by Louise Beech
‘Does no one visit you?’ I asked, realising I’d been brusque.
Why couldn’t I find Katrina when I needed her? As Catherine I spoke without thinking. The girl shook her head, and more gently, finally finding Katrina, I asked where her mum and dad were.
‘Mum’s away and Dad’s not allowed to come here.’
I wondered how appropriate it was for a complete stranger to stay with a small girl until her favourite carrots arrived. I sensed a troubled background and had no idea if a nurse would call security. What a pathetic picture this child in the middle of a hospital bed made, her eyes huge with curiosity and faith. It formed a photograph in my mind. A print she might one day find in a shoebox, mixed with snaps of holidays and Christmas and rabbits. Might her mother give her half-lies when she asked about her origins? A half-lie only becomes a half-truth when the shadow finally moves.
‘I like your brooch – it’s Pinky.’ She held up the toy and I stared at the un-pink rabbit. Maybe one day, in a few years, she’d ring a crisis line and Katrina might be there, asking how she felt, helping her find the answers, listening to the story of the rabbit that she hugged when she was alone and talked to the odd woman who disturbed her, who waited until the carrots arrived.
A nurse with a blood-pressure machine peered into the room. ‘Are you Rebecca’s aunt?’ She looked me up and down.
‘Oh, no, I got lost.’
She stared at me.
‘She’s looking for her aunt,’ said the girl, Rebecca.
I thought of Rebecca Houghton, that day spent ice-skating, the day I forgot Nanny Eve. I wondered if classmates asked this girl out, or if she too hung around with boys and climbed trees.
‘Which floor do I want if my aunt had cancer surgery?’ I asked the nurse.
‘The tenth, probably ward 130.’
‘I hope you find her,’ said Rebecca.
The nurse continued with her equipment to the next room, wheels squeaking as though crying.
‘You have this.’ I unpinned the brooch, and Rebecca stared at it in my hand. I was afraid to touch her.
‘Put it on me,’ she instructed. I pinned it above the word ‘Trouble’. She smelt of clinical shampoo. ‘I look cool. Will you come and see me again?’
‘I won’t be here,’ I said.
Ring me in ten years, I thought. Ring me and tell me about this day. Tell me why you had no visitors, tell me your story, why you had no fear of a stranger, tell me you still wear the brooch she gave you.
Would she even remember?
I walked away but then looked back over my shoulder. Rebecca was watching me. The brooch winked.
In the crowded lift I pressed the button for floor ten, took the tube of cream from my pocket and coated my hot hands in gel. The many faces merged. Then in the mirror I saw the bushy-haired man. His face was disguised by a thick, bristled beard and moustache. My knees were jelly. Why was he here? He had only ever appeared as I awoke, there at the end of my bed, halfway between dreams and life.
I looked for him in the sea of faces. Not there. Did I know him? It felt like I did. From the mirror he smiled and mouthed ‘tiger’. I shrunk back, nudging a pyjama-clad man who said, ‘Hey!’
When the doors opened, I pushed my way out. Looked back. There was no bushy man. No bearded sort-of-stranger. My imagination? I sat for a moment in the corridor. Thought I might be sick, but it passed. Seeing him as I woke was unnerving but somehow explainable. He was some figment of a nightmare, maybe.
But now I was fully awake.
On ward 130 I recognised the Stoma Care Clinic poster and found the third room along. The curtain had been pulled around Aunty Hairy’s bed; I wondered if she was being examined so I paused and listened for a nurse’s voice. Hearing nothing, I peeped through the gap. Hairy was doing a puzzle, alone.
‘Catherine, come and sit.’ She patted the sheet. ‘Martin’s gone to get some stuff from home. Where are your mother and Graham?’
I sat on the bed near her legs, still trembling after seeing the bushy man, and said they must still be eating. Tea trollies jingled in the corridor and someone further along wailed. I scratched my fingers.
‘You mustn’t worry.’ Aunty Hairy took my fidgety hand and patted it.
I began to consider that really I should call her Aunty Mary in my mind as well as in speech. She deserved her real name. Soon she might not even be bristled anymore. I insisted I wasn’t worried about her. If anyone could send cancer packing with a pat on the hand, she could.
‘You’ve enough on your plate with the house and your volunteering.’
‘I’m sorry I called you Aunty Hairy.’ I blurted it out in a messy jumble in case I changed my mind and didn’t say it.
She laughed. ‘Oh, Catherine, you funny girl. You mean that time at the dinner table? I laughed for days. Told Jean not to send you to bed.’
I was embarrassed to find myself crying and roughly wiped away the tears with my sleeve. I confessed that I’d called her it since then. ‘There was a girl and I told her it was your name, and she thought I mustn’t like you much.’
‘Come now, don’t get upset.’ She pulled me to her chest and I wondered where her colostomy bag was and if I was leaning on it. ‘It’s not really about the name, is it?’
I wanted to argue that it was, that names mattered, but she hugged me tighter and said she’d fight this disease with everything she had. She stroked my hair and said, ‘You know that, don’t you?’
Now was the moment to ask. I took out the strange letter.
‘This was in the box of photos you gave me,’ I said. ‘I hate to trouble you when … you know…’
‘Oh Catherine, distractions are good.’ She unfolded the faded paper and read it. Then she closed it softly, tears shining in her eyes.
‘What is it?’ I asked. ‘Do you know? Was my dad having an affair?’
‘Oh, gosh, no,’ said Mary. ‘I’ve never seen it before and don’t know how it got in the box, but I remember your dad telling me about it – about a gorgeous letter he had written for your real mum before you were born. About the heart. His heart. How she’d have to share it when you arrived. He had such a lovely way with words. Such a kind man.’
He didn’t have to share his heart after all. She’d died and it was just the two of us.
‘Wow, I’ll really cherish this letter then.’ I paused. ‘What was my real mum like? Really like?’
‘Sadly, we hardly got to know her,’ said Aunty Mary. ‘They weren’t together long before you were born. You were quite the surprise. But we really liked her. She was kind … gentle … the good ones always go young, don’t they?’
I nodded. ‘Thank you for buying me my rabbit.’
‘Oh – Geraldine.’ She patted my damp cheek. ‘You loved her. Used to brush her fur and walk her around the garden on a pink lead like she was a puppy.’ She paused. ‘I didn’t buy her though, sweetie.’
‘No? Who did?’ Footsteps sounded and my mother opened the curtain.
‘Who bought Geraldine?’ Aunty Mary asked her.
‘You did,’ said my mother. ‘Catherine, why are you bothering your aunt with this stuff? Didn’t I answer enough questions about this the other night?’
Mary insisted it was OK, we were just reminiscing. Graham resumed his place in the bedside chair, the smell of cigarettes on his coat.
‘You bought her.’ My mother sat on the bed and glared at Mary, who seemed to rethink. I sensed a hidden message in my mother’s look, in those three words. Something I couldn’t hear or understand.
‘I did.’ Mary forced a giggle. ‘How silly to forget. Must be the treatment.’
Her mannerisms were unnatural, and my mother chimed in with, ‘Do you need anything from the hospital shop?’
I felt like the only one not in on a joke, though Graham seemed oblivious too. Female heels approached the curtain; I anticipated a nurse and was annoyed when Celine poked her head through the gap and said, ‘Not disturbing you all, am I?’
‘Not at all.’ My mother smiled. ‘Lovely of you to come.’
Celine wore a white jacket over a sequined vest-top, her sculpted breasts fighting for space inside it. New hair extensions swung down to her bottom. I could taste expensive perfume and needed air.
She flicked a strand of hair away. ‘Dad, Jean, Mary, Catherine.’
I ignored her and said we should give Aunty Mary space. But Mary made room for Celine. She always had room at her dinner table, no matter how many turned up.
‘What do you need at the hospital shop?’ asked my mother.
Graham stood to leave, and Celine took his chair, looking with disdain at the catheter and other tubes that coiled from the sickbed. She kept her pink designer clutch bag on her knee. I glanced through Mary’s puzzle book – she had attempted every one but completed none.
Aunty Mary handed a fiver to my mother and asked her to get a paper. Looking at me she said, ‘Is tonight’s the one your friend’s in?’
‘And what’s the column about this week?’ Celine looked down her expensive nose at me. ‘“Fern the devoted wife bakes sponge cake and makes a trifle and does voluntary work for the good women of the area”?’
I ignored her, adding the word bitch in answer to “female dog” in Aunty Mary’s puzzle. Mary said she thought Fern’s column was fun, that it was sad that she couldn’t work it out with her husband. Maybe she wrote the column to cope with the sadness of losing him, she said.
‘No, she sleeps with lots of people to do that,’ said Celine.
‘What’s your Mark’s excuse then?’ I asked. ‘Anyway, Fern won’t be in the paper again. They found out she’s not really married, so that’s that.’
Aunty Mary said it was a shame. She only ever bought the Saturday paper to read Fern’s column – and for the free magazine with the TV listings.
Celine teased a blonde lock into a curl around her finger. ‘Maybe they’ll get a proper writer instead.’
‘You’re a bitch,’ I said.
‘Catherine, enough of such words on a cancer ward.’ My mother had returned from the shop and dropped the newspaper onto the bed.
‘I don’t understand,’ said Aunty Mary, opening it. ‘All my friends at the Post Office love Fern. How did they find out she was separated?’
‘Somebody rang her editor. She thought I did it.’ I was tired of saying it, of telling people she’d blamed me, having them possibly consider that it was. But mostly I was hurt that Fern had thought so. Aunty Mary said anyone who really knew me would know better.
‘No smoke without fire.’ Celine’s eyelids were heavy with mauve paint.
I said that was what I’d thought when I’d heard about her husband Mark and the teenage girl.
‘Why are you saying vile things?’ asked my mother.
‘Why am I vile? I’m only saying what’s true. Mark’s not vile for sleeping with girls half his age and she’s not vile for dissing Fern? – But I’m vile. Everyone knows he slept with that sixteen-year-old girl. I’m going.’
‘Don’t leave, dear,’ said Mary. ‘This little madam should go.’‘Who are you calling a little madam?’ demanded Celine.
My mother patted the pillows and said we should both go if we couldn’t stop the bickering.
Celine stood, towering over me in her four-inch stilettos, and tried to push past. But her heel got caught in the catheter drain and pulled it apart from the bag. Urine splattered like an orange firework, staining her trouser leg.
Mother pulled the buzzer cord. ‘Nurse!’ she called. ‘Poor Mary! Poor Mary!’ I heard: Pure Mary, Pure Mary.
‘I’m covered in piss,’ whined Celine.
Aunty Mary clapped her hands, put her head back and laughed.
‘You really shouldn’t say piss on a cancer ward,’ I said.
I left Celine looking for paper towels, my mother shouting for help and Aunty Mary laughing, red-faced and delirious.
On the bus, I called Fern’s mobile, but it was switched off. I rang her mother’s home number. The phone rang and rang. When Fern’s mother finally answered, she told me she’d gone, left that morning on a cheap, last-minute package holiday to Lanzarote.
‘Who with?’ The thought of someone else being with her made me scratch my hands.
‘She went on her own. What happened between you girls?’
I was relieved that Fern hadn’t told her mother; it meant she couldn’t have fully believed it herself. Fern’s mother said she’d be home on Sunday the ninth and asked if I had a message. I couldn’t think of anything.
One of the Crisis Care wall prompts came to me: ‘If you’ve already said it all suggest the caller repeats their story, and you might find a question you missed.’ It occurred to me that I’d never messed with Fern’s name. Perhaps its simplicity stopped me. But thinking over our story to find questions I’d missed, I realised it was because I’d had no need. I’d trusted Fern enough not to.
That night I slept for three-and-a-half hours.
I dreamt of the room.
There was a metal bed in the corner. Little Rebecca slept there with all manner of tubes transporting thick, dark blood into her veins and extracting stained mucus from others. The sheet was soiled. My father’s letter was pinned to the wall.
‘The heart is the first organ that forms. Everything we need to know is in there.’
I approached the bed; Rebecca opened her eyes with an audible click.
There’s another room, she whispered, without opening her mouth.
A door appeared behind her, the wood breathing, up and down, up and down. Everything you need to know is in there.
In the room or in my heart?
You must see it, Rebecca whispered, soundless. You must face it or I’ll die.
She pulled the tubes from her arm and fat droplets of blood hit the floor. Drip, drip, drip.
I’ll die if you don’t see.
Drip, drip, drip.
See. Everything you need to know is in there.
I woke to the leaking tap. Dripdrip-drip. I’d forgotten to wrap a tea towel around it, or to put one underneath to absorb the noise. My heart mimicked the sound. No Nanny Eve on the bed singing. No Fern at my feet. I recalled her words the last time I’d woken from a dream: ‘That place is giving you nightmares.’
But today I hadn’t been to Flood Crisis. And when I had gone on Sunday I’d not dreamed at all. The realisation pleased me; helplines and callers and their stories were not the source of my anguish. But then relief gave way to a question that I saw flashing eerily in the DVD player’s green digits.
If crisis centres weren’t causing the dreams – what was?
19
Two sixes at Santa’s feet
‘I won’t play unless I’m the shoe.’ Christopher picked up the tiny metal boot, waited for dispute, and when no one argued he placed it on the Monopoly board.
The Flood Crisis coffee table had been cleared – magazines shoved under the sofa, mugs of tea in hand or by feet, and the singing, thrusting Father Christmas relegated to the corner, from where he watched in silence. Jangly Jane had commented on Santa’s inappropriate underwear and tried to cover the offending shorts.
‘This is the most-played board game in the world,’ said Christopher. ‘It’s also a game of luck, so I’m doomed before we begin.’
I picked up the silver Scottie dog; I had no preference of ornament, no reason to choose the animal, so really he picked me. Jane, after trying to resist the game and arguing that we should do some role-play practice, surrendered. She picked the car charm out of the box.
‘Skill is required more than luck.’ She shook the two dice and threw them onto the board. One dropped off the table and revealed a three; the other was a one. ‘Skilled players win more often than unskilled.’
‘I’m also doomed, then,’ I sighed. ‘Can we just play snap instead?’
‘The dice decide who goes first,’ said Christopher. ‘Going last is a significant disadvantage, because you’re more likely to la
nd on property that has already been bought and therefore be forced to pay rent instead of having an opportunity to buy an unowned property. And don’t buy Park Lane; according to the laws of probability seven is the most likely roll of two dice, with a one in six chance, so Park Lane is one of the least landed-on squares because Go to Jail is seven places behind it’
‘You need to get out more.’ I threw the dice – two fives landed in the middle of the board with a satisfying clatter.
Christopher picked them up, shook his cupped hands for ages, expression serious, and cast them onto the board. He wore a black shirt. One vertical crease up the left arm ruined the otherwise smooth material. I wondered if he’d been to an interview before our shift and not ironed his clearly just-taken-out-of-a-packet top. ‘Eleven!’
‘How do we play around the phones?’ Jane glanced at the booths.
‘We’ll each assign someone to fill in for us,’ said Christopher. ‘Obviously, if two people are away we’ll pause the game. I’ll cover your turns, Katrina.’
‘I’m not sure that will work,’ said Jangly.
Having appointed herself the banker, she organised the money piles and straightened the Chance and Community Chest cards. Christopher arranged his play-money into piles according to denomination and imparted words of wisdom.
‘Did you know,’ he said, ‘that though dogged by bad luck in real life, King’s Cross Station has the fortune of having both a Go To dedicated card and one that advances the player to the nearest railroad. So it’s a lucky spot.’
‘So those unlucky in life fare better in this game of chance?’ Jane sipped tea.
‘I was merely observing,’ said Christopher. ‘Consider me the bearer of information from which one can draw great inspiration.’ He grinned.
‘Or consider you an arsehole,’ I said. ‘Shall we?’
I handed Christopher the dice. I added that if the phones got busy it would be the longest game ever played, and on cue the telephone in booth one chimed.
‘I’ll go.’ Jane stood and headed for the cubicle, calling over her shoulder, ‘We should pause the game. You two might cheat.’
I finished my tea and put it under the chair, away from feet that might fidget or jump with anticipation. With a deliberate flourish, Christopher threw the dice and moved his boot five places to King’s Cross Station. He bought it. I threw a seven and landed on Chance.
