Playing Dead (13 page)

‘Walk,’ she repeated firmly.

He levered himself to his feet. Felt instantly giddy, unreal. The weight hit his feet and they throbbed out a hot, heavy complaint. He gasped and stood there, supported by the crutches, swaying a little, wondering if he was going to pass out.

‘Walk,’ she said again.

‘Oh hell, all right,’ he muttered, and gingerly put one foot in front of the other. It hurt. He stepped forward again, and again. The pain was excruciating. ‘Fuck that,’ he shouted, and threw the crutches aside in sudden, impotent fury. Having done that, he collapsed to the floor in an ungainly heap.

‘
Shit!
’ he bellowed.

He wasn’t going to be able to walk again, what the hell was she tormenting him like this for?

‘Patience,’ said Marta, bending and putting his arm across her robust shoulders. She started to haul him upright again. With her help, he was able to flop back onto the bed. ‘We’ll try again tomorrow.’

Chapter 26

They tried the crutches again the following day, and the day after that. On the fourth day he fell sprawling to the floor, every cramped and aching muscle screaming a protest. The physio simply helped him up and said: ‘Again.’

Within a fortnight he was able to make it to the door. For the next two months he stomped along the hospital corridors. Brother Benito came back several times, bringing whisky and that benign, infinitely tolerant smile.

‘Didn’t I already tell you to fuck off?’ asked the man.

‘I believe you did,’ said Brother Benito. ‘But you didn’t mean it,’ he added, and sat in the chair in the man’s room with almost Buddha-like patience, until the man had completed his physio for the day and returned to his bed to rest.

‘That bitch,’ complained the man when Marta had left, promising more torment tomorrow. ‘What the hell’s the point of all this? I’m never going to walk, the doctors said so.’

‘Indeed,’ said Brother Benito, and handed him the whisky.

A month after that, she presented him with a flat circular board about two feet in diameter, with a six-inch plastic ball set in the centre.

He was walking with two sticks now. It was painful, laborious, but he no longer needed the crutches. He stared at the board with extreme suspicion. Marta had no doubt contrived yet another way to torture him.

‘What is it?’ he asked, as she sat on the side of the bed next to him.

‘Balance board,’ she said. ‘It’s going to strengthen your ankles.’

It did. It hurt like hell, but it did. Now he was down to one stick, stomping along the corridors with the physio at his side, saying, faster, come on,
faster.

It was a relief to get back to his room, back to his bed, sip some of Brother Benito’s whisky, and rest.

‘You’re a slave driver,’ he complained, flopping back onto the pillows while Marta put his sticks neatly in the corner by the door.

He watched her. She had a slender waist and good breasts beneath the unflattering concealment of the white uniform. Her thick dark hair was neatly tied back into a ponytail. She turned, caught him staring at her arse and went red.

She came over to the bed where he was sprawled out. ‘How’s your memory coming along?’

‘Badly,’ he said, his half-smile dying on his lips. He still could remember nothing. And it worried him. How was he ever going to get back into the world if he didn’t know who he was? The doctors had said there was no neurological reason for this blankness where his memory should be; their suggestion was that some psychological rather than physical trauma – maybe the shock of the fall? – had triggered the loss of his memory.

‘It will come back,’ she said. ‘When it’s ready.’

She touched his hand. He grasped her fingers, twined his into hers. She didn’t pull away.

‘Shut the door and come and sit down here, Marta,’ he said.

Marta went and closed the door and came and sat on the side of the bed. The man leaned forward, grasped the back of her glossy dark head, and kissed her, snaking his tongue into her mouth.

‘Oh,’ she murmured against his lips, but once again she didn’t pull back. Her tongue met his and played with it.

After a few seconds she did pull away, and he let her.

‘We shouldn’t,’ she said, her cheeks red now, her eyes bright.

‘Why not?’ asked the man. ‘We both want to.’

He kissed her again, trailing his hand down from the back of her head over her collarbone and down to the buttons on the uniform. He unfastened them quickly as he kissed her, pushed the edges of the coat back, then he drew back a little.

She was wearing a thin, blue-sprigged summer dress. More buttons, running all the way down. He undid these, too; a black sensible bra and panties underneath. It was like trying to break into a fortress, but somehow he did remember how this was done. He leaned in again, kissing her more deeply, his hands busy unfastening the bra behind her back. She had pale skin on her belly, and a few moles here and there, like beauty spots.

The bra came loose and her heavy breasts fell free of their confines, her large dark nipples already hard with desire. The man brushed his hands admiringly over them and she cried out. His hands dropped to the pants. She lifted her hips and he quickly got rid of them. A thick black bush there, hugely erotic to him. He felt his cock stir to new heights at the sight of it.

When did I last have a woman?
he wondered. He didn’t know. He didn’t know anything except that he needed this now.

Sitting on the edge of the bed, he pulled her across him so that she was straddling his lap. He freed himself, paused long enough to kiss and lick her nipples, then guided his cock up into her cavernous wetness. She was hot and panting now, and he was desperate for this, rock-hard with lust.

He thrust crazily into her, holding her tight in his arms, lifting her so that her thighs slapped against his belly in a rocking motion as his penis plunged in and out of her. He wanted it to last, it felt so good, but it couldn’t; it had been a long time since he last did this, he knew that, and his orgasm was approaching, stealing over him, making him shudder and gasp with delight.

‘I’m not on the pill,’ she gasped, her arms around his neck, her lips beside his ear.

He did the decent thing and withdrew – not that he wanted to. The hot pulse of his loins told him orgasm was just a beat away, and almost the instant he pulled out of her he came. In the same split-second of orgasm there was another woman in his head. Dark-haired like this one, but not merely pretty: beautiful. This woman was thinner and with larger, tauter breasts. He saw her face in a sudden flash – serious dark green eyes, sculpted cheekbones, a wide, laughing mouth . . . and then it was gone.

They stayed like that for several long moments, breathless; then Marta flipped her leg back over, picked up her panties from the floor, set about refastening her bra. She rebuttoned her dress, then her uniform. Then she stood there and stared down at him.

‘So, who were you fucking?’ she asked, her mouth curved in a cynical half-smile.

‘What?’

‘Who was it?’ she asked. ‘It certainly wasn’t me.’

Again, he saw her. Green eyes dark as tourmalines. Thick, flowing, cocoa-brown hair. Who the hell was she?

He stared at Marta, hardly even seeing her.
Who was that woman . . .?
Marta’s face was thunderous.

‘I don’t know,’ he said. He didn’t. It was the truth.

She slapped his face, hard, and stormed from the room.

After that, it was strictly business with her. She was cold with him, remote; and he accepted that. He mastered the balance board with an effort, and walked the corridors with his sticks, sweated through the physio, ate, grew stronger – wondered what the hell was going to happen to him when the day came that he had to leave hospital.

But Benito had an answer for that. The doctors were talking about how pleased they were with him now, that his memory should return to him given time, that he had made a most remarkable recovery – but they couldn’t let him out of hospital unless he had a home to go to, and someone to care for him as he completed his recuperation.

‘Of course you must come and stay at the monastery,’ said Brother Benito.

The man looked at the brother, sitting there as he had so many times before, patient, kind; he remembered that this was the man who had in all probability saved his life, who had taken no notice of his surly refusal to accept comfort and companionship, who had come back again and again and again, with whisky and quiet conversation, when all he got in return was anger and abuse.

‘I couldn’t do that,’ said the man. He stared at the monk. ‘You know, I don’t know a damned thing about you, do I? Except that you saved my life. Have you
always
been like this?’

‘Like what?’

‘Kind. Giving your arse away, taking nothing in return.’

‘Ah! No.’ Benito was smiling, lighting up his craggy features. ‘I wasn’t always one of the brothers, you know. Once I was a bastard.’ His eyes twinkled with mirth as he said it. ‘Just like you.’

The man was intrigued. ‘A bastard? You? Come on.’

‘Oh yes.’ Now the smile drained from Benito’s eyes and they looked sad. ‘I was a soldier once. A Falangist volunteer. I fought in the Battle of Majorca during the civil war in Thirty-six. We drove the Republicans back into the sea.’ He paused. ‘We won.’

‘You say that as if you
lost
.’

‘What I lost then, my friend, was my taste for bloodshed. I saw things . . . terrible things. And did them too. We won, yes – but at such a cost.’ Benito shook his head and then brightened again. ‘So come and stay with us. No one will bother you. You’ll be left in peace. I promise.’

‘I couldn’t.’ Benito had already done so much.

‘Oh? Why not?’ Brother Benito looked at him. ‘Where else would you go? The doctors won’t release you until they are certain you can manage alone, and, to be honest, you can’t. You need somewhere to stay so that you can recover properly. The hard work’s done, now it gets easier. Accept the invitation. Come and stay.’

The man stirred uneasily in the bed, aware that he owed the brothers an enormous debt of thanks. And what choice did he have? He had no idea where his home was; all he could do was wander the streets if he turned down the offer. And he had been churlish enough to this good man, he knew that.

‘Then . . . thanks,’ he said.

And it was agreed.

Chapter 27

The monastery was a haven of calm, perched high upon the edge of the Tramuntana mountains where they dipped down to the sea. As the monks went about their daily business of prayer and work, the man started to walk outside the monastery walls, going further and further every day.

Nurtured by good food and sunshine, he grew strong. Months passed peacefully by and he felt shielded from the world, content with his lot, sheltered within the cosy rhythms of this spiritual hideaway. The endless cycle of prayers and the daily singing of the choir in the little Renaissance church were a soothing backdrop to his daily life. He even threw aside the sticks and walked unaided, wearing shorts and a thin shirt, which he stripped off when the day grew too hot.

His ankles still gave him some pain; occasionally, one or the other would lock solid, and he had to sit down in the pink Mallorquin dust and swear and groan until the crisis past. But he persevered, and grew fitter, until finally he was able to jog along the precipitous pathways with the ocean crashing onto the rocks far below him. When he was able to do that, he knew that his body was back to normal.

But his mind . . . that was another matter. It frustrated him badly, the weird flickering images that drifted in and out of his brain. The dark-eyed woman. An occasional feeling of urgency, of tension – as if he had missed something vital, that there was something he had to do . . . but what? He didn’t know.

‘Come into the town with me, I’m going to get provisions and go to the bank,’ said Benito often, but the man always refused. He felt safe in the monastery, as he had in the hospital. The world could not intrude here.

He said no so many times that, finally, Benito’s patience snapped.

‘There’s a word for this,’ he said.

‘For what?’

‘For what you’ve become. It’s institutionalized.’

‘What?’

Benito was looking at him sternly as they stood in the garden. The man had been digging up vegetables for dinner, he was happy – why wouldn’t Benito take the hint and piss off?

‘First you wanted to stay in the hospital.’

That was true enough; he had.

‘Now you’re barely going outside these walls except to walk alone. You’ve been living here for a year, my friend. You can’t hide away from the world like this.’

The man stared at his friend and saviour. ‘Are you saying you want me to go?’ He felt hurt and angry at this unexpected attack.

‘No. What I am saying is that you must start to get back into the real world. For the sake of your health. That’s all. So next time I ask you to join me, just come. All right?’

Benito left him alone. But the following week he came back.

‘I’m going down to the town,’ he said. ‘Come with me.’

‘I’m busy,’ said the man. Benito was right and he felt ashamed but he
did
feel apprehensive about venturing out.

‘No you’re not. So you’re coming.’

It wasn’t a request, it was an order.

‘Well fuck
you
,’ said the man. But Benito was right. This was ridiculous. ‘Start the bloody motor up,’ the man said. ‘I’ll get washed. Ten minutes, okay?’

The first time out was the worst, but after that he did sometimes go with Benito when he went down to the nearest small town. He drove a battered, wheezing old Renault; it looked as if the journey back up might kill it stone dead. Benito always went on market day to get provisions and do any banking.

At first, the crush of people and the noise felt strange to the man. But Benito moved confidently among the stalls, filling bags, chatting to the stallholders while the man held back, uneasy among this teeming mass of life. He was usually glad when they got back to the car and started back up to the monastery; but every time he accompanied Benito on these trips, he felt a little more comfortable with it all.