Dispossession (4 page)

o0o

A practical man, a dependent man in a hell of a muddle, I
did what came naturally to me. There was a phone by the bed; I picked it up,
and called Carol.

At work, where she should still be: I got a colleague and a
mutual friend, who sounded strangely hesitant when she realised who she was
speaking to. She said, “I’ll try,” not “I’ll get her”; and came back a minute
later to say, “I’m sorry, Jonty, she won’t speak to you.”

I left it an hour, then tried again. Dialled our home number
this time, and heard Carol’s voice recite it, as she always did; said, “It’s
me,” and heard the sudden silence, and the click thereafter as she hung up on
me. Dialled again, dialled many times and got nothing but the engaged signal
each time.

I should phone a friend instead, I thought, see what they
could tell me; but the timing was bad. People would be getting in from work,
maybe dealing with fractious babies or starting to cook dinner, certainly
wanting to relax. Leave it till later, I told myself, make it easier on them. I
needed someone I could talk to, not someone who had one eye on a crawling kid
and the other on burning toast.

A couple of hours, I thought I’d give them; but after a
couple of hours
The Twilight Zone
was in my
head again and playing so loud I could barely hear anything else, except for
Sue’s voice calling me husband, lover, friend.

She had come back, contrary to hope or expectation; and when
she came, she brought photographs with her.

And yes, that was me in the middle there: despite the unfamiliar
suit (Issey Miyake, she told me) and the glint of an earring, that was
unquestionably me. And yes, that was Nick Beatty beside me, known of course as
Warren, my oldest and closest friend doing a friend’s duty here and holding me
up with a hug; and yes—alas!—that was undeniably Sue beside me, her arm slipped
laughingly, possessively through mine. And these to this side were my friends
and family, whom I knew and could name, every one; and those to that side were
hers, whom I didn’t and couldn’t. And the background might look like a
warehouse but it wasn’t, she said, it was her parents’ church, Catholic
Chinese; and apart from that, she said, everything was exactly what it seemed.

That was the two of us, she said, getting married; and here
was another picture of the two of us setting off on our honeymoon—Hong Kong,
she said, and it rained all week, so no tan; but at home she had photos of that
also, which she’d bring next time to show me—and that was James the Second I
was driving, the sports car I’d totalled on an empty road in the Lakes just six
weeks later.

My car, she said, not hers.

Then she kissed me, and she tasted of smoke and tea and
spices, alien to me.

o0o

And then, maybe seeing that this was too much, that I really
couldn’t cope any longer, she changed the subject.

“I saw your friend Luke on the telly last night,” she said.
“Luke the angel. Falling,” with a giggle that was more nerves than amusement.
“I’m sorry, I never believed you before, not about him. Not till I saw...”

And if I’d never believed her before, I believed her then.
Suddenly I believed it all, though none of it made sense yet. Luke was not
exactly private, not a secret, but still he was special to me; not for sharing
unless with someone who ranked also as special, a lover or a good close friend.

So did I sleep that night?

Bet your sweet life I slept. No point enduring hospital food
and hospital hours, no point taking up a hospital bed at all unless you take
also every possible advantage of the facilities. I whimpered and fussed, I said
every part of me hurt, I told them I was scared of the dark—and no lie that, I
was terrified of its implications: the long sightless hours where your thoughts
blunder heedlessly in circles, lost among landscapes extrapolated from known
anxieties into horrorshows of anticipation—and at last they gave me a jab, if
only to shut me up. One needle into the left buttock with what seemed to me
unnecessary vigour, the payback for my being awkward, and I slept like a
chemically-saturated log until a male nurse came to wake me at some godforsaken
hour of the morning.

An insipid cup of tea clattered onto the locker; he gave me
a practised smile to go with it, the promise of breakfast in an hour and in the
meantime how about a blanket bath?

“Any chance of a real one instead?” I asked plaintively.

“Not a hope in hell,” and oh, he was cheerful about it. “You
don’t shift from that bed till Mr Coffey says you can. Besides, I’m not
replacing all your dressings for you. Settle for a bed-bath, eh? You’ll be
getting nice clean sheets in a bit, shame to lie on them all mucky...”

Truly, I did feel dirty: or stale and greasy, rather, with
gunk clagging in the corners of my eyes. What I wanted was a long soak in
scalding water, to wash me all the way through to my bones; but we clearly
weren’t operating to my agenda here and I didn’t want to make enemies to no
good purpose. So, “Okay,” I said. “Better than nothing. But just give me a bowl
of water and some soap and let me get on with it, yeah?”

“I wasn’t suggesting anything else. Any patient with one
good hand gets to wash their own goolies. Even when they go private.”

A grin, more genuine this time, to acknowledge that this
relationship was already headed the way he wanted it to go, two young blokes
joshing together on an equal footing; and then he left me. Left me wondering
and uncertain, and wanting to ask a question that was going to sound stupid,
whichever way the answer went.

But hell, stupid I could manage, I could live with. God
knew, I must have sounded stupid enough yesterday.
“Who are you?” “I’m your wife, darling, I’m the woman
you’re in love with.
” Words to that effect, at least; and I’d sooner
remember the effect than the words themselves. Sooner still be sitting in a
barrel going over Niagara, I thought that would probably be a more comfortable
experience, but
one thing at a time, Jonty...

The good news, I supposed, was that I could remember all the
words from yesterday, and their several effects. It wasn’t seemingly an ongoing
thing, this memory loss, I wasn’t going to wake up every morning with no
recollection of the day before. I could start building a life again, on this
bank of the river. Though I thought I’d be spending much time, too much time,
maybe all my time for the foreseeable future gazing at the further bank, and
trying to build bridges.

Any information could serve as a rope, or a plank, or a
concrete pile; so when the nurse came back—to fill a bowl at the basin in the
corner, to lay out bowl and towel, soap and flannel on the locker where I could
reach them, to add shaving gear and a small mirror because Sue hadn’t made good
her threat to shave me last night, I’d been too upset, but the scabs on my face
were twelve hours less fresh now and the hospital didn’t like stubble any more
than she did—I asked him straight out, “Is this a private room?”

“Yes, of course,” he said, startled, smiling. “Didn’t you
know?”

No, I didn’t know. I’d had to work it out. Good practice, I
suspected, for a whole lot more upcoming that I’d be expected to know or to
remember, that I’d have to work out on my fingers. But all my time in
hospitals, whether resident or visiting, had only ever shown me two standards
of accommodation: solo rooms for the rich, and wards for the hoi-polloi. I was
prepared to believe that there might be provision to put NHS patients on their
own, when their condition required that, but a bad head and bruises were surely
not enough. Neither a lapse in memory.

Nor was one question, one answer enough. Answers breed
questions, inevitably; every step forward only shows us new horizons, just as
far away.

“Who’s paying for it?”

“I wouldn’t know, would I? Aren’t you?”

There at least was one answer that I knew already. No, I
wasn’t. My company had offered private health insurance in my contract, but I’d
turned it down in an excess of political zeal. Carol had been angry, I
remembered: wanted to know what was the point of saying no to something that
would cost me nothing, that would give me regular check-ups and have me
high-stepping over the queues whenever I needed treatment. Me, I’d wanted to
know what was the point of the company paying for something that I was entitled
to for nothing; every private patient, I’d said, costs the people more than the
Exchequer saves. It’s a trickle effect, I’d said: private work saps quality
staff from where they’re needed more, and the more people go private the more
they endanger the whole future of the NHS. What will be the need for it, after
all, when the majority of the population has made other arrangements? Slippery
slope, I’d said; and down at the bottom there are ambulance drivers wanting to
see a credit card or a policy document before they’ll scrape you off the
tarmac.

All of that I’d said; and here I was, scraped off the tarmac
myself and hustled off into a private room without the chance to gainsay it,
and if Sue were responsible for this she’d be in trouble next time she showed
her face around the door.

The nurse was called Simon, he said, and he didn’t have any
problem with the idea that I wanted to be alone while I washed, for all that he
and half a dozen others had presumably had me naked under their hands often
enough in the last few days. I’d been unconscious then; now I was back in my
body, and not actually being foolishly modest about it, despite appearances. I
wanted to rediscover it, I guess, to take possession again: to learn exactly
what the damage was, and to do it unobserved.

Simon seemed to understand that, without my having to
explain. At any rate, he left me to peel back the covers on my own, and check
out as much as I could see for dressings.

Hadn’t felt up to this yesterday, the mental shocks had been
enough. But my whirligig mind had run somewhat out of whirl, during seven or
eight hours’-worth of drug-induced coma. I didn’t like it, that I had
apparently total memory loss for a significant period—no, more than
significant, a Richter-scale earthquake of a period—of my recent life; but
acceptance had at least settled like sediment, if it hadn’t dissolved like
sugar. It was a fact that inhabited my head like a tumour, like a stranger, but
it was at least there and I could handle it. I could mediate all my thinking
through that, not to make too great an idiot of myself hereafter.

Getting that sussed, getting—you should excuse the expression—my
head around it, however temporarily (no illusions here: I could think myself
perfectly in control of the situation, and five minutes later be a shrinking,
whingeing wreck again for no material reason at all, only that some synapse in
my brain had gone zip instead of zap, and thrown me into panic mode): even if I
was only suppressing questions that would have to be confronted later, that
suppression still left me free to be curious at last about my physical
condition. Everything was functioning well enough, that much I’d gathered. I
didn’t even have the tube in my arm any more, now that they could feed me their
slops by mouth. But at the same time, everything hurt. I hadn’t been lying to
the nurses and the night sister to get my sleepy-jab, only exaggerating for
effect.

So I threw the covers back—or I didn’t, to be honest, I
pulled them gingerly aside; and the gingerliness wasn’t only due to my sore
arms and aching shoulders not wanting to work that hard, I was chicken too. And
I worked off the hospital robe they’d made me wear in lieu of the pyjamas that
Sue said I didn’t have, that she hadn’t wanted to shop for until I was
conscious. Robes were easier for the nurses, she’d said, and if I was going to
have to wear stuff in bed at least I was entitled to a choice. Cotton or silk?
she’d asked; and what colours would I like? Christ, I’d said, I didn’t care.
Bog-standard Marks and Sparks would do fine, I’d said, might as well keep it in
the family.

No relation, she’d said, you can’t catch me that way.

Actually I hadn’t been trying to just then, but she wouldn’t
believe me; and to go on from there to ask what had happened to the several
pairs of pyjamas that I did indeed own, that I wore every night in bed with
Carol, had seemed suddenly just too much trouble to contemplate.

But that was last night and this was still abominably early
in the morning, and I was still wearing a hospital robe. Easier for the staff,
and actually easier for me too, with the stiffness and pain of every movement.
It fastened with bows, for God’s sake, all down the back; I rolled onto my side
and worked a hand slowly along my spine, tugging them undone. Then I slipped it
off my shoulders; and then I flopped flat and lay still for a couple of
minutes, only my head raised up, only looking at my skin and not trying to see
any deeper. Trying not to, indeed. Skin was enough, skin was plenty.

I guess my skin that morning was only showing me what a
body, what any body might look like after undergoing wicked deceleration in a
tumbling, tearing, buckling metal shell; except that I had a lucky body,
because ordinarily you’d be looking more than skin deep and still finding
damage, unless you were seeing things not skin risen to the surface, bones and
wet things being worn externally for a change. Only talking bodies here, of
course, not talking heads. I couldn’t see my head without picking up the
mirror, and that was for later; but bodywise, no question, I was lucky.

Lucky to be all black and blue where I wasn’t fading gently
towards yellow, almost every visible inch of me a bruise, and no wonder I felt
so sore. No little wonder if I’d blocked off the memory of its happening,
either; that was a major wonder, and I was wonderfully grateful, though I’d
have preferred not to have lost so much baby with the bathwater.