Inchworm
Page 1
ANN KELLEY is a photographer and prize-winning poet who once nearly played cricket for Cornwall. She has previously published collections of photographs and poems, an audio book of cat stories, and some children’s fiction, including the award-winning Gussie series. She lives with her second husband and several cats on the edge of a cliff in Cornwall where they have survived a flood, a landslip, a lightning strike and the roof blowing off. She runs courses for aspiring poets at her home, writing courses for medics and medical students, and speaks about her poetry therapy work with patients at medical conferences.
The Bower Bird is the sequel to The Burying Beetle was shorlisted for the Brandford Boase Award and was selected for the WHSmith New Talent Initiative.
The Bower Bird won the 2007 Costa Children's Award and the UK literacy Association Book Award. The Bower Bird also won the 2008 Cornish Literary Guild's Literary Salver.
Other Books in the Gussie Series
The Burying Beetle
The Bower Bird
A Snail’s Broken Shell
Other Books by Ann Kelley, published by Luath Press
Runners
The Light at St Ives
Praise for Inchworm
There are not many books around that you can give to anyone of any age and be sure of an appreciative audience, but Kelley does it beautifully in this, the third in the Gussie series, following the well-deserved Costa Category award for The Bower Bird. Sue Baker, PUBLISHING NEWS
From the first line of this book I was captivated! Gussie is a fantastic heroine – innocent, brave and optimistic at all times. She seems so fragile, a kind soul you can’t help but root for, someone who doesn’t want to be pitied. Never before has a book caused me such appreciation of being healthy and alive. It was engrossing and poetic – it grabs you and won’t let go. There is lots of hidden humour, small clever things that Gussie says that at first you might not notice, but if you read it again, it will give you the giggles… This is definitely one of my top ten books. You have to read it, and it will stay with you forever! TEEN TITLES
Overall, a great book, I certainly wouldn’t mind finding it in my stocking this Christmas. THE INDEPENDENT
… mature, beautifully written. THE IRISH WORLD
She succeeds in underlining the fragility of life but more importantly in celebrating the miraculous beauty of the world around us. INIS
Praise for The Bower Bird
It’s a lovely book – lyrical, funny, full of wisdom. Gussie is such a dear – such a delight and a wonderful character, bright and sharp and strong, never to be pitied for an instant. HELEN DUNMORE
An inspirational tale of youthful spirit in the face of adversity…What makes this book intriguing and brilliant is Gussie’s vitality and high spirits. CORNWALL TODAY
The author as artist evokes people and places with delicacy, humour and truth – a novel of outstanding beauty. THE 2007 COSTA BOOK AWARDS
Praise for The Burying Beetle
Many thanks for sending The Burying Beetle. I started reading it this morning before breakfast and ignored hunger pangs to finish it off in great sadness. It’s quite beautifully done. Sue Baker, PUBLISHING NEWS
This is a special book, the one you come across in a hundred, the one you will read and reread, a slow, savouring, enjoyable novel. Marion Whybrow, ST IVES TIMES & ECHO
Acutely observed, tender, funny and very moving. Michael Foreman
I am going to get this book no matter what. I will have this book. Stephen Perkin, age 14
Obvious comparisons to Mark Haddon… Sue Baker, PUBLISHING NEWS
Watch out for… Grown-ups rushing to borrow their children’s books (again) when The Burying Beetle by Ann Kelley is published. THE HERALD MAGAZINE
…the same clear, direct perspective as Cassandra Mortmain in Dodie Smith’s I Capture the Castle – and she’s in a fairly similar situation too, living in the country with an eccentric parent. PUBLISHING NEWS
There is a delightful joy in words, being alive, and in nature. The storyline is minimal, understated and secondary to the world of thoughts and the imagination. This is a rare and unusual novel. Sophie Smiley, SCHOOL LIBRARIAN JOURNAL
Inchworm
ANN KELLEY
Luath Press Limited
EDINBURGH
www.luath.co.uk
First published 2008
This edition 2009
eBook 2013
ISBN (print): 978-1-906817-12-1
ISBN (eBook): 978-1-909912-50-2
The author’s right to be identified as author of this book under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 has been asserted.
© Ann Kelley 2008
Contents
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Enjoyed The Burying Beetle?
Other Books from Ann Kelley
Many thanks to Bella, Simon, Sonny, Eiofe and Jake Hassett, Dr Kate Dalziel, Lisa Innes, Alan Naftalin, and Chloe Flora Foreman for inspiration, ideas and advice. And all friends and family who made suggestions and let me steal words out of their mouths.
To all organ donors and their families.
Thank you for the gift of hope.
PROLOGUE
The unexamined life is a life not worth living – SOCRATES
ALISTAIR SWERVES TO miss a huge heap of something in the middle of the road. It’s 3 a.m., the dead of night, the end of the year.
‘What the…?’
Mum stirs in the front passenger seat. ‘There’s another.’
‘What is it?’
‘Looks like elephant shit,’ I say.
Alistair winds down the window. Mum says, ‘Smells like elephant shit.’
Around the bend we come across them. Trunk to tail, the troupe tiptoe silently through the sleeping London street.
‘A circus?’
‘It’s lucky to see elephants,’ I say. I need all the luck I can get. I am on my way to have a heart and lung transplant.
CHAPTER ONE
Intensive Therapy Unit
MY FIRST THOUGHTS on waking are – Where are my cats? I feel no pain but I do have tubes coming out of every orifice, plus one or two new holes in my chest and other places. My throat is sore and I can’t talk. Mummy is here wearing a hospital gown and surgical mask, though I can still see her tears, and Daddy looks anxiously through the glass door. He can’t come in because he has bugs up his nose.
It’s several days since the transplant. I am pretty drugged up and sleep a lot but everything went well, according to my cardiac surgeon. I have lots of nurses. Someone watches me all the time. It’s like having slaves. They turn me, wash me, change my dressings, take my temperature and blood pressure about a million times a day. There are machines all around me, monitoring all my bodily functions. I have catheters and bags of liquids going in and out of me, but I am now breathing without mechanical assistance. Various drugs are being fed into my veins. I feel sleepy but contented, not worried. The physiotherapist comes to make me cough. She calls me Gorgeous Gussie. She makes me laugh and it hurts.
Thoughts flutter in my head and out again like a flock of pigeons rising from earth in a panicked bunch, like tickertape: loose sheets of paper snatched by the breeze.
Alistair cannot come into the Intensive Therapy unit, even though he’s a doctor, because he isn’t related. He waves through the window at me, blows kisses and gives the thumbs up sign.
I sleep and I am in a ball of pain. I am everyone who has lived, who is living now, who is going to live, and we are all in pain and this ball of pain is God. I am God. And the pain is everlasting. But with all my strength and power I force the pain into millions of parts, millions of people sharing the ball of pain, and I force the pain into a flat line of time – past, present and future. I am God, and God is everyone, and we all share the pain.
I open my eyes and see nurses, my invention, sharing my pain.
Was it a nightmare? It seems too real; I am still God, I am still in pain, but the pain is less, fading. There is a dreadful stench, like a dead elephant. I dare not close my eyes because I am terrified. It’s then that I remember, I’ve had this dream before. It is only a dream.
Room 3, B Ward
When I can talk again, I ask my nurse, Katy, if she is real. She laughs.
‘I was last time I looked,’ she says.
‘Is there a horrid smell?’
She sniffs. ‘No more than usual,’ She is doing something to my IV line. I suddenly start to cry.
‘Gussie, what is it, darling?’
‘I had a nasty dream. It was awful. And I…’
I’m afraid I blubber.
‘Nightmares are common after transplant, I’m afraid. Lots of people get them. You mustn’t worry, they’ll go away.’
I ask for a mirror. My chest is covered in a wide tape, so I can’t see the clips or incision but I want to see my face, to see if I’ve changed.
I have – I’m pink! Pink cheeks! Pink lips! Normal coloured. Not blue any more. I look normal. I don’t know whose heart and lungs I have inherited. It feels weird, very weird: not quite a robot but someone else’s heart and lungs working inside me, attached to my veins and arteries. Like putting a new engine in a clapped-out car. I was clapped-out, breathless all the time, fainting, and my heart racing like a steam train going through a tunnel. Chest pains, palpitations, nausea, dizziness, exhaustion, headaches, cyanosis, the usual stuff. I can’t wait to try out my new motor. Will I have the donor’s memories or habits? Perhaps I’ll start scratching my bum or tapping my foot. I could blame all my bad habits on my donor! Perhaps I will suddenly crave Brussels sprouts or black olives, perhaps I’ll be able to speak Russian or be mad on motor racing or Manchester United? If my donor was unhappy, will I have her bad memories? I hope she wasn’t allergic to cats; what a terrible thought. At pre-op meetings I was told that I wouldn’t acquire any of a donor’s traits. The heart is a pump and the lungs are bellows: they don’t carry memory. It’s a myth, they said. I won’t suddenly be an expert on quantum mechanics. Shame.
I don’t feel like a different person. My eyes look the same. It’s the same old Gussie staring out of them. Maybe I look a little older. I might start growing now, growing tits and hips and pubic hair. Getting taller. Putting on weight.
‘If I asked the doctors, do you think I could see my old heart and lungs, Mum?’
‘You gruesome little beast, no, I shouldn’t think so.’
‘Oh, why not?’ It would be fascinating to see my old organs, to see the disease I was born with. I hope they are going to keep them to show medical students.
‘Let’s concentrate on looking after the new organs, shall we?’ says one of the nurses, Katy, who has just done a blood test and is now is doing something to my IV lines.
I have the same hallucination as I had before. It’s so scary. I hate it. I’m having an anti-psychosis drug to make the horrors go away.
Mum brings in some music for me, with ear phones. I don’t know what it is, but Alistair sent it. It’s Handel’s Arias for opera or something, very soothing. He said to listen to it when I go to sleep and then the horrors won’t come back.
I sleep and dream I’m running along Porthmeor Beach, with my cats following me. The sky is pink and the sea flat. Suddenly an elephant appears, swimming majestically, then another and another. They form a circle and raise their trumpets and squirt water into the sky, like an illustration in a Babar story. I wake feeling wonderful, sore but happy. I can breathe, fill my new lungs; soon I’ll be able to run along the beach again.
I can’t wait to go home to my cats, my darling Charlie and bossy Flo and scaredy-cat Rambo. To see Brett and my new family: Claire and Moss, Gabriel, Troy and Phaedra, and Fay, my great Aunt Fay. I’ll be able to go to school. I am so grateful to my donor and his/her family. Without them I would not be alive. And suddenly I am in tears for that dead person and her grieving family and friends.
It rains every day but I love the raindrops running down the hospital window, the blurred bones of leafless trees. I love the starlings waddling across the grey grass; a robin’s red breast the only colour in the January landscape, like a still from Doctor Zhivago, the sky a khaki grey-green; I’m growing fond of the muffled sound of a helicopter landing with someone arriving for a transplant, or maybe the transplant coordinator delivering an icebox with organs in.
Today’s biopsy shows no signs of rejection, no inflammation.
My first walk: I’m helped, of course, but to be vertical and walking is marvellous. I don’t feel as breathless as I did BT (Before Transplant). A whole load of tubes, like a milking machine, accompanies me. The cardiac monitor has been unplugged, so I can move about but I feel woozy and have to get back to my bed, my safe island.
Later I find myself talking to my new heart and lungs as if they are visitors and I want them to feel at home. In fact they are more like adopted children, who will settle down and learn to love me as I learn to live with them, hopefully. Otherwise – disaster! ‘Now I hope you don’t miss your other body too much, though I’m sure you will for a while, until you get used to being inside me. I promise to look after you. I’ll do plenty of exercise and have my teeth checked regularly so I don’t get infections. I’ll eat all the right foods and never eat smoked salmon or unpasteurised cheese.’ (I will have to avoid food poisoning as I am immunosuppressed owing to all the antibiotics etc that I have to take. At the moment I am pumped full of painkillers, Septrin, cyclosporine, all sorts of drugs with long names.)
‘I can’t take you to a foreign country for a year,’ I tell my new organs. ‘I can’t remember why, but that’s all right because we’re going to live in Cornwall, and that’s like a foreign country. It’s got banana trees and palm trees.’ I press my hand against my chest and say, ‘I promise you you’ll love it. I’ll never eat shellfish or blue cheese or rare meat. And no soft eggs.’
Bloody hell, am I going to have to survive on vegetable soup?
If the heart cannot feel why do we say heartfelt? Deep in my heart? Heart throb? Heartache? Heartbroken? Fainthearted? Eat your heart out? Lose my heart to…? Set my heart on doing something? Braveheart? With all my heart? (I am told that because of some surgical procedure I will feel no pain from my new heart, so no heartache then.)
I’ve asked Daddy to lend me a camera – I left mine in Cornwall – so I can record what goes on here in hospital. He gives me one of his own precious cameras – an old Leica. It’s fiddly to load the film but it’s smaller than my Nikkormat and not as heavy. It has to be sprayed with disinfectant before I can use it. Hope it doesn’t harm the works. I make portraits of all the nurses and doctors who come into the room, the cleaner, the physio, my pale-blue room, the machines behind my bed, the view through the window, and Mum. Mum has lots of grey hairs. Shall I tell her? She looks older and anxious, but she’s always looked anxious.
I’m
not allowed out of my room yet. It’s like being in prison. But I have mail!
Der Gussie,
How ar yu? I am good. My rabits and duks are good. My cats are good. Zennor is good. She et wun ov Claire’s best shoos. I hope you will get beeter and I will sea yu sooon.
Luv,
Gabriel xx
(He has drawn a picture of his puppy chewing a shoe. It was in the same envelope as Fay’s Get Well Soon card that had a lovely drawing of a tabby cat on it by an artist called Gwen John.)
My dearest Gussie,
I hear you are doing very well and making a good recovery. It will be lovely to see you again – my little great niece! We will have great times when you come home. Do you like the ballet? I can take you if you like, with Phaedra (if she’s not surfing). There’s a good Dutch dance company performing in Truro in the spring. Hopefully you will be back by then. My naughty cat Six-toes killed one of the chicks – the black one. She is banished from the garden now and has to stay indoors. She is very cross as you may imagine.
Get well quickly, my brave little darling, we are all thinking of you,
Lots of love,
Fay xxx
PS Claire, Moss, Phaedra and Troy all send love and kisses.
They had all put messages on the card:
Masses of love, thinking of you, Claire and all the Darlings. xxx
Be good, love Phaedra. xxxxxxxxxx
YAY GUSSIE!!! – Troy x
Looking forward to seeing you soon, lots of love, Moss. xxx
On a home-made card covered in stuck-on silver stars and pink hearts:
Dear Gussie,
I hope you are feeling better. I can’t wait to see you again. When are you coming home to Cornwall? SCHOOL IS HORRIBLE. MY SISTER IS HORRIBLE. I am feeling dark night blue without you.
Can’t wait to see your scar, is it brill?
Love, Bridget xxxxxxx
(Bridget lives in colour, thinks and feels in colour. Not like ordinary people who see red, feel blue, are yellow-bellied. She has an existence made up of an artist’s palette of vivid colours. A weird and interesting child with a purple pain in the neck of a sister, Siobhan, who has her eye on Brett, and anything in trousers.)