I opened my eyes and turned off the tap. What I thought was the trickle of water was more echoes from the road outside; a very young child's laughter. Late, wasn't it, for babies? But what did I know? It didn't matter.
I'd been fretting so much over the why of Tamara's actions that I'd neglected the where. And both avenues of thought had offered me an in: taxis. How else would she leave the village, especially if she had a few cases with her?
Quarter of an hour later I was on the phone, a list of the taxi firms - three of them - in the immediate vicinity. I knew it might be a long shot that any of them would still have a log of the actual phone call Tamara would have made, but there was a chance the drivers themselves would remember picking her up, especially if she was distraught. A handsome woman going to pieces. People remembered that.
The first number produced a dead tone. Maybe they'd gone out of business. The second firm I called, contrary to my suspicion, had a log that went back as long as a year; neither Tamara's mobile number, nor the B&B's, were on their records. I considered the possibility that she had called from somewhere else, a restaurant for example, but she only ever went out to restaurants with me, and anyway, it would have been difficult for the hospital to contact her beyond the numbers that existed on my person at the time of the accident. Despite my fears that she had abandoned me straight away, logically it didn't wash. She would have come to see me, if only to gauge how destroyed I was before bailing out. I stuck with the date of the hit-and-run.
The third taxi firm had no records at all. 'I'm just a one-man outfit,' he said. 'One man, one car, one phone.'
I tried to describe Tamara to him but it was piss in the wind.
'Look, mate,' he said. 'I'm busy. They say we're coming out of recession, but it feels to me like I'm still up to my neck in it. So if you don't mind, I've got to clear the line for all those punters who aren't about to call.'
I was about to put the phone down but had a thought. 'Okay, I'll book a taxi,' I said. 'Now, if you would. Take me to the A&E in Ipswich.'
He was a hefty guy in his mid-forties. I knew he was hefty before I even saw him, because he sounded his horn three times from the cab before coming to the door and giving it a weighty knock. He was back in his driver's seat by the time I'd hobbled to the door and he wouldn't look me in the eye then. Guilt at rushing an invalid along. Guilt at not being there to help him into his seat. He wore a glossy moustache and a side-parting. Little white pinch marks on the bridge of his nose showed me he'd just taken his glasses off. You become a regular Sherlock Holmes when you've little else left in life beyond observation.
'Please,' I said, as he threw the gearstick into first. 'Hang on a sec.'
'You do want to go to the A&E, don't you?'
'Yes, but it's no rush. I'm not having an emergency.'
'You look as if you have, and not that long ago.'
Another Sherlock Holmes. We could have opened a practice. 'Never mind about that,' I said, and I took out my wallet. Already his expression was of mild regret at accepting this job.
'This is the woman I was telling you about on the phone,' I said. 'I really need to find her. It would help me enormously, more than you can imagine, if you could tell me if you picked her up.'
He sighed and held his hand out for the picture. I felt a momentary pang when I handed it over, as if in doing so I was somehow casting Tamara away. I fidgeted nervously, wanting the photograph back all the while he was wiping the grease off his mitts all over her.
'This is like in the movies, isn't it?' he said. His piggy eyes sucked her in. Tamara had been wearing a tight white T-shirt on a cold day when I took the picture. I swallowed it down and waited.
'You know, it's difficult. I pick up attractive girls like this all the time. Friday, Saturday nights, you know?'
Yeah, I thought. Yeah, right. Here we go.
'But this one, this one I'm not sure about. I can't quite remember...' He was rubbing his chin now. I saw black hoops of sweat in the hollow beneath his bingo wings.
'This is just like the films, isn't it?' I said.
He thinned his lips into a sheepish what can you do? kind of smile. I took out my wallet and withdrew ten pounds.
'She's ten pounds important to you, is she?'
I took out a twenty as well. He pocketed the notes and went back to the photograph, frowning, rubbing his chin.
'For fuck's sake,' I said.
'There's no need for that.' He presented the photograph back to me, flicked out between two fingers. 'Yes, I remember her. Of course I remember her. She was in tears.'
My tongue thickened; my throat narrowed. I wanted to pull him near to me, see if I could smell her perfume on him. She had sat in this car. Tamara might have been sitting where I sat now. I pressed my hand against the upholstery.
'Where did you take her?' I managed.
'The hospital. Same one you're going to now. I take it she was coming to see you? This was months ago.'
'Over six months,' I said. I placed the photograph back in my wallet and tucked it safely away from him. He kept his eyes on my pocket, as if he could still see the outline of her through my jeans. I knew how he felt; she was like that. She left an impression. 'And then what?'
'And then what, exactly? I don't know. I went off and had a pie, read the papers, took a guy to the airport. You know. Same old, same old.'
'I mean, you didn't wait for her? You didn't take her back?'
'Didn't take her back, no. But then, by the looks of you, it wasn't likely to be a quick visit. No grapes and chocs for you, I'd imagine.'
'You didn't take her back at all? Later? I mean, hours later? Days?'
'Nope.'
'I don't have any more money, other than enough to pay for this trip. We could stop at the bank...'
He held up his hand, nervous now. Perhaps he realised that what he'd done was less than chivalrous. 'It's all right. I don't want any money...'
Any more, you mean.
'... I didn't take her back, no. Not that day, not ever. I haven't seen her since. There are other cab firms, you know. I'd remember having her in the car. She's a handsome woman, that one. A special catch. You lucky swine.'
I could have punched him, but I would have set my rehabilitation back weeks. Instead, I pulled on the door lever.
'Hey, what about my fare?'
I unfolded myself, gritting teeth, clenching fists. 'Like you said,' I grunted. 'There are other cab firms.'
He stepped on the gas and gave me the Vs as he tore away. Any satisfaction I had in wasting his time was short-lived: I was wasting my time too.
I waited another twenty minutes for a different taxi firm to send a driver round. I showed him the photograph too, before we set off, but drew a blank. No bribe needed this time. We travelled the 35 miles or so to Ipswich in silence. I was glad he preferred quiet, although I could have done without the smell of stale cigarette smoke. At the A&E entrance he wished me well and I grabbed hold of that, guarded it hard and fast against the suspicion that this was already a wild goose chase and that Tamara had simply called a different cab firm, or thumbed a ride, or simply vanished into thin air like the vapour from an open bottle of the perfume she liked to wear.
Inside the hospital, I was rapidly shunted from the counter when it was clear that there was nothing freshly wrong with me - Can't you see there are sick people waiting to be treated? - and told to talk to someone at the main reception. Once I was there, a security guard with thighs for arms and industrial chimney stacks for legs peered down at me from the shadow beneath his security guard's visor as I tried to make myself understood to the receptionist.
Eventually she suggested I go to the ward where I had lived for half a year. I had to ask her where it was. In the end, one of the porters, perhaps taking pity on me, bustled me into a wheelchair and pushed me what seemed like miles through a bland chemical-smelling labyrinth. He helped me out of my chair when we'd reached a far outpost of the hospital. This was Death Alley. This was th
e place where plugs were pulled. For the first time it occurred to me that I should perhaps be grateful for Tamara's leaving when she did. Otherwise I might not be here now. She could have said the word if the doctors believed there was no way back for me. I'd have been a flatline. A black mark on a chart no longer needed.
I shuffled to the ward, suddenly feeling worse than I had since I emerged from the coma. Was that hospitals, exerting their malign presence, or just fatigue? It had been a long day. I'd done more travelling around today than in many, many months.
Another desk. Another sour-faced woman behind it pushing a pen, filing a document, wishing she was anywhere but here, having to talk to this denuded old-before-his-time wreck of a man who looked as though he should be given a permanent bed in this place.
I was about to ask her I don't know what... I thought this would be easy before I'd realised what 'this' was, and I was fumbling again for the photograph of Tamara when she said, her voice flat, her face somehow even sourer: 'Hello Paul. It's lovely to see you.'
Barbara took me through to the lounge area and made me tea. She'd built up a head of steam now and there was no point in trying to make myself understood. I was now, at least, in the company of someone who had looked in on me while I... slept, probably most days. It was a relief of sorts, though I desperately wanted to find out what had happened to Tamara. I felt closer to some kind of resolution than I had in ages.
She handed me the tea. She was talking about Angela and Catriona and Fay, nurses I did not know, who had brushed my hair and wiped my arse and chatted to me while I withered on the vine. I took the cup. It rattled in its saucer. I cried.
I liked the sour face, I decided. It did not let up. Even when she was trying to bring me round, coax a smile out of me. The tea was hot and sweet and it reminded me that I hadn't eaten anything since breakfast. Toast was offered. I gobbled it down. I was this close to asking if I could move back in.
'What's the trouble with you?' she asked me. 'Why haven't you been back before now to say thank you for everything we did for you?'
I blew out my cheeks and ummed and ahhed, but she punched my knee. 'I'm kidding with you, you silly badger,' she said. 'I could tell, even when you were lying on that bed, yawning and dribbling away, that you were soft in the head. And a pilot. Why would I want to get on one of those massive planes knowing that they might have soft shites like you up front flying the buggers?'
It worked. I managed a little chuckle and felt better for it. I stared into the remnants of my tea and said, 'I'm trying to find my girlfriend.'
'Your girlfriend?' Barbara said, as if she couldn't believe I'd have such a thing. 'Tall girl. Dark hair. Olive skin.'
'Yes,' I said, and I was so excited the cup started rattling again. 'Do you know where she is?'
She shook her head. She seemed confused. 'We were all waiting for an invitation to the wedding.'
'What? You've lost me.'
'While you were in your coma, the girl... what was her name, now? Right, Tamara, well she wouldn't stay away from this place. We ended up putting you in a different bed, one with a pull-out cot underneath it so that she could stay with you through the night.'
'But she's gone. She left me. I'm trying to track her down.'
Barbara suddenly looked as though she wanted to be back at her desk, doing things with paper clips, fielding calls, calling for a crash team. 'Oh, God, Paul. I'm sorry. Sometimes, you know... the pressure. The day-to-day grind. The not knowing. It can wear you out. I've seen people in this hospital turned into emotional wrecks. What's the word? Wraiths. They come in all hopeful and determined and in no time at all they're grey and hopeless, and I'm talking about visitors here. Especially coma patient visitors. You're waiting for something that might never happen.'
'How long did she visit for?'
'You were in here from the April to the October. She was a fitting in your room for maybe a whole month. We just thought she'd drained her batteries. Not for a moment did we suspect... Look, she showed real devotion. You don't often find it, even in long-married couples. She was a puppy by your side. She talked to you. She held your hand.'
The pain of tears that could not come. I shook my head, trying to force it away. 'But then she left me,' I said. 'She left me.'
'I don't know what to say,' she said, spreading her hands. The sour face was gone now. I caught a hint of what she must look like when she was off duty, with friends, family. She was kind and I was grateful to her for looking after me. 'We talked about it. It seemed... unlike her. She didn't seem the quitting type. But, circumstances change. People change. I don't know what I can do.'
My mind was full of ideas. Maybe security had footage of her on the CCTV. Maybe someone talked to her about the futility of it all and she had let slip where she was going, who she was turning to. But Barbara told me to stop it.
'Maybe she just needs time,' she said. 'You've been gone for six months. She thought she was going to lose you. To all intents and purposes, you went to sleep and then woke up again. It might have felt like moments to you. But you've carved a great hole in that woman. She needs to mend, just like you. Give her a chance. Give her time. A girl like that, the way she behaved at the start... people like that don't just turn off. She'll get in touch.'
She might have said all of that, or I might have imagined much of it. It was everything I'd hoped and feared she might say, but it was what was expected of her. She was in the mending business. I still didn't feel better about things.
I said hello to other faces, people who knew me better than I knew them, made empty promises to keep in touch and let them know how things were going. They and I were forgotten as soon as we turned our backs on each other. I made my way back to the exit. Shortly before I reached it, I heard footsteps behind me.
'Need a lift home?'
Ruth always put the heating on in her car for longer than was necessary. After twenty minutes it was stifling. I wanted to open the window, but the electric control on my side was busted. She had all the power and I didn't want to ask her; although it was hot, there was frost in this car too.
We got back on the A-road and she let me have it.
'What do you think you're playing at, Paul?' she demanded. Her eyes alternated between the road in front and, via the rearview mirror, the road behind. There was a weird, concomitant feeling that nothing in this car therefore existed; she didn't look at me once. It was as if she were rehearsing lines from a play. It kind of helped. I didn't say anything.
'I'm trying to help you. We're all trying to help you. Why don't you believe me?'
'I do believe you.'
'About Tamara, I mean.'
'I doesn't matter what I believe. I have to find out for myself. I have to hear it from her. We sold our flat to be here. You don't just walk away from that kind of commitment. At the very least she'd want her share of the money.'
'You'd be best to just let her go and get on with your life. How much happiness could you have with her if she comes back to you? She left you. You wouldn't be able to bear her nipping out to the shops for fear of never seeing her again.'
I turned away to watch the traffic. 'That's not it,' I said. 'You obviously don't understand.'
'I'm not sure there's anything to understand, Paul.' A sigh. A tut. 'Look... I'm being unfair to you. I'm being selfish. I thought... I hoped...'
I turned back to her. The intensity was gone. She no longer shot looks at what was behind us. Now she was concentrating on what was ahead. Her look had softened. She seemed more like a lost girl. It was fascinating the way her emotions swept her, physically, from one end of the female spectrum to the other.
'You hoped what?' I asked, but I knew.
'I thought something might come of us.' Her voice changed completely. It might have been someone else now, in the car, magicked into her driving seat while I was looking the other way. She was all soft curves, her angles and arches and teeth concealed.
She'd been in to collect some of her things. She
was now, officially, on maternity leave. Not seeing her in her uniform was unusual. So was seeing her without her hair pinned up. A lot of those lines around her eyes were down to me.
'That's good to know,' I said. 'Really. I just need to put this to bed. I can't function.'
'It's not just me, either, although you've come to mean a lot to me. It's others in the village. They need you too.'
'To dispose of their dirty little secrets?'
'That's one way of putting it. But not every secret is dirty. There are some desperate people around, Paul. They can't organise their own lives. They can't... you know... forge a path.'
'They can't build their own bonfires? They can't lift their own bin lids?'
'Maybe not. Maybe it's about distancing yourself from something. Not getting your hands dirty with what's been soiling your mind for so long. You're a symbol, don't you think? A white knight.'
'I'm a sin eater,' I said. 'Do you really think burning Percy Filth's porn collection is going to cure him of his habit? No. He'll be back in the newsagent's tomorrow replenishing his stock. You know, I do this shitty thing for them, not for any recognition, but because it's there, it's something to do. You say they need me, but they don't give a fuck about me, about who is doing this for them. And I can tell you, the feeling's mutual.'
I saw her wince. She breathed deeply. Her face paled a little.
'You all right?' I asked.
'A little pain,' she said. 'It's fine. It's sitting in this position for too long. Junior is making it known that he's not happy.'
'That makes two of us,' I said, and regretted it. I saw her slump a little.
'I'm sorry,' I said. 'That was uncalled for. And it's not true. I was just being a smart-mouth.'
'It's all right,' she said. 'You've been through a lot. You feel free to speak your mind. I'm a nurse, you seem to forget. I can take all that and more. I've got skin thicker than a hippo's.'
Loss of Separation Page 10
