Oh Dear Silvia (18 page)

‘So, first of all, the icing appears brittle but is in fact soft, more like a sugary wrapping really. The cake itself is like a Madeira cake or, no, more like pound cake. Very yellow, very
plain, quite moist. Absolutely no attempt at a cheeky layer of jam or confectioner’s custard or cream or anything, which is a tad disappointing, but hey, look at how cheerful the whole Miss Piggy pink face is. DIVINE. One thing I would say though is that, weirdly, when you pop a piece of Miss Piggy cake in your mouth, although you know it’s undeniably cake, you can’t help it darling, you expect to taste bacon. I’m not sure if I’m glad or disappointed not to. Odd.

‘Anyway Sis, it’s lovely and I know you would love it. Fancy a bite? Fancy it enough to open your eyes and sit up? Eh? No? OK. Well listen. Big news, exciting news. I have someone here for you to meet and I don’t mind telling you darling, this guy is going to change your life. He is a policeman hon, but don’t panic, you’ve done nothing wrong. He has something important to tell you, and I think you might want to wake up to hear it, frankly. Hang on.’

Jo goes to the door and pops her head out to beckon Craig in.

He stands up, picks up his black tote bag, and walks into Suite 5. As he enters, Craig has to catch his breath. He has never seen anyone in a coma before. It’s disturbing. Craig falters for a second and stops in his tracks.

Jo has become inured to the shock of it, even after such a short time.

‘Come in. Don’t worry, it’s alright. Think of her as asleep. Now I’m going to stand here …’ Jo positions herself at the
internal window, blocking any view into the room from the nurses’ station ‘… you just carry on, as you normally would … but quietly … please … yes?’

‘Of course … just put this down.’

Craig quickly looks around, and goes to the corner of the room where there is a plug point. He puts his bag down, unzips the top and takes out a large ghetto blaster, which he plugs in. He turns the volume way down low, takes a deep breath, puts his hat on, and presses ‘play’. The unmistakable if muted first few bass-slapping bars of Tom Jones’s ‘You Can Leave Your Hat On’ start to sound. Craig swaggers to the side of Silvia’s bed.

‘’Ello ’ello ’ello, I believe there’s been an incident around these parts, and a laydee has been injured. Well love, my name is Sgt Sirloins, and I need to take down a few particulars … right now …’

With that, he turns round, bends over and, in the same alarming movement, he whips off his uniform trousers which are Velcroed at the side. It would have been deft if the Velcro wasn’t so stubborn at the ankles, where the trousers firmly remain joined. He is wearing a black thong and so, were Silvia to wake up at this moment, which thankfully, of course, she doesn’t, her first sight after eight days of unconsciousness, would be of a hairy pimply pale bent-over bum.

Craig quickly straightens up in time to dance to the first lyrics of the song as they start. He gyrates and mimes along.

Baby, take off your coat, real slow.

Baby, take off your shoes, I’ll help

You take off your shoes.

Baby, take off your dress, yes yes yes …

Craig is following the instructions of the song as best he can. He manages to get the jacket off in time and is pleased with that, so he does extra-sexy pursing of his lips, and plenty of hip thrusts. He prefers the music to be louder, as it covers the huffing and puffing he only now realizes he does whilst getting undressed. He’s never noticed that before. Yes, this is definitely slicker and sexier when the music is throbbingly loud.

And when the recipient isn’t in a coma, frankly.

He can’t bring himself to look at her because he fears the pitiful sight of her might cause his penis to get even smaller than it presently is, which is spectacularly small. If he is performing in a club, he can ‘arrange’ his manhood just before he goes on stage so that he presents himself at his optimum state. He hasn’t been able to do that here. Nothing about the hospital atmosphere has helped him in this respect. Even the deferential cup of tea from the trolley lady has failed to make him feel big enough. He has been unable to tap into his necessary fantasy high self-esteem in this bright neon lighting and antiseptic smell. He has no command over his willy whatsoever.

Which is a shame, since his routine now demands that he
proffer his front to Silvia to show the full force of his jam-packed black thong with the giant cobra’s head emblazoned on it. It looks best when it’s nice and stretched, but presently the cobra is looking a bit wrinkled and empty. Decidedly unthreatening. You wouldn’t be scared if you met that cobra in a desert. In fact, you might take pity on it and either pet it or club it on the head to mercifully put an end to its misery. Craig prays that Jo doesn’t clock it too much, in case she decides to deduct anything off his wages for his glaring inadequacy.

You can leave your hat on,

You can leave your hat on,

You can leave your hat on …

Unfortunately, as Craig is attempting to leave his hat on but get his shirt and tie off (which he really wants to do soon, because his torso is fairly impressive and may mitigate the effect of his less than perfect penis), he is hampered by the still-attached-to-his-heels trousers. As he has swung round to face Silvia, the pesky trousers are strangling his ankles and preventing him from throwing some of his more impressive moves. He tries to kick out wildly with his feet, but fails, and the overall impression is of someone having a fit, which isn’t sexy. And sexy is what it’s all about.

Frankly, Jo isn’t finding the display particularly sexy, but she is definitely unable to look away as more and more of Craig’s streaky spray-tanned body is revealed. Jo hasn’t been
in close quarters with an increasingly naked man like this for some time, and is transfixed. Even the smell of him is fascinating, a sort of zesty lemony sweaty niff, which is presently permeating the room like a determined creeping citrus mist. Maybe the power of that overwhelmingly heady odour alone will jolt Silvia into wakefulness?

Jo, like Craig, longs to turn the music up. This whole exercise seems wrong without loud thudding music. She hasn’t seen anything like this before, but she knows that’s how it should go. She feels ever so slightly disappointed that he has chosen this very obvious music.
The Full Monty
music. Such a cliché. Silvia wouldn’t approve of this choice. Almost anything else would have been preferable. Jo’s eyes flick frantically between the curious sight of the now naked Craig – naked, that is, save for the thong, the socks and shoes with trousers attached and, of course, the hat – and Silvia, who is fully clothed for bed, and a hundred per cent staunchly disinterested. Not a jot of any reaction on her face. Nothing. Jo realizes that without the aid of loud music, this endeavour is going to go for nothing, and will have been a total waste of time.

Craig is just getting to his dénouement and if anything is going to rouse Silvia, it would be this moment, but not if Silvia can’t hear it. She needs to know her cue to open her eyes if she is going to. It’s fast approaching, and Jo can’t help herself, she lunges towards the ghetto blaster and whacks the volume up to full fat, just as Craig releases the catch on the side of his
underwhelming thong to play his ace, and reveal all. As Jo turns back from her crouched position at the controls of the ghetto blaster, Craig is also mid-turn and mid-reveal.

A thrillingly awful moment occurs when Craig’s flaccid penis and Jo’s flushed cheek come into brief contact.

‘Sorry.’

‘Sorry.’

They both shout above the music, awkwardly.

‘
You can leave your hat on
…’ bellows Tom.

Craig loudly joins in with the last sentiment of the song.

The kerfuffle is tangibly chaotic and Winnie is aware of it, even though she is with a different patient in Suite 8. Once again, she speeds down the ward with a low, stealthy grace. Winnie is an NHS Exocet. Especially when Jo is in the building. Winnie is on high alert. She flings open the door of Suite 5 to see a sight she will forever wish she could forget. A naked man, the colour of an old tangerine, scrambling around under Silvia’s hospital bed, trying to find his hat.

‘Oh dear Lord! Wha’appn ’ere? Jo, what you tinkin? Get dis dyam h’idiot outta here right now. You tink Silvia want dis ya foolishness? Me don’t h’even know de awake Silvia, but me know she don’t. Nobody do! Look ’pon dis stupid ragamuffin, ’im so orange, ’im a fruit! Wa di blouse ’n’ skirt! You in a wholeheapa trouble wid me, Jo. Get ’im gaan!’

Craig frantically tries to gather up his clothes and leave, but the bloody trousers still tugging and lolloping around his
ankles torment him and in no time at all, he falls over, like a felled orang-utan, so Tango-ed and lumbering is he.

‘Sorry nurse, I just need to … sorry …’

He flounders about, trying to get up and pack up and get out.

Jo has her head in her hands.

‘Winnie, I’m so sorry. This isn’t what it looks like.’

‘Me no know what it look like, me only know what it is. Disrespectful. Das what. Aks yerself why you bring dis bodderation here? Look ’pon dis chaos!’

To Craig’s further shame, Winnie picks up the cobra thong which has pinged off and is now dangling on the side guard of Silvia’s bed.

‘Bwoy! A wa dis?!’

Craig reaches out tentatively to retrieve the offending article.

‘It’s … um … my thong …’

‘I know is what, ya wutless nasty fool. Pick it up an’ move yu backside before I box yu face. Ya hear mi now?! I’m serious. Gwaan!’

Craig snatches up the thong, and his other clothes. Jo helps to rip off the obstinate ankle-grabbing Velcro trousers, and assists him to scurry off, which he does, bumbling out of the door, holding the pile of clothes in front of his groin to protect his modesty. The nurses at the desk stifle their giggles. As he runs down the corridor frantically searching for the toilet where he can get dressed, he speeds past the trolley lady who
looks on aghast, and has many treasured and long-held values about policemen shattered in a nanosecond.

Back in the room, Jo feverishly yanks the plug of the ghetto blaster out of the wall and, thankfully, the wretched music stops. That is, however, the single positive thing that’s happening presently. Winnie is the only person Jo has any real respect for in the hospital, so it is doubly awful that it’s the lovely, honourable, hard-working Winnie who is standing at the door with her hard-working hands on her hips glowering angrily at Jo right now. Jo is immediately catapulted back to her childhood when so often she would be the one on the receiving end of the reprimands from her mother, even if both she and her sister were equally culpable. Silvia was always the favourite, seemingly blameless one.

‘Right, sidung ’pon dat chair, sista. Yu better start talkin. Gimme some reasons for dis craziness. C’mon.’

Jo sits on the visitor’s chair.

Winnie pulls up the other visitor’s chair and sits next to her. She is furious with Jo for this ridiculous disruption, but she knows that she won’t get any sense out of Jo unless she is gentle, and anyway, Winnie firmly believes that true strength is found in gentleness. So long as she can keep her tongue under control, that is the preferred route, always, for Winnie. It isn’t what Winnie has witnessed or experienced herself, inside her own family, apart from her mother, but it is what she knows to be right. Winnie’s Christian engine drives her to try and look
for the best in other people. She prays that, conversely, this is how others might interact with her, but she fears that life doesn’t always work that way. This all helps Winnie to sit with Jo, in the middle of a hectic shift, and hear her reasons without judging her too harshly.

The two women sit side by side at the foot of Silvia’s bed and their needs dovetail nicely. Winnie’s need to protect Silvia and therefore understand and guide Jo. Jo’s need to succeed in waking up her sister, and to face her more real and profound fears. Stuff she doesn’t like to think about, or talk about. Stuff that makes Jo recognize the awful truth of feeling so much the lesser for so long. Certainly less than Silvia, and for most of the time, less than almost everyone.

Winnie knows in her relatively few and recent dealings with Jo that this is Jo’s truth. All of Jo’s behaviour around Silvia points Winnie towards Jo’s massive want. Winnie reaches over and covers Jo’s hand with hers.

They sit quietly like this for a few moments, snatching a chance to just be. The chaos of the last ten minutes is still ringing in the air of the room, but it gradually quietens into a distant noise, replaced by the more familiar sound of Silvia’s assisted breathing. The room is full of the now. Of the critically ill Silvia. The reality of it is tangible and unavoidable.

Jo is the first to speak, and her voice cuts through the sadness of the room like a knife through jelly.

‘I am sorry, Winnie. I really am. I thought … I don’t know …
I thought it was kind of a wild thing to do, bit crazy y’know … saucy, for her. She would’ve laughed about it if she was … y’know … the old Silvia. Would’ve found it sort of revolting and amusing and, well, it certainly would’ve got her attention.’

‘H’indeed. Yes. Yes. Hmm …’

‘But obviously it … hasn’t worked. Nothing works, does it? Nothing I do. Never has, to be honest. All I’m trying to do is to think differently. Come up with something to give her a reason to want to come back … y’know.’

‘So, sorry, yu tink she purposely unconscious?’

‘No, well yes. Well, no, not exactly. All I know is that Sissy is a phenomenally strong person and if anyone could push through and wake up, it would be her. Except that … she’s very different, these last few years. Very … changed. Personally, I blame that awful woman Cat. You’ve seen her in here, haven’t you Winnie? I mean, honestly, what do you think …?’

‘Not fe mi to say … but …’

Jo isn’t listening really. She is revelling in the fact that someone, anyone, is listening to
her
. Being the listener herself isn’t her bag …

‘Because I think Sis has made some weird decisions. Well out of character. I mean, she’s always been a bit selfish, but to not see the kids, not answer their calls, not even acknowledge Willow, honestly, it’s not OK, is it? D’you think?’