TWENTY-ONE DAYS — an extract

SELF-MEDICATION

Chapter Four

‘Rose had a son, did I tell you that?’ 

His frail old voice sputters and crackles, a resilient ember in a dying fire still resisting total extinction. Even though I have turned my back on him to show my lack of interest, it is the third time he has asked me this question in the last ten minutes. My muscles are so rigidly locked to shut him out, I am positive rigor mortis is minutes away, but I can still feel a building itch in the middle of my back as the heat from the old man’s determined stare singes my skin. Mikey would have just answered; he has a thing about keeping everyone happy. He would have placidly gone along with the old man, patiently nodding with a genuine look of interest plastered across his face, no matter how many times the conversation circled and repeated. His engaging chuckle would have bubbled out of a mouth that looked just like mine and crinkled the corners of identical eyes to the ones that look back at me out of the mirror, yet somehow my face doesn’t love the world like his does. ‘Why do you always look slightly traumatised like you’ve just survived a shipwreck?’ Mikey always used to say and he would grab my face with his big chunky hands and try and pull my smile upwards. 

‘A little boy…excellent little chap’ burbles the old man at my unrelenting back.

The itch is spreading now, prickling its way up to my neck, insidiously demanding I turn around and rub the irritated skin against the pillows. I refuse to give in; I will not turn around and get cornered by the old man’s perpetual need for conversation. The itch goes mad, igniting every tiny nerve between my waist and the back of my neck until I feel like I will explode if I don’t claw my skin off with a razor blade. The itch wins. Mutinously, I glare at the old man as I haul myself into sitting position and wiggle my back furiously to and fro across the pillows. 

‘Saw an elephant in India do that once. Damned thing nearly knocked the tree down with its damned itchy backside. Had the same look on its face as you,’ he wheezes happily at me.

For a full thirty seconds I try and stare him down with my best withering glare, but the humorous glint in his old eyes steadily bores into me, and I realise I haven’t a hope in hell of ignoring him. 

‘So, Rose had a boy, did she?’ I am less than enthusiastic but the old guy seems immune to my lacklustre tones.

‘Just a twig of a lad with a sweet lop-sided smile...that same mass of curly, red hair. About four years old, I suppose, when she brought him to see me. Must have been 1919 or somewhere abouts. Little chap laughed like a gurgling tap...the sound used to reach inside me, right into the pit of my stomach. I know, I know… sentimental guff...I can see you thinking that, but true all the same.

The old man smiles at the memory and I nod voluntarily this time, quickly staring down at the patch of bedsheet I’m idly pleating between my fingers, hearing the familiar gurgle of a boyish laugh in my chest.  

‘That was later though, at least I think so...yes, that’s right...the laughter was another time. I kept him safe, as best I could. He was the lucky one. Harry, his name was Harry…yes, he was lucky...

A sigh sucks through his emaciated frame and swallows his words, and the breath that follows barely registers life. 

‘I need some water...please?’

‘Sorry?’

‘Water…please’

As soon as I lift my head, I am aware he must be able to see my horrified expression. I don’t want to go near him; the mere thought of touching him is a long way out of my comfort zone. Hunting desperately for a reason to refuse, I cringe back against my pillows, sign-posting my revulsion as clearly as I can. 

‘Please...’

His hand trembles towards me, a mere inch off the coverlet and any possibility of refusal is obliterated. Reluctantly, I manoeuvre my lumpy shape over the side of the bed and pad across the room towards him. Up close, the black zig zag lines of stitches criss-crossing his face are horrifying, pulling his deep wrinkles and loose skin out of their natural alignment, a hurried fix on a dying face, temporary at best. Beady eyes stare up at me and I am uneasily aware he is reading the blatant disgust stamped across my pupils. The plastic drinking cup is on his bedside table, so I fuss about filling it from the jug for a minute as an excuse to look away, until I can no longer delay the moment I have to awkwardly angle the paper straw towards his chapped lips. As he sucks greedily, his lips seem to disappear completely, so the face below me seems no more than a sucking skull with yellowed eyes that are locked to my own. With every weak slurping sound, the ugly lump of his Adam’s apple bobs slowly up and down in his sagging neck, forcing each sip down his throat with a tiny gurgle. Eternity and beyond has been re-enacted in each dragging sip before a tiny nod signals my release. I drag the straw from his lipless mouth so eagerly, the water splashes across his face, dribbling down to form tiny rivers in the crevices and folds of his neck. Immediately his eyes dart to the box of tissues on the bedside table, but horror has already motivated my escape. The thought of making contact with his puckered old flesh is beyond anything I can bear, and before that rasping voice can wheedle my cooperation, I clumsily abandon the cup on the bedside and race to the sanctuary of my bed, burying myself in the bedclothes. My subconscious has chanted ‘Please don’t ask me’ fourteen times before the voice crackles out of the drowned skull again.

‘Thank you, dear girl,’ he whispers across the room. 

The room settles back into its habitual quiet as the old man retreats into his memories, and I try unsuccessfully to banish my close-up view of that frail, ravaged face. My nagging conscience is vigilant though, and an image of his piteous, wet face will not be shut out. I try and expel him from my mind by filling my head with Mikey’s voice on the Walkman cassette, but there is no comfort there.

“Come on Jen,’ Mikey mumbles familiarly through my headphones, but now he is asking me to do more than just give him a lift. 

Roberts stalks through and rearranges the old body in the other bed as though she is reorganising her sock drawer. He attempts to creak a greeting, but the nurse barely grunts back before she is on her way out again. 

‘Please Jen,’ Mikey is relentless.

It is not the old guy’s fault he’s stuck with me. I know that. Guilt plays pinball in my chest and knocks a chunk of steel off my armour-plated heart. Cautiously, I acknowledge the best way to placate my conscience would be to listen, since the old guy is clearly desperate to talk. I waste away ten minutes or so staring out the window at the damp world beyond; pleating an intricate row of folds in my starchy sheet becomes a priority for another five minutes; I even glance half-heartedly at the untouched volume of Shakespeare on my bedside before I’m ready to surrender.

‘The boy?’ My voice sounds hoarse like the old man’s.

‘Wet.’

‘Sorry?’

‘Water…everywhere…dripping down my face. Running down my neck’

‘I’m sorry…’

‘Didn’t see that damned rain coming. One minute the street was a dust bowl and then it bashed down from the heavens like a wall.’

‘Oh, I see. Was this when you met the boy?’

‘Such a hullaballoo kicked up by those street sellers, shouting and cursing, running all over the show. Gathering up all those gee gaws they were forever shoving in my face in the hope I was silly enough to squander good money on ‘em. Bengali…that’s right… they were all jabbering away in Bengali…must’ve been in Calcutta then. Must have been after the war.’

He falls silent for a moment and I abruptly realise he is talking to himself, not to me. His overwhelming need to tell his story has taken over, and now he’s in some grey world between wake and sleep, gripped by his uneasy mind. The uncomfortable thought occurs to me that I might talk like this sometimes too, and quite possibly, the old man is my audience. 

‘Street urchins of course too, always plenty of them, scuttling past me through the downpour to fight each other for space under the rim of a doorway, jamming their skinny frames into whatever space they could find. I remember thinking that at least you couldn’t hear ‘em shrieking and carrying on. That crashing rain flattened everything. I must have been on an errand of some sort, can’t remember what… had to have been important though; too much Spanish flu around to venture out over something trivial. Hadn’t quite made it back when that cloud burst, so I was reduced to racing through the market in a rather hopeless attempt to avoid a damned good drenching. Ha! There was some determined fellow who dogged my heels, the beggar wouldn’t leave me alone. Kept trying to interest me in an umbrella for twice the rupees it was worth - like I was some damned fool tourist. Filthy chap kept grabbing at my arm, high chance he was riddled with flu like the rest of ‘em. Flung some coins at him in the end just to get rid of him. Foolish…so foolish - should never have ventured out.’

The streetlamps in the little garden square flicker into life signalling it is officially night-time. They wiggle and wave in the streaky rain on the window like waiting ghosts. Their undulating forms feel as though they are moving closer to the window and for the first time, I am actually glad of the old man’s company. Just as I have concluded he has finally run out of steam; his feet twitch spasmodically under the bedclothes and he creaks into life again.

‘My garments were drenched and steaming in the heat by the time I arrived back and found her waiting for me. Standing there perfectly still like a little statue, she was. Should have known…one day… I remember feeling irritated, out of sorts with the whole damned world. Recognised her instantly, of course… must have been five years since I saw her, but it could have been yesterday. Not that she looked the same. No, she’d changed beyond belief, painfully thin now, except for the jutting belly, not much more than a collection of brittle bones, as though the child she carried had devoured her. I found myself wishing she hadn’t come, better to remember her as the vibrant girl I knew in Abyssinia, not this nervy creature hiding under a hat brim; She must have been crying. I remember thinking that. Silly girl was trying to hide her tears.

‘Have you ever had any news?’ That’s what she asked me.

‘Nothing.’ I told her, ‘Not a word. Not even a rumour.’ 

Needed time to think so I pulled out my handkerchief and mopped my face, brushed the rain off my clothing and that’s when I first noticed the boy. Hadn’t noticed him at first because he was stretched out on his belly on the stone floor at the far end of the building. The maid’s little girl was with him. What was her name? Neela, that’s right. Little Neela, stretched in the dust and drawing patterns on the dirty floor with Rose’s boy. Never forget the pair of them like that, her dark skin and the boy’s blue-white paleness smudged together in a hazy cloud of red dust.

‘Surely there is someone else?’ I asked Rose. After all, I had to ask; I couldn’t just ignore her situation.

‘No-one,’ was all she would whisper, all weedy and lost. I mean, I tried to be understanding, but it was damnably hard. This shadowy version of Rose in front of me was a disappointment. I loved her better when she was impudent and exuberant - hated her better that way too.  

‘What about the father of the baby? Can’t the blighter help?’ 

There wasn’t a ring, you see; I knew that already; first thing I looked for when I spotted that jolly great, pregnant belly. Suspected she didn’t even know who the fellow was, but I had to do the right thing and ask. Perhaps, someone could bully the man into paying, that was the first thing I thought. Harsh, I know. I used to be softer, kinder. I just wasn’t the same man who had rollicked off to

Abyssinia before the war. Rather think the younger me had been quite a nice chap, actually. No, Calcutta had hardened me, too many desperate people demanding help, too much death and disease. I’d no room for sentiment anymore – even for Rose.’

His voice fades again and lapses into the shallow drags of sleep. The idea of him as a young man sweeps around the edges of my imagination but I can’t pin down a youthful vision of that fleshless skull in the bed across the room. Impulsively, I edge myself off the bed and lumber stealthily across the room to stare nervously down at him. His wounds are still horrifying, but this time I search for the human being beneath the bomb damage; a long aquiline nose, high cheek bones, a well shaped jaw, a pitiful scrap of humanity that was once a handsome man.

‘Rose?’

My heart crashes up into my gullet in fright. I freeze beside the old man’s bed, praying he doesn’t open his eyes and die of shock to find me leaning over him. He twitches and mumbles in his sleep, but to my relief, the sagging eyelids stay glued in place. Perhaps there’s some sort of short circuit going on in his head like the dodgy wiring I had on an old refrigerator once. One minute the light inside the fridge was on and next minute it was off. On-off-on-off for a week or so, until eventually it just stayed off one day and everything inside it went bad. As soon as I think about the old fridge, I wish I hadn’t.

Abruptly the wires re-connect again.

‘Rose?’ calls the old man’s voice as he swims up to the surface again.

‘Damned girl wouldn’t respond; she just sunk in a heap on the nearest seat and stared down at that belly that was straining to break out of her cheap tea dress. I’d no idea what to do with her. Still couldn’t even see her face to judge what she was thinking. She was wearing one of those foolish cloche hats, the kind some fool decided made a woman’s face look like a budding flower. Load of nonsense! The damned thing looked like those helmets worn by the bloody Huns.

In the end, there was nothing for it but to try and coax some sense out of her, so I plunked myself down beside her and reached for her hand. I was still a sentimental fool when I think about it. Dear God! As soon as I touched her skin, I leapt away in fright; she was burning like a furnace. I had tried to be so careful; how did it not occur to me that Rose might bring death to my door? Couldn’t speak I was so horrified. Just clutched my handkerchief to my mouth and backed as far away as I could. She looked at me then, raised her head and stared back at me; all scarlet cheeks and dripping sweat; death stamped in her dilated pupils. For the second time, Rose had come close to ruining me. ‘I cannot help you,’ 

What else could I could say? There was nothing that could be done back then, but those hot, sick eyes despised me, and she finally found her voice.

‘Just the boy,’ she begged me, ‘I am not asking for me, just the boy. Take care of him till the next ship home. I’ve a friend in Brighton. Send him to her – that’s all I ask.’ 

Truthfully, I didn’t know what to say to her. Half my mind was frantically trying to recall how close I had stood to her, and the other half…the other half was devoured by a past I thought I’d shut away. For a long time, I think I just stared blindly down the length of the stone floor at the children lying on their bellies in the dust. The rainstorm abruptly cut off. Yes, that’s what changed everything, that burning shaft of sun that followed the rain. It shot through the stained-glass windows… and the children...those children became angels, glorious stained-glass creatures, all dappled in crimson reds, cobalt blues and sapphire greens from the great crucifixion window. The dust they’d kicked up was floating around them in the rainbow light; they were a miracle, a message. They touched a heart that had been drowning in the rains.’

His faulty wiring trips again and he sinks into laboured breathing. Impulsively, I reach out and gently touch his hand. The old skin is soft and warm; I don’t know why this surprises me. If I close my eyes it could be Mikey’s hand under mine. It feels like too much effort to cross back to my bed, so I sink into the chair beside the old man’s and wait in the dark for his next surge of electricity.

‘He looked at me…quite suddenly. Don’t think the little lad knew I was there before – too engrossed in the faddle he and Neela were making in the dust. Must have felt me staring at him, I suppose, because his bright head abruptly jerked up and those eyes…those glorious eyes stared back at me. I don’t think I have ever seen anyone with eyes like that since. A rarity…a bloody miracle. Perfectly imperfect – one steel grey and the other green as a glass bottle - eyes that had the power to break hearts; eyes as rare as duck’s teeth.

  ‘Dear God!’ That was all I could manage to say, ‘Dear God!’ and I remember hearing my words echo through that empty church like a prayer.

In truth, I was willing abandon Rose with barely a qualm, but this child… this boy was a different matter. I felt like I was drugged. I had no real sense of what I was doing. I must have walked down the aisle and knelt down beside the children because that’s what I next remember. Neela didn’t even bother to look up from her drawing; little miss was used to me, paid me no attention whatsoever, but the boy’s strange eyes followed me, and that little hand reached up to curiously touch the metal crucifix hanging against my chest. The pain in my chest was unbearable; felt like my heart was going to crash out through my ribs. You see, I didn’t have a choice anymore. The decision was made that would change my life. It must have been God’s choice. Surely it was that? I looked down the aisle to

Rose and met her eyes.

‘I will need to baptise him,’ I said.

She merely nodded. She knew I would take him - always had - there was no further help I was willing to offer her, and she knew not to ask. I was doing my duty, that was enough. She dragged herself off the pew where she’d sat down, and for a moment, she simply stared down the aisle at the boy beneath the cross. Just stared at him for what seemed like an eternity, till I got it in my head she was memorising every inch of him. It was as though she was kissing him with her mind. 

‘Thank you,’ she eventually whispered, but she looked to the altar when she said it.

Was that the last time I saw Rose? It must have been. The memory of her ungainly stagger down the aisle of St John’s is so clear in my mind. Surely that was the last time I saw her, as she raced to take death as far away from her son as possible.’ 

#

All through the early evening, the old man’s voice wavers on, and it is not till the evening shift arrives with a new supply of medicine that he eventually finds a place of quiet. The determined nurse who has taken charge insists I return to my bed, so I loll on my back and wonder about what happened to poor Rose and why she still haunts the old man so badly. Perhaps he should have helped her, but it sounded as though there wasn’t much more he could do for a dying woman in those days. Weirdly, now I know he is a priest, it somehow makes sense. In my mind, I’d cast him as some sort of lost Duke, but now I know about the church connection, my mind is stamped with a vision of him in a pulpit, declaring God’s vengeance on a cowering congregation below. I briefly consider whether I should tell the nurse about him being a priest, but the idea makes me feel uneasy, and I eventually decide his sleeping whispers are no one else’s business. It is not until midnight that exhaustion finally catches up with me and uneasy sleep pulls me under. 

‘Forgive me,’ 

The old man’s shout bounces off the empty walls and it takes me a moment to be sure it’s not my own dream that’s escaped into the atmosphere. Staring at the ceiling in the foggy, grey of hospital night, I try to slow my breathing and wonder whether there’s the faintest chance of sleep again. 

‘I did my duty... I did my duty... I did my duty.’ 

The urge to sleep evaporates. Struggling into sitting position, I can just make out the old priest’s form in the dim light; his closed eyelids are flickering and twitching like an old Labrador dreaming about chasing a rabbit and a bony hand claws spasmodically at the bedclothes as he digs for other memories that must be skittering beyond his reach. I am still debating about whether to summon the night nurse when he finally quietens again and sinks into sleep or coma, or wherever it is an old man goes when he is about to quit. Tomorrow. One more sleep. I rub my stretched belly and hope I can last twelve hours more. Let the old man tell his stories. At least, then he’ll leave me be. As I finally start to drift off again, it occurs to me it’s strange his family hasn’t rocked up to claim him, after all there couldn’t be anyone in the western world who hadn’t heard about the Harrod’s bombing by now. Without them, this abandoned man was going to have a lonely fight for his own redemption. Listening was all I had left to offer.