Staring At The Light

by Fyfield, Frances

  Nobody knows you, Johnny, except me. Don’t cry, please don’t cry. He lit a cigarette. These were things he should tell Sarah. Make her understand that Johnny did keep his promises.

  The talent of capturing likeness was a frightening gift. This was not Johnny now, but Johnny in a few years’ time when the good looks would be gone, the apoplectic colour of his skin higher and the brown eyes ever more hooded. Finally the mouth, large and wide like Cannon’s own, the only real point of resemblance, with fleshier lips drawn back into a rictus of a smile to show chipped, uneven teeth, stained dark. A shadowed face, hurt and lonely and cruel. Puzzled. Quickly, before any element of pity could enter the equation, Cannon inked in three of the teeth to make them blacker and added an additional crease to the forehead to indicate pain. He stood back from his handiwork. ‘I must remember what an ugly bastard you are,’ he muttered.

  The plip of drops into the chair had ceased. Condensation, not rain, dripping from the skylight, rotting the beams. The light from the roof would be the only sign of his existence here, apart from his anonymous comings and goings in a street largely devoted to shops and offices. The end of both the dripping sound and the whisper of brushstrokes across the paper left a vacuum of silence. He stood and stretched; wished, for a fleeting moment, that he had Sarah Fortune’s flexible limbs. Then froze.

  There was someone downstairs.

  Rotten steps led up to the attic, with a notice at the base of the steep, narrow flight informing the unwary of the fact. Sarah had secured this place, hadn’t she? Made an offer subject to planning permission, written the necessary letters on headed paper to make her sex anonymous, secured a respite from further viewers; he forgot the details. She had spared him those.

  But downstairs there were indeed the slight vibrations of movement. A trio of voices, climbing upwards. Cannon turned out the light and braced himself across the door. If anyone were to touch it, they would feel the warmth and know he was there. The drip from the skylight resumed with the resonance of a drumbeat.

  There was no timbre of anxiety in the conversation he could hear from the room below, the words of which he could not decipher. He heard only the rhythm of it, the pauses and the hesitations. The high voice of a woman, announcing exclamations of surprise or disgust; the low voice of a man and the more youthful treble of a second male, murmuring apologies. They came out on to the landing. There was laughter, and one voice, the woman’s, was incredulous. ‘Someone’s actually offered to buy? Amazing.’

  ‘There’s a large attic.’ The apologetic one with the servile voice. ‘Can you see? Don’t …’

  ‘More than I want.’ The woman again, her feet on the stairs, coming on regardless with a light, swift step, until she was on the other side of the door.

  ‘Don’t.’ The apologetic voice was becoming shrill, ‘Don’t go up there; the beams are rotten, it isn’t safe, come back.’

  Unlike his brother, Cannon had always admired the insatiable curiosity of women; he had always venerated women, even when he was preserved from them, but this particular example was one he automatically detested. The woman pushed at the door; he leaned the whole of his weight to the other side. ‘Locked,’ she said. The tread of the top stair creaked ominously.

  ‘Come down,’ the man shouted again.

  She ignored him, paused, and shoved.

  Cannon could imagine her, palms pressed to the door, touching his own skin through the panel, their foreheads and mouths separated by the mere thickness of wood. He imagined himself knocking a little hole through, so she might catch sight of a single eye, see him poking something through into hers. For a moment, he could understand Johnnyboy’s congenital, intense hatred of women. Thought again of making another hole and sticking his prick through it. That way, surely, she wouldn’t come back. They were both evil thoughts, which shamed him into a blush even as he contemplated them. He suppressed a desire to giggle, stuffed his fingers into his mouth. They went away, the men rebuking the woman, who was angry with them both, and they with her. Raised voices floated down the stairs. ‘You will insist on seeing everything. When will you ever listen?’

  ‘There was somebody there, I’m sure of it.’

  ‘That isn’t possible. It’s dangerous.’

  ‘I’ll complain.’

  ‘No, get him to complain. There’s no point in us complaining; don’t want it anyway.’

  ‘When will you evah lissen,’ Cannon mimicked, ‘you silly moo?’ opening the door a crack as the voices faded away. The woman had left a faint trace of perfume: she must have reeked of it – all the better to disguise the smells of human life, turpentine, paint, the harsh soap from his hands.

  For a whole minute Cannon felt instantly jolly, until the life went out of him and he dropped into the damp armchair like a doll. He lolled in it and picked at the frayed upholstery on the arm. It begged to be picked at; no wonder Sarah did it. However could he go on living like this? He was better in prison – my God, there were aspects of it he had positively enjoyed. He entered one of those temporary phases when he told himself that Johnnyboy would get bored with the game, long before his own deadline for winning or losing it, just like he did with the houses he left to rot when they ceased to be fun.

  Oh, Lord, they had had fun. What else was there to do but wait for the time to pass? Sell the picture and give him back the money? No. The baby would need it; Julie would need it. Nor could he bear to hand it over to that – that – Philistine.

  Cannon looked at the face in his drawing and saw again that they no longer remotely resembled each other, but Johnnyboy had already entered the room. Johnnyboy had the cunning he had never inherited and, in the same breath, Cannon felt the familiarity of fear.

  The people had been sent to tease. Johnnyboy had always been better at games, better at everything. Probably knew where his brother was, in the way he always seemed to know.

  There was not really anywhere to hide. From a ghost. A legend he no longer quite knew. From his own heart and the lure of destruction. From his own nature. From a world where he still did not understand the rules.

  5

  Today I shall need an onion for the stew and another bottle of wine, William wrote on the margin of a set of notes. Other than that, life is dandy. Why did Cannon bring me that painting to look after? Why am I so surprised that someone likes me?

  Sarah, where are you? It’s too late for shopping. Perhaps you’re working. He must stop writing in the margin of notes, as if that were the only paper he had; but he was, after all, surrounded by them. They were always to hand. William perfected the notes he had scribbled during the day in the evening, late afternoon or early morning; sometimes, such as now, at dawn, as if the very labour of it might encourage the sun to rise and the dreams to end. The notes were a record of expertise, a database for his credibility; he pored over them, wondering how he could have done things better. He did not just need the respect of his professional peers: he craved it. His papers in the international journals provided something of the kind. He was always looking for something fresh to write, but apart from that he yearned to describe his profession as a series of refinements and surprises; otherwise it all became pointless. Technique could always be perfected. William knew that the pursuit of excellence and knowledge (how pompous that sounded) was the only thing that could give him dignity.

  In the early days of semi-idealism he had not been like this. He thought now that his was a route for a frustrated artist, or mechanic, rather than a medical man; someone who might have been equally happy tinkering round with cars, fire engines, trains, cameras and the other kind of bridges. Painting had been a passion until he recognized his own lack of vision. He could never make himself concentrate on the whole, only the part. Writing things down wasn’t bad, but despite strenuous efforts he was not unduly talented at that either. Like the painting, it was the details that bogged him down in pedantry while the concepts evaded him. So he had to be an excellent dentist. That was all he could do.

&nbs
p; And yet he wanted to write about the individuals and how temperament was such a feature in treatment; the mystery of the human response, which varied as widely as the colour of their eyes. Maybe colour and physical type were the keys to it all. Perhaps the pain threshold was dictated by the thickness of the hair, while the size of the feet governed tolerance of anaesthesia – perhaps it was as simple as that. This was too large and wide a theme: he wanted something both factual and anthropological to enhance his self-esteem. All right, then: he wanted to write about how trauma changed attitude; still too fanciful and vague. What was required in his dull circles was articles on new techniques in root-canal therapy, implantology, rather than anything with a personal touch, but in this particular dawn he wanted to write about how a terrified patient became the opposite of his former self; changed from unwilling to willing, from afraid to positively enthusiastic. He wanted to write a paper about Cannon out of sheer affection for him.

  This is achieved by extreme measures, William wrote on a fresh sheet of paper while glancing at the large bundle of Cannon’s notes. First, allow the patient to develop a truly terrible set of teeth which he comes to loathe. They have made him socially anathema; disfigured him. Then get fate to make them worse. Incarcerate the patient. By this time, he will no longer care and may become very co-operative indeed … Encourage a suicide attempt. This often leads prison authorities to allow special treatments not normally contemplated …

  He sat back in his chair and tried to reconstruct Cannon’s history from his very clear memory of the remainder of Cannon’s front teeth. Tetracycline was a useful antibiotic for adults, no longer given to children who had yet to develop their secondary teeth because of its pernicious side-effects. Cannon had been unable to remember why he had ingested so much of the stuff: both he and his brother were sickly, he said, not subject to the best of medical or parental care from a single father with other things on his mind. At that age tetracycline made the new teeth emerge a ghastly brown shade; healthy at heart, maybe, but uneven, misshapen, with the appearance of dirty decay. The larger the teeth, the less attractive. A tetracycline smile was not a pretty sight. And there had been delayed, inadequate treatment of caries, an impatient dentist (I bit her, Cannon had said. I bit her so hard she refused to treat either of us again). Some phobias were more reasonable than others.

  The other way of getting a patient to become co-operative is to ensure that a dental appointment is a high spot in an otherwise boring life. Ergo, it really does help if your patient is in prison at the time. His stomach rumbled. He moved into the kitchen, poured cereal, the bachelor’s standby food, into a bowl and added milk. He waited for the flakes to become a soggy mess and ate absentmindedly. The stomach continued to growl.

  It also helps if the patient regards sedation by Diconal as the best time he’s had for ages. It is as well to prolong such treatment if you have any curiosity about the fellow at all. He may tell you things while under the influence which he might not otherwise reveal. Nor might you wish to know.

  He knew what he might write next, if this mood of frivolity prevailed: a book of Diconal poetry, a slim volume admittedly, in which he would put into rhyme all those disjointed, sometimes revelatory things that people happened to say under the magical influence of deep sedation. Like that poor boy, Andrew, with his broken front teeth, two to be extracted, two to be saved and crowned. Tetracycline would not harm him; Diconal would obliterate any memory of what William had done, as well as any memory of what he had said. Not that Andrew’s lisping, fretful replies could be said to be significant. He moaned about not wanting to lose his job.

  Cannon, under sedation, was rather more amusing and infinitely varied. Cannon growled. He could not keep his hands still: they conducted an orchestra with minute movements, or made tiny little motions resembling an artist with a brush, which were, in their way, endearingly vulnerable. He repeated the name of Julie in a high, sing-song voice and the name of Johnnyboy in a low hum, apparently aping the music from the radio in the surgery. On the day William had asked, Do you have any children, Mr Smith? he had moaned in his sleep about how he longed for a child and feared he could never achieve it. Then he sang that his twin brother wanted to kill his soul. When his mouth was not full, he chanted as if he was in the playground, something that sounded like a skipping rhyme. Johnnyboy, Johnnyboy, dirty fangs, Johnnyboy, la, la, la. He mimicked the radio.

  William reminded himself to ask Cannon more about his next of kin and cursed himself for not having asked before. A twin brother. They might have the same teeth. There would not be too many left with the ugly distinction of brown tetracyline fangs. The very thought stunned him; he closed his eyes to savour it. He was tired; concentration, even in excitement, slipped. Sleep had been punctuated by the same old nightmares, the children, and Isabella’s skull beneath her flawless skin. Isabella, rampaging through the waiting room with those two in tow, hacking to pieces the paintings on the walls. The recurrence of the image was so vivid, even now that he was awake and noisily ingesting his bowl of cereal, that William stumbled downstairs to check. He tripped on the bottom step, swore and catapulted himself into the room. All was safe, and there on the wall the picture Cannon had brought. To be exact, the third picture Cannon had brought.

  There was only ever Johnny and me; everyone hated us. Afraid of our teeth.

  Cannon had thought that he was paying for his extensive treatment of beautifully crowned front teeth by bringing along, every second visit, a sketch or a small watercolour, executed with cheap materials in prison. Cannon was not paying for it at all: sleight of hand with the forms, a conspiracy with a prison doctor, Sarah, and officials frightened into fits by the prospect of another suicide attempt. They had paid for it. All the same, it had moved William that Cannon came armed with gifts; but, then, the attitude of the prison patients, the existence of whom Isabella so deplored, had always surprised him. Since his first practice, which had had a prison on the doorstep, he had always included prison patients and he had volunteered to continue at the same discounted rate long after Isabella had got him out of there. Why? she had shrieked. You could treat princesses and you treat them. Why? Because it was a chance to make a difference. And because they were churlish and pathetically grateful by turn.

  Cannon had been practically dragged into the surgery, his guard agog at the poshness of it all and his charge gibbering with fear and white with pain; abscesses from broken, untreated teeth; suicide risk. William gave them both a large shot of whisky for starters. Promised Cannon he would not feel a thing and almost made him believe. Not quite. Until he became utterly passive.

  The very first sketch Cannon had brought him was slightly macabre. William moved down the corridor towards the door to where it sheltered in a corner. It was a pencil sketch of his own hands, caught in the act of making busy explanations. They were sketched as if they had been held in front of Cannon’s face, in front of Cannon’s mesmerized, terrified eyes, watching every movement, as William, after stroking the jaw, rubbing the numbing ointment in the gum, talked incessantly while he worked, getting the needle in there while Cannon was still hypnotized by fear and the constant stream of words. Cannon, sweating with relief, when William said, We are going to do nothing today, but you see, you had an injection without realizing, didn’t you? Then explaining, with dramatic use of hands, pointing, illustrating, finger-wagging, cupping, expansive, what he was going to have to do after the massive dose of antibiotics had worked. You’ll feel better tomorrow after they begin to take effect, and next time we’ll put you to sleep, promise – the hands folded at last in an attitude of prayer alongside his face. William was accustomed to using his hands to explain; the language of gesture was less specific than words, suited him better.

  And the patient had recorded exactly what he had seen in movement, and made it still. Cannon captured William’s elegant hands, palms outwards, fingers fully spanned like birds in flight, anatomically correct, unmistakably his own hands down to the last crease, but
looking as if they were born to bless, caress and heal. The sketch of the hands thrilled him still, made him proud. You gotta take care of those hands, Cannon had said. William wanted to go back to sleep. He did not want to write or to think. The light crept through his windows and revealed the clean paint, and the extra-clean mark where yesterday’s boy had steadied himself against the wall. William’s stomach continued to grumble. The milk had been too cold. It did not seem much to complain about.

  Seven thirty and the phone buzzed. He ignored it, listened form a distance as the message recited briefly the services he could offer, implants, cosmetics, enamel facing, crowns and a whole new life, addressing the unwary in cheerful tones he scarcely recognized as his own before inviting them to leave a message saying they were going to cancel. Or whatever they were going to say at this godforsaken hour of day when the light still awaited arrival. He waited to hear if it were Sarah – she owed him explanations – but it was a man, pleading a business meeting. William did not have the faintest idea who it was. Identification of this voice required consultation of the damn notes. Maybe one of those who promised to return but never did. He moved on, tummy growling, vaguely upset, to look at the second of Cannon’s drawings and the third. In his dreams, these were the first the children destroyed: his hands.

  The second hung in pride of place in the bathroom, in case it should otherwise cause offence. It was of a slim, heavy-breasted girl-child perched on the end of a high bed without frills. She sat on the very edge, supported by her arms, looking at her feet, which were both just on the ground. One foot was raised from the heel, for particular inspection of the toes; she was nervous but amused, eyes fixated by the foot rather than by the audience. The room had all the appearance of an institution, a hospital ward or a lecture theatre of the old sort, bare, apart from the lights in metal shades hanging above her and the surgical green of the walls behind. Her skin was dark, the sheet, covering the bed on which she sat, white. She was an object for inspection rather than seduction. William could imagine students standing in front of her in a circle outside the picture, waiting for a description of her history, her times, her disease, while she, quite simply, waited on life to continue.