Angelica's Grotto (22 page)

‘Here you are,’ she said, and gave him a long and intimate kiss.

‘What’s this?’ said Klein when he found his tongue. ‘Has God suddenly declared a Happy Hour?’

‘I was worried about you, Harold. When you left the auction you looked not long for this world. You’re still very pale. How are you feeling?’

‘Great. They had to tether me to this machine to make the ward safe for the nurses.’

‘No, really, was it a full-scale heart attack? Have you got any pain now? What are they going to do with you?’

‘It was a small-scale heart attack. I haven’t any pain now. I’m waiting for an angiogram and when they’ve had a look at that they’ll decide what to do next. What happened with the painting?’

‘It went to a telephone bidder for £1,250,000.’

‘A million and a quarter! Mr Las Vegas was right – UFOs, alien abductions, and big money for mystics.’

‘Wasn’t Redon a Symbolist?’

‘That’s the label they’ve stuck on him but a mystic is what he essentially was. Your last bid was a million, right?’

‘Right.’

‘You’ve got a lot of balls, Melissa.’

‘Fortune favours the bold, Harold, and one of these
days you’ll be getting a cheque for £1,164,062.50 which is better than a kick in the head from a dead horse.’ She made a circuit of the bed, sliding the curtains along the rails until Klein was closed off in a private cubicle.

‘What’s happening?’ he said as she came to his bedside.

‘Physiotherapy.’ She took his right hand, moved it up under her skirt and clamped it firmly between her legs. No knickers. ‘I want you to get well soon; you’ve got a lot to live for.’

‘You mean, I’m a successful old fool?’

‘Success is certainly within your grasp. Keep doing that, you’re looking better already.’

‘Melissa, why are you being so nice to me?’

‘You’ve got the quids, I’ve got the quos. I can be bought.’

‘Ah, it’s just business then, nothing personal.’

‘Not entirely; I can’t be bought by just anybody.’

‘I’m honoured.’ He removed his hand.

‘Don’t be hurt, Harold; I’ve told you before this that everything’s business in one way or another: that’s what makes the world go around.’

‘It certainly seems to be going around faster than it used to.’

‘You’re keeping up with it pretty well. When you’re back to full strength we can talk about the future, but for now you should get lots of rest. Can I bring you anything?’

‘Could you get me some things from home?’

‘No problem. Give me a list.’

She sat on the edge of the bed while he made the list, her bottom touching his leg. ‘It’s funny,’ he said, ‘here I am in hospital after a heart attack and I feel more alive and in the world than I’ve done in years, just because you’re sitting on the edge of my bed.’

She touched his cheek. ‘You mustn’t get too fond of me, Prof – I don’t want to break your heart.’

He kissed her hand. ‘Don’t worry, you won’t.’

The curtains slid back as a male technician arrived with an ECG machine.

‘I’m off,’ said Melissa. ‘I’ll be around tomorrow with your things.’ She slid her hand under his pillows, kissed him and left.

When the ECG was done and the technician gone Klein reached under the pillows and found Melissa’s black silk knickers. ‘Hard sell,’ he said; he held them to his face for a moment, then put them in his locker.

At three o’clock in the morning the ward was fully itself, a place of darkness behind the membrane of apparent reality, a realm where nothing was certain and everything in doubt, an enclave of enforced intimacy where strangers hawked, spat, snored, farted, and peed in bottles while nurses ministered to them in stealth and whispers. Klein, now on the third of Patrick o’Brian’s Aubrey-Maturin novels, was in the foretopmast crosstrees of
HMS Surprise,
considering, with Stephen Maturin and Jack Aubrey, ‘the ship thus seen as a figure of the present – the untouched sea before it as the future – the bow wave as the moment of perception, of immediate existence’. The frigate was before the wind, her motion long and easy; the swing of the topmast as she pitched was hypnotic.

Harold Klein, millionaire,
said Oannes.

Belay that, said Klein. You needn’t tell the whole world about it; anyhow, a fool and his money are soon parted. ‘Sorry,’ he said as Staff Nurse Judy Magee approached, ‘I was thinking out loud.’

‘I didn’t hear anything,’ said Judy, offering a thermometer. ‘Pop this under your tongue.’

‘In a moment.’ Testing, said Klein to himself. Testing,
one, two, three, four. To Judy he said, ‘Did you hear anything then?’

‘Like what?’ She put the blood-pressure cuff on his arm and pumped it up.

‘Words from me.’

‘When?’

‘Just before I asked you if you heard anything.’

‘You said you were thinking out loud.’

‘And after that?’

‘One twenty over sixty.’

‘Did I say that?’

‘I
did – that’s your blood pressure.’

‘But after I said I was thinking out loud, what did I say next?’

‘You asked me if I’d heard anything. Would you like a sleeping tablet? They’ve written you up for one.’

‘No, thanks, I’ll be all right.’ He popped the thermometer under his tongue and tried to keep his mind blank while she wrote down his blood pressure. ‘OK,’ she said when she had noted his temperature, ‘I’ll look in on you in another hour.’

‘Right. See you.’ He was always pleased to see her in the night; hers was a sweet face, what he thought of as a Forties face, the loyal sweetheart in black-and-white war films, working as a riveter in an aircraft factory while her fiancé fought overseas. The shape of her face and her short hair reminded him of Melissa but the spirit that animated her face was altogether different. Oannes, he said, is that you?

Were you expecting someone else?

You’re different now, we’re having a conversation and it’s all in my head – I’m not talking out loud or whispering.

So?

You’ve become a proper inner voice! It’s been so long since I had one! To what do I owe this change?

We have more to talk about than we did before.

Like what?

Like how much money are you putting into this Melissa thing?

I still have to work that out. Why?

You’re not by any chance stalling, are you?

Stalling? Not really – it’s just that it’s something that requires careful thought.

I’m glad to hear that, because you don’t really know anything about her except that she tastes good.

Aren’t you the one who said that madness is the natural state?

Yes, but I never told you to go
completely
natural; there are practical limits to this sort of thing.

You’re starting to sound like the talking cricket in
Pinocchio.

Maybe guys with wooden heads
need
talking crickets.

Look, I’m kind of tired now. We’ll talk again soon, OK?

Whatever you say, Boss.

In matters of wardrobe Klein was not burdened by his professional aestheticism; he was ordinarily to be seen in jeans and T-shirts when it was warm, jeans and polo-necks and various outdoor-man jackets when it was cold. Large black medically-bespoke boots were what he walked around in and he always wore some kind of hat to shade his eyes, as often as not a sort of bush-ranger affair in green canvas. Today, however, he sported a black shirt, tan linen jacket, and his hat was a Death-in-Venice panama.

‘You look different,’ said Doctor DeVere.

Klein shrugged. ‘Things change,’ he said.

‘What things?’

‘I had a heart attack, I’ve been in hospital, and my inner voice has come back. All the way.’

‘Sorry to hear about the heart attack. How are you now?’

‘I’m fine; it wasn’t a big one. They did a balloon job on the right coronary artery and put in a stent and now I can walk a lot better than I did before.’

‘What brought it on?’

‘The auction was a little too much excitement for me.’

‘Ah, the Redon! You’ve sold it then?’

‘Yes, it’s gone.’

‘Did it fetch a good price?’

‘A million and a quarter.’

Dr DeVere whistled. ‘Crikey! I’m not surprised that you had a heart attack. Unless, of course, you’re accustomed to dealing with that kind of money.’

‘I’m not.’

‘Will you be going ahead with your plan to fund Melissa’s study?’

‘Oh yes. We still have to work out the details. She visited me in hospital after the auction.’

‘Pleasant visit?’

‘Very.’ Klein couldn’t help grinning.

‘Cheered you up, did it?’

You don’t have to tell him everything,
said Oannes. ‘We had a nice chat,’ Klein said to DeVere. ‘She said she could be bought.’

‘Did she! Is that how you think of the funding?’

‘I’ve told you before this that I think her project is worthwhile. She appreciates my support and I appreciate her appreciation. Everything is business in one way or another, Leon.’

‘That’s one way of looking at life, I guess. You said you’ve got your inner voice back. Is it the same inner voice you had before?’

‘No, it’s Oannes now. I’ve told you about the last time I heard my old inner voice: it was that day in the Fulham Road when I was trying to walk fast enough to get a better look at a woman who was walking much faster. I said to myself, “One day you’ll drop dead while something like that walks away from you.” Then I said to myself in a different voice, “Well, that’s life, innit.” And that was the voice of Oannes.’

‘So that was the transition, and since then it’s been only Oannes, right?’

‘Right, but he limited himself to one-liners until we started having real conversations in hospital.’

‘When did that happen?’

‘It was in the middle of the night, the same day Melissa visited me in the afternoon. He said, “Harold Klein, millionaire,” then we talked about money and Melissa and I was doing it in my head, not whispering: talking with an inner voice the way I used to before all this began.’

‘Not quite the way you used to. Did the old inner voice say things like “Madness is the natural state?”’

‘Certainly I’ve changed. People
do
change, you know.’

‘Let’s go back to the beginning of this whole thing. How would you describe the losing of your inner voice? What would you say was happening in you back then?’

‘My self stopped talking to me. I lost contact with myself.’

‘Why do you think you lost contact with yourself?’

‘All of me wasn’t going in the same direction; I was drifting apart.’

‘What would you say the different directions were?’

‘Partly I wanted to loosen up and partly I didn’t.’

‘When did you first visit Angelica’s Grotto?’

‘It was after our first session.’

‘Afternoon? Evening?’

‘Evening. I didn’t feel like working; I was having a drink and listening to Connie Francis. She was singing “Everybody’s Somebody’s Fool”. I went to Yahoo and told it to search for Sexuality.’

‘Were you feeling like somebody’s fool?’

‘I was feeling like anybody’s fool.’

‘So you went to Yahoo. Your Oannes, is he perhaps a bit of a yahoo?’

‘Perhaps.’

‘And Oannes is … ?’

‘An aspect of myself.’

‘Can you say more?’

‘He’s an aspect of myself I’m quite comfortable with. When I talk to myself as Oannes there’s a lot less bullshit than there used to be.’

‘And a lot more sex.’

‘Well, I’m putting my money where my mouth is, and vice versa.’

‘And is all of you going in the same direction now?’

‘Looks that way to me.’

Watching Klein, DeVere was reminded of cop movies in which a guilty man with a foolproof alibi sat in his chair the same way Klein was sitting in his. ‘So,’ he said, ‘how would you assess your present situation?’

Klein thought about that for a while. ‘You’ve seen in amusement arcades a brightly lit glass case full of little prizes, and you have to manoeuvre a pair of claws to pick up what you can?’

‘Yes, I’ve seen those.’

‘Well, I’ve done the best I could with my claws.’

‘What exactly have you picked up?’

‘Little treats, little bits of Melissa-time.’

‘No more than that?’

‘Treats and bits are all I can manage – the whole Melissa is beyond my grasp.’

‘Would you want the whole Melissa?’

‘Actually, I like it the way things are now.’

‘You think that’s the best you can do?’

‘It’s the best I
want
to do; it feels right.’

‘Why do you think that is?’

‘Let me ask you a question: what do you think your function as a psychologist is?’

‘Helping people to work through their problems.’

‘And who decides when they’ve done that?’

‘Usually it’s the patient and the psychologist together.’

‘What if they don’t have the same opinion?’

‘Can you elaborate?’

‘Take Bruno Schulz’s little eunuch, grovelling at the bedside of the woman he can’t have while a stallion licks her bottom – would you say he’s worked through his problems?’

‘I very much doubt it.’

‘But maybe that’s how he wants things to be; maybe he likes that arrangement.’

‘And what about you? Is that an arrangement you’d like?’

‘You’re a lot younger than I am, Leon. Maybe how you are now isn’t how you’ll be when you’re my age.’

‘You’re not answering my question.’

‘Look, in these sessions you’ve had me putting all kinds of things into words and you’ve helped me get to where I don’t have to put everything into words any more. I know the way I am now probably isn’t your idea of a good way to be but it feels right for me, OK? And from here on out I think I can go it alone.’

‘Are you saying that you want these sessions to stop?’

‘That’s what I’m saying.’

DeVere ran his thumbnail down the outside edge of the notes stacked in Klein’s file. ‘It’s your choice of course, but I have to say that I think there’s still work to be done.’