Aunt was upset by Babe’s news. She’d grown fond of the photographer, as she always referred to him. He was interesting: he brought another world into her sitting room; he made her laugh. She was sorry she wouldn’t be seeing him anymore. Having admitted that, having got it off her chest (‘Look, I’ve got it off my chest,’ she said, cough-laughing into her whisky glass) Aunt did everything she could to make Babe feel better and more positive.
‘A nice fellow. Clever, certainly – though not at crosswords. Or was he?’ Aunt said, ‘A joke, ho ho. Generous? Oh yes. You’re still hung about with his baubles, I see. Handsome, I won’t deny. But a juvenile lead. Not man enough for you, Not mature enough. No. Let’s have another whisky.’
They drank pints of whisky, interspersed, in Aunt’s case, with painkillers and minute helpings of the creamed vegetable soup – usually carrot – those who loved Aunt took it in turns to make and bring her. Her fridge, and the box freezer above it, were full of the stuff, in little cling-filmed pots, jostling with the cod fillets Aunt fed to her cats. Every so often Aunt would leave the room, and patter, rice-paper thin, to the kitchen; and return with a fizzing glass of what looked like fruit salts which she’d set down beside her whisky on the table. Morphine every four hours; Solpadine (the fizzers) as a supplementary when the pain got unbearable; and all that whisky – why didn’t it kill her?
‘What did it mean, Aunt? Was none of it true? Was it a game?’ Babe asked her. (Babe was still in shock; it had been so sudden.) ‘Was it only a game?’
‘Could be,’ Aunt said. ‘How do I know? Yes I do. I’m sure he meant it. I’m sure he thought he meant it, at the time. Anyway, don’t you play games? You always beat me at Scrabble, I notice. I think you cheat. Don’t expect me to play with you in future. Now, getting back to the crossword,’ Aunt said, ‘Harpo and Groucho won’t do – sorry, chaps, no offence – so who were the others? Tell.’
‘Chico?’ Babe said. She was no good at the crossword (which Aunt regularly solved in ten minutes) but it was nice to be consulted. Aunt always consulted her. ‘Then there was Karl, of course,’ Babe said.
‘Karl,’ Aunt said, ‘Karl. How could we forget him? Quite the funniest of the four.’
A day or so later, a postcard came to Babe’s house, written all over in Aunt’s famous blue felt tip: ‘What say HARPO, GROUCHO, CHICO& ??? ZEPPO ??? So we don’t need Lenin Karl (!) Come back SOON. XXX Aunt.’
Aunt’s ceiling seemed to grow browner as they sat there, evening after evening, puffing away, swigging away, drunk as life peeresses. Soon snow pressed against the windows. Soon the lanes were full of it. Sometimes Babe had to stay the night, and she lay in the double bed in Aunt’s spare room and listened to her cough, and heard her pad to the bathroom time and time again. The light under Aunt’s door stayed on until morning.
‘We laughed a lot,’ Babe told Aunt. ‘We were always laughing. Doubled up with it, often. Our cheekbones ached. We did have fun you know. We had a lot of fun.’
‘I know you did,’ Aunt said, ‘I know you did. Laughter’s good stuff. I approve of laughter. Tastes better than these fizzers, yuk,’ Aunt said. ‘A good howl can be therapeutic, too.’
Aunt didn’t howl, so far as Babe knew, but she wasn’t always able to laugh. Sometimes when Babe telephoned she was sharp. No, she wasn’t all right, she was bloody awful. No, Babe couldn’t come over. No, no, no. Not today and not tomorrow. Not any day this week.
Christmas cards began to appear on Aunt’s chimneypiece. They didn’t talk about them. Aunt was dreading Christmas. Not because she’d acknowledged it would be her last (she was making plans for her garden in the Spring: ‘Shall I build that wall?’ she kept asking, ‘What do you think? Give me your views. Should I move the island bed? Should I widen the border?’) but because she’d always hated festivals. Festivals were for children. Aunt had had affairs, successful and less successful, happy and not so happy; Aunt loved men and liked them, but she’d never married and she’d never had children. In the past, those who loved Aunt had begged her to spend Christmasses with them and their children (of whom she was varyingly fond) and sometimes she had, providing it didn’t mean spending a night away from home. Aunt’s old maroon Mini hadn’t left its garage now for two weeks. She wouldn’t be going anywhere of her own choosing. Her loved ones would be popping in, of course, on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day and Boxing Day; they’d all be bringing presents and booze and fags and carrot soup; Mr Timms from across the road would be coming midday to make up her fire; the doctor and the nurse would call. But there was no getting away from it: some of the time, a great deal of the time, and all of every night, Aunt was going to be – apart from the animals – alone over the Christmas holiday. With him.
Aunt still hadn’t accepted her lodger. She was still taking swipes at him, still keeping him at a short arm’s length. How, nobody knew. There was nothing of her. The nurse was ‘dropping in’ every day now, sometimes twice. The morphine was three-hourly. ‘One of the advantages of teabags,’ Aunt said, peering into the tea she invariably let go cold before drinking – or, increasingly, not drinking – ‘is there’s no risk of a tall dark stranger lurking in the cup. So there,’ she said over her shoulder to him. ‘Yah boo to you know who,’ she said to Babe.
While Aunt was out of the room getting her fizzers, Babe peeked inside the Christmas cards on Aunt’s chimneypiece. She’d thought there might be one from the photographer. He hadn’t sent one to Babe, and she was trying not to think of last year, and the fun they’d had, the fun she’d thought they’d had – but Aunt, why no card for Aunt? He hadn’t fallen out of love with her. Yet he had been fond of her, he’d said so, often. ‘Aunt is a major human being,’ he’d said, more than once, ‘really major,’ and Babe had agreed, even though, in her view, major was a word best left to military matters. No card for Aunt, no card for a really major human being, hurt. At a hurtful time, it was one of the things that hurt most. The photographer had had to write to Babe once or twice – brief, typewritten notes on practical subjects, things he’d left behind and so forth, and stamped with a second class stamp – but he’d never mentioned Aunt in these notes, he’d never asked how she was, he’d never sent her his love. Babe kept turning this over in her mind. She stayed awake pondering this. Was nothing good? Was nothing true? Was nothing real? Did nothing mean anything?
Babe couldn’t talk to Aunt about this, of course, but there were other things that hurt, and she told Aunt about those.
‘This exhibition is painful,’ Babe said. ‘All those portraits of me. More or less naked. Asleep. In bed. I’m even on the catalogue. And last week in the colour supplement there was one of her – his new person. Naked. In bed. We’ll be beside each other, you realize, on the ICA walls. Bedfellows, so to speak. How can he do that, Aunt? Why doesn’t it bother him? How can he do it so soon?’
‘All grist to the photographer’s mill,’ Aunt said, trying to get a spoonful of carrot soup into her mouth; failing; giving up. ‘Anything goes with artists. All must be sacrificed to Art – is photography Art? I’m never quite sure – nothing, no one, is safe. Anyway, they aren’t portraits of you or of her, they’re portraits of him. He’s the subject of all his photographs, even those fuzzy landscapes. That’s enough profundities for the time being. I’m not sure I like carrot soup all that much,’ Aunt said, ‘if I ever did. Could you pass the word round?’
‘Do you think he’s claimed a Lifetime of Happiness from her yet?’ Babe asked Aunt over the telephone. Babe had rung Aunt to tell her Boris had come home. He’d been missing two days, unusual for him, and she’d been frantic. Aunt had been anxious about Boris too, and had rung before breakfast for news – which meant a painful descent of the stairs because she had no telephone by her bed. Those who loved Aunt were working on her to get one connected.
‘I once knew a cat who was away eight months, and then just walked in,’ Aunt had said before breakfast. ‘What a relief,’ she’d said a moment ago, when Babe had told her the glad tid
ings. ‘Now we can all relax. Until next time.’
‘Do you suppose he’s sold her one?’ Babe persisted. (She referred to the occasion the photographer had pretended to be a salesman, and had come to her door offering a Lifetime of Happiness on an easy instalment plan.)
‘What’s a lifetime?’ Aunt said. She’d just ‘celebrated’, the one she loved best had helped her ‘celebrate’, her sixty-third birthday. ‘What’s happiness? Anyway, did you buy it? Did you say Ta ever so, and sign on the dotted line? I doubt it,’ Aunt said. ‘Not you. Too dull. Too commonplace. You’d never commit yourself to that.’
‘Look, Babe,’ Aunt said later, as they sat either side her fire, ‘you must try and get a sense of proportion about all this. If Jim and Ted,’ she said, referring to Babe’s sometime husbands, ‘merit a section, say, in Ted’s case, and a chapter in Jim’s, then the photographer is worth only a page or so in your book. I’m speaking figuratively of course. Only a page or so. Half a dozen, at the most. Remember that.’ Aunt, after two stabs at it, swallowed her morphine mix, and made a face; and then chased the morphine with a swig of whisky. Just recently she’d given up all attempts at soup, no matter what variety, though she toyed with a forkful of scrambled egg, a spoonful of jelly.
‘Incidentally,’ Aunt said, ‘how’s your other book coming along? My book, I should say.’ (For Babe had asked permission to dedicate the book she was writing – not writing; how could she? – to Aunt. Aunt had said yes. She was flattered, she said, not to say bowled over – though she did rather hope there wouldn’t be any filth in it. No explicit bedroom scenes. Nothing a maiden aunt wouldn’t be pleased to read. Babe wanted to finish the book in time for Aunt, but she knew she hadn’t a hope.) ‘Does the photographer appear in your book in some guise or other?’ Aunt said. ‘Do I? Are we both a bit of grist to your mill?’
After Aunt died, Babe said to the one Aunt loved best, the one who loved Aunt best, the one who had lost most: ‘What shall we do without Aunt? What shall we do without Aunt’s voice, and Aunt’s laugh, and Aunt’s famous blue felt tip and Aunt’s postcards? How shall we manage without Aunt to tell things to?’
The one Aunt loved best and who loved Aunt best and who had lost most, the one to whom Aunt wrote not just postcards, but long letters (and had managed to do so from her hospice bed that last harrowing week) said: ‘We must go on talking to Aunt. We must keep telling her things. Aunt was always interested. You can tell her about the awful men you meet, and the boring dinner parties you go to. You can tell her when Boris goes missing, and when he comes back. If you feel like cutting your throat, tell Aunt. Tell Aunt everything. Make Aunt laugh.’
Babe told Aunt. She told her funny things and sad things and boring things; and afterwards she imagined what Aunt’s response would be.
For a time it worked. For a time, Babe could hear Aunt’s laugh and Aunt’s cough and Aunt’s voice. For a time, she could see Aunt. She could see her lighting a cigarette, and padding about with a glass in her hand. She could see Aunt’s hand in close-up, turning up the cards, flattening out the crossword page on the table in the corner.
Babe devised all manner of ruses to keep Aunt there, and for a time it worked, but it got harder. It got harder every day. She forgot to tell Aunt, or she couldn’t face it, or she put it off. Then when she did, she couldn’t always hear Aunt’s reply. After two months had gone by, she couldn’t see Aunt’s face or Aunt’s hands in the way she had; she couldn’t hear Aunt’s voice distinctly, she couldn’t see Aunt clearly at all.
Then one day Babe went out to dinner, and when she got home, around midnight, and was having a nightcap, she told Aunt about her evening.
‘Aunt,’ Babe said, sitting in her easy chair, sipping her whisky, ‘here’s one for you. I’ve just been to a dinner party. Not good news, as per. No ashtrays for a start. When I asked for one, my hostess, laughing a v. false laugh, said: “You’re not still a slave to that disgusting habit, surely? I thought no one in their right minds was silly enough to smoke these days,” etc, etc. Then, would you believe, Bobby Gaskell – who knows the answer perfectly well – asked me why the photographer wasn’t there. Had I left him at home, or something? “I got the impression he never left your side,” he said. Great. Then we went in to dinner. The first course was soup. “Carrot soup!” the woman opposite me exclaimed. “My favourite! How clever of you, Annabel! Such a fiddle faddle to make, but worth it. One can never have too much carrot soup!”” ’
The story was supposed to make Aunt laugh, it was supposed to make Babe laugh, they were supposed to laugh together. But perhaps Babe had drunk too much claret before her nightcap; perhaps she hadn’t told the story right; because though she waited in the quiet room in the quiet house, she couldn’t hear anything. Babe went on sitting there, drawing on her cigarette, draining her whisky glass, listening; and eventually she thought she could hear Aunt, a long way off, saying ho ho ho. She thought she could hear Aunt laugh. Babe wanted to join in. She wanted to laugh with Aunt; for a moment she thought she was going to, but she didn’t. She howled. She howled up the stairs and into the bathroom and while she was getting undressed and while she was taking her face off. She cried herself to sleep.
ADAM MARS-JONES
Baby Clutch
The half-dozen Walkmans that used to live on this ward, bought by a charity for the use of the patients, were walked off with in a matter of days. The next batch, if the charity decides to replace them, will have to be chained down, I expect, like books in a medieval library.
At least the television in my lover’s room has a remote control; that’s something. There used to be a remote for every room on the ward, but one or two have also gone walkies. Replacing them isn’t a high medical priority, though perhaps it should be. Life on this ward can seem like one big game of musical chairs, as if death, being spoiled for choice, will come by preference to the person with no flowers by the bed, with no yoghurts stashed away in the communal fridge, the person whose TV has no remote control.
A television looms larger in a hospital room than it could ever do in someone’s home. There are so few excuses not to watch it: visitors, coma. Once I came in and was shocked to see a nurse comforting my lover. She was bending over him with a tenderness that displaced me. My lover was sobbing and saying, ‘Poor Damon.’ It was a while before he could make himself understood. The nurse wasn’t amused when she found out Damon was a young man on Brookside who’d just been killed.
She’d have been even less amused if she’d known it was the first episode of Brookside my lover had ever watched. He hadn’t seen poor Damon alive. But I suppose it was the mother’s grief having no actual content for him that let him share it so fully.
There’s another television in the day-room, which even has a video recorder and a little shelf of tapes. The day-room also contains an eccentric library, Ring of Bright Water rubbing spines with a guide to non-nuclear defence and a fair selection of periodicals. My lover and I find ourselves listing the self-descriptions we find least beguiling in the small ads of the gay press.
‘Antibody-negative,’ is his first contribution. He resents the assumption that good health is as intrinsic to some people as blue eyes are to others, or the condition, so common on these pages, of being ‘considered attractive’.
It’s my turn. ‘Straight-appearing.’
‘Healthy,’ is second on my lover’s list.
‘Discreet.’ What kind of boast is that, after all?
‘Healthy.’ My lover can’t seem to get over this little preoccupation of his, so I shut myself up, without even mentioning non-camp, looks younger, genuine or first-time advertiser.
Deep down I’m pleased by the silliness of the small ads, pleased to find any evidence that there are still trivial sides to gay life. More than anything, I want there to be disco bunnies out there somewhere, still. But I expect even the disco bunnies are stoic philosophers these days, if only in their free time. What used to be the verdict on men who loved men – something abo
ut being locked in the nursery, wasn’t it? There’s nothing like being locked in a hospice to make the nursery look good.
We are having a respite between waves of my lover’s visitors. Less than half-joking, I suggest that one of the nurses on the ward should function as a secretary, to make appointments and space the visitors out, to avoid these log-jams of well-wishers. I resent the brutal etiquette of hospital visiting, which means that a new visitor tapping hesitantly at the door instantly shuts down our intimacy. I try to be tactful, do some shopping in the area or talk to one of the other patients, but I doubt if I manage to be nice about it. Making myself scarce only encourages the other visitors to stay, to cling like leeches. I find the whole business of dealing with the visitors exhausting, and I’m not even ill.
The Penguin Book of the British Short Story Page 69
