Please
Page 11
That sounds a paradise few could fail to choose.
With fingers entwined we’ll find relief from the preachers.
I set off down the hill to the campsite. The lights from the caravans below glowed soft yellow. Seagulls called–wild, haunting–and music boomed from the clubhouse. A plane was taking off from the airport on the other side of the island, a steep trajectory over the mountains and out towards the sea, tilting gracefully like a gull, its lights winking in the dusk.
But I can look back and say quite peacefully and cheerfully how silly I was. No, no, I don’t want that time to come hither.
Hooch was sitting outside talking into her mobile when we got back, with her ledger open in front of her. She stopped talking and switched off the phone as we walked past and looked at us with no expression.
‘The fridge is fine with that clip holding it shut,’ Georgina said to her. ‘Thank you.’
‘That’s what it’s for,’ said Hooch.
Georgina stopped at her table and said, ‘Do you ever miss home, Hooch? It must be a long season.’
‘Five and a half months. It’s what I do. It’s very cold at home. Scotland is very cold. I like to be outside, like.’
‘Did you do the same sort of work in Scotland?’
‘No.’
‘What did you used to do?’
‘I was a social worker.’
Georgina nodded and followed the rest of us into our caravan.
‘She’s a miserable bitch,’ she whispered to me.
‘What’s a social worker?’ said Felicity.
‘It’s like a life coach for poor people,’ I said.
We heard her turn her CD player on, Coward’s words drifting over again, as if she were using the songs to communicate something to us.
And when you’re so blue,
Wet through
And thoroughly woe-begone,
Why must the show go on?
I was carrying a tray of drinks back from the bar when I noticed that the arm with the situation was hanging down much longer than the other one. We sat in silence and watched the Little Mr and Miss Universe competition. Jamie had dressed himself up as Tarzan, Felicity was a fairy, and after the competition they danced on the stage to the latest summer disco hits, which involved regimented dance routines known by every kid. Georgina and I watched the gyrating children and hummed along to the cheesy pop. We drank a carafe of cheap red wine and I said I wanted some more and she said, yes, so we drank more. If I were honest I wanted to be drunk so I would be sure to get to sleep. I didn’t want to lie there worrying about my arm.
Hooch was outside in her hammock, drinking a glass of something amber coloured and reading the life of George Best by the light of the caravan. She was smoking a cigarette. Coward sang out from the machine:
Go slow, Johnny,
Maybe she’ll come to her senses
If you’ll give her a chance.
People’s feelings are sensitive plants.
I mumbled, ‘Evening, Hooch,’ and a grunt came back.
Inside the caravan I wrapped a towel around the affected area and went to bed. I had a vague idea that the newly exposed flesh might need protecting or that maybe the warmth would encourage it to grow back. I fell asleep and dreamt of diseased bodies and hideous limbless creatures.
The next day I sat up in bed and immediately unwrapped the towel. My arm flopped out and dangled down. It seemed to hang much lower than it had yesterday. I looked at my shoulder and saw that it was now attached by only a sliver of flesh, no thicker than a pencil. I was afraid to let this fragile-looking thread take the weight so I held the arm with my other arm and went and sat on the step of the caravan, nursing it like a baby. Fear came down like a cage. I wished I was at home. My own doctor, Dr Brazenose, would know what to do. These foreign doctors, maybe they weren’t so up to date. Or maybe it was some sort of Spanish condition. The doctor didn’t seem so surprised about it, after all.
I looked over at the dark windows of Hooch’s caravan. I could hear the faint murmur of her radio. When it wasn’t Noël Coward, she listened to the World Service–fat, plummy voices growling on and on about foreign uprisings, dysfunctional economies and obscure election results in former Soviet states. I heard Jamie and Felicity scuffling about and Jamie skipped over and jumped on my back. ‘Careful of my sore arm, darling,’ I said.
‘Let’s have a look. Have you still got a hole in it?’
‘No, it’s OK,’ I said. I didn’t want him to see it like this.
‘What time are we going to the water park?’ he said.
‘When Mum gets up. I’ll go and see if she’s awake.’
In the bedroom I shook Georgina. ‘Georgina, look at it now,’ I said ‘Look.’ I let the arm dangle down. I could still move it, although it did take a bit more effort, but it was now a good six inches longer than it should be.
She sat up and reached for her spectacles. When she put them on she gasped. ‘Oh my God, Roger, what did you do?’
‘I didn’t do anything.’
‘What did you do?’ she repeated. We both stared at the arm for a long time. Then she said, ‘Come here,’ and she hugged me. ‘Don’t worry. We’ll take you to the town. There’s a hospital there. A big one. They’ll know what to do.’
‘What if…?’ I said.
‘Don’t be stupid,’ she said. ‘That’s not going to happen, have you ever heard of that happening to anyone?’
I got into the shower and gave myself a really good wash ahead of the hospital visit. I was using the affected arm to wash under my other arm when the situation got much, much worse. There was a kind of twang at my shoulder and the arm fell away, the upper part hitting the shower floor, the hand falling to rest against my thigh. ‘Shit,’ I cried. ‘Fuck. Oh no.’ I looked at the shoulder, expecting to see blood. But there was nothing. I stood with the shower gushing and steam gathering around me. I bent and gripped the arm by its hand. Then I rested it on the floor and with my good hand examined the place from where it had fallen. It was completely smooth, as if the arm had never been there. I bent down and felt the severed end of the detached arm too and it was smooth as well.
I turned off the shower. How was I going to explain this to Georgina and the kids? Waves of guilt and despair swept through me.
I wrapped the arm up in a towel and set off across the site to the main gates. I walked and walked, holding the arm close to my chest, tears burning my cheeks. I walked for about an hour but eventually the heat got too much and I collapsed on to a bench. I unwrapped the arm and looked at it. It didn’t look any paler than the rest of my body. I touched it. It didn’t feel cold, like a dead thing; it felt the same as before. I interlocked the fingers of my good hand with the fingers of my severed arm and sat there. Cars swished by on their way to the beach. I closed my eyes against the scorching sun.
Some time later there was an angry crump of gravel followed by Georgina’s voice, sounding tight and clenched. ‘Roger! We’ve been looking for you everywhere.’
I climbed into the car sheepishly. ‘It’s my arm,’ I said. Georgina looked at the swaddled bundle then the stump at my shoulder. ‘Oh, Roger, grow up. Are you ill?’
‘Well, no.’
‘Well, if you’re not ill you’re just going to have to get on with it, aren’t you? Sometimes your self-indulgence is so pathetic. Don’t ruin everyone’s holiday over this.’
Felicity and Jamie were quiet all the way back. But I heard Jamie say quietly to Felicity, ‘Dad’s arms fell off,’ and I heard Felicity giggle.
Hooch was standing outside our caravan when we got back.
‘You’ve got a blockage,’ she said, accusingly.
‘Oh,’ said Georgina.
‘It’s affecting the others on the row so I will have to fix it, like. Do you mind if I turn you off for half an hour?’
‘Well, I was just about to cook,’ Georgina said.
Hooch stared at her, unsmiling. ‘I’m doing my job,’ she said.
Till you know that you know
Your stars are bright for you,
Right for you.
We didn’t go down to the bar that night. Jamie and Felicity went to the playground on their own. They were upset to see the arm so I agreed to keep it wrapped up while they were around. But I kept it near by so I could see where it was. We sat outside and drank wine and looked at the stars. You could see Venus. Mercury too. When it was time to go to bed, I unwrapped the arm, pulled back the covers and laid it on the sheet on my side of the bed. Georgina looked at it in horror. ‘What are you doing?’
‘I’m going to bed,’ I said.
‘With that?’ she said.
‘But it’s me. It’s my arm.’ I didn’t want to be parted from the limb. I had a vague notion that during the night it might rejoin my body in the same way it had strangely become detached. I got in next to it and cuddled it close. A cold, clammy hot-water bottle.
‘If you are sleeping with that arm then I am sleeping on the sofa.’
‘Fine,’ I said, and rolled over.
The next evening Georgina told me that she was going to stay with Hooch for a few nights. ‘This…you know…this arm thing…it’s a bit…eeeuch. You know how I am with snails and things like that.’
‘Hooch?’
‘Just till the end of the holiday.’
‘I can’t imagine you staying with Hooch.’
‘You can’t imagine me? You don’t imagine me, I’m just there.’
We looked at each other for a few moments in silence.
‘Snails?’ I said.
My face burned with shame and anger as I watched her drag her suitcase through the gravel to Hooch’s caravan. Hooch was at the table doing her ledger and she didn’t even look up as Georgina lifted the case up the step and into Hooch’s home.
Georgina stayed with Hooch for the last three days of the holiday. We were about to set off for the airport when Georgina discovered I had packed the arm into my carry-on luggage.
‘Roger, I can’t believe you still have that. You can’t take it home with us.’
‘Well, I’m not leaving it here. What would I do? Chuck it in a skip?’
‘You know what they said at the hospital. They couldn’t reattach it. The nerves were all dead, like it had never been attached. You’re so sentimental, Roger. It’s an arm, that’s all. The human spirit is not present in that piece of flesh. There’s nothing of you, the man I love, in that arm.’
But I was adamant. ‘The arm comes with me,’ I said. ‘I don’t care what anyone says.’
At the airport it showed up on the X-ray and they took me into a special room. The police became involved. It took a long time, but eventually they were made to understand that there was no crime involved. But they wouldn’t let me take it on the plane. They spent some time deciding on its classification. It wasn’t a dead body, so what was it? They eventually decided it was meat.
‘My arm is not raw meat,’ I said.
After some discussion they let me take the arm away with a promise to return the next day with the right paperwork, and Georgina stalked off to the boarding gate without looking back, pulling behind her Felicity and Jamie, who twisted their necks to stare at me, eyes wet, faces red, lips trembling.
Hooch was standing outside her caravan with a suitcase. She was waiting for a taxi to the airport. She told me, in blurting, breathless sentences, all about Georgina and her. I pushed her inside the caravan, and from that point everything went badly.
But now it was all going to be all right. I stopped on the hill and looked down at Hooch’s caravan. Empty. People come, and people go, then disappear. That’s about it really, that’s all you can say. I took a swig of water, felt giddy as if with the first touches of flu. Has the Perrier gone straight to my head or is life sick and cruel instead?
Hooch’s caravan still smelt of Georgina. I made tea, and went outside and sat in the hammock. I picked up Hooch’s mobile and listened to the messages. The light in number 46 was flickering, the shower tray in number 49 was leaking, there was a smell of gas in number 94. I would attend to these problems the next day. I picked up Hooch’s book. A page was folded over a third of the way in. Two-thirds of a story she would never hear.
I looked over the site to the mountains. I could see an eagle high in the sky, slowly circling at its great height. I wondered whether it could see me.
A room with a view and you and no one to give advice.
That sounds a paradise few could fail to choose.
I thought of Georgina and Felicity and Jamie. One day I would go to the beach again and build another sand palace. It would help me remember that once there was more than just us. Still, I am better off here, in the sun. Nothing ever seems so bad when the sun is shining. I looked over to the box where my arm lay. Later I would take it out, sit with it in my lap again, as I did most nights. Otherwise I would forget. It would forget.
I want to remember every minute, always, always to the end of my days.
People had moved in to the next-door caravan, our old caravan. They kept talking to me, trying to get me to go out with them, down to the bar, to be sociable. To share. They once asked me what I was holding, what was in the bundle, what was so precious. Was it a baby? they joked. They were worried about me. I ignored them. I like to be alone. I want the freedom and I want the guile. I clicked on Hooch’s CD. I won’t share, I won’t. Some things are private. So don’t worry. I won’t share you. I won’t. I won’t.
We’ll bill and we’ll coo and sorrow will never come,
Or will it ever come
Always torn, always thinking what if,
of possibilities, of the way things could have been
if only
I’ll see you somewhere
I’ll see you sometime
Darling…
Oscillate Wildly
Alison MacLeod
I loved the high-energy silliness of the title. It’s like some surrealist slogan demanding we live life fully. I also loved the homage of a pun on Oscar Wilde. The song itself is a rare instrumental, all coolness and melancholy-very haunting-until it suddenly lifts off into something joyous, something big. I wanted to write a story that took that kind of running leap-a sort of tribute to someone I knew who was particularly good at running leaps.
Many years after his great-uncle laid the solid round of it in his hand, he would think of the carving. In the stillness of near-death, as the nurse pressed the sponge to his lips and dribbled water over his tongue, he’d see in his mind’s eye the creamy white stone gleaming on his desk beneath the skylight. His fingertips would remember the broken edge where the vandal’s hammer struck all those years ago. He’d spare a thought for the poor, notorious penis that had been severed with the blow and rested now, inert and foreshortened, on its cushion of testicles. Were he able to move his mouth, he would have smiled a final time at the comic vulnerability of those stone genitals, naked atop a pile of utility bills-his Great-Uncle Gaston’s erstwhile paperweight and, now, for a brief while longer, his.
In those moments, when time forgot to breathe, he sensed every detail of his, literally, fleeting life with a radiant clarity. He did so in spite of the injections of diamorphine-of sweet, merciful heroin-that his brain now required to forget the tumour pain and to bypass the sensation that something, an animal, was tearing into his gut.
On the stairs to his room, the voices of his life lapped at the edges of him. He heard his ex-wife Shelley’s muffled dramatics through the floorboards and thin rug. He heard the nurse’s spoon stirring the brown sugar crystals at the bottom of her mug. He heard the bass line of his neighbours’ music reverberating through their shared wall. He heard the tight, compressed breathing of Eoin, his brother, as he turned the pages of the Independent beside his bed. He heard his lover, Abi, turn in her broken sleep on the floor near his
deathbed. He heard the slow shuffle of his elder daughter’s grief in the room, and the bracelets of his younger daughter jingling with an energy, an angry restlessness, she couldn’t contain. And, twice an hour, he heard the trains hurtle past the nearby crossing, loud as avenging angels at the dead-end of his street. He was fifty-two.
He had expected a heart attack. His doctor had explained that tumours need blood; that, in time, there wouldn’t be blood enough for him and them both. He had imagined himself reading at his desk as the ghostly boot-blow was dealt to his chest, and Abi or one of the girls finding him, upright, in his black jeans and green pullover, resigned, gone, but OK. He hadn’t expected to wake, without actually waking, to cold, soaked sheets below him; he hadn’t expected the sensation of a catheter being threaded through his penis. He wouldn’t have believed that he, he who’d always been so able to turn a phrase, would some day communicate his final, urgent thoughts in a code of stuttering eyebrows and eyelids.
Nor would he ever have imagined, thank God, the agony of his body as it was rotated every five hours, day and night, at Shelley’s insistence–she had arrived after twenty years with clinking bottles of wine and a horror of bedsores. (He would have laughed if the joke hadn’t been, so inescapably, on him.)
More than anything, he would never have dreamed that his body was capable of such stillness.
So this was that bleak fate he’d believed would never be his: a cancer coma.
The brightness of the room seeped through his eyelids. How many days had passed like this? Flies buzzed and thudded against the skylight’s pane. Abi. Was she still in the room?
Then he felt her hands on his feet, rubbing the soles. ‘I promise,’ she’d replied months before. ‘I’ll be with you. If it’s humanly possible, I’ll be with you.’ And he’d felt his love for her would burst the banks of his chest.