I ran out of steam and stood there, waiting for Mr Squinty to send me packing.
‘So you know nothing about him?’ He seemed more curious than put out.
‘He smokes. He may live in a council estate. He sits at my local café at the same time I do, every morning. He never has anyone with him – I don’t think he’s very sociable. He always wears the same godawful blue jacket …’
Mr Squinty said nothing for ages, which was extremely disconcerting. Then he nodded, slowly, as if he were thinking something through.
‘Does he know you?’ he asked. ‘Would he recognise you, I mean?’
‘Yes. Almost certainly.’
‘Good,’ he said. He put his hand firmly on the back of my arm. ‘Come with me.’ A few beds down, he added, ‘I’m Gabriel Flynn, by the way.’
‘Darrell Kincaid. You’re a – doctor?’
‘Tone of doubt noted and granted. I am a doctor, but of psychiatry.’
‘A psychiatrist? Why does–’
But Dr Flynn stopped abruptly, and I almost cannoned into him. His tweed jacket smelled faintly of cigar smoke. I found it strangely comforting.
We were at Big Man’s bed. He was hooked up to a drip, and to a machine that I assumed was monitoring his vital signs. He was lying with the sheets pulled tight across his chest, as if a nurse had recently re-made the bed and not been too fussed that there was someone in it. His arms were above the sheets, but I noticed that they were just lying there limply, as if he had lost the power to move them. He was staring up at the ceiling, and seemed oblivious to our presence. His gaze was so intense that instinctively I glanced upwards. But the ceiling was uniformly plain and bland. White tiles with a slight texture. Nothing that seemed to require prolonged scrutiny.
‘I’m back,’ said Dr Flynn, in a voice that was cheerful but a little too loud – the kind used by a certain type of preschool teacher who desperately wants a different job.
‘And I’ve brought a visitor,’ he continued. ‘Her name is Darrell, and she was worried about you. Although God knows why, when you’re clearly right as rain.’
Big Man did not respond to the dig. He may as well not even have heard it. He kept on lying there, unmoving, staring at the ceiling.
I raised my eyebrows at Dr Flynn. I expected him to take me aside and explain, but he spoke right up. Either it was a psychological tactic designed to provoke, or discretion was simply not his thing.
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘our Mr Hogan has been like this since he was given the all clear from the surgery. He won’t move. He won’t talk and he won’t eat.’ He addressed Big Man directly. ‘The nurses are becoming more than a fraction annoyed, Michael. And believe me, if you saw some of the instruments they have at their disposal, I myself would be wanting to stay on their good side.’
To me, he said, ‘It’s common for people, especially men, to go into a bit of a despond after heart surgery – brush with mortality, loss of sexual power and all that. But this reaction is more like a severe post-natal depression. Quite interesting, really, from an academic point of view. Pain in the jacksie from a practical one. Because if he doesn’t improve–’ He gave a brief, resigned shrug.
‘What?’ I asked, perturbed. ‘What happens if he doesn’t improve?’
‘Well, there’s a joyous spectrum of possibilities. Committing him to the loony ward is a likely start. Then there’ll have to be a feeding tube inserted, because we are duty-bound to not let him starve. Plus catheters and all that palaver for when the food we force into him inevitably makes its way out. Then if he continues to refuse to help himself, we will probably resort to ECT.’
‘ECT? You don’t mean – electric shock therapy?’
‘I do indeed mean that.’
I was horrified. ‘I thought that had been banned?’
Dr Flynn looked mildly surprised. ‘No, no. It’s still in use. Highly effective, in fact. Not pleasant, of course, even though we do stick you with an anaesthetic beforehand. But apart from the risk of chunks of your memory being erased, side effects are on the whole minimal.’
I stared down at Big Man. The odd blink had been his only detectable movement during this whole exchange. But unless the surgery had gone very awry, I knew he must have heard every word. If I’d been the subject of Dr Flynn’s bald prognosis, I’d be down the corridor, gown flapping, running like the bare-arsed wind.
‘You said if he doesn’t improve soon–’ I asked. ‘How soon is soon?’
‘Tomorrow, I’d say. Can’t keep him in here much longer. Patients are anxious enough without having the Zombie from Planet Doom in the next-door bed.’
If I hadn’t been so appalled, I might have laughed.
‘What can we do?’ I said.
It was a general cry for help, not directed to anyone in particular. But Dr Flynn said. ‘Glad you asked. I want you to sit here and talk to him.’
‘But … about what?’
‘Anything you like. What do you do for a living?’
‘I write romance novels,’ I admitted, a little reluctantly.
Dr Flynn grinned delightedly. ‘Really? My God! I always thought they were written by fat women who keep dolls on their bed. Do you keep dolls?’
‘No.’
‘Teddies?’
‘No!’
He chuckled. ‘Well, that’s grand, then. You’ll have yards of material.’
And he started to walk away! I grabbed his arm. ‘Are you serious? You want me to sit and talk to him?’
He paused. His smile had gone. ‘I want to keep him in the world,’ he said. ‘And I can’t do it on my own.’
I let go of his arm. ‘How long should I stay?’
‘Long as you can,’ he replied. ‘Long as you can …’
He nodded to me, stuck his hands in his grubby tweed pockets and strolled off.
I looked around to see if anyone else had overheard our conversation, so I could ask if I were hallucinating. No one seemed to be even the slightest bit aware of me. I looked down at Big Man. He didn’t seem to be aware of me either, but I knew now that was because he was ignoring me.
I found myself in an ambivalent emotional state. Part of me was full of admiration for his ability to sustain such extraordinary pig-headedness, and part of me was becoming increasingly irate – for much the same reason. What did he think was going to achieve by this? And what on earth made him do it in the first place?
‘I want to keep him in the world.’ It was an odd thing to say, but then, Dr Flynn wasn’t exactly conventional. Though to be fair, I hadn’t had much to do with the psychiatric profession. I’d been offered grief counselling after Tom died, and did one session with a well-meaning but intense woman who seemed to want me to cry. I wanted someone to cheer me up. I thought that was the point of grief counselling – to make you feel better, not worse. But this woman seemed to think crying would be good for me, a healthy release. In my opinion, Tom’s death was so dramatic that tears seemed a particularly useless reaction to it.
Keep him in the world. Perhaps Dr Flynn had meant that Big Man needed to be reminded that the world existed, hence the need for a running commentary from me. It made a certain sense: difficult to stay locked in your head with someone yabbering non-stop beside you. There was a chair against the wall. I pulled it out and sat down. And began to talk.
I told him everything. I didn’t intend to, but once I’d started, I found I couldn’t stop. At first, it was all light-hearted – stories of my parents: my father’s personal crusade against random apostrophes (‘Surely all but the most egregiously obtuse can distinguish between a plural and a possessive?’), my mother’s reaction when Pringle branched out of knitwear and went all modern (‘Of course, I bought from them at the right time, when they still had royal patronage.’). Stories about Simon: that he was considering applying to the Guinness World Records for the most number of cavity searches performed by international customs on a single individual. Stories about my name: the lists I’d made as a young child of super-g
irly alternatives (my favourite was Fifi Honey-Belle, and this was years before Bob Geldof had daughters). Stories about me and Michelle: the book of love spells we got from the library. We performed the least disgusting – most required us to use our menstrual blood – by chanting a few lines and sticking lemon peel in our bras. It didn’t work, unless some poor random male is still finding himself inexplicably riddled with lust for two unknown teenage girls whenever he makes a gin and tonic. I found it harder to talk about my writing because I still hadn’t heard if my publisher had assigned a new editor to me, and felt a rising bubble of panic whenever I thought about it. But then I started to talk about coming to London, the hoops I’d had to jump through to leave home, my constant freak-outs about money, the house that was infested by grumpy Gypsy builders – and rather like a piece of film run in reverse, I gradually worked my way back to the event that had triggered it all off.
But I didn’t come right out with it. I couldn’t. I paused, and sat there. I’d been talking for at least an hour, and the silence sort of rang around me. So when there was a movement in the bed next to me, I jumped. My eyes had gone down to my hands, where I’d been unconsciously rubbing the space where my wedding ring used to be. When I looked up, Big Man was staring right at me.
I stared back, mouth open a little in surprise. Then, before I could stop them, the words just came out.
‘He died,’ I said. ‘My husband died. Tom. My husband. He’s dead.’
I shut my mouth with a snap. I could feel my face start to flame with embarrassment at the stupid way I’d blurted it out, and because of the way Big Man continued to stare at me. His expression was similar to his usual one, but this time, hostility was definitely winning over neutrality.
Then I jumped again. Because Big Man spoke. His words were slow but absolutely distinct.
He said: ‘Lucky bastard.’
Dear Reader, I slapped him.
Dear God. I leapt up and slapped a man two days out of heart surgery right across the face.
I looked down at him for one horrified moment, my hand poised above the cheek it had just struck, the cheek on which a livid white imprint was now turning red.
And then I turned. And I ran.
I had just enough presence of mind not to run in the tube stations in case someone thought I was a bag snatcher, but I ran all the way there and all the way from the last tube stop to my house. I threw open my front door, slammed it shut behind me and clattered up the stairs. In the bedroom, I came to a sudden halt, and that’s when my knees gave way and I sank down onto the floor and curled up into a ball. My breathing was ragged and gasping, and I could not seem able to catch any air.
I thought – I really had thought – that I’d coped as well as anyone whose partner had died. I thought I had passed through all the stages of grieving – shock, denial, anger and then sadness – and come out the other side still sad, but ready to move on. How wrong I had been. Look what had been lurking inside me all that time, just waiting to be released. Some person, some thing I did not recognise. Some kind of furious, maddened monster. I had never hit anyone in my life. I’d never had brothers or sisters my own age, never got into playground scraps or catfights. I’d never had physical arguments with a boyfriend, couldn’t even imagine having one …
I heard the bedroom door creak, but I did not raise my head until a voice said, ‘You all right?’
I’d left the house that morning before the builders arrived, and to be honest, the obvious thought that they’d be here hadn’t occurred to me when I’d run in as if pursued by the hounds of hell. I must really have given the pair a start if the boss had felt compelled to come up and check on me.
Anselo wore a wary frown and seemed ready to bolt. It was clear to even the meanest intelligence that I was nowhere near all right. But to spare him – and myself, I have to admit – from any further discussion, I replied, ‘I will be.’
I thought he’d nod and beat a hasty retreat. But he frowned down at me for a moment more and said, ‘You’re not hurt? No one tried to–’
I almost laughed. Little did he know that today’s top candidate for unhinged smack-down artist was, in fact, my good self.
‘No. I’m not hurt. Just upset.’
This time he did nod, but continued to hover in the doorway. ‘You want – tea?’
It was the last thing I wanted. I felt as if food and drink would choke me. I shook my head.
I was desperate for him to leave me alone, and I think he sensed that. He nodded again, once, and carefully shut the door.
After a while, it was too uncomfortable to keep sitting on the floor. I hauled myself up into the bed and lay there until the sky outside the window was completely black. When I eventually made my way down to the kitchen for a glass of water, there was no one there.
‘You can be thin on the outside but fat on the inside. A thin person can still have sky-high levels of cholesterol and arteries clogged worse than the M-twenty-fucking-five.’
‘Tremendous. Any other happy fact you feel compelled to impart?’
‘Don’t get me started on bowel health.’
‘If that is an offer, let me accept it.’
‘Do you know how much half-digested red meat could right now be backed up in your colon?’
Mr Perfect sank back in his chair and shot me a despairing look. ‘How did we get started on such a conversation?’
It was kind of him to suggest it had nothing to do with me, when in fact it was entirely my fault that we were discussing the lower bowel.
It was my fault because I’d had no sleep, no breakfast and had been walking the streets since six in the morning, because I did not want to have to pretend I was OK to Anselo. The probability that he would actually ask if I were OK was low, but still – I didn’t want to see him. I walked for over two hours, down to the canal and all the way up to Highbury Fields and back to the café. By then, though my feet were killing me, I was thinking that I felt marginally better. But as soon as Mr Perfect saw me, he said, ‘Are you all right?’
I hesitated. ‘Don’t I look all right?’
‘I’d have to say that you look a little peaky.’
He was standing, waiting for me to take the chair he had offered me at his table. For a second, it occurred to me that he might be only being polite because now that he’d started, he felt compelled to continue. Then I decided that I gave not a crap. If I didn’t sit down right now, I’d have to saw off my feet to stop the pain.
‘A late night?’ he ventured, as he resumed his seat. ‘Or is something troubling you?’
I came this close to telling him. But as the story formed in my head, I realised how bad it sounded – and I did not want to jeopardise this relationship before it had even made it to the starting line. My book reading had informed me that posh people married the non-posh for only two reasons – one: an injection of funds, and two: to counterbalance the odd wayward chromosome. Not that I was leaping ahead to marriage, you understand. That would be entering crazy-woman territory. But if I were him and I heard my story, I’d be mentally drawing a thick black line through my name on the suitable spouses list. And you never knew, did you? As my mother always said – better safe than sorry.
I was saved by Mario, who placed my cup of coffee in front of me. I offered him a grateful smile, and said to Mr Perfect, ‘Nothing that this won’t fix.’
A voice beside us said, ‘It could be your zinc levels.’
Mr Perfect and I exchanged a quick, alarmed glance. Then he shifted his seat to the side, so the two of us were now facing the adjacent table. Miss Flaky had a pot of some biological-smelling tea in front of her, and a book whose title I couldn’t quite read, but which included the word Authenticity.
Miss Flaky continued, ‘Zinc deficiency is one of the least recognised causes of sleep disturbances. It can also lead to loss of appetite and mild anaemia. How are your fingernails?’
‘My fingernails–’
‘Are there white lines present?’
/>
I checked. ‘No …’
‘That’s a common sign, but not the only one. I’d suggest you ask the pharmacist next door to do a zinc check for you.’
‘Does it involve giving blood?’ I suddenly remembered Mr Perfect’s gore-phobia and shot him an apologetic glance. ‘Sorry–’
‘That’s quite all right. I can hear it mentioned. I just can’t look at it.’
‘The zinc check is simple. All you do is hold some liquid zinc sulphate in your mouth for a few seconds. If you can taste it, you probably have a deficiency.’
‘And then what?’
‘Supplements. You should be taking some kind of multivitamin, anyway. Our modern diet is woefully inadequate nutrition-wise, plus we’re constantly under assault from environmental pollutants, genetically modified foods, chronic stress, etc. A lack of folic acid alone puts us at risk of cardiovascular disease, not to mention breast and colon cancer–’
‘What a good idea.’ Mr Perfect broke her flow. ‘Let’s not mention those. Why don’t we, in fact, change the subject entirely?’
Miss Flaky gave him a look. ‘Men are often uncomfortable discussing their health. It seems to be a little threatening to them.’
Mr Perfect spread his hands. ‘I am entirely comfortable with the state of my health.’
‘Oh really? And you were last checked when?’
‘As I recall, when I was ten years old. I had my tonsils removed. I’m sure you’ll be pleased to know that my recovery went without a hitch.’
‘Oh my God–’ Miss Flaky was slowly shaking her head. ‘The tonsils are a vital lymphatic barrier between us and infection. We should be thankful for our children’s sake that barbaric Victorianisms like tonsillectomies are now rarely performed.’
‘I’ve never had a day’s illness since!’ Mr Perfect protested.
‘How do you know?’ Miss Flaky asked. ‘How do you know what state your cholesterol is in? Your blood pressure? And what about your prostate?’
‘I could go out there now and run five miles with ease.’ Mr Perfect’s tone was still light, but I did notice he was sitting up straighter in his chair. ‘I’d want to be more suitably dressed, of course–’
The Sweet Second Life of Darrell Kincaid Page 8
