Lilian's Spell Book

by Toby Litt

I felt nothing more.

  Chapter 50.

  I woke up in a noisy, blue place that turned out to be the hospital.

  A woman nearby was having a loud phone conversation.

  ‘You’re all right,’ said Peter, who was by my side. ‘You’re going to be all right.’

  ‘Mary?’

  ‘She’s okay.’

  ‘Okay?’ I tried to lift my head. I realized that it felt weird, soft.

  ‘Don’t move. Mary’s here. Mary’s fine.’

  I tried to turn my head. Everything felt stiff. It wasn’t painful, though. Mary was in a cot to my left side. She was in clothes I didn’t recognize. Jack sat next to her. He smiled at me, then rushed across to give me a hug.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mummy,’ he said. ‘It’s my fault.’

  ‘No, it’s not,’ I said. Quite sure it wasn’t, whatever he meant.

  ‘Be careful,’ said Peter. ‘She’s a bit fragile. Watch out for the tubes.’

  ‘I thought you were dead,’ said Jack. ‘I thought you’d died because of me.’

  I held him for a few minutes as he cried.

  ‘I’m okay,’ I said. ‘Daddy says I’m okay.’

  ‘But you’ve got a broken skull,’ said Jack.

  ‘A what?’ I said, trying to sit up – not a wise response.

  ‘Calm down,’ said Peter. ‘Just rest for a minute.’

  Jack kissed me on the forehead.

  ‘Don’t die,’ he said.

  ‘Tell me now,’ I said to Peter.

  ‘You landed on the back of your head. I’ve seen an x-ray. You were very lucky. You had severe concussion. Your skull broke in three places. They’ve pinned it back together.

  I put my hands up to my head. The softness was a bandage of some sort. It felt foamy behind my head.

  Then I panicked. I kicked my legs and lifted my bottom, just to make sure I wasn’t paralyzed.

  ‘Keep still,’ said Peter, and grabbed my wrists to hold me down. ‘You’ll pull it out.’

  There was a thin tube coming out of my left arm, up to a clear bag.

  ‘What else?’ I asked.

  ‘There was some swelling,’ Peter said. ‘Some bleeding. They think that’s going to be okay. They’re going to keep an eye on it.’

  ‘The brain’s like a squishy in a box,’ said Jack. ‘It squishes around.’

  ‘Your brain had quite a hard squish,’ said Peter. ‘It’s badly bruised. They need to keep you under observation for a while.’

  ‘Is Mary really all right?’ I asked.

  ‘She has a pulled elbow,’ Peter said. ‘That’s all.’

  ‘She has nurse elbow,’ Jack said.

  ‘Oh, my baby,’ I said. ‘Oh, I’m sorry.’

  ‘It’s fine,’ said Peter. ‘Shouldn’t be any long lasting damage.’

  ‘We have to get back to the house,’ I said. ‘If we go back to the house, there won’t be any damage at all. The house will fix us.’

  ‘You’re not going anywhere,’ said Peter.

  ‘What day is it?’ I asked, in a sudden panic.

  ‘It’s Sunday afternoon,’ said Peter. ‘About one o’clock. You’ve been out for almost twenty-four hours.’

  I closed my eyes. It was Midsummer’s Eve. Was I strong enough for what was ahead? I needed to get back to the house.

  ‘You just appeared,’ I said.

  ‘Jack wanted to tell me about flying,’ said Peter, ‘as we drove to the supermarket.’

  ‘I wanted to make Dad believe.’

  ‘He gave so many details – like you telling him not to fly above a certain height. That rang true. But then he kept going on about it. I thought he needed to be taught a lesson – shown you weren’t flying all round the house the moment we went out. Forget Mary’s formula, I thought, we could get that any time.’

  ‘What did you think you’d find, when you came back?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Peter. ‘I thought you’d be up to something secret. And when we arrived home, we couldn’t find you. Then Jack heard Mary laughing in the cellar. When I tried the door, it was locked from the inside – and when I looked for the keys, they were gone. But the key to the chapel was still there. That’s what gave me the idea of sneaking up on you. I thought I’d see if you’d really gone mad. Part of me was convinced you’d lost it. I took the key and told Jack to come with me. He helped me move the lectern. Then he fetched a torch, because I’d forgotten to bring one. You should have seen him. He was so excited at going down the tunnel.’

  ‘It was spooky,’ said Jack.

  ‘But I insisted on going first. And the next thing I know, I’m poking my head out in the cellar, and I hear someone shout and look round to see who it is. And you know the rest.’

  ‘I don’t,’ I said.

  I was starting to feel very woozy, but I wanted to hear what Peter had to say, so I didn’t mention it.

  ‘You were out cold. Mary was screaming her head off. It was the two things together that made me really freak out. You’d never have slept through it normally, if she were making that racket. Jack stayed with you and held your hand. I carried Mary upstairs and called an ambulance.’

  ‘We had a ride in the ambulance,’ said Jack. ‘With the lights on and everything.’

  ‘They brought us here,’ said Peter. ‘Then they took you off, and there was just a lot of tests and waiting. When they kicked us out last night, they gave us the details of some B&Bs. We’re staying in one now. It’s not bad.’

  Peter was putting a brave face on it, and I loved him for this.

  ‘Father Trovato is here,’ said Jack. ‘But he didn’t have breakfast at the breakfast place.’

  ‘Why is he here?’ I asked.

  ‘I called him,’ said Jack. ‘You know, the last rites.’

  ‘He was going to do that?’

  Peter looked very awkward. He was against a background of blue curtains. Every now and then, I heard the woman’s voice as she talked into her phone.

  ‘He did it already,’ he said. ‘We weren’t sure if you were going to make it. I asked him to. It was me.’

  Only then did it hit me what I’d put them through.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said.

  ‘It’s okay,’ said Peter. ‘You’re going to be fine. As soon as you’re released, we can go back to the house and you can heal up there. Father Trovato says that’s fine.’

  ‘Where is he?’ I asked.

  ‘Just taking a walk,’ said Peter. ‘When you started to wake up, I asked him to go out. I didn’t want him to be the first thing you saw. Jack can go and find him.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I want to be with you.’

  All these things I’d gone through without even being awake. I closed my eyes. I thought I was going to be sick. Then I felt how hungry I was.

  ‘I’m starving,’ I said, my eyes still closed.

  ‘We can get you something from the shop.’

  ‘I got a magazine with a gun,’ said Jack.

  ‘I think I need to rest,’ I said.

  ‘That’s good,’ said Peter. ‘We should call the doctor. They wanted to know when you woke up.’

  Jack pressed the button for the nurse. I listened as Peter told her to tell the doctor I’d woken up.

  I drifted off until I heard a voice saying my name. The doctor was a woman with long blonde hair tied back. She shone a light in my eyes and asked me if I could see with one eye shut, then the other.

  ‘Very good,’ she said. ‘If you notice anything unusual, please tell someone straight away.’

  I started to laugh, hysterically. Peter and Jack joined in, too.

  The doctor looked a bit confused, then smiled.

  ‘Private joke,’ Peter managed to say.

  Chapter 51.

  I slept for an hour or so.

  This time Father Trovato was there when I woke up.

  ‘Hello,’ I said.

  ‘I’m glad you are alive,’ he said. ‘You must do what the doctors say.’

 
I was waiting for the sermon – dangerous experiments – but he didn’t say anything else.

  Mary was awake, too. Peter was sitting in the other visitor’s chair, feeding her from a bottle.

  I teared up. This wasn’t how I’d planned to wean Mary.

  I remembered something.

  ‘Mr. Gatward?’ I asked. ‘Is he all right?’

  ‘Mr. Gatward is still missing,’ said Father Trovato. ‘It is worrying. The police are now taking it seriously.

  Just then a nurse came in with a little tub of pink syrup for me to drink.

  ‘A little top-up,’ she said.

  I didn’t want to drink it – I didn’t want to be put to sleep again, but she watched me until I’d swallowed it.

  ‘You’ve been on some strong stuff,’ said Peter. ‘I think it was morphine.’

  ‘Oh, that’s what it is,’ I said. I had been wondering why things seemed so distant.

  Father Trovato stood up. ‘You must do what the doctors tell you,’ he said.

  I wasn’t sorry to see him go, partly because I needed a pee.

  They had put a catheter in, but I wanted them to take it out. I wanted to be able to move around.

  Peter called the nurse back. She said that I had to stay where I was.

  I used the catheter, which felt bizarre.

  The pink syrup knocked me straight out.

  The next time I woke up, Peter and Jack were holding my hands.

  ‘Visiting time’s over,’ Peter said. ‘We’ll be back in the morning. Look after yourself.’

  Jack gave me a kiss on the lips, so delicately. They get so rowdy at his age that you forget how gentle they can be.

  ‘I love you, Mum,’ he said.

  Mary was on Peter’s chest in the Babybjorn, but he bent down so I could stroke the side of her face.

  ‘How’s her arm?’

  ‘Fine,’ he said. ‘She’s on painkillers, too.’

  ‘What time is it?’ I asked.

  ‘Eight o’clock,’ Peter said. ‘We’ll be back at ten. Say goodbye to Mary.’

  A nurse came round and pulled our curtains back. I was in a ward with five other women. It was the one in the bed next to me who had been on her phone. She was about twenty-five, mixed race, hair extensions and false nails. Seeing her, I felt like I was back in South London.

  ‘Margie,’ she said, introducing herself. ‘Acute appendicitis.’

  What was I going to say? Flying accident?

  ‘I had a bang on the head,’ I said.

  ‘He seems nice enough,’ said Margie. ‘But when they’re drunk…’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I fell onto a brick floor.’

  ‘I believe you,’ Margie said. ‘Thousands wouldn’t.’

  Her phone began to buzz and she took the call.

  I wondered where my clothes were.

  Carefully, I pulled myself into a sitting position. This made me feel very dizzy for a couple of minutes. When I’d recovered, I looked around me. There was a small bedside unit with a blue door on the front. I hooked my toe through the handle and tried to open it. Margie caught what I was doing and signalled that she’d help. I mouthed, ‘Okay.’

  I slid down from the bed, onto my feet. That didn’t feel too bad. Bending down, though, seemed to bring a whole wave of blood into my head. I thought I was going to black out. But I braced myself until it passed. Then I pulled open the door. My clothes were there, neatly folded up. Luckily, my jeans were on top. I reached for them and managed to get them up onto the bed before the next lot of dizziness hit me.

  The brown envelope with Mike the cab driver’s number on it was still there, in the back pocket.

  This made me think about Mr. Gatward again. Where was he? What was happening to him?

  Margie said goodbye and flipped her phone shut. ‘You should have waited,’ she said. ‘I would have helped you.’

  ‘I bet you’re not supposed to get out of bed, either.’

  ‘No, I’m going to have a whole week, feet up on the sofa, watching TV,’ Margie said. ‘How great is that?’

  ‘Can I borrow your phone?’ I asked.

  ‘No problem,’ she said.

  She was about to throw it but I said, ‘Wait.’

  Pulling the drip behind me, I was able to make it over to her bedside. I needed a bit of a rest when I got there, though. I felt very exposed in the hospital gown – and I was exposed, up the back.

  ‘Bloody thing,’ she said, passing me the phone. ‘I hate it.’

  I said, ‘I’m going home.’

  ‘You don’t look very well,’ she said. ‘I think you should probably stay here.’

  ‘I’m calling a taxi,’ I said. ‘Where are we? Where’s the main entrance?’

  ‘Lift’s at the end of the corridor. Two floors down and it’s right in front of you.’

  I dialled the number, digit by digit, having to go back again and again as I got them wrong. My fingers felt terribly fumbly.

  ‘Anytime cars. Mike speaking.’

  ‘I need a car as soon as possible,’ I said.

  ‘I can’t do you for half an hour,’ said Mike. ‘I’m on my way back from town.’

  I told him where I was, and where I wanted to go.

  ‘Heard they had an ambulance there today,’ he said. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘I’m okay,’ I said. ‘They’ve just discharged me.’ Margie frowned at me, then ticked me off with one of her false nailed fingers.

  ‘Okay,’ Mike said. ‘I’ll turn round and be there in… twenty minutes.’

  I gave the phone back to Margie. ‘Thanks,’ I said.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘I understand. I’ll cover for you. You get away from him while you’ve got the chance.’

  I swayed back over to my own bed, got the rest of my clothes out of the cabinet then set off down the ward.

  ‘Where’s the loo?’ I asked Margie.

  ‘First on the right,’ she said.

  The cubicle wasn’t occupied.

  First of all I had to remove needle from my arm. It was taped down in a few places.

  I washed my hands as well as I could, then peeled the tape back and pulled the needle out. It bled for a while as I pushed down onto it with a wodge of loo paper.

  I needed to tie a knot in the tube to stop the clear liquid coming out.

  Someone knocked on the door.

  ‘Busy,’ I said.

  Next was the catheter. I sat down on the loo and took a deep breath, then blew all the air out. It wasn’t as painful as having Jack, but I wouldn’t recommend it. I managed not to cry out.

  Luckily, I’d been wearing a long sleeve top, so I was able to cover my arm.

  It was only now that I looked in the mirror. There were bandages all over the top and back of my head.

  ‘What are you doing?’ I asked myself.

  But I knew the answer.

  I washed my face and then put on my clothes. I tried shoving the catheter into the tampon disposal box, but it wouldn’t fit.

  Instead, I balled it up inside the gown and stuck it under my top. I put the drip up my sleeve, as if it were still in me. Then I walked back to the bed as steadily as I could.

  I put the gown and catheter in the cabinet and hid the drip stand behind the blue curtain.

  ‘I’m off,’ I said.

  ‘If they ask,’ said Margie, ‘I’ll say you went to the loo.’

  Then I had a thought.

  ‘Do you have any cigarettes?’ I asked.

  Her handbag was on her bedside cabinet, and from it she produced a soft pack and a lighter.

  ‘Thanks,’ I said.

  ‘You’re far better off without him,’ said Margie. ‘Go, girl.’

  I made it to the lift and pressed the button. When it arrived, there was a doctor inside but he didn’t even look at me.

  The walk to the entrance seemed to go on forever. I held the cigarettes up in front of my chest, like an ID pass. But nobody challenged me, and I made it out into the
cooler air of the carpark.

  There was a smoker’s shelter next to where a load of bikes could be locked up to frames. I couldn’t think of the right word.

  I went and stood there, then lit a cigarette. I had no idea what the time was, or how long it had taken me to get ready.

  The nurse who had brought me the pink stuff came out of the front door and walked towards me. She was chatting to another young woman. I turned away, then realized the back of my head was probably more noticeable than the front. I turned to face them but with my eyes down, blowing out smoke.

  They walked past.

  Mike’s cab arrived about five nervy minutes later.

  He got out and was looking around when I walked slowly up to him.

  ‘You don’t look too well,’ he said.

  ‘I’ll be fine once I get home,’ I said.

  Chapter 52.

  The longer the journey took, the worse I felt. I sat in the back, falling asleep and waking up. The painkillers seemed to be wearing off.

  When Mike turned a sharp corner, I banged my head against the window – which startled me.

  The vision in my right eye had started to get blurry. When I closed the other eye, I couldn’t see very much.

  I had decided to go back alone, rather than try to take Mary with me. Too many times already I’d put her at risk. And I wished Peter could have come to help me, but he was looking after Jack. He couldn’t have done anything anyway, apart from stop me doing what I needed to do. This was the end – this was between Lilian and me.

  ‘Are you sure you’re all right?’ Mike asked, once or twice.

  ‘It’s worse that it looks,’ I said. ‘I’m just tired.’

  But a huge headache had started, worse than the worst migraine.

  I lost consciousness again.

  When I woke up the last time, as we were passing the road into the village, I realized that I’d lost all vision in my right eye.

  The cab’s headlights lit up the trunks of the trees as we passed them. I looked behind us but couldn’t see anything because the road was so dark.

  The house was dark, too.

  I hadn’t even thought about how I was going to get in.

  ‘Look,’ I said to Mike, ‘can I pay you tomorrow? I don’t have any money.’