Corpsing

by Toby Litt

  I counted the square tiles in the ceiling.

  When I started listening again, the doctor was talking about my legs. Apparently I was going to have to do physiotherapy.

  ‘How long did she take to die?’ I asked.

  The doctor looked at me, realizing a lot of things all at once. He knew he shouldn’t lose his temper with me, so he went back to the beginning.

  ‘We estimate the time of her death to be approximately twenty minutes after the shooting.’

  ‘In the ambulance?’

  ‘We didn’t try moving her – she died in the restaurant.’

  ‘Were you there?’

  ‘No, I wasn’t.’

  ‘Have you ever been there?’

  ‘Um, no.’

  ‘Well, I wouldn’t recommend it as a dining experience.’

  He obviously didn’t feel this was a gag he had any right to laugh at.

  ‘After she died, she was brought here – to UCH. Then she was buried. It was a nice funeral, I hear.’

  ‘Did you ever see her?’

  ‘No. I didn’t. By the time she got here it was a matter for the pathologist.’

  ‘Mmm,’ I said, ‘brain matter.’

  ‘Perhaps we should discuss this later.’

  ‘Do you know if she said anything? If she said anything about me?’

  ‘To be honest, the injuries she sustained were so severe –’

  ‘You mean her head?’

  ‘Principally.’

  I smiled, I believe for the first time.

  ‘I like that – principally.’

  He went on.

  ‘The areas of her brain that dealt with speech were still physically intact. However, the shock must have been so great that I doubt she would have been capable of using them.’

  ‘Is that your professional opinion?’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘How long have you been a doctor?’

  ‘Twelve years.’

  ‘It would probably be a good idea to take you seriously, then.’

  ‘I’ll leave that up to you.’

  ‘You know, it’s funny. I’m sure I heard her saying bastard-bastard-bastard as I was dying.’

  ‘Given that you were in a room full of people who’d just seen a hitman shoot you, I’d say it’s quite likely one of them was calling him a bastard. You probably heard that.’

  ‘Lily was my girlfriend for two years. I know her voice.’

  ‘Well, maybe you weren’t in quite the best state –’

  ‘I did die, didn’t I?’

  ‘For about half a minute, yes. In the operating theatre.’

  ‘Tell me about the guy who shot us.’

  ‘I think I’d better leave that to the police.’

  10

  The police came next. They asked me question after question. My questions back to them went unanswered.

  Eventually, I found out that the hitman was now in jail. The way he had been caught, putting it together from what I’d read in the newspapers (my mother kept all the cuttings) and from what the police let slip, was actually quite stupid.

  Apparently, he’d arranged for some kid to stand outside Le Corbusier holding his bike while he went inside to do the job. This, he’d thought, would save him valuable getaway time afterwards. No need to unlock the bike, just take it from the kid who he’d paid to hold it. Of course, the boy wasn’t to know what was about to happen inside the restaurant. It seemed a sensible plan. However, this particular boy thought that the money the hitman was paying him wasn’t enough – so he decided to nick the bike instead. Unfortunately, his feet didn’t really reach the pedals. So when the hitman emerged, fresh from his crime, he found the boy and the bike gone. But when he looked fifty yards along the road, he saw the boy wobbling up to, then crashing into, the side of a black cab. The hitman sprinted down the street, becoming more conspicuous with every step. The police would have no shortage of witnesses to his mad run. He started shouting. More witnesses. The cab-driver got out of his vehicle to see if the bike had done any damage to his paintwork. The bike – a Cannondale Super-V Raven 4000 – was worth a couple of months of most people’s wages: including the cab-driver’s. This was the simple reason for the hitman’s pursuit. When the police later asked him whatever he was thinking of, running away from the commission of a serious crime and straight into a confrontation that would draw the attention of half the street, the hitman replied: ‘My bike is a Cannondale Super-V Raven 4000. You don’t just let some kid steal one of those. The kid was going to die, especially if it was damaged.’ ‘But you’d just shot someone,’ the police said. ‘To be honest,’ the bike-crazed hitman replied, ‘I forgot all about that the moment I saw my bike was gone.’ The damage to the black cab was minor but unmissable: the pedal had removed paint, leaving behind a silver-grey slash on the left rear wheel-arch, the handlebars had skidded along the side of the door. The bike itself was unharmed. The kid, though, was in the way of getting himself killed – if not by the hitman then by the cab-driver. By this time, traffic was building up behind the incident. Horns were being honk-HONKED. Heads were snaking out of driver’s-side windows. Expletives were escalating. As soon as the boy saw the hitman running towards him, he dropped the bike and took off. Again the handlebars slammed into the paintwork.

  ‘It’s mine,’ shouted the hitman as he arrived, hardly out of breath. ‘The bike is mine.’

  He tore it from the cab-driver’s hands.

  ‘That little cunt was stealing it,’ the hitman said.

  ‘Well, someone’s going to have to pay for this.’

  The cabbie’s thick finger touched the grey gash.

  ‘Yeah,’ said the hitman, mounting up. ‘You will.’

  Two of the drivers trapped in the cars behind had got out to give the cabbie some up-close-and-personal grief.

  ‘Come back!’ shouted the cab-driver.

  The hitman was riding rapidly along the pavement, the bike rocking from side to side between his legs.

  The cabbie swore, and didn’t bother chasing him.

  ‘Alright! Alright!’ he said to the two irate drivers.

  It was then that they heard the sirens, shortly followed by the gunfire.

  The hitman was now in Wandsworth Prison.

  I imagined him in his grey cell: doing squats and press-ups to keep those pecs and calves toned up, reading bike magazines and fantasizing about gear ratios, waking up from a nightmare about not having killed me – of having failed to do his job well enough.

  11

  Then there were two young women: Vicky, not her real name, and Anne-Marie.

  Vicky was the Victim Liaison Officer sent along by the police.

  She was a sweet, long-haired girl with a crumbly grandmother’s chin and brown-stained teeth. When she spoke it came out as half comic-cockney and half joke-yokel.

  ‘Any time you want to call me up – day or night, please do. We want to look after you, ahead of the trial.’

  You could tell that she hated her job, hated her clients and most of all hated herself – for not having whatever it took (guts, imagination, ambition) to get herself somewhere else.

  ‘Here’s my office number. And my mobile.’

  Altogether now – ahhhhh, for poor Vicky.

  I gave her a line about me wanting to confront the perpetrator of the crime of which I’d been the victim. In other words, when I finally got out of hospital, was there any way she could get me in to see the hitman. She said she thought it wouldn’t be possible. The police were still proceeding towards a prosecution. He would be the accused. I would be the chief witness. We weren’t exactly going to be allowed to get together and compare notes. I would have to wait until after he was convicted – ‘Are you sure of that?’ I said. ‘Convicted? We’re talking about the police here.’ – before I would be able to do any prison-visiting. But I wasn’t going to get anything out of him the police hadn’t already. What was he going to do? See me in a wheelchair and break down in contrite sobs, confess
all and name names? Not outside of a very bad movie. I did want to see him, though. I wanted to see what kind of person he was, how he spoke, how he moved, whether I’d’ve liked him if he hadn’t shot me.

  Anne-Marie was much more of a surprise.

  As far as I could remember, we’d been out for a couple of drinks together – and that was all. Yet here she was.

  Anne-Marie worked as a booker in Lily’s modelling agency, Select. She had the sad allure of a woman who spends her entire life assisting other women in the pursuit of a beauty she herself will never attain. Anne-Marie was nearly thirty. There were work-bags under her eyes, the corners of which were beginning to admit lines. Her teeth were the dull colour that Diet Coke stains ice cubes. She was beautiful, but not in the right way. If she’d been an actress, she’d have been perfect for young-and-damaged. As it was, damaged (really damaged) had yet to hit Cosmopolitan. If any harm was to be done to a model’s appearance, then it was to be done by the make-up artist – and was to be temporary.

  She seemed to be suffering from the fashion industry’s love of tragedy-by-association. She’d brought flowers and grapes and magazines, as if she couldn’t decide which.

  ‘How are you?’ she asked.

  Then went on to talk about nothing but Lily for half an hour.

  ‘I’ll give you a call when I get out,’ I said as she was going.

  ‘Mmm,’ she said, blushing. ‘That’d be lovely.’

  And another motive for her visit suddenly became apparent.

  In between, for light relief, bringing neither good nor bad news, there were the the nurses.

  ‘Aren’t I supposed to find you attractive?’ I said to the most lissome of all. ‘Isn’t that your job?’

  She gave me an article to read about masculine sexualization of neutrally designed female work-uniforms.

  ‘But I used to fancy schoolgirls, too,’ I said, when I’d let enough time go by to pretend I’d read the article.

  She gave me a pitying look.

  ‘That’s good,’ I said. ‘Could you do that again, but this time with your uniform off?’

  She gave me the finger, smilingly – on the cusp of offence.

  I rolled over on to my front and hiked down my pyjamas.

  ‘Anything you say, nurse,’ I said. ‘But don’t forget the lubrication.’

  By the time I looked round again, she’d left the room.

  I started crying.

  12

  Finally, there was Lily’s solicitor.

  He was a businesslike man in grey, obviously embarrassed by having to invent a bedside manner for himself.

  The fact that I was recovering evidently caused him no small discomfort: if his errand had been a mercenary raid in search of a death-bed signature he would have been far more sanguine.

  As it was, he gave me the news with a matter-of-factness that matched the cut of his hair, his suit, his fingernails.

  ‘In the weeks before she died, following what I understand was your permanent separation, Lily neither made a new will nor altered the conditions of the old. Therefore, according to the terms of the latest will she made, about a year and a half before she died, you are named as sole beneficiary. You will therefore inherit all her assets, moveables and property. That includes the flat in Notting Hill which firstly belonged to Lily’s parents and latterly to her mother alone. Lily’s mother, I must warn you, is particularly distressed about this. I foresee some small trouble on that issue. There is also in existence a small life-insurance policy on a pension she had recently taken out.’ Very unLily, I thought; then remembered I had persuaded her into it. He named some figures. ‘However, I have consulted with Lily’s parents – and they have indicated to me that among Lily’s possessions there are a number of items – photographs and the like – which would be of some considerable sentimental value to them. They have therefore asked me to intercede with you on their behalf, and to ask if you would allow them to take these items from her flat.’

  ‘I’ll think about it,’ I said.

  ‘Also, I think you should know, for the sake of accuracy, or perhaps I should say conscience, that I did receive a phonecall from Lily on the very day of her death indicating that she fully intended to alter her will – urgently, in fact. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to meet her that day – and we all know the rest. But, in the knowledge of this, you might consider how Miss Irish might have wanted things.’

  ‘How do you think she’d have wanted them?’

  ‘She gave me some indication that she had a preference as to which of her parents was to receive the legacy.’

  Her mother: Josephine.

  ‘And Lily was going to make a new will giving everything to her?’

  ‘That is what she led me to believe.’

  ‘Including the flat,’ I said.

  ‘Including the flat,’ he replied.

  ‘I’ll bear it in mind. Give Josephine the keys to the flat. Tell her she can take what she wants.’

  13

  Six months they gave me.

  For a set number of hours a day, the State told me it valued and loved me.

  However, I will spare you the tales of hospital-ward bonhomie; the horror stories and the at-the-time-hilarious jokes; the tributes to individual doctors and nurses; the deaths from trivial complaints and the recoveries from life-threatening illnesses; most of all, I’ll spare you the unremitting devotion of my mother.

  Count yourself lucky.

  Walking my first few faltering steps was every bit as schmaltzy as you’d expect. Like a complete girl, I cried. But I’m not going to get all TV movie on you. My motivational methods were a little unconventional. (The physio disapproved.) I thought that if I hated myself enough, I would probably be able to shunt myself around. And so, to encourage movement, I used to chant with each step: Cri Pple Cri Pple. I walked.

  My doctors bored me back to a semblance of a semblance of normality.

  Six months since I recovered consciousness. Six months, and then I and my hardly-needed-any-more wheelchair were sitting in the back of a black London cab.

  An interconnected group of strange-shaped metal objects were placed in my hands – these, I eventually recognized, were the keys to my flat.

  The driver had already been given my address.

  14

  Turn the key in the Yale. I remember being a child and not being tall enough to reach the sink to wash my hands. Push open the door. I remember going to a wedding and falling off the churchyard wall and being winded and thinking I was dying – in a graveyard beneath yew trees. Step into the dead air, untickled by recent speech, unwarmed by skin or cooking, unloved by presence. I remember the month before I went to primary school, kneeling in front of a full-length mirror as my mother taught me to tie my shoelaces. Pick up the stack of letters on the sideboard in the hall. (There are no messages on my answerphone.) I remember the last day of term, the mystical boredom which I thought I’d never recapture – until I got my first job. Stagger into the toilet. I remember tripping over while I was running towards my mother holding my school report and smiling. It looks like a spider has crawled across Conrad’s page. Vomit. Heave. Gag.

  Cue my parents, a little late because of the traffic on the M40.

  My mother had already been into the flat to prepare it for my return.

  ‘I’ve thrown away those magazines,’ she’d said.

  I didn’t need to ask which. They’d been in the bottom drawer of my desk, along with my diary.

  My mother knew me better than ever and liked me less and loved me more.

  I opened the door for them.

  ‘Oh, aren’t you well? Let’s get you to bed, then. Would you like a cup of tea? Herbal tea? Coffee? Hot milk? There’s food in the fridge, frozen food in the freezer. There’s fruit in the fruitbowl. I bought you a fruitbowl – it didn’t look like you’d got one. You needed a fruitbowl. The rent’s been paid. I’ve darned your socks. Please don’t buy any more acrylic ones. There’s a list of the pe
ople who left messages by the phone. Are you feeling better now? We had an awful journey. You’re looking terrible. What time is it? Now, you know we both love you.’ Beat. ‘Very much.’ Beat. ‘You know. Dad is going to drive home now. I’m going to be staying in a little B&B round the corner. I’ve left their number for when you want to get in touch with me. They said they’d have you back at your work, whenever you feel like it. Everything’s going to be all right. But you must be tired. Why don’t you go to bed. I’ll bring you some hot milk. Hug and kiss. Hug and kiss. There’s no need to use that language.’

  After that first year and a half of intensive ga-ga goo-goo, your parents can never address you sensibly again.

  In the evening my mother brought me scrambled eggs – just like on the days I faked illness to get off going in to school. But I wasn’t able to eat them.

  ‘Why didn’t you take the embryos out?’ I bleated.

  ‘There weren’t any there.’

  ‘Look, there’s one. And another. They look like babies.’

  I scraped them – crimson-flecked jelly – to the edge of the plate.

  ‘I can’t eat that.’ Blood trailed across the yellow-white surface of the egg, blood swirled around the gelatinous not-yet-chick.

  ‘I’ll make you some more.’

  ‘Please, no.’

  ‘Baked beans on toast?’

  ‘Okay.’

  But the baked beans reminded me of the time my new pet lizard had a miscarriage, giving birth to the entirety of its womb.

  ‘Weetabix and hot milk?’

  ‘If you scrunch them up for me.’

  She put her hand on my forehead. Even though I was obviously unwell, she wanted me to know how patient she was being. I would be expected to repay her – in kind – when I recovered: phonecalls, visits, Christmas.

  I didn’t sleep very well.