Painkiller (22 page)

There’s one thing I can’t get around; the take-off, the part of the flight where you are required to sit down. No excuses. The plane moves up at a 45-degree angle, accelerating at a terrific rate, and you can feel it pushing you back in your seat. What’s happening is that the acceleration is placing g-force on your spine and compressing it together. It’s something you wouldn’t particularly notice. But if you happen to have chronic nerve pain that’s derived from an injury based in the small of the back…

The first time we tried to fly after my injury we did something unambitious; a short package trip to Spain. I was completely unprepared for how it affected me. I ended up with a huge flare-up, and I spent the following week lying down in a darkened room in the hotel. I might as well have drawn the curtains in my own bedroom and listened to flamenco music on my iPod.

He sums this all up by saying: ‘You know what happened last time.’

‘I’m feeling really good at the moment. Look.’ I give a little dance. ‘Let’s go to Rome. Let’s have a second honeymoon.’

‘OK. Fine.’

And he backs away from me, almost afraid.
He’s so worried I’m going to leave him.

He’s halfway up the stairs, and I call to him.

‘Dominic?’

‘Yes?’

‘I do love you.’

So we’re off to Rome. It’s taken six weeks for Dominic to get time off work, and I still feel OK. No sign of the pain. I wake up every morning and wait for reality to fall in on me, but it doesn’t happen.

Now our cases are packed and weighed, and there’s a taxi coming to take us to Heathrow. Dominic is still watching me, bug-eyed. He can’t get used to me moving around fairly normally. He is obviously expecting me to shatter into a thousand pieces at any moment. He asks me how I am every ten minutes. Sometimes he even asks me how my memory is; if I can remember moments from that first year, after the accident.

I shake my head and he nods, thinking. I expect him to look more disappointed, somehow.

Our flight is gloriously uneventful. Dominic is still staring at me, wide-eyed, I think he’s waiting for something to happen, but I pat his hand and say, ‘Read your book, I’m fine. Really.’

He sits there in his seat, not reading his book, and I sit there in mine, coping with being fine. I look out of my window, unable to tear my eyes away. It’s the first time in ages I’ve not looked out of a plane through a fog of agony, and I’m captivated by the sights below. My mind is frantically throwing out images and metaphors.
I need to write a poem about this. If I can. I have to see if I can read my handwriting now
…

The suicide letter again. In my head.

How did I write it?
 

Forget about the bloody letter, Monica. You’re on holiday.
 

At the moment England is shapeless and murky, as if it is lying at the bottom of deep water. The clouds drifting by our wing are like lumps of pack ice drifting on a frozen lake, and not too much later the weather clears, and I am staring down at the Alps, white and green and speckled, gouged out of the earth, like someone had attacked a tub of mint-choc ice cream.

My perceptions feel different. I feel different. I wonder what it would be like when my own murk clears, and the pin-sharp pictures finally arrive in my mind.

We emerge, blinking in the wobbly nicotine-stiffened air of Rome. Scarcely able to believe what we’re doing, we take a taxi to the hotel. Our big black Mercedes noses into the fast-moving stream of Fiats and Toyotas, causing howls and hoots from the drivers, and soon we are bumping and jerking along terrifying, narrow roads as our driver makes gestures to everyone he sees. A girl on a moped zips past us wearing nothing but a crash helmet, a light summer dress and a pair of trainers. Her dress flaps in the humid heat revealing long brown legs.

Even though we’re being thrown about inside the car, I still feel nothing; no pain.

Nothing.

When we reach the main street, we are besieged. Traders circle and jostle us, waving fake Gucci handbags, bottles of water and, mystifyingly, statuettes of the leaning Tower of Pisa. Dominic looks in my direction, concerned, but I’m smiling like an idiot. I feel nothing. There is a beggar lying across the pavement, tapping his stick rhythmically on the kerb.
Tap tap tap.
We have to skip round him and onto the road to get to the hotel. I wonder if, at the end of the day, he would dust himself off and saunter away, but then I feel guilty. That’s just what people think about me when I park in those disabled spaces.

I hurry back and put five euros in his hat. He gives me a broken grin and keeps on tapping.

Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap.
 

And I’m reminded of the password. The photos Dominic took of me. How Dominic changed his password to stop me snooping. Fleetingly I wonder if he has got over his paranoia. I hope so, because for now, everything is all right.

Everything is perfect.

Forget about it.
 

As soon as we enter the hotel room we hold each other tightly and fall onto the bed, casting our clothes off and dropping them on the floor. He pulls me onto my knees, and I wonder if he wants me to assume a doggy pose like one of his pornographic films; but he wriggles under me, happy to lie back and let me sit astride him, again. I’m happy to oblige as I’m enjoying my new freedom, but it’s not the first time that I think it wasn’t quite like it was before. I’m sure when we had an active love life, Dominic was at least, well…
active.
I hold him by his shoulders and roll, until we change places and he’s on top of me. I remember the old thrill of watching his chest above me, moving back and forth.

He lasts about twenty seconds before his arms give out and he collapses on top of me.

I wake early. Far too early. The noises of the morning are only just beginning; just a solitary barking dog. Dominic is still flat on his stomach, snoring slightly.

I can’t wait. Time is too precious. I have to go. I can’t control my body but this time it’s in a good way. I throw on some clothes, leave a note for Dominic, leave the hotel, and find myself walking to the Spanish Steps. Tiptoeing over the traders setting out their wares on the pavements.

I get to the Keats-Shelley House, only to find that it’s closed. Not open until the afternoon. I sit outside the heavy door and read my book about the poets, enjoying my freshly found level of concentration, devouring the pages. I read about how Keats died, in terrible pain, but surrounded by his friends. How sad they burnt all his furniture because they were afraid of the tuberculosis!

I look up at the windows and fantasise about being in the room where he breathed his last, being one of his friends. I read a little about Byron, and am strangely moved by his last words: ‘I think I shall go to sleep now.’

It’s restful in the square, and I feel at one with it all; I feel at one with Keats. I read ‘Ode to a Nightingale’, and decide I have to write my own ‘Ode to Keats’.

I brace myself and walk to the top. It’s been a long time since I’ve had the courage to go up this many steps; it would be frightening if it wasn’t so tiring. I sit in a café and I write a poem on the back of the napkin that comes with my coffee, about pain and sharing.

The handwriting is almost normal; almost mine. Like the handwriting on that suicide letter I couldn’t have written.

Ever since the agony and ecstasy of the treatment I’d tried not to think about the suicide letter. I’d chosen not to think about it, because I so wanted everything to get back to normal. And now my poem has forced the thought back into my mind.

My Angry Friend has been banished, but he is still there, hiding somewhere, jumping up and throwing the fragments of the letter in my face and screaming (
Look! Look at it! Look there you silly bitch! They’re lying to you! They’re all lying to you!
)

‘No, leave me alone!’ I say it out loud, startling a man near me, taking photos with his phone. ‘I don’t want to listen to you any more!’

(
Look! Look at what you wrote!
)

I can’t. The suicide letter is long gone.
 

(
Not the suicide note, you daft cow! The poem! Look at the poem!
)

Then I realise I’ve spelled the word ‘burden’ incorrectly, and I feel a shudder of what is coming for me.
Please God, keep him away for a little while longer.

I stand at the top of the steps and look down. They fall away to the ground quite steeply, and I feel dizzy just looking. Very dizzy. I have more memories of steps. More steps.

Car park steps.

Hospital car park steps.

The memory is sharper now, and it’s too much.

It’s making me feel nauseous.

And there’s a hand at my back, and I scream. Very loudly. And I almost pitch myself off the steps and fall.

‘Are you all right?’

Dominic is there. It’s him. It is his hand on my back.

‘My God! What were you trying to do?’

Dominic flinches. ‘Do? I wasn’t trying to do anything. I was just meeting you. I got your note. I followed you here.’

‘Why did you say that? Why did you just say “Are you all right?”?’

‘Because you looked like you’d just had a heart attack when I touched you!’

‘You scared me! Why didn’t you say something?’

‘I did! I called to you! I guess you weren’t listening.’ He looks at his watch. ‘Come on. We’ve got to head off. I want to see the Vatican.’

‘But I’ve only just got here!’

‘Monica, it’s nearly eleven!’

‘But they open the house at one o clock.’

‘Oh no! No way are we waiting here for two more hours. We’re on a schedule here. Time is precious. You’re not being fair, Monica. This is our holiday and you just take off the first chance you get?’ He shakes his head in disappointment. ‘We’re heading to the Vatican, before it gets too hot to walk.’

‘But I want to see Keats —’

‘He’s dead. He’s not going anywhere. Come on. The Vatican. We’d said we’d do that on day one. You promised.’

(
Time is precious
)

So, reluctantly, I surrender, and we go to the Vatican. We go over a huge bridge, the Ponte Vittorio Emanuele II. It’s lined with bits of statue; huge grey people with missing arms and heads.

This place is full of broken bodies. I think I fit right in. In fact the whole city is like me
.
An ageing lady who’s still beautiful, but who’s had a few knocks too many in her long, eventful life. And it shows
.

When we get to the Vatican, it’s a circus. We’re jostled in the square, jostled in the huge queue to get into the place. Dominic is in awe, looking at everything, devouring every painting, every fresco. But he always keeps one eye on me. When I suddenly shiver at the sight of a tortured statue of a luckless saint, he’s at my side.

‘Are you all right? Did the shock on the top of the steps – did it jar you?’

‘I’m fine.’

‘How’s the pain?’

‘It’s fine. I’m fine.’

‘But you shuddered. I saw you.’

‘It’s
fine
, Dominic. I just had someone walk over my grave.’

Dominic grins. ‘This is Rome. We’re probably walking over everyone’s grave. Come on. Let’s go and get something to eat.’

The day darkens, and we go back to the hotel, ring down and reserve a table. Giddy with the idea of a romantic meal, I put on a sheer green silk dress slashed to the thigh (I bought it during a mad month when I decided I was going to compete with Angelina) and shoes so vertiginous my toes start screaming the moment I take them out of the suitcase.

Dominic throws on a jacket. ‘Ready?’

My eyes flick up and down his body. His jeans, his open-neck golf shirt and crumpled corduroy jacket. ‘You… are not going downstairs like that.’

‘Why not?’

‘Jesus, Dominic. Do I have to spell it out? This is our first proper meal together since I’ve felt better. I’ve not been able to wear these shoes for five years. Have a sense of
occasion
, for God’s sake.’

He looks at me. He doesn’t know what to say. Something that looks a lot like recognition spreads slowly across his face, and with some effort his shoulders descend, his hands unclench, and he relaxes and smiles as if to say ‘no bother’.

He raises his arms in mock surrender and goes to find the suit that I know he has forgotten to pack. He eventually emerges with a tie, (
the one I hate
)
,
and I can see he couldn’t manage to do the top button up on his shirt, his (
fat
) neck is exposed beneath the knot.

The moment I enter the restaurant I feel incredibly overdressed. No one is wearing a tie. One man is even wearing shorts. Dominic doesn’t seem to notice, and follows the maître d’ with obvious hunger. We are given a table near the kitchen, as we booked too late. All the other diners allow their gaze to wander around the room, and I know they’re only doing that so their eyes can rest on us for a few seconds. I can hear their thoughts.