Up on Cloud Nine

by Anne Fine

  One eye snapped open. “Are they gone?”

  He wasn't in the mood for chat. Mostly, he lay and groaned. At one point he asked rather groggily, “Is Mum coming?” And though I could have checked with him—“Your mum? Or mine?”—I thought it more polite to assume he meant Esme.

  “Hasn't quite made it back yet.”

  Tactful, that “yet.”

  “I feel awful. I hurt all over.”

  “You're lucky you're not dead. If it weren't for that jasmine cutting of my mother's, and me reminding all your nannies to keep it watered—”

  “Oh, shut up, Ian!”

  He went back to sleep.

  I passed the time tidying the bed tray. First I inspected the rough drafts of my homework. (Looked good. They must have done an excellent job between the two of them, pooling their strengths.) Then I brushed off the crumbs from some nice snack Jeanine had no doubt sent along to keep Franklin's strength up.

  And then, somewhat bored, I went back to my writing.

  esme!

  When nurses came along to sort Stol out, I drifted away down the ward. I've seen Stol naked. I've shared beds with Stol. I've burst in on Stol in lavatory cubicles with no locks.

  But this was different. I didn't want to be around while they were doing whatever it was nurses have to be doing. And he wouldn't want me there. Either he'd have his eyes closed, in which case my watching would feel like peering through a keyhole. Or he'd be trying to cover his embarrassment by making jokes with the nurses. And since he wasn't in top form, that wasn't fair either.

  So I just happened to be up by the desk when the phone rang. The nurse who answered put her hand over the mouthpiece and said to me, “Someone here wants to talk to your mother. It's a frightful line. I can hardly hear anything.”

  Esme!

  “It's Nicaragua,” I explained. And then, in what Dad calls one of those moments that give him hope I might one day be an adult, I offered, “I know her quite well. Would you like me to take it?”

  It sounded heartfelt. “Oh, yes, please.”

  I took the phone. “Esme, it's Ian.” The line was so awful, I practically had to shout it. “Ian!”

  Wincing, the nurse leaned back to open the door to the cubicle behind her. I backed in and shut the door. “Esme?”

  “Ian?”

  “Yes.”

  “I thought this number was the hospital.”

  The crackling and whistling were terrible. So was that awful wait while what was said bounced off the satellite. You know it's there. You know what causes it. But still you can't help thinking the other person's suddenly turned dubious and peculiar and suspicious.

  “It is. We're in the ward with him.”

  “In the what?”

  “Ward.”

  “I want to speak to your mother.”

  “She's not here.”

  “I thought you just said—”

  “Listen,” I said to Esme. “Someone's been with him all day. Right now, it's my turn. Stolly's doing well. He's broken tons of bones, but they'll all mend, and his brain's working fine.” In case she thought my family had far lower standards on this front, I added to cheer her, “He's been speaking to Franklin.”

  “Is Franklin there? If Franklin's there, Ian, put him on.”

  I wasn't going to tell her he was off having a pint with my dad. (Or a nice glass of Beaujolais.) “I'm sorry. He's gone to buy a sandwich.”

  Another of those pauses that makes you think the other person's on the moon. Then Esme said:

  “I'm coming home.”

  I know what Mum would have done. She'd have slid into top gear. “No, Esme. Really. Stol's in good hands, I swear. The worst is over. You feel free to stay and finish whatever you're doing.”

  But I was suddenly remembering a night when Stol and I sat in our huge pink puffy matching World of Esme beanbags and watched his family's films. Esme flouncing about in a combat-print maternity frock. (A seriously weird garment.) Then Esme posing beside a font in a church, under a sign that said STRICTLY NO PHOTOGRAPHY!, trailing a snow-white lace bundle in a bonnet that I took to be Stol as a baby. “You were never more beautiful,” Mr. Oliver said suddenly. “Thanks very much,” Stol responded modestly, and Mr. Oliver replied tartly, “I was speaking to your mother.”

  Then we saw Esme crossing the lawn in her candystriped harem bloomers. (“Oh, I remember those!” my mother said later, when I started to describe them. “They were her gardening dungarees and she looked like Andy Pandy. People would catch sight of her over her garden gate and walk past again, sniggering.”)

  The next shots were of Esme peering over the prototype pince-nez spectacles that first made her famous. She overheard my whisper to Stolly, “Why is she wearing your dad's clothes?” and delivered me quite a lecture about the fact that pinstripe cashmere flannel went “right to the core of her aesthetic.” Then we had Esme in steel mesh shorts. (“Painfully successful!”) Esme in a chiffon ball gown. (“I know! I know! Whimsy fringing on camp! But a breath of fresh air after all those techno fabrics.”) Esme in a mock-shaved-mink boiler suit. (“Don't tell me! You look—and you shudder. But I assure you, Ian, at the time it matched the zeitgeist.”) Esme in a plain, severe black veil at Stol's grandfather's funeral. (“Now, why on earth did I wear that? Oh, I remember. It was because I'd just dyed my hair snow white for Christmas.”)

  What I had realized even then was that for Esme, life was just a show. You wore a different costume for each skit. But that was it. She knew it was a show. And even actors have a life behind.

  And Stol had asked, “Is Mum coming?” His first question. His only question, now I came to think.

  So maybe my mum (bound to believe blood's not thicker than water) had been a little bit too quick to tell Stol's mum she wasn't needed.

  The pause had lasted a moment too long even for a bounce off a satellite.

  “Ian?”

  I decided to go for it. “Stolly was asking for you.”

  She sounded definite. “I'm coming home. Tell him I'm on my way.”

  I lost my nerve a bit. Esme is dreadful in hospitals. You really begin to worry they'll pull the plugs on whoever she's visiting, just to be rid of her.

  “But what about finishing the shoot?”

  “For heaven's sake! They're only photographs.”

  I felt light-headed. It was the way we wrapped up one of our party games, even when Stol played. The game works in rounds. Somebody says a name, and everyone thinks of something you absolutely know they'd never say. My all-time best was one for Great-granny: “I'll just preset the video.” Dad's finest triumph was an invention for Mum: “How should I know where the children are?” (Mum had revenge with “Oh, no, Sue. Not chips again!”)

  But when we stop, we have a ritual to wind things up. Someone calls out: “Esme!” And we all shout, in perfect unison, “For heaven's sake! They're only photographs.”

  tea towels

  Next time Stol opened his eyes, I said, “So what's all this about tea towels all over the floor, then?”

  At once he pretended he'd gone back to sleep again.

  next time he cracked

  Next time he cracked, I let him have it. “What on earth were you doing? You have as many good times as anyone. More!” I didn't bother to remind him of all the hours we'd spent rolling down Tunney Hill in Mr. Baverstock's plastic barrel. Or the times we'd gone fishing with next door's retriever. Or the films. Or the laughs at school.

  “Oh, shut up, Ian,” he mumbled.

  “Shan't!” I said, irritated. But I did. For what had come to mind was once when we were picking our way barefoot over the stones in the river. Stol had spread out his arms to the sunlight and said to me, “Hey, Ian, can you feel the ghosts of all the other great days we've had down here?”

  “No,” I had said, and thought no more about it. But now I did. Now I thought, do thoughts like that work both ways for Stolly? If he gets low, does he see ghosts of all the other bad times queuing behind the one t
hat he's actually having? Stol is so different. Maybe it doesn't really take that much to tip him over. Maybe he's like a water glass under a dripping tap. One last gleaming blob falls, and not just that tiny amount, but the whole raised mound that was sitting on top of the glass then spills over.

  He said as much once, when I pulled him off the viaduct. I'd turned to find him sitting on the parapet, leaning over to look down. You could tell he was seconds from—how should I know? Getting giddy and toppling? Deliberately shunting himself off? Seeing if he could fly? I hurled myself at him and grabbed his jacket with both hands to tug him back on top of me. And Stol's no sylph. I hit my head horribly hard on the cobbles, and he scraped his ear till it tore on my buckle.

  When we'd stopped pushing each other off, and rubbing bits that hurt, I'd given him the sort of look my mother gives me when I do something stupid, like have a tantrum over some bike chain that won't fit or some zip that I can't pull.

  “So,” I said, in that “I'm waiting” tone of voice. “What was all that about? What were you doing?”

  I don't know whether it was the shock of being so close to disaster, or if he was just being Stol. But he made such an honest stab of answering that I was floored.

  “Nothing,” he said, screwing his face up and rubbing his ear again. “Well, not nothing, of course. But nothing important. It was just a sort of impulse.”

  “To throw yourself off a viaduct? Come off it, Stolly!”

  “Well, not quite an impulse. I mean, I was thinking.”

  “Oh, yes? What? ”

  Again he grimaced. “Hard to explain. But I just suddenly felt ‘not there.' ”

  “‘Not there?'”

  “Yes. And not just that weird feeling you're always getting that you're standing outside yourself, watching your own body get on with life without you.”

  I could have said, “Speak for yourself, Stol” but didn't feel it was the time to interrupt.

  “It's been coming a lot recently. You must get it too, Ian. Don't you wake in the night with this feeling—this really electric feeling—that something tremendous is about to happen?”

  Not wanting to put him off by saying no, I kept my face straight and said nothing.

  “You don't know where or when. Or even what. But it feels as if it's getting closer and closer. Everything's sharper. Brighter. More significant. You hear someone say something and you think, ‘Yes!' Or, when you touch an orange, it isn't just an orange anymore. It's—”

  I waited.

  “Oh, I can't explain! But you feel like a cheat in your body. I mean, outside you look the same, you carry on the same, everyone treats you the same. But inside there's this supersharp person who really knows exactly what life is and how to live it.”

  My patience isn't limitless.

  “Not quite so sharp they don't know better than to throw themselves off a two-hundred-foot viaduct.”

  “Well, that's just the point, Ian. All of a sudden I just wanted to—”

  “What?”

  “Not be the person on the outside. Not be the usual ‘be careful' and ‘you might fall' and ‘stay away from the edge' Stol. Just for one single moment I wanted to be the one I am inside. The person free of everything, who can just swirl through things as I choose.”

  See? Told you. Thinks that he can fly.

  Well, maybe it isn't exactly the sort of thing they teach at nursing school: “Find someone really bashed up and suffering, who needs their healing sleep more than practically anyone you can imagine, and then poke them awake so you can have a good go at them.”

  But I did it anyway. Prodded him, hard, on a bit that wasn't plastered.

  Whimpering, he opened his eyes. I don't think, at that stage, he'd quite grasped it was me making him hurt more. But I poked him again anyhow. “You listen to me,” I hissed. “Remember that day when you nearly hurled yourself over the ledge of the viaduct and I very kindly stopped you? Well, that was”—I counted the years back—“nearly three years ago. Nearly three whole years! And you do realize that if I hadn't grabbed you, you would have been dead all that time?”

  He gave me a bleary look. “So?”

  “So,” I said icily. “Since then, we've had a billion good times. We've had a trillion laughs. And every one of them has been a sort of free gift for you, because, if I hadn't dragged you off that stupid parapet, you would have missed them all.”

  I leaned even nearer. “Would you have wanted to miss them all? Would you? Would you rather have been dead through all those This is the perfect day, Ian's, and all those I am perfectly happy now's? Because if you would, if you want my opinion, it's an attitude of the blackest ingratitude. The blackest!”

  Then I shut up very quickly, because the nurses were coming.

  the (almost) foolproof plan for suicide

  While they were fussing round, I thought about the (almost) foolproof plan for suicide Stol had invented.

  “Right. First you hammer a huge strong stake into the ground at the edge of a cliff top.”

  I'd looked up from my maths homework. “Oh, yes? Why a cliff top?”

  “Wait till you hear! Then you tie one end of a really tough rope round your neck in a good hangman's knot—”

  “Well, that'll count you out of doing it, won't it?”

  “—and the other end to the stake.”

  “Why?”

  “So you can hang yourself, stupid.”

  “I guessed that, idiot. But why there?”

  “Because you're being sure. Next, you drink poison.”

  “Poison? What, with a hangman's noose already round your neck?”

  “Right. Then you set your clothes on fire.”

  “Just to be more sure?”

  “Yes. And then …” Stol's eyes shone with the triumph of it all. “Then, you lower yourself over the cliff and, as a final touch, just in case, pull a gun from your pocket and shoot yourself in the head.”

  “Well, that should probably do it.”

  But already he was worrying. “Oh, I don't know. Suppose the bullet missed and cut the rope in two. Then you might fall in the sea. The water would put out the fire. And if you swallowed enough salt water, you'd throw up the poison. Then some passing fishing boat might pick you up, and, lo and behold, you'd be fit as a fiddle and still on the planet.”

  “So,” I'd said. “Not quite foolproof yet …”

  “Not quite.”

  He'd gone back to his brooding, and I'd gone back to my homework.

  a threat and a promise

  But at least it had been a plan, not some half-baked stupidity like falling from a window. And it did set me thinking. As soon as the nurses had straightened his covers and vanished, I said to Stol, “Good thing it was such a crazy thing to do, because it's given me an idea for saving your bacon.”

  My accusation of ingratitude had clearly stung. Opening one baleful eye, he mumbled, “Don't need any help from you.”

  “Oh, no?” I jeered. “You've pushed your luck a bit too far to try to make that claim. I hope you realize it's not just my parents and Franklin who'll be on your back this time. There'll be other people too. There's a cop in disguise who is narrowing her eyes rather beadily at your parents. And some woman who goes round scattering pamphlets on junior depression knee-deep behind her is strolling about clutching a huge fat file on your star hospital appearances.” I leaned closer and hissed in his ear. “I'm pretty sure she'll want to make a few million appointments, so you can talk to her about your inner thoughts and feelings. And since every inner thought and feeling you've had since I've known you has been very peculiar, I don't offer much for your chances of staying out of a straitjacket.”

  Stol groaned, and, on a streak, I added the worst threat of all.

  “Remember Rupert? How, since he took those pills, they've watched him every minute? Fancy that?”

  Stol rolled his horribly bloodshot eyes. I couldn't tell if what was sapping his will was horror at the thought of all those eyes on him, or plain old
pain. But he was beaten.

  “Oh, all right,” he told me weakly. “Save my bacon.”

  No need to forget our manners. “Please …?”

  “Please,” he whimpered.

  I rammed home my side of the bargain. “All right. I will. But in return, you have to promise me you'll read what I've been writing.”

  He opened one bleary eye. I scooped my exercise book off the swing tray to the side and held it where he could see it. “It's your life.”

  “My life?” He made the mistake of trying to screw up his face in a look of contempt. The massive fresh grazes across his cheek crumpled, and, wincing, he flattened his features. “But I haven't done anything.”

  “No.”

  “Or been anywhere exciting.”

  “Neither have I,” I said sourly.

  “Or met anyone interesting.”

  “Apart from me, of course.”

  “Or even had any girlfriends since Tabitha.”

  “You didn't even have Tabitha,” I unkindly reminded him. “Since she was imaginary. But I've been writing all day, and I've still only managed to get down the tiniest part of it.”

  “Really?”

  He took another quick squint at the exercise book I was flipping in front of him. Then at the great pile of sheets on the tray, where the story spilled over.

  “All me?”

  “Not all you,” I admitted. “There are bits about other people, where you were the one who made all the difference. Or where things wouldn't have worked out in the way that they did if you hadn't been there.”

  Stol lay there, silent. Finally he said, “So—a sort of biography?”

  “Yes. It's a kind of written Memory Box.”

  “Why?”

  “Why?”

  And that, I swear, is the first time I really wondered why I'd spent the day scribbling in such a fury.

  I knew the answer straightaway, though. “It's to make you see.”

  “See what?”

  “Exactly how you matter. And how much.”

  He made a face. If I'd been anyone else in our whole class, I would have shut up then, really embarrassed. I wouldn't have added another word. But, last year, when we brought home our annual school photos, I'd handed mine to Mum, and Stol and I had stood like wallies while she went pink and sniffy and scrabbled for tissues. Stol tried to console her. “I don't think Ian looks that bad.” Mum swatted him away. “For heaven's sake, Stol! It's not that. I was just wishing so much that I could show it to his mother, so she could know how happy and bright and well and alive her tiny son is now.”