have purpose of that magnitude is to have life beyond our own needs: a greater, nurturing cause.

  I patrolled her hospital bed once the operation was done. I ensured blankets were over her toes and not so heavily as to cut circulation. I ran ice around her lips to ease her thirst. I read her the newspaper, the arts section if there was one on the day, or else a few pages of the book she’d brought for comfort reading: The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes. I brushed her hair so it haloed her on the pillow. When food was allowed I cut the crusts off her sandwiches.

  I dared not touch the tube draining blood from her wound but I did make sure her smock covered it so she didn’t take fright. When Roff paid a visit I was suitably servile. I stood up and almost bowed to his reverent presence. He had the habit of not looking directly at the face of the person he was speaking to. He peeked under Tilda’s sheets to check his handiwork. I offered to step outside the screen as he inspected her but no, he said, he wanted me to stay: ‘We’ll have a little talk in a second.’ This had a forbidding ring to me, as if he had grave news to impart.

  It wasn’t news—it was advice. He studied the tube and said, ‘Good drainage,’ and asked if I would take a seat on the end of Tilda’s bed. The operation had been a success, he reported. The cancer was no longer there. He was confident he had got it all. Tilda whispered, ‘Thank you. Thank you,’ though the effort made her wound hurt.

  ‘Now,’ Roff said to me, as if I was his patient’s translator. ‘A few things. In a day or two someone will come, one of our lady helpers, and she will have a mirror. She and Tilda will look at the scar together. It’s important this is done as soon as possible so Tilda gets used to the sight of it.’

  He put his hands in his pockets and strolled towards me. ‘And may I give you this advice…’

  ‘Colin,’ I prompted him.

  ‘Oh yes, Colin. On the anecdotal evidence we have, it’s important for Tilda to show you the scar before too much time goes by. Don’t let it drift or it becomes dreaded and affects her wellbeing.’

  ‘Understood.’

  Tilda was muttering ‘Thank you, thank you’ sleepily. Roff nodded his pleasure at her gratitude. He reached down and stroked her hand, her right hand. He stared at the hand, at where a needle was taped to her vein connecting her to a baggy drip with a spirit-level bubble of clear liquid in it. He became agitated. He tugged his cuffs out from under his suit sleeves. ‘Nurse,’ he said with a raised voice. ‘Nurse.’ He flicked the bed screen apart. ‘Nurse.’

  He lowered his voice when the nurse arrived, spoke very quietly, but my cocked ear picked up the gist of his complaining. The needle should not be in Tilda’s right hand, it should be in her left. Her right side was the ‘removal zone’ side. ‘For heaven’s sake, did you not check this? It’s basic. Basic.’

  He ordered the needle be changed this instant.

  The nurse, chin tucked down, cowed by Roff’s gentlemanly anger, hurried past me with a cool ‘Excuse me’ and did as he commanded.

  I leant out of the screen. ‘Is there a problem?’ I asked Roff.

  ‘Nothing. A minor matter.’

  Fair enough, I thought. It seemed logical to me that the more status someone had the more minor matters would annoy them. I said as much to the nurse out of sympathy for her.

  She had rust-red hair, a thick stack of curls. This ward, 7D West, was not a red hair ward, or a brown hair ward or black. All the patients were blonde. All had breast cancer, all were thin. Not sick-thin but fit-thin, as if they ran miles and ate properly. The blondeness was of the same yellow shading as Tilda’s. In eight beds, eight women, none related but so similar. I almost said something to the nurse, a slip of the tongue about coincidence—‘Is there a breast cancer look?’ But I could tell she was too stern a breed for appreciating whimsy.

  Chapter 39

  It is an honour to be taken into someone’s wounds. Their real wounds, not their emotional gripes. Wounds that cut the body until it is less whole, less human and no amount of healing can make it complete again. To be taken into someone’s wounds is to be trusted to recognise that only their flesh has been ruined. It may be revolting to behold, this wound, but it has not wrecked the rest of them.

  I was about to be taken into Tilda’s wound. I was about to witness the ultimate nakedness. I waited outside our bathroom door until I was called. We’d been back in Scintilla four days. It was time to get my first viewing over with. She told me to wait until she showered and gathered her courage. She warned me that her right side was like a breast without a nipple at the moment. This was because swelling remained on her. The idea of that swelling pleased her. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the swelling never went? A nippleless swelling is better than flatness and poky ribs showing.

  I tapped on the frosted glass door. ‘Your audience awaits.’ I could see Tilda’s shadow moving about in there, shuffling this way and that. I supposed she was deciding where best to stand.

  ‘Okay,’ she called. ‘I’m ready. Careful what you say, won’t you?’ A nervous giggle parenthesised the request. She whistled a few tuneless bars. I could have been inspecting a new outfit she’d bought. I finger-brushed my fringe out of the way like I was going on a date. The death-awe returned to me. Death was about to show me its true face, the face of the god of disfigurement. I was determined to look it in the eye and not blink or turn my head or gasp. I may not be a crier when it’s required of me, but, honesty box, this was my finest hour of intimacy.

  I turned the knob and eased the door open, making the steam mist swirl out. Tilda had wrapped a towel around herself like a long bra. Her wet hair was furled in a bob and she had brushed blueness onto her eyelids. She smiled with a mouth of purple lipstick, though I could tell it was more scared grimace than smiling. She stood up straight and adjusted her bony shoulders back and forth, unsure of their correct setting for this occasion. Forward made her bust too concave, she said; the other way made it stick out too falsely. ‘Here goes, then.’ She closed her eyes, held her breath and let the towel drop.

  It was just as she had described: a breast without a nipple. And yet not exactly a breast. More a bulge of pale pink skin with a thin scar running horizontally through it. Darker pink where the scar stopped in the middle of her chest. Whiter pink where it trailed into her underarm. The effect of the scar and the bulge together was like a pair of large lips pursed and permanently sealed from ever parting. I said as much to Tilda and she looked down and felt across herself. ‘Lips?’

  ‘Lips.’

  ‘Yes. I can feel lips all right.’ She remarked how the pain was so slight, the skin so smooth and so firm and so silky. ‘Lips. Come and kiss them. Come and kiss them.’

  I thought she was testing me, wanting me to prove I was still attracted to her. Yet there was no mistaking the other meaning in her voice, the groan which was caught in her throat and making her gulp. It was one of her usual pre-congressing manneris
ms.

  I did not hesitate. I placed my hands on her hips, bent down and kissed. I started at the centre of the scar, kissed along to the right of it, then back along to the left. I kissed into her armpit’s bristle. The taste there was soap and cotton. The scar’s taste was faintly metallic, the kind that blood leaves when a fresh scab is healing.

  She turned around to have me kiss while she watched in the mirror. Was she checking if I was doing it under sufferance? I was not doing it under sufferance. There was ecstasy in this wound-kissing. It was the more factor making a comeback.

  Chapter 40

  In the city you are anonymous. You can walk down the street and no one says hello. Country life is a different proposition. You can’t turn a corner and not be recognised, greeted, watched. Which is fine if you want to live in public. But what if you want to avoid people’s eyes?

  Tilda wanted to avoid them after the cakes and casseroles began arriving. There they were at the back door with well-wishing messages:

  Our thoughts are with you, Tilda. From the Croft family (your neighbours over the rear fence). Hope you have a speedy return to good health.

  Thinking of you at this time—Pamela from the bakery. P.S. These Neenish tarts were made with my hand. They are not bought ones.

  Hector and Filipa Vigourman left a tin-foil parcel of quiche. We have both had family members touched by your illness. We know what you are going through. The Lord only gives burdens to those who can bear them.

  How did anyone know? ‘Have they been spying?’ Tilda railed. ‘Has this town had its eyes pushed to our keyholes?’ How could she walk down the street now? They’ll be looking at her for defects. She always liked getting looks from men. She guaranteed being titless would disqualify her from being perved at.