Collected Stories

by Bernard Maclaverty

  Grandma banged the sitting-room door with her fist and shouted,

  ‘Turn that thing down a bit.’

  Nurse Foley opened the door and said at the top of her voice,

  ‘That’s me away.’

  Ben turned the volume down. Nurse Foley stepped into the sitting room. Grandma stood behind her. Ben could see that they had both been crying.

  ‘The spit of him,’ said Nurse Foley. She reached into her pocket and produced a half crown and gave it to Ben.

  ‘It’s not seventy-five thousand but it’ll get you some sweets.’

  ‘What do you say?’ said Grandma.

  ‘Oh thanks –’ said Ben.

  ‘Don’t look so surprised,’ said Grandma.

  ‘But what’s it for? It’s not my birthday or anything . . .’

  ‘It’s for being good,’ said Nurse Foley.

  JUST VISITING

  THE PUB, ALMOST opposite the hospital gate, had an off-licence attached. He waited a long time for the green man before crossing. The rain was falling constantly and the wind darkened the pavements as it gusted. He ran with his coat collar up. A bell chinked when he opened the door and a girl came out from the back to serve him. There was not a great range of Scotch in half bottles so he bought, not the cheapest – because that would look bad – but a middle-priced one. The girl began to wrap it in brown paper.

  ‘Don’t bother,’ he said. ‘It’ll do like that.’ He slipped the half bottle into his jacket, making sure the pocket flap concealed it.

  In the lift to the wards a Sister with winged spectacles stood opposite him. He thought he heard the liquid clink in the bottle when they stopped at any floor but she didn’t seem to notice. When the lift doors opened on the fourteenth floor he smelled the antiseptic – but there was another smell – a perfume he couldn’t quite place. A sweet, intense – uneasiness. He walked along the corridor.

  He hadn’t seen Paddy for three years – not since he himself had moved to the city. Through the ward windows he could see men in various propped positions, in beds, on beds. A sign above one – NIL BY MOUTH. Was that him? How much had the illness changed him? Would he recognise him easily? A nurse in her forties sat at a desk mid-way along the corridor. She continued writing her report, then looked up.

  ‘Just visiting,’ he said. ‘I’m here for a Mister Quinn. Mister Paddy Quinn.’ She stood up and escorted him. The name tag on her lapel said Mrs MacDonald. Again he was aware of the liquid clinking in the bottle in his pocket.

  ‘He’s in a room by himself – he’s still very weak after his operation. So please – if you don’t mind – don’t be too long.’ She opened the door and called out, ‘Visitor for you, Paddy.’

  A figure lay flat in the bed with his back to the door facing the window. The visitor moved round the bed to face him.

  ‘Paddy – how are you?’

  The nurse closed the door. Paddy gave a groan and heaved himself onto his elbow.

  ‘I hate that bitch, MacDonald. She is so fucking patronising,’ he said. ‘Good to see you, Ben.’ Ben reached out and touched the older man on the shoulder. ‘Watch me – or I’ll fall apart.’ Ben plumped up the pillows and wedged them behind Paddy’s back.

  ‘So – how are you?’

  ‘Some fucker unseamed me from the nave to the chaps.’ Paddy lay back on the pillows and blew out his breath. His beard and hair were now completely white. When he opened his pyjama jacket to display his wounds Ben tried not to let anything show on his face. There was an incision beginning at Paddy’s neck which zig-zagged down his side to the bottom of his ribs.

  ‘Jesus, it’s like the map of a railway track.’ There were junctions and off-shoots and either there was extensive bruising or else the whole wound had been painted with iodine.

  ‘It’s hand-stitched,’ he said. ‘Nothing but the best.’

  ‘Is it sore?’

  ‘Naw . . .’ Paddy looked at him. ‘What the fuck d’you think?’

  Ben nodded, not knowing whether to smile or not.

  ‘Did you manage to run the cutter?’

  Ben glanced over at the small window in the centre of the door. There was no one looking.

  ‘In my wash-bag,’ said Paddy. Ben slipped the bottle from his pocket into the wash-bag, covered it with a damp face-cloth and zipped it up.

  ‘Crinkle-free,’ he said. ‘The girl was going to wrap it but I said no. I didn’t know the lie of the land up here.’ The wash-bag was now stowed at the bottom of the bedside cabinet. Ben sat down on a chair. Paddy leaned back on his pillows.

  ‘It’s good to know that’s there.’

  ‘Are you not allowed anything?’

  ‘Two cans of Guinness a day. Three if someone’s brave enough to buck the system.’

  ‘Slim rations,’ said Ben.

  ‘I’m on that many bloody drugs . . .’

  ‘When did you arrive?’

  ‘The night I phoned. They operated the next day.’

  ‘I’m sorry I couldn’t get up sooner but you know how it is.’ Ben shrugged, making out he had no control over anything. ‘So – how have you been since I last saw you?’

  ‘Apart from cancer – okay.’

  ‘Sorry – but you know what I mean. How’s the town I love so well?’

  ‘The terrible town of Tynagh. It’s not been the same since you left. Morale has taken a nose dive.’ There was a long silence. ‘Where green peppers wrinkle on the Co-op shelf.’ Ben rested his elbows on his knees and stared down at the terrazzo floor. Paddy stared at the white coverlet. ‘What’s the teaching like here?’

  ‘For fuck’s sake, Paddy . . .’ Ben leaned back in his chair and appeared to concentrate on the ceiling. There was another pause – the wind buffeted the window and the rain sounded like hailstones against the glass. ‘I mean – they wouldn’t operate . . . to that extent if they didn’t think they could . . . I mean the signs are good. My own father – they just took one look and closed him up again. Told my mother the only thing left was to take him to Lourdes. Are you getting radiotherapy?’

  ‘Chemotherapy. They say it’s worse.’

  ‘But they wouldn’t put you through all that if they thought . . . if they didn’t think you had an . . . excellent chance.’

  ‘Did she take him? To Lourdes?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘He died the week he came back. We were just kids – didn’t even know he was ill.’

  ‘Fuck it – pour me some orange juice. In that glass.’ There was a carton on the grey metal locker and Ben stood and began to pour out of the torn spout of the cardboard. ‘Stop – go easy. Just enough to colour it.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The whisky.’

  ‘Are you sure? Paddy, I’d hate to be the one . . .’

  ‘I’ll do it myself then.’

  ‘Stay where you are.’ Ben crouched and took the half bottle out of the wash-bag. There was a series of small metallic snaps as he broke the screw-top, then the hollow rhythmic clunking as he poured whisky into the tumbler of orange juice.

  ‘Say when.’ Ben kept his body between the tumbler and the door. He stopped pouring. Paddy said,

  ‘When.’

  He put the bottle back in the wash-bag and handed the glass to Paddy. Paddy sniffed at it.

  ‘Terrible fucking smell – orange juice.’ He raised the glass to his mouth, quickly tipped it back and swallowed half its contents. Then the remainder. He lay for a moment with his eyes closed. ‘Oh that’s good. What about yourself?’

  ‘No, it’s too early for me. Thanks all the same.’

  ‘That’s how it all started. Difficulty swallowing. It went on for a couple of months – and then it got so bad I went to Doctor Fuckin Jimmy. And now I’m here.’

  ‘Doctor Fuckin Jimmy.’ Ben shook his head, stood up and sniffed at the air. ‘Maybe I’d better open that window for a bit.’

  ‘Jesus, you’ll have it as cold as the caravan in here.’

  ‘It
’s the smell – if the nurse comes in.’ The lower section of the window hinged in at the bottom. The wind gusted up into his face when he opened it. ‘It didn’t stop us having some good nights.’

  ‘Plenty of internal central heating. Days in the Seaview, nights in the caravan.’

  ‘Good times, Paddy.’

  ‘Laughing to piss point.’

  ‘Mine’s a whisky,’ said Ben, imitating Paddy’s voice, ‘and I’ll leave the measure up to yourself. And when it came to your round, you oul bastard – What kind of beer can I buy you a half pint of?’

  ‘That’s a lie.’ They laughed and nodded.

  ‘Do you still live in it?’

  ‘The caravan? Yeah. If it hasn’t blown away. It should be tied down a day like that. But I can’t be bothered any more.’

  ‘Come on Paddy . . .’

  ‘The doctors were saying – when I get out the District will have to house me. They say they’ll not release me until I get a place to recover in.’

  ‘You see – they expect you to get better.’ Paddy nodded but he didn’t seem sure. He said,

  ‘How’s the wife and weans?’

  ‘Fine – everybody’s fine.’ Ben looked at the racing grey sky and then down at the leafless trees in the grounds.

  ‘I liked the kid who thought wind was made by the trees waving.’ Ben looked round and Paddy was lying back on his pillows with his eyes clenched shut. ‘Maybe I’d better go,’ he said. ‘Is there anything you want?’

  ‘Yeah – you could run the cutter for me again. In fact, if you don’t I’ll break your legs for you.’

  ‘Okay – okay. But it’ll be Friday before I can come.’

  ‘And close that fucking window.’

  Ben snapped the wood frame back and snibbed it.

  ‘The windows must be like that to stop you jumping out. When it all gets too much.’ Just then Mrs MacDonald tapped the glass of the door with a fingernail. ‘I’m overstaying my welcome here.’

  ‘Fuck her. I remember seeing it written up in big six-foot letters once – on a wall. Do what you’re told – REBEL.’

  ‘So you keep telling me.’

  ‘She’s nothing but a saved oul bitch,’ said Paddy. ‘Before you go I want you to do something for me.’

  ‘Yeah sure.’

  It seemed important and he leaned forward to listen attentively. He thought of wills, of funeral arrangements, of last wishes.

  ‘See the wardrobe – there’s a dead man in my dressing-gown pocket. Dispose of it.’

  On the way out in the main corridor he smelled the sweet intense perfume again. It was so strong it almost caught the back of his throat like cigarette smoke. Mrs MacDonald was now sitting at her desk in the light of an anglepoise. He stopped and waited for her to pause in her writing.

  ‘Yes?’ Mrs MacDonald looked up from her work and Ben felt he had to point vaguely in the direction he’d come from.

  ‘I’ve just been visiting Paddy Quinn.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘And I wanted to give you my number – just in case. He hasn’t anybody. Here, that is.’ She wrote down Ben’s particulars.

  ‘You’re a friend of his?’

  ‘Yes – we’ve known each other for about ten years now. We were neighbours – sort of.’

  ‘In Tynagh?’

  ‘Yes – when I was teaching at the High School there.’

  ‘Lucky you. What a beautiful place. It’s my favourite seaside town.’

  ‘How do you know it?’

  ‘Mr MacDonald and I drive through it most years. On our way somewhere.’ Ben nodded but decided to say nothing. He cleared his throat.

  ‘How is he? I mean I know he’s weak but . . . how is he?’

  ‘Mr Milne – sorry, the surgeon – is convinced that he caught it in time. They are all quite hopeful.’

  ‘That is good news.’

  ‘But he’s almost sixty – and hasn’t treated himself as well as some.’

  ‘Thank you – thank you anyway for all you are doing.’

  Then he saw the source of the perfume – behind Mrs MacDonald’s desk – two bowls of hyacinths. Big bulbs sitting proud of the compost, flowering pink and blue and pervading the wards and corridor with their scent. It was a smell he hated because he associated it with childhood, with the death of his own father. A hospital in winter brightening itself with bowls of blue and pink hyacinths – a kind of hypocrisy, the stink of them everywhere. His mother crying, telling them all to be brave.

  It felt like the first day of summer – warm with the sun shining out of a cloudless sky and the trees in the hospital grounds in full leaf.

  When Ben went into the ward it was empty. Mrs MacDonald said with a repressed sigh that Paddy was probably in the smoking-room. Ben walked to the far end of the corridor and looked through the small window of the door. There were four or five men inside. He went in.

  ‘How’re ya,’ he said. Paddy was in his wheelchair sucking his pipe.

  ‘On fortune’s cap I am not the very button.’ They laughed. After the treatment the hair on the right-hand side of his face had fallen out and gave his beard a lop-sided look. He was fully dressed in trousers and jacket and sat apart, looking out the window. The others were in a group, smoking cigarettes. ‘Have you put on some weight?’

  ‘According to the scales,’ said Paddy. The room was bluish with smoke and smelled stale. There was a green metal waste bin quarter filled with cigarette butts. ‘And how are you?’

  ‘Great – the first week of the holidays. Like the first couple of hours on a Friday night.’

  ‘You can hardly see out this fucking window for nicotine. Look at it.’ The glass was yellowish, opaque. ‘It hasn’t been cleaned for months. Nobody ever sweeps the floor in here. The message is, if you smoke in this hospital we’re gonna make you feel like shit because we’re going to treat you like shit.’ He knocked his pipe out into the bucket and began to crush some tobacco between his hands. Ben sat down. The white-painted window sill had tan scorch lines where cigarettes had been left to burn.

  ‘Take it easy – maybe in a . . . a ward of this nature they have a point.’

  ‘Fuck off, Ben. People get hooked on things.’ He tamped the tobacco into the bowl of his pipe and began lighting it with a gas lighter. ‘Addiction is a strange bastard. It creates a need where no need existed. And satisfying it creates a pleasure where no pleasure existed.’

  Ben looked at the cigarette smokers. At least two of them looked like winos, with dark-red abused faces. They wore hospital dressing-gowns over pyjamas and had open hospital sandals. Ben stared down at their feet. They were black like hide with pieces of cotton wool separating the toes. Their toes looked dried, encrusted and brittle. His eyes flinched away.

  ‘Let’s go outside. I’ll take you for a spin in the wheelchair.’

  ‘Did you run the cutter?’ Ben nodded and indicated his pocket. ‘Let’s stash it in my room first. And I’ll get you the money.’

  ‘Don’t worry about it. It’s a gift – this time.’ Ben wheeled him along the corridor. Mrs MacDonald was on the desk and she spoke to Ben as they passed.

  ‘He’s fair putting on the pounds,’ she said. Ben felt obliged to stop the wheelchair. He nodded.

  ‘It’ll be food – you must be giving him food.’

  Paddy sat staring ahead.

  ‘Why don’t you go out – that lovely day. Get a breath of fresh air.’

  ‘It’s not fresh air I want,’ said Paddy, ‘but the good fug of a pub somewhere.’

  ‘Don’t you dare,’ said Mrs MacDonald and Ben and she laughed. Paddy’s knuckles were white on the armrests of his chair.

  Ben slipped him the half bottle and Paddy stood up and went into the toilet with it. He tried to vary the places he stored it. Ben stood waiting, staring out the ward window. Mrs MacDonald passed the door with a slip of paper in her hand. She smiled and stopped. She put on a whispering voice.

  ‘I’m serious about that.’
>
  ‘What?’

  ‘The pub business. It would be terrible to undo all the good work. I’m holding you responsible.’ She grinned and walked away in her flat shoes, flicking at her piece of paper with her finger.

  When Paddy came out of the toilet Ben smelled the whisky off his breath as he got back into wheelchair.

  ‘How much weight have you put on?’

  ‘A couple of pounds but I’m still lighter than when I came in. It’s that fucking chemotherapy-therapy that goes for you. And the no drink laws. They stop you drinking and then ask you to put on weight – for fucksake. Drink’s full of calories.’

  ‘I’ve been thinking about half bottles – the shape of them. There’s something Calvinist about them. They’re made flat like that for the pocket. No bulge, no evidence. A design to fit the Scots and the Irish psyche.’

  ‘Shut up and drive.’

  There were many patients outside in the hospital grounds, sitting on benches in pyjamas and dressing-gowns tilting their faces up to the sun, or being wheeled about. A couple of female nurses in white uniforms lay on the grass. There was a blackbird over by the railway cutting singing constantly.

  ‘It even feels like summer,’ said Ben. They stopped at an empty bench beside a laburnum tree and Paddy got out of the chair onto the bench. He sat filling his pipe, staring at the cascades of yellow blossom.

  ‘This bastard’s poisonous. You’ve no regard for my health at all.’