by Lucy Booth
He stands slightly apart from his mates, all dressed in their Saturday night uniform of short-sleeved shirts and polished black shoes. No trainers, mate, not in here. Stands back and watches over them, swigging occasionally from a bottle of Beck’s. He won’t drink that Corona shit. With its bit of lime shoved in the top. It’s gay, that. He stands back, watches over them all. Looking for the first signs of trouble. Not so he can avoid it, mind. Quite the opposite.
And while he’s standing there, surveying the crowd, the boys on the other side of town are piling into a cab. Whooping and shoving each other, winking at a group of girls who are leaving the pub at the same time. All talking over each other to ask the cabbie to take them to Deansgate. To that stretch of bars down near the Arndale. You know, right? Next to Kendals?
So all Reece and I have to do is stay where we are. Stay right where we are. And wait.
*
The boys fall out of the cab and straight into the bar. A quick hello to the guy on the door – Joe’s been coming here for years. Knows him well enough for a blind eye to be turned to a red football shirt peeking out from beneath the collar of a pale blue button-down. Jägerbombs all round – the heat of the spirit mingling with the sweetness of the Red Bull to deliver a direct punch to stomachs already swollen with fizzy lager. One round, two. Rob waves his hands in drunken helplessness, ‘Mate, I can’t do a third. Seriously …’ before a third is plonked in front of him and he swallows back retches to see it off with the rest.
‘Rob, I’m heading out for a fag? Want one?’ Joe has to shout to be heard over the chatter of voices and pervasive thud of the bass of a nineties garage tune.
‘Wah? Yeah, yeah. Fag. Good idea.’ Rob follows him out of the front door. To the cordoned-off area in front of the windows where smokers huddle, bounce from one foot to the other and guzzle more booze to stay warm.
It stopped raining hours ago, but it’s freezing outside. Despite the cold, the tiny smoking area is packed. Bodies herded together, gated in on all sides by metal barriers to allow passers-by to slip past untainted on the pavement beyond. Joe and Rob jostle through the throng. Hitch shoulders up to slide past groups of girls, legs in short skirts turning blue in the freezing night air.
And who should they end up next to in that squashed little space?
All it takes from me is a nudge in the small of his back. A gentle shove on that crowded pavement. A whispered insult dropped in the right ear. The wrong ear for Rob.
‘What did you just say?’ Reece spins round. Squares up to Joe who weaves on the spot behind him.
‘Me? Nothing, mate, not a word.’ Joe holds his hands up, gives Reece a lopsided grin. A smile of submission, conciliation.
‘Do you think I’m a mug or something? I heard you.’ Now his friends are turning round. Gathering behind him to fold arms over puffed chests and look over his shoulder at the guy who’s been stupid enough to insult their friend.
‘Mate, seriously, I didn’t say a word. Honestly, just came out to have a fag. Must’ve been someone else.’
‘Fucking prick. Typical United fan …’ He’s spotted the football shirt, revealed at an open neckline. ‘Think you can slag someone off and then not bother backing it up. You’re a fucking joke, mate.’ His face is close to Joe’s. He hisses the last sentence. ‘A fucking joke …’
The fuse is lit. In fifteen years Joe has never missed the chance to avenge an insult, to wade into a fight. And Rob has never failed to step in to calm things down. On that I can rely.
‘Look, why don’t you just carry on back to wherever you crawled out of and I’ll carry on having a nice pint with my mates.’ As he speaks, Joe’s chest puffs up and out. He draws himself up to his full height. Spreads his fingers before balling them into fists to hang at his side. ‘Dick …’ He mutters, looking back over his shoulder where Rob stands, eyes drunkenly screwed up to take in the unfolding scene. This is where he steps in. This is where he always steps in.
‘Joe … C’mon, mate. Leave it, yeah?’ Rob grabs Joe’s arm. Slips his taller frame between Joe and Reece.
‘Did you just call me a dick?’ Reece is furious. A cold, hard fury. Spit sprays in their faces from yellowing teeth in a snarling mouth. He shoves Joe in the shoulder.
‘What if I did, eh? What are you going to do? Punch me?’ Joe squares up. Butts back with his chest thrust forward. ‘C’mon, then …’
‘Joe, seriously. Back up, mate. He’s not worth it.’ But Rob’s words are lost as a fist flies through the air and catches Joe on the cheekbone.
All hell breaks loose. Punches are being thrown in every direction. I hop off my vantage point on the metal railings. Squirm through the crowd to stand behind Reece. Slip a glass bottle just within reach. Hold his hand in mine to curl stubby fingers around a slim green glass neck. Jog his elbow so glass meets brick and shards shatter.
It’s over in a matter of seconds. What will appear to outsiders as an accidental lunge is, we know, a carefully choreographed pas de deux. Arms swing fluidly through the air in complete synchronisation. Jagged edges find resistance in soft skin before they puncture with the softest sigh. Hot blood pumps from a severed artery, puddling into a crimson pool on the concrete where Rob lies slumped after just one slash.
It takes Joe a second to realise what’s happened. To turn and see his friend doubled up on the pavement. It doesn’t register. It can’t register. He was just stepping in to stop the two of them fighting. What the … ? It doesn’t make sense. He stands over Rob and stares. Wordlessly mouthing his name again and again with a hand drawn up to a gaping mouth, slack and uncomprehending.
A bouncer pulls him out of the way. Lies Rob back on the pavement and bundles cloth at his neck to stem the flow of blood. The other has tackled Reece, one arm pinning down his neck as he sits astride his back. Holding his cheek to the cold concrete so he has no choice but to look at what he’s done. But there’s no remorse. No look of regret. He stares, defiantly. Short breaths huff and puff and he waits for the inevitable. He waits for the sirens.
And Rob, he just lies there. Skin fading to a porcelain white. I crouch over him, grab at arms lying lifeless and wipe away the trickle of blood that makes its way slowly from the corner of his mouth. His eyes, glassy and unfocused stare up at me, unseeing. As the night sky alternates blue and black in sync with approaching sirens, his head falls to one side and he breathes a word. A single name in a bubble of blood. ‘Beth.’
We stand together in the corner of the operating theatre, Rob and I. Watching over the team of men and women in their blue tunics, mouths covered with surgical masks, eyes darting to the flashing, beeping machines that react to every change Rob’s body makes. They work quickly, silently. Stemming the blood flow that has spurted continuously from the open wound. Three pints, four, five. As long as there’s the faintest flicker of life, these men and women will do everything they can to bring him back.
Rob slides down the wall to crouch, hands cupped over his mouth as his eyes stare, disbelieving, at the lifeless body draped in blue and jacked up high on the operating table.
‘I won’t make it, will I?’ He looks up at me, rubbing long fingers against stubble darkening his jawline. Reaches to wrap his fingers around mine where they rest on his shoulder.
‘There’s a chance, but …’ I trail off. I feel like I owe him some sort of hope, however misplaced. However futile.
‘God, Beth … What was I thinking? He always kicks off with someone … Why didn’t I just leave it?’
Before I can answer, raised voices in the corridor are swept through swinging doors as a nurse comes in with yet more blood.
‘Where is my husband? Where is he? I have to see him! Now! Rob! Rob! Rob Porter! Where IS he?’ The voice is high-pitched and frantic, but there’s no denying who it belongs to.
Rob looks up at me, standing over him. ‘What the … ? That’s Beth! What … Hang on … Who the fuck are you?’ He scrambles to his feet, trainers wet with his own blood slip and squeak against
the linoleum.
I close my eyes. Take a deep breath. Look him straight in the eye. ‘I think you know, Rob. You know that you can’t possibly be here talking to me and over there lying on that bed.’
He backs away from me, mouthing words that can’t be spoken. Staggers backwards into a metal trolley with a clatter. Holds his hand up against me as I step forward to comfort.
‘Stop. Don’t touch me. What … ?’ He looks desperately from me to the body lying on the bed, shrouded in blue. Back to me. Out to the voice in the corridor that cries his name. ‘I don’t get it. Who are you? What are you doing here?’
‘I’m Death, Rob. Your death.’ There’s no other way to say it.
‘No. No. You’re not. You can’t be.’ He’s still. Disbelief is written all over his face. He balls his fist into his hair. Pinches his brow between finger and thumb. ‘What about … I dunno … You being a skeleton in a hood? What about that … scythe thing?’
‘All made up.’ I shrug my shoulders and hold my hand out to him. Slowly, gently so as not to startle. ‘Most people who meet me don’t live to tell the tale, Rob. So they make stuff up. They’re scared of me, so they make me out to be this monster. But I’m not, Rob.’ My voice is barely more than a whisper. ‘I swear I’m not.
‘If you saw me at the end of eighty years and you were old and you were ready, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation. You’d know me from the very second I walked into the room – whoever I looked like. But you’re not old, and you weren’t ready. And so I have more to explain.’
While I speak my fingers have slowly breached the gap between us, until my palm can cup his cheek. He tilts his neck to rest his head in my hands. Nuzzles slightly into my palm to breathe in that perfume he bought her for Christmas that he can’t smell without the familiar punch of longing.
‘But you look exactly like her. Not, like, a bit of a resemblance. Exactly like her.’
‘I know. That’s what happens. You see me, everyone sees me, as the woman they most want me to be. And I am her, Rob. Right here and now, I am her. I know everything she knows. I know everything you’ve ever said to her. Everything you’ve ever done together. I know that you hate peas and love salt and vinegar crisps. I know that we were convinced Billy was a girl and called him Sophie for the nine months before he was born. I know that when you were sixteen and we first kissed you went home and told your nan that you knew exactly who you were going to marry. And I know that if this happened all over again, you’d still wade in and defend Joe. Even if you already knew what that guy was capable of.’
I’ve stepped forward now to wrap my arms around his waist in a hug. I can feel the body that’s stiffened in shock relax as he presses his lips to my hair before resting his chin on the top of my head.
‘Can I see her? I need to see her. I need to see the kids.’ He wipes his nose on the heel of his hand. Takes deep breaths to bite back tears.
‘She’s outside. She’s waiting for you. But you can only see her when your body is taken to her. Until you let your body go, and you have to do that yourself, you’re tied to it. And once you let go, it’s too late for goodbyes.’
He nods, silently. Begins to sob, quietly. Steps back to look at those bodies in the corner gathered under the operating light. ‘I can’t leave her. I won’t leave her. I promised I wouldn’t abandon her. This morning. This morning. I promised.’ He stands. Punches the wall above my head. Lets out a yell of frustration from deep within. ‘This is bullshit!’ A guttural roar that coincides with a flurry of activity around the table as a heartbeat strengthens and pupils contract in response to bright light. He’s not going to go without a fight.
For three days he veers between us. Identical twins bound in grief on either side of his bed. A flicker of an eyelid, the squeeze of a hand and he’s hers. As organs fail, one by one, slowly but surely, he’s mine. Swinging between lying motionless on the bed, swathed in tubes and monitors and plastic pipes, and railing at me. Shouting and yelling. Tearing at his hair. Upturning chairs. Kicking at walls.
He never once bemoans his own fate, not once. ‘Look at her! Look. At. Her! Look what you’ve done to her!’ He grabs my chin. Forces my head in her direction.
I can’t. Can’t look at her. All I see when I do look at her is Tom. A love that’s been torn apart too soon. An emptiness in her eyes as she looks towards a future without him. While the act of stabbing Rob came easily, too easily, this is unbearable. To sit here, day after day and watch a life crumble and collapse. I’ve seen how this ends. Seen the sleepless nights and the vacant days and the turning to talk to someone who will never again be there. I’ve seen Tom doing it. See him living it every day. And now, I’ve subjected Beth to the very same.
When I do look, I have to fight the urge to throw up. Swallow back the bile that rises in my throat. The bile that rises because of what I’ve done. She is broken. Greasy hair is slicked back from a face that yellows under the strip lighting.
Although her mum has brought clean clothes and arranged a room at a nearby hotel, she won’t move from the bed to change, to rest. She sits, in the same clothes she was wearing on Saturday morning, when he kissed her on the top of the head, nipped her on the lip and told her he loved her. Now those same lips move in silent prayer to tell stories about the kids, about his parents, about their wedding day. Anything. Just in case he can hear. And he can. He can hear every word. It’s the only thing that stops his ranting. When he walks round the bed and holds her hand and cocks his head to listen and laugh and press cold fingers to his lips.
But he can’t fight for ever. The blood loss has caused irreparable brain damage. His body is slowly shutting down, like the lights being turned off at the end of a working day, one by one. Room by room. By the third day the anger has mellowed to acceptance of the inevitable. He perches on the chair next to me to regale me with stories, show me pictures of the kids. I know it all, because for these final precious days, although I am Death, also I am Beth. I have lived with him, I have loved him, and I must help him say goodbye.
The doctors come in to see her. Middle-aged men with wives at home, with children they’ve watched grow into adults. They come in to start the conversations about what more steps can be taken. To start the conversations about turning off the machine, about the quality of life he could expect if they were to continue pumping his heart on his behalf, to continue breathing air into his lungs with the artificial bellows by the bed.
Rob gets up from the chair beside me. Walks round the bed to wrap his arms around Beth one last time. To drop a kiss on the top of her head. He nods at me over his frozen body, and there’s no need for any more conversation. I reach up to flick the switch on the life-support machine and watch as Robert Porter slowly, quietly, fades to black.
16
BANGING AT THE DOOR. A BANGING THAT PAUSES to allow a bellow. ‘Tom? Tom. Mate. Open the door. It’s me.’ Alex.
We sit, side by side, backs against the door. An extra weight against the outside world in case the Chubb and the Yale and the chain all fail.
Our heads hang. Knees tuck up under our chins. Tom holds his hands flat against his ears. We wince, in unison, with every thump.
Silence. And then another voice. ‘And me.’ Higher pitched, softer. Janey. A pause. He can hear them out there, whispering to each other, deciding what tack to take next.
When Alex speaks again, it’s a whisper. The softest of murmurs. His voice is level with Tom’s ear, from his position hunkered down against the door in the outside world. ‘Mate. Please. Just open the door.’ There’s a shuffle as Alex turns, leans his own back against his side of the door. Hangs his head and draws his knees up under his chin. And so they sit, back to back, bookends on either side of a door that won’t budge.
Day after day his friends visit. Take it in turns to sit outside the door. Trying to time it so they bump into him on the way home from work, so he has no choice but to face them, to talk to them, to let them in. What they don’t know is that he do
esn’t go to work, hasn’t left the house for anything other than a pint of milk in weeks. So turning up at five, four, even earlier won’t make a difference because they’ll never catch him. But they can see the light shining through the crack beneath the door, hear the muffled sound of quiz show theme tunes wending their way from the lounge, and they know he’s in there.
They adopt a daily shift of an hour or two, in pairs or alone. They call to him, cajole. Convince. Commiserate. Charm. Some sit in silence. Some relay news from their own lives. Throughout, Tom keeps quiet. He knows they’re there and he knows they know he knows. But he can’t bring himself to open the door. To see the cocked head and the look of pity. He can’t trust himself not to react like he did to Emma. To snap like he did with Kath. If he doesn’t open the door, he can’t push them further away.
Finally, day after day, they accept defeat. Tell him through the door that they’re going to go. To leave him to it. But they’re there if he needs them. He hears that every day. That people are there if he needs them. But there’s only one person he needs, and she’s dead.
After each visit, he waits for the silence. Waits for heavy footsteps thudding down carpeted stairs and the chunky thunk of the communal door to the street swinging shut. He waits for half an hour. Waits for the coast to clear. And when it does, when he can lean his head out of the front window and see no one waiting below, he runs. Pounds down wet pavements, slick with leaves. When he runs, he can’t hear her voice. Can’t catch a whiff of her perfume. He can see her – he sees her on every corner. Sees her in the shadows cast by the trees outside his window. Sees her cross the road ahead, just out of reach. But as long as his mind is filled with the gritty scuff slap of trainers on tarmac, he can’t hear her, and as long as his head is down and his legs are pumping, if he sees her, he can always run away.
