Oh Dear Silvia

by Dawn French

  Ah. Her eyebrows. Cat strokes them with great tenderness. Or rather, she strokes the place where Silvia’s distinctive eyebrows ordinarily are. Only now is it apparent that the unique symmetry and shape of Silvia’s notoriously perfect eyebrows is entirely fabricated by Silvia and her handy eyebrow pencil. She has always used a very particular shade of reddish-brown that is completely believable, expertly applying it with tiny hair-like flicks that go to make a very authentic effect. Silvia copied the shape from the glamorous old Hollywood starlets, Marlene Dietrich, Jean Harlow, Bette Davis, Elizabeth Taylor. A small square box above the nose, with an elegant high arch bowing outwards. Silvia is expert at this and somehow a daily glamour is achieved with this simple but effective trick. Not now though. Now she has two blondey-red wisps, two crummy excuses for eyebrows.

  Silvia’s eyes are closed. That’s the most difficult part. How Cat would love it if they would suddenly open, big and grey and blue and blousey like they are. Cat would know so much if only they would open. She could read Silvia then. Lying there, eyes shut, Silvia is closed, and Cat can’t bear the consequent rejection she feels, however ludicrous that is. A slumbering torment.

  Her fingers are at Silvia’s mouth, where the venom is stored, a dangerous place, a wide, expressive powerful mouth. So many have wanted to kiss it, because those full lips would surely be so well equipped to do a proper job of the kissing. You would be folded into those accomplished lips, they’d surely wrap around your measly mouth, around your resistance and your willpower. You’d be helpless if those lips were kissing you. They are especially impressive when outlined in Silvia’s trademark strong coral red and filled in with a gloss version of the same. Silvia ALWAYS wears lipstick. In colours that argue loudly with her hair. Colours that confound your notion of taste, that dare you to be as loud and brashly confident as her. Now, though, her lips are natural, and even more pink than any lipstick.

  Cat pushes gently up at each side of her wide mouth.

  ‘Smile, darlin’. Life is still worthwhile. If you just smile …’

  No, it’s too grotesque.

  Cat stops and cups Silvia’s face in her hands, enjoying the plumpness of her cheeks against her palms. The softness and warmth feels, just for a moment, like health. She reaches down and kisses her on that fine freckled forehead.

  ‘C’mon Silly. You can do it, so you can. Just hold on.’

  Silvia’s sleek hair falls back and away from her large English face, revealing telltale grey roots all around, giving her a kind of silver halo. She wouldn’t like that, but Cat has always thought Silvia shouldn’t dye her hair. She suspected, quite rightly it seems, that Silvia has the type of grey hair that is strong and thick. Metallic. Cat often tells her it would look phenomenal and that she should let it grow through, proudly. She thinks it would give Silvia an air of elegance, and she is annoyed that Silvia won’t take her advice. But Silvia will have nothing to do with it.

  When Cat and Silvia first got to know each other, Silvia told Cat about how, as a young girl, everyone commented on her strawberry-blonde hair. It defined her and it clearly marked her out as her mother’s daughter. Jo had ‘brooown’ hair – that’s how Silvia always said it, with an elongated vowel to emphasize its dullitude.

  ‘BROOOWN. Soooo. Boooring. Jooooo Boooring Haaair.’

  Jo looked more like Dad whilst Silvia looked like Mummy. Silvia liked it that way. She loved Mummy more, and anyway, Mummy was female and beautiful. Dad was a man and a very archetypal army officer type of man. Yes, let Jo be the butch one, like him. Silvia wanted to be delicate and feminine. That was always going to be tricky to pull off because, much to her annoyance, she was tall and big-boned like her father, but somehow the essentially female pale red hair was her saving grace. It lent her an unambiguous girlishness.

  Why on earth, then, would she allow it to turn grey? No, that was never going to happen, she would go to her grave strawberry blonde. So, Cat thought, she had better organize to get those roots rectified at some point in the next few weeks. She didn’t even know if it would be possible or allowed in hospital.

  So much to find out.

  But for now, she lets her fingers wander from Silvia’s face outward into her hair and she gently massages her scalp.

  ‘Amazing hair, Silly. Wonderful head. Great shape. C’mere, does that feel good? You like this normally, if you ever let me get near you! I do know a bit about massage you know, when I was backpacking as a student in Southern India, I did stay on an ashram for a fortnight and we all learned head massage. Like everyone else of course, I preferred receiving it. It’s glorious if it’s done right. Hope this is good, darlin’. Wonder if you can feel it at all? Oh Silly. I do miss you. I miss that you would be batting me away right now, and not letting me do this. You’d better come through this Sil, I’ll be furious if you don’t. I mean it. Feckin’ fuming.’

  Cat hears herself say this but doesn’t allow herself to dwell on the thought, it’s too grim. However, she is glad she’s said it out loud. Silvia likes honesty and would certainly be saying it how it is, if the roles were reversed. Maybe she’s locked in there, longing for someone to speak truthfully.

  Cat wants to be that person. She yearns for the approval of Silvia, and as yet, she doesn’t feel she is fully granted it. Silvia has stepped up for Cat, most especially in one particular instance that was truly remarkable, but that’s not quite the approbation she seeks. That was more like a show of courage on Silvia’s part, not the pure personal endorsement Cat aches for and feels she deserves.

  The irony, Silvia says, is that until Cat grants herself the permission to be acceptable, she is singularly unacceptable.

  This is maddening for Cat who, at work, is perfectly assured. It’s only in the orbit of the leviathan Silvia that she becomes such a pathetic jelly on occasion. The very thing that repulses Silvia. This is what Cat has battled with. It’s her constant torment. How to win Silvia’s affection, how to creep closer into that warm place which is only in Silvia’s gift. In the gift of an intrinsically ungenerous person. Not a simple aspiration, admittedly, and possibly self-destructive, but Cat can’t help herself.

  She’s drawn to Silvia like a moth to a flame, and, like moths do, she is willing the flame to burn brighter and higher.

  Seven

  Jo

  Friday 4pm

  Winnie and the other nurses can see into Suite 5 through the long window on one wall, which enables the staff at the nurses’ station to keep an eye on whatever’s going on. Very often, with seriously ill patients like Silvia, Winnie and the other nurses will ignore a certain amount of strange behaviour by visitors so long as it doesn’t interfere with the actual physical care of the patient. The visitors are, after all, in their own shock and sometimes react oddly.

  This afternoon, though, Silvia’s sister is sorely testing their patience. She has closed the big outside window curtains and lit many overpoweringly sweet-smelling candles, which are drenching the entire ITU in their repulsive musky pong. She has been repeatedly told not to do this as a naked flame can cause serious explosions when coupled with oxygen, which is clearly in huge supply in ITU. But none of the warnings register with stubborn ol’ Jo. She is playing loud Enya-beauty-spa-atmosphere music which is leaking out into the corridor. The music is the worst offence. It is annoying and upsetting other patients’ visitors and Winnie even noticed that a fellow coma patient has charted some eye movement for the very first time, perhaps as a protest against the audio torture.

  Jo is ensconced in Suite 5, conducting what she considers to be a celestial gathering. Amongst the towering insanity of the bizarre scene, only one fact is a surety. Silvia would hate this. Really hate it.

  All around Silvia’s head is a halo of different-coloured crystals arranged in an arc on her pillow. On Silvia’s chest lies a clutch of white feathers tied up with twine and quartz beads, and a dreamcatcher. Jo is dressed in flowing white linen, an outsized long-sleeved blouse and a long white skirt. Her obvious and hasti
ly chosen black underpants are the day’s biggest mistake so far.

  Or so she thinks. She is wrong.

  Many other much worse mistakes are happening, including her choice of opening line.

  ‘Right, let’s begin by getting comfortable. Oh sorry Sissy, you can’t of course. Ignore that bit, I’ll start again. Hang on, let me get comfy …’

  Jo is gabbling, as per usual. Gabbling furiously whilst trying to invoke peaceful meditation. She sits.

  ‘OK. Here we go Silv. Oh great masters of our universe and all the abundant goddesses, hear us in our time of need. Please, if you’re not too busy, we beseech you in your infinite wisdom, to summon all the angels and archangels hereabouts and convene them here … abouts. I call out to all nearby divine celestials to gather here to pool our combined forces and make a diamond-white liquid lovelight so strong that it will heal my sister Silvia and bring her upwards out of sleep and back to the living plane and to well-being. It doesn’t matter if not all the major angels are available, so long as a couple of key ones could come? Michael for instance. I have been reliably told that Archangel Michael can simultaneously be with unlimited numbers of people in unlimited numbers of places? Not sure if that’s true, but it would be great if it was … so, do come unto here, o great Michael. Keep breathing Silv, inhaling the positive thoughts, and exhaling your tensions. Let them go. Give yourself permission to let them go. And breathe. And breathe …’

  The machine breathes in.

  And out.

  And in.

  ‘Good. Come! Come! This is so definitely helping you, Silv, whether you are aware of it or not. Try to relax and allow yourself to feel totally safe. Because you are safe Sis. You’re with me, and just as I promised Mummy, I will look after you. I will always keep you surrounded by the highest divine light. You just need to welcome in the world Silv. I know you’ve always resisted this stuff in the past darling, and I’m still smarting from being referred to as an “insane witch” but when the angels arrive, they will help you to purge yourself of all your toxic anger and bitterness which constantly cloud your experience of the light. You will be cleansed and vitalized, just you wait.

  ‘I invoke you, o angels of light, approach! Come, angels all. Come, Gabriel, Raphael, Donatello, Michelangelo … Sandalwood … Um … Shamu … Israel … Zak … and … Po. Come close and shower this wretched invalid with your healing vibrations, envelop her in your protective love, and let her body glimmer with light and health. Allow us to feel your presence. Please. Come on angels, please … soon, please, if you don’t mind … because visiting time is almost over … please?! I’m sorry to have to make you work to an earthly schedule, all you hallowed ones, but I’m afraid we are a tad bound by tempus fugit. Sorry about that, but if you could convene soon, that would be super …?’

  Jo allows a unique minute of silence to happen. She is looking for any sign of a supernatural presence. A feather, perhaps, or a breeze, or, she dares to wish, a vision? What she wouldn’t give to witness a heavenly host. It would be double great, she thought, if the slightly disapproving nurses were blinded by the divine light through the window. That’d teach them she wasn’t entirely wacko. Admittedly, as a child Jo had had her wacko moments. She once cut off all her hair and attempted to stick it on to a bald doll with a flour-and-water glue. She kept a pebble from a Cornish beach as a pet until she was well into her teens, and she refused to wear anything that wasn’t purple until she left primary school, causing endless problems with uniform. Eventually, the Head gave in when little Jo claimed she would go on a hunger strike if she was forced to give up her royal purple – a colour she claimed kept her alive. All of these eccentricities were par for the course inside the tight unit of four that comprised her family. They soaked it up and accepted her as just ‘JoJo’, the one who’s a bit odd and a bit irritating. That’s who she happily is.

  Here, now, in this room, she listens. She looks. But silence and stillness are no friends of Jo’s. She is intensely uncomfortable in their company. She only has five more minutes, so she has to take matters into her own hands.

  ‘Right, well, shame you couldn’t make it in time, Michael and all the others, but I think I know what you’d do if you were here, so Silv, I’m just going to invoke the spirits of them through me to do the healing myself. So, here goes …’

  She stands up impatiently and walks to the head of the bed, gesturing like a rookie polytechnic lecturer in a science seminar about planets.

  ‘So, I quickly say the angel prayer: “Angels help to guide me, with abundance to provide me …” Yes, yes, I feel it now, I utilize Archangel Michael’s sacred vacuum to suck up your low and broken energies, through your crown chakra, hoovering up all psychic debris. Be receptive, Silv, you might feel a bit of psychic pulling … surrender Silvia, give yourself over to the supreme lord, and let go of all that does not serve your highest purpose … Submit! Submit! Oh, bugger …’

  Winnie is tapping on the window, pointing angrily at the candles and indicating her watch. Jo is out of time. She has to stop. She slams her hand down hard on the bedside table.

  ‘For God’s sake! I was just getting warmed up. Damn it to hell!’

  She flounces about, blowing out the candles and clearing up feathers, cursing and putting the lights back on.

  Silvia just lies there. Exactly the same. No perceptible change whatsoever.

  Jo is furious.

  ‘Thanks a lot Archangel Michael, typical man. No bloody show. Prick.’

  She bundles out of the room, too embarrassed and irritated to give so much as a backward glance, intent on devising whatever the next method might be to wake up her frozen sister. She will melt that iceberg, come what may. Yes she will.

  Eight

  Winnie

  Friday 7pm

  Just before she goes off duty, Winnie pops in to do a few last jobs in Silvia’s room. She rips open a new packet of elastic stockings and, singing little snippets of Calvary Voices repertoire under her breath all the time, she replaces the old ones with these new, tighter fresher ones. It takes some doing. Silvia’s legs are heavy.

  ‘Sorry Silvia, I know dey not de most glamorous tights dem, but hey, wotcha gonna do? Better you don’t get trombosis, darlin. You don’t want dat. Pyainful. Yes. Mi see dat hyappen in here, bwoy, de lady was screamin, den, in ten minutes, she a dead! She say no to dese tights. Big mistake. Yes, sista. But you gonna wear dem, Silvia. Yes.’

  Once the new stockings are on, Winnie glances around the room, checking everything is correct. She notes all the relevant figures from the various machines carefully into the clipboard log at the bottom of the bed. She looks carefully at how Silvia is lying, and she alters the position of her arm and her head which had flopped sideways more than Winnie considers to be comfortable. She wipes the side of Silvia’s mouth where, just today, she has begun to dribble, and she puts a fresh cloth beneath her cheek to deal with it. The room is quiet, save for the constant compressed hiss of the ventilator.

  Winnie likes this gentler part of the day. The light is fading outside, it’s time for her to go home, but it’s only at this twilight time of evening that her motionless patients look right in their beds. It’s bedtime, after all, even if they were well, they might just be in bed now. Somehow it doesn’t feel so massively wrong to be bedbound in the evening. That’s why she elected to do mainly day shifts. She feels that more nursing is required during the day, that this is when she’s genuinely effective. She also needs to be at home at night for her son. Her momma can look after him for a while after school but Winnie knows that the few hours the two of them have alone together each evening is the bedrock on which she is going to build his future.

  It was her mission once to break the cycle of negligent dads she knew so well and saw all around her where she used to live both in Jamaica, where she was born and raised, and in the West Midlands, where she came to live in her teens. They were all around her, the careless fathers. Her own dad wouldn’t recognize her if she bumped int
o him in the street. Luckily that’s unlikely to happen since he stayed in ‘Birningham’ as her mother refers to it, and anyway, she heard a rumour he’d gone back to Jamaica last year, to spend his last ranting days in the sun and in the rum. Good riddance to him. What had he ever given her except a massive load of stress?

  He upset her momma, coming into church disgracefully drunk and demanding money from her while the pastor was preaching. Everyone was looking at them, feeling sorry for their troubles and pitying them. All those other women in their poshest hats, their finest Sunday crowns, all looking away for shame and feeling so grateful it’s not their turn today. They all sung louder to drown out his boozy ferocious ranting. So he stood in the aisle and roared louder, snarling and snorting and spitting. He frightened her. Her mother held her hand to comfort her, but those images of his rheumy raging eyes still haunt her. This was the man she was supposed to look up to, to admire and respect. The head of the family. The king, the lion. This man? This poor excuse for a man? This staggering bullish hollow creature? This lumbering dolt? How could she respect him?

  She resolved to change it right then and there, she was never going to allow this humiliation into her own life. She would find an honourable man who wanted to step up and be a proper father, and she wouldn’t settle for anything less. Her child would have a dad to look up to, they would not have to live with the aching gap where that person is supposed to be and they wouldn’t live with the constant nagging toxins of doubt inside them that they somehow weren’t good enough to deserve their father’s love. That’s what it equalled for Winnie. A life of self-doubt. Her mother was always encouraging but a kid never wants the approval they already have, they want the one that’s so far out of reach. The impossible one.