This Holey Life (29 page)

He gazes up, searching for God up there, while I am searching for cobwebs. ‘Have you ever noticed her feet?’ he asks.

‘Her feet?’ I look at the dainty blue slippered feet of St Hilda and think of my own feet, clad in my favourite Clark’s. I think of all those other feet again, the ones who
have trod in here before me. All of these worshippers gazing up at this window, a window somehow salvaged from the ruins left by the Luftwaffe, brought back to life in the new church, so St Hilda
could once again offer words of wisdom to those with open ears.

‘Look at the snakes, Vick,’ Steve says, pointing them out, a tangle of serpents writhing around her feet. I’ve never really considered them before, the snakes, preferring the
seagulls above her, memories of Worthing. ‘She turned a plague of snakes to stone.’

‘A plague of snakes? In Whitby?’

‘So legend has it. They say that’s why ammonite fossils have been found on the beach there. Hence the ammonite genus
Hildoceras
.’

What is going on inside my husband’s head, going off on one right when he should be firmly on the ground? ‘Have you been Googling again?’

‘Wikipedia.’

I can’t help letting out a sigh. I sense Steve stiffen beside me, bristling at what he can only take as criticism. ‘It’s all very interesting, Steve,’ I start, pushing
myself on. ‘But I was kind of hoping your time-out for reflection might’ve been more productive.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I was kind of hoping you might have worked out a way of solving our little spiky haired problem.’

‘Karolina.’

‘Yes, Karolina.’

He sighs this time. A mighty sigh that comes from deep within. ‘I suppose I was hoping,’ he looks up, ‘the old girl might pass on some of her legendary wisdom to me.’

‘Shouldn’t you be relying on God for that?’

‘Shouldn’t you?’

‘This isn’t about me.’

‘But it isn’t about me either.’

‘What about the phone calls?’

‘There were no phone calls.’

Silence. Deadlock. I forge on. ‘And what about Desmond? Have you spoken with him today? Or have you been waiting for St Hilda to step down from that window and chin Karolina.’

‘I’m not sure chinning will get us very far.’

‘It helped me with Martin.’

He shakes his head, at me, at the world.

But I’ve said that word. That name. Martin. It hovers in the hushed air of the church and I have to do something about it. A quick glance at my watch tells me I need to leave my husband
here, with the old girl. It’s quarter to four. Time to get back to the real world.

‘Just how much have you put back?’

‘Unlike you, Vicky-Love, I can hold my drink. You only have to sniff a wine gum to get trollied. And anyway, your mother-in-law has fuelled me with a tanker load of coffee. I’m fine.
It’s all good.’ He takes a puff of his inhaler and lights up.

I pull away from the street, leaving my family, my shelter behind me, stuck in the Espace with Martin and his smoke and his man-toothache that is the worst toothache since the beginning of time.
Since Adam and Eve trod happy-go-lucky through the Garden of Eden, not a care in the world. Before cares even came into the world. Before Adam gave in to his stomach and ate that stupid apple. That
stinking rotten apple disguised as a luscious Granny Smith.

The waiting room. Eerily quiet, which straightaway makes Martin fret over his health, cupping the side of his face and groaning like a Premier league footballer. ‘Never
trust a quiet dentist,’ he says, barely audible as he won’t open his mouth. A ventriloquist’s dummy. A dummy anyway.

‘You’ve spent too much time with Dorota.’ I find a chair and swipe a dog-eared magazine off the heap on a table.

‘Don’t diss your mother-in-law,’ he whispers. ‘She saved my life today.’

Today’s not over, that’s what I want to say but I restrain myself, breathing deeply and reminding myself that Martin has had a mega week. I should be supportive. Kind. The good
sister.

I’m halfway through the latest
Chat
, catching up on my celebrity ‘news’ so that I can be one step ahead of Olivia, when Martin is told to go in by the receptionist, who
he has been blatantly eyeing up ever since we arrived. (Nothing stops him.) He shuffles off and I get back to
Chat
.

Ten minutes later and I am fully up-to-date on Tom Cruise and his young wife. Just as I am moving on to a minor Royal, there is a scream. High-pitched and panicky. Followed by a muffled crash of
scattering metal. The receptionist snatches her blonde little head away from the computer monitor and looks at me as if it’s my fault. A passing hygienist stops in her squelchy Croc-tracks
and looks at the receptionist as if it is her fault. The magazine slips from my lap and falls, splayed, Tom Cruise face-down, to the floor. We all look at it. And I know exactly who is to blame.
Who else? I feel my face heat up as quick as a halogen cooker. A menopausal flush that reaches up my nose and into my ears. What’s Martin done now? Has he made a pass at the dentist? Please
tell me no.

The three of us, united in worried curiosity, listen out, alert. A moment of silence. Just a moment. Then the door flings open and we can see into the surgery: Martin prone on the chair, his arm
fallen to one side, hanging limp, metal instruments strewn across the floor.

He’s fainted.

The wuss.

But where’s the dentist? I can’t see the dentist. There’s the dentist. That’s the dentist, coming out of the room, panic stuck to her face. Shouting. Wild-eyed and
spiky-haired.

Karolina?

Yes, Karolina is the dentist, who else, I might’ve known, and she’s shouting for help.

‘Somebody call 999!’

Meanwhile another dentist emerges from the staff room, brushing off the crumbs of a sugar-free snack with each rushed step, and they disappear, the two of them, Karolina lagging somewhat behind,
back into the room. The door slams shut. Bang. Boom.

More silence. Louder than any noise. I can hear the cogs clicking in the receptionist’s tiny head. She’s been joined by the hygienist, priest-like in her white uniform; they are
whispering to each other, glancing from me to the closed door behind which carries on a drama involving my brother.

Two brief thoughts.

Why, out of all the dentists in South London, did Karolina have to be the one to deal with Martin?

Has the Polish psycho killed my brother?

These thoughts jostle for supremacy in my head but I am beyond sorting them out. I am beyond thinking. I am reacting, up off my feet and barging into the room, ignoring requests to stay outside,
ignoring the receptionist and the hygienist’s dual attempt to pull me back, an overpowering urge to help Martin.

And there he is, Martin. Out cold. Blood trailing down his nose, like he’s been hit. Again. The second dentist is stabbing something in his leg. Through his trousers. His thigh. My brain
cannot work out what is going on. I look to the dental nurse who is on the phone to the ambulance. Then I spot Karolina, standing with her back to the wall, staring blankly ahead, quite still. What
the hell has happened? I speak to the room, to anyone who’ll listen:

‘Will. Someone. Please. Tell. Me. What. She’s. Done. To. My. Brother?’

‘Apparently it was the latex gloves that did it,’ I tell Claudia much later as she finally answers her phone and drags herself away from William Shakespeare to
visit her husband in hospital.

Her husband, my brother, is sitting up in bed, calmly watching the News, with a red nose, a drip in his arm, and wires on his chest hooked up to one of those heartbeat monitor things. Nurses
swarm around him, taking his blood pressure, scribbling notes, and generally fussing.

Jeremy is perched on the bed eating his father’s untouched supper, something involving mashed potato and beige meat. He picks out the diced carrots and lines them up on the side of the
plastic plate like the victims of a vegetable firing squad.

Claudia and I sit opposite each other and talk over Martin’s long legs.

‘It was an anaphylactic shock,’ I tell my sister-in-law who has still managed to leave home with coordinated accessories. ‘When Karolina hit him in the face, that must have
triggered it.’

‘Why the hell did the dentist hit him in the face?’

‘That’s the bit I’m not sure of. Martin, would you care to elaborate?’

Martin continues to watch the News. ‘Drop it for now, will you? I’ve had a day of it.’ He turns, appealing to the nearest nurse for rescue from these two pestering women. The
nurse is only too pleased to administer a stern shake of the head to both Claudia and me. I want to kick her in her stockinged shins but instead I stare pointedly at my watch, waiting for her to
drag herself away, which she eventually does when Martin hands her his empty mug.

‘I’ll get you a refill, cheeky,’ she simpers, reluctantly swaggering away.

‘So how long do you have to stay in for?’ Claudia asks.

‘They haven’t said.’ He looks at his wife, mustering up an expression of misery. ‘Till my heart rate settles.’ He points to his heart, a gesture laden with
symbolism, which elicits an expression of worry, a delicately crinkled brow, from his estranged wife. ‘I had a funny reaction to the adrenaline. The very thing that saved my life almost
killed me.’ He smiles weakly and we can see a gap where the troublesome tooth once was.

While we contemplate his words, forgetting the bit about Karolina punching him, he asks: ‘Where’s Steve? Can you send him in?’

This is when Claudia’s eyes well up and her little pixie nose pinkens in sympathy with her husband’s red hooter. ‘But Martin, surely it’s not that serious you need a
vicar?’ She extracts a delicate lace handkerchief from her clutch bag, perfecting the hospital bed scene.

I know he’s had a scrape with death but Martin is perfectly alright. He’s going to be fine. So I will not buy into this melodrama. ‘Why on earth do you want Steve?’

Martin drags his eyes away from Claudia and lands them on me. ‘I’ve got some information.’

‘Information? What are you talking about?’

‘Information about our Polish friend.’

‘The one that decked you?’

‘The very same.’

‘Why did she hit you?’

‘That’s what I want to tell Steve. Can you get him to come in?’

The story according to Martin:

When I was a kid I had this shocking eczema. Scaly red patches behind my knees and in the crooks of my elbows. Bad in the heat. Worse in the cold. My skin would be cracked,
oozing pus and itchy. So itchy. I had to have oily baths and plaster myself in cream or else my skin would be so tight it would split. Mum used to fuss over me, spent ages applying greasy
emollients, gently, methodically, the way she’d rub milk into the ficus leaves to make it shine.

It got a bit better when I was a teenager though there’d be outbreaks at times of stress like my O-Levels. Then when I got into my twenties I had this funny turn. It was a
colleague’s retirement do, this crusty old academic who’d been in the department since the time of Aristotle. There were drinks and nibbles one Friday afternoon in the senior common
room. Warm white wine. Dry, salt-flecked pretzels. Crisps. Peanuts. I ate great handfuls, anything to soak up the Liebfraumilch so I could get away sharpish and avoid the rush hour. Claudia had a
dinner party planned. Her first, and I didn’t want to let her down. I felt a bit odd, was in a trance-like state listening to Hugh bang on about his latest research project and the huge lump
of funding he’d somehow blagged, when I thought I was going to be sick. Blamed it on the gut-rot wine, excused myself and went to the loo. Sitting there I felt steadily worse. My stomach was
heaving and I felt giddy, like I was on a ferry sitting in the bilge. I went to get a drink of water from the tap, and then glancing in the mirror above the sink, I saw my face was distorted. My
eyes and lips had swelled up and suddenly I found it hard to breathe. Needed a puff of my inhaler. And another. And another. I could feel my airways constricting, my tongue swelling. It was like I
had a sock stuffed in my mouth and then I had this overwhelming sense of doom, as if the world was falling down on me. That was the point at which Hugh came in and rushed straight back out to call
an ambulance.

I had these tests done and they decided I was allergic to nuts. So I avoided nuts. I didn’t seem to be quite as bad as some people who couldn’t even be in a room with nuts without
keeling over. I just don’t eat them. So it hasn’t really impacted on my life.

And then there’s my tooth. I should’ve gone to the dentist sooner but to be honest I hate going. Haven’t been for years. I’ve spent so much time with doctors, in
hospitals, with my eczema, asthma and all the rest of it that I suppose I’ve avoided the dentist. My teeth have never given me any problems. Until recently. This tooth has been aggravating
for a while and then I got walloped by Bob. And then by Vicky. Then Karolina extracts it. Once I see it, my tooth, held up to the light, its long pointed root, clasped in the grip of her shiny
dental implement, I confront her. The dental nurse has popped out for something, a sticker maybe because I’ve been such a good boy and not cried a drop. I tell her, Karolina, that I know she
has made up stories about Steve. I tell her that she needs to retract everything she has said. She stares at me, her mouth open, nothing coming out. She starts to cry. I tell her I know she made
those phone calls, I know she stole Steve’s mobile and made those calls herself. I worked it out. It’s a no-brainer. She stops crying then, as suddenly as she started, the proverbial
tap, and comes over all serious and quiet. She is very close to me. Her hands are right by my face. I can smell the latex. It makes me feel queasy but maybe that’s the tooth, the blood I can
taste in my mouth. Her musky tobacco scent. I’m biting down on this swab and I wonder if she can understand what I am saying to her, muffled as I am, and English not being her mother tongue.
But she understands alright. She gets up from her swivel chair. She gets up and she punches me. A third time. Only at least she has the decency not to punch me in the mouth. She goes for my nose.
It hurts. But not for long. Soon I feel drowsy, like I’m wafting up out of the dentist chair. I am stuck to the ceiling, looking down at this spiky angry head. I hear a scream and then I see
me, myself, Martin, in a deep, deep sleep from which I may never wake. It is not the punch that has done this. It is the gloves.