How the Dead Live

by Self, Will

  ‘I like the way they allow these cats to come on to the ward,’ I say to Natty, who’s packed the valise and is now helping me out of my nightie, into my clothes.

  ‘What?’ I daresay she’s thinking about other, more lively concerns – like where her next fix is coming from, now she hasn’t managed to hit on her sister for a loan.

  ‘The kitties – on the ward. They don’t seem to mind about them. There’s a tabby who sits over there on that old lady’s bed all day; and there’s a tortoiseshell who comes in this window from time to time and curls up right on my tummy. It’s so comforting – I wonder if it’s a new therapy they’ve devised?’ But this doesn’t draw her out either; she only gives me a funny look. The funny look. The look you give dying people who’re seeing things.

  Now, here come Richard Elvers and his missus. See how fine they look together – all the deportment and elegance that money can buy. You’d have to say Charlie’s chosen wisely, because they complement each other well. Both fleshy, both anally retentive, both driven. Elvers is a big, sandy-haired man with a safely red complexion (he doesn’t drink). He favours dark, double-breasted suits which rationalise his fat. So does she. ‘Hello, Lily’ – he leans and pecks at me, as if I’m carrion already – ‘I’ve just spoken to Molly and she’s given the family seat a good seeing to.’

  ‘Oh, that’s good.’ Now the Filipino’s got her act together – I shall return!

  ‘The car’s right outside on a double yellow – so we’d better get going.’

  ‘Upsy-daisy,’ says Natasha, and she and Richard lever me to my feet. I bestow a few valedictory smiles on the supernumeraries in the other beds – no need to say au revoir. Sister Smith is at the nursing station together with the two nurses who’re coming on for the night shift. ‘Good to see you up, Mrs Bloom, and on the arm of such a handsome gentleman.’ She has, presumably, assumed that Elvers is one of mine. For shame – really the woman is a fool. Still, I smile as best I can, give her a flash of the plastic. After all, this will probably be the penultimate time I leave the hospital.

  Chapter Two

  I’m glad he’s got a ticket – although sad it’s only an interim, sixteen-pound, fine. He deserves an unfixed penalty, our Richard; a free-floating axe should swing permanently above his head, ready to cleave him if he ever does anything wrong. And wherein lies his fault, this upright entrepreneur who’s had the good grace to marry, look after and even be faithful to a daughter I myself could frankly do without? He’s successful – we don’t like that. After all, anyone can be a success, but it takes real guts to be a failure. Richard is gutless – which perhaps explains his boyish buoyancy. There’s nothing in that puerile belly of his save for the gas of marketing, without which – as any fule kno – there can be no oxygen of publicity.

  So, we settle ourselves and our tumours in the blue confines of the Mercedes and set off. Richard is fuming a little – but only internally. The car is like Richard himself: stylishly unstylish, corpulent, solid, efficient. And navy – part of the senior German service. Mercedes pride themselves so much on the longevity of their vehicles it surprises me they bother to bring out new models at all. One would rather think that now, as we power down the home straight – I say ‘we’ advisedly-towards the millennium’s end, they’d reintroduce the older models again. ‘Ladies and Gentleman, meine Damen und Herren, Mercedes-Benz of Düsseldorf, for a few seasons automobile-manufacturers by appointment to the Thousand-Year Reich, are proud to present the all old, all new, Horseless Carriage! Assembled lovingly by three ancient artisans, veterans of the Battle of Sedan, the Horseless Carriage features an entirely wooden body and a solid metal dashboard! Vases and reticules are optional, but every single Horseless Carriage comes with antimacassars as standard – ‘

  ‘Look, Mumu,’ Natty breaks in – she’s in the back with me, the grown-ups are in front – ‘there’s Jewmar.’ And indeed there, on the corner of Prince of Wales Road, is Jewmar – or what used to be Jewmar when the girls were kids. All that remains now is the black outline of lettering stencilled on the brickwork. Jewmar – or Lewmar, to give it its correct name-was a dry-goods store owned by Lewis and Mary Rubens, the couple who lived next door to us in Hendon in the sixties and seventies. Lewis and Mary – hence Lewmar; hence, to our anti-Semitic wits, Jewmar.

  I couldn’t believe the Rubenses when Yaws and I, together with Charlotte, aged one, moved to Hendon. Here, strained through net curtains, rustling about in a nylon, gingham-patterned house dress, and dumped down on a velour-covered three-piece suite, was all the sour, affected, sub-gentility of my own lower-middle–class, Jewish upbringing. The Rubenses’ place smelt of gefilte fish and matzo balls – despite the fact that Mary Rubens cleaned relentlessly; she was a laving engine. And once every surface was spotless she’d re-cover it with glass, or plastic, or vinyl. There were glass covers on all the tables, stippled strips of transparent vinyl on the edge of every carpet, plastic covers on the seats. The whole joint was encapsulated – but it only served to keep the odours in. Meanwhile, over the hedge, next door, I’d be popping Librium and ironing creases into Yaws’s shirts. After all, I’d married into true shabby gentility, and there were standards I had to fail to maintain.

  Jewmar, its austere naves lined with boxes of Brillo pads and its rococo chapels writhing with mop-heads, has long gone, to be replaced by a branch of Waste of Paper, part of a nationwide chain that sells prints, posters, postcards and decorative stationery. These stores started up in the seventies, flogging post-hippy tat – flowery bookmarks, bookish flower presses, you know the cack. To kids mostly, I suppose. I remember the original outlet, which was in the basement of Kensington Market; and I recall too the tubby, pimpled, bum-fluffy proprietor, one R. Elvers. Yup, Elvers is the man behind Waste of Paper, which is why Natty says ‘Jewmar’ in this heavily ironic way, with the accent on ‘Jew’. Not that Elvers is Jewish, you understand, it’s only that like so many liberal Englishmen he finds our Jewish anti-Semitism hard to take. Ach me! So many people left to disparage – so little time.

  Yeah – but y’know what? Jimmy cracked corn and I really don’t care. I’m annoyed that Richard has over two hundred Waste of Paper outlets. I’m aghast at the way he buys taste wholesale not just for his stores but for himself and his wife as well. Did he have any taste grubstake to begin with, I wonder, or has he never staked any claim at all? ‘Nearly home, Mother,’ says Charlotte – as if it were true. But now that we’re pulling up Kentish Town Road, and turning into Islip Street so as to negotiate the one way-system, I’m not so sure that this is my home at all any more.

  When I think of the colossal effort I made to integrate with this neighbourhood when I moved here ten years ago, it makes me realise how pathetically small all my life’s endeavours have been. My efforts as a homemaker were like playing with kids’ constructor toys, Lincoln’s Cabins Stateside, and Betta Bildas when I crossed the pond. They were childish, out of scale, and inevitably, once I’d completed them, I’d smash them up in a giant fit of pique.

  I have to say this much for David Yaws – in his demise he exhibited a genius for timing which was entirely absent in his life. Having been late for everything, he finally left me in the winter of 1970, not to shack up with Virginia Bridge, or Serena Hastings, or any of the other uptight genteel fucks he’d strung along since – in some cases – before the war. Nor did he get it together with Maria dos Santos, his fellow ecclesiastical historian and stereotypically hot Iberian lover. Maria was the one he actually chased all the way to Seville, where he howled outside her door like the dumb dog he was, until she had to climb off of her back terrace and go to her mother’s house, in order to telephone me, and ask me to leave a message at his fucking hotel to tell him to come home. No, not Maria – who I always rather liked anyway. No, he went off to Crouch End of all places, where he had effected a liaison with a little old lady called Wix, Wendy Wix. Who was so little and old and wrinkly and fucking genteel that according to the girls she was like a cross betwe
en a gnome and their grandmother.

  I suppose Yaws was missing Mumsie, his mother, who he’d managed to neglect into the grave the year before. Either that or he really was a gerontophile. A sinister thought, but then as the decades passed and the prissily precise accents of his comfortably padded, inter-war youth were drowned out by the current babel, he must have developed a genuine yearning for a brief encounter with the past. That was all he got, for having failed as a gentleman, Yaws copped out of being a man as well. By dying. They said it was a heart attack, but this sounds far too speedy for Yaws who wandered through his entire life in slow motion. No, I’m more inclined to think that his mortal coil simply uncoiled. His tick-tock clock ran down and no one troubled to rewind it. His heart pittered, pattered, skipped a beat, thought, ‘Screw this,’ and halted. He was fifty-six, another droning male who failed to make it out of the killing jar.

  How strange that Jews should’ve silted up the backwaters of suburban London. How peculiar for the diaspora to end behind net curtains. Net fucking curtains. Rather than going to Hollywood or the gas chambers I joined this gauzy crew. Richard turns the car carefully into Bartholomew Road and we purr down it, the Nazi suspension eliminating the potholes. Not that Kentish Town is anywhere near as dismal as Hendon; it’s wedged into the core of the city far more tightly, a sliver of a district. I moved here in 1979 when Natasha went to art school, and once again, as I’d done so many times before, I organised my own induction: getting a library ticket; finding out where the good deli was; pacing out walks; window-shopping; acquiring neighbours. Christ – I’m glad that’s all over with now, I don’t think I could stand to do it again. I’d sooner move back to Madison, Wisconsin. Where Dave Kaplan and I spent the Eisenhower years – or at any rate some of them. Madison – now there was a town for claustro-agro. A radial of avenues, swept by the chilly winds off the lakes, and all of them aiming towards the fake Capitol, the vanishing point of democracy.

  ‘We’re here, Mumu, let me help you out.’ Why’s she being so solicitous? Out the door in a flash, round to my side, and a rail of an arm to lean on. Oh! Pain and nausea. Which came first? Certainly the pain makes me feel sick, but could it be that it’s feeling nauseous that gives me such pain? We totter to the kerb. I’d forgotten it was spring, although in London this often only means a jaundiced outbreak of forsythia. The street looks different the way things do when you’ve been away; and when you’ve been in hospital the familiar usually looks tremendous, the vitality of the fresh outside a glorious part of recovery. With all three kids – even after the painful, embarrassing delivery of Natasha – I felt immeasurably better when I got out of the hospital. I’d like to say that it was the transcendent feeling of New Motherhood, of Cosmic Beginning – but it wasn’t. It was me being well again, de-lumped, un-bumped, unpicked and free.

  It’s not like that now – I’m only coming home to die, so the street looks like crap to me, blobbed with dog shit; spattered with chewed-up gum; cluttered up with cars on either side. The bricks of the three-storey terraced houses are bilious in the sharp sunlight – what’s London made of? Why, London bricks, of course. I feel horribly exposed in my crappy old overcoat and my Cornish-pasty shoes, with my scalp showing through my sparse hair. Each step brings a dollop of bile into my mouth, so by the time we’ve reached the front door, entered it, broached the flat’s front door, shuffled across the vestibule, staggered through the front room, and made it into the bathroom, I’m ready to vomit. Which I do. Natty holds on to me all the while, not exactly whispering, but at any rate muttering reassurances. ‘That’s all right, Mumu, on you come now, don’t worry, that’s OK, on you come, there you go, do you want a flannel?’

  A washcloth? Eurgh. It smells when I clean my face with it-everything smells too much. I long for the days when Churchill was in power and all I could smell was the smoke from my Winston. You couldn’t get them in England then, I had to have friends bring them over from the States. We stutter back into the main room of the flat, then through the double doors to my bedroom, where I sink down and Natty kneels to remove my pasties. My little flat – why can’t I keep it clean? Without Filipino assistance all the surfaces are covered in crumbs, the carpets wefted with cat hair, the lampshades furred with dust. But why should I bloody care? For once in my life, entropy is in fashion. The Second Law of Thermodynamics is the look for 1988. Says top designer Stephan Shylock, ‘No need to worry about taking the trash out, dusting, ironing, or cleaning the drapes. Let that dirt build up mightily and allow your living area to reflect your own inevitable dissolution . . .’ Pity Molly had to spoil the spoilage.

  Where are my kitties? There were plenty at the hospital– or were those mine? Or has the Filipino sucked them up along with their hair? Do I even care? My girls will be adequate pet-substitutes – for now.

  ‘Mumu, d’you want to climb into bed?’ Why is she bothering me? It’s comfy here, slumped down on the bedside – why would I want to lower myself into that chilly linen tomb? Old Lazarus has just managed to clamber out of the last one. Buthey! It’s not up to me; she’s got me back on my feet and we stagger together like two marathon dancers nearing the end. Off with the coat – down with the dress. I only dress down nowadays y’know – I only wear dresses that can be taken down. My days of upwardly-mobile undressing are over now. I was never exactly free with my body, but before my second was born I had no qualms about crossing my arms and pulling my dress over my head. Then advancing, open to whichever man, open to the world.

  ‘That’s better.’ Better for who, exactly? Better for you, you round-heeled little tart? Better for you to have me supine so you can rummage through the flat and see if you can turn up any loose cash, dollars maybe left over from my last trip to New York. Whatever. Natasha would purloin a wad of zlotys if she thought her drug dealer would accept them. I used to be a big blonde with big tits and a big nose. Now I’m a big grey blob, with one and a half tits and a sharp beak. I’m a game bird – I hope. No, on reflection I fear, I quail.

  ‘Errrrrr!’ The flat has an intercom buzzer that sounds like hesitation.

  ‘That will be the Macmillan nurse,’ says Elvers – because he’s paying for it.

  ‘I’ll let her in,’ says Charlotte – because she is, too. Natty stays pennilessly put. Then a tangle of voices which I can’t be assed to unravel. They are, presumably, showing her the flat and going over the drugs with her –

  The drugs! That’s why Natty was so keen to come back with us – she has her eye on the Oramorph (one milligram of morphine sulphate per cc of liquid), and the diamorphine (handy hexagonal pills, twenty-milligram blues and ten-milligram browns, to be taken sub-lingually), and the Valium – of course. I’ve already heard her thinking aloud about ‘when they’ll give her Brompton’s cocktail’. While Sister Smith knew better than to hand her the hospital-issue paper bag full of the stuff, she did give it to Charlotte. Natasha has swooped in its wake like a seagull. Jesus – how grotesque. You’re dying and your junky daughter comes over to rip off your pain relief’ – Natty!’

  ‘Yes, Mumu?’ Her lovely wasted head pokes through the double doors to the living room.

  ‘What’s the nurse like?’

  She enters and pulls the doors to before replying. ‘She’s wearing a ghastly yellow cardy which makes her skin look sallow and ugly.’

  ‘Indeed – and d’jew think that reflects on her healing arts?’

  ‘Dunno – you asked what she was like. Charlotte’s showing her the kitchen and Richard’s making up the sofa bed for her.’

  ‘What time is it?’

  ‘It’s nearly five, Mumu.’

  ‘You must be feeling sick, precious – tell Charlotte to bring my drugs in.’ That gets her trotting off coltishly – my little junky pony.

  ‘Aren’t you feeling well, Mum? Are you in pain?’

  Oh yes – it pains me to see your round face. It pains me to see that I’ve squeezed out a further dollop of Yaws’s white, adipose body. Never allow yourself to be swaye
d by a man with a surname that can be read backwards. ‘I want my pills.’

  ‘Dr Bowen thought you wouldn’t need any more until this evening.’

  ‘Well . . .’ It’s becoming a real effort to say things; I have to punch a hole in the wobbling membrane of nausea that envelops me, simply in order to ejaculate them. ‘I don’t believe Dr Bowen is that sympathetic. I mean – it isn’t her fucking pain!’

  ‘I’ll get them.’

  More muttering behind the doors, then they swing open again. Why am I insistently reminded of cowboys being thrown out of saloons in old westerns? It’s the movies, kid – enjoy. Natty was right about the cardigan. ‘Ms Bloom?’ She’s revolting – arguably more cadaverous than me; a ministering angel – of death. ‘I’m Deirdre Murphy.’ I’m an authority on arrogant contempt – perhaps the world’s fore-most. ‘I’ll be looking after you for the night.’ She has a rapid yet limpid voice – no Irish accent.

  ‘You’re a bit early, aren’t you?’

  ‘Normally the night nurse will come on at eight in the evening and stay ‘til eight the following morning, but the agency thought it would be a good idea if I came earlier this evening so that you wouldn’t have to deal with two new carers in the one day.’

  ‘How considerate of them.’ To consider their own profits.

  ‘Yes, well, we are here to help.’ Indeed you are, you’re helping me to let go of life already – with cardigans like that loose on the surface of the world, it’s no longer a safe place for anyone with any sartorial taste. ‘Your daughter said you wanted some pain relief?’ She’s got the bag.