Clear (25 page)

‘You wrote that?’

(She looks momentarily impressed.)

‘Don’t be
ridiculous
,’ I cluck. ‘Jack
Schaefer
.’

The nurse continues to weight me up. ‘So she brought you along to take her place?’

‘Yes.’ (If in doubt, agree. That’s my philosophy.)

She glares at me for a moment, obviously quite disgusted (I check my fly), ‘And you know Mr Leyland
well
?’

I shake my head. ‘No. I couldn’t honestly admit to that…’

‘So is she
paying
you?’

I draw myself up to my full five foot eight (Oh come
on
, what’s an inch between friends,
eh
?). ‘Absolutely
not
.’

She turns and inspects a timetable on the wall.

‘Taking the damn
piss
,’ she mutters (in that lovely, musical,
nurse
way, just underneath her breath). ‘Okay,
fine
,’ she eventually grouches. ‘Can I
get
you anything?’

(From her tone of voice I realise that my answer has to be ‘No. Absolutely not.’)

‘Like what?’ I ask.

‘I dunno. Tea? Coffee?’

‘Coffee. That’d be good. Milk, one sugar. Thanks.’

‘Take a chair,’ she scowls, and points.

I take the chair.

Wow.
Nice chair. Philippe Starck.

She leaves.

I stare over–a little anxiously–towards my unsuspecting ward. He’s in his late forties. Well upholstered. Not bad looking (like James Spader with an MA and less hair).

But ill. Very ill.

He tries to say something through his oxygen mask. I lean in closer.

‘Vacant,’ he says.

‘Pardon?’

‘Vacant.’

‘Vacant?’ I quiz him. ‘Who is?’

He clumsily knocks the mask off. ‘You
cunt
.’

Ah. Good.
Right
…

‘She’s a
nurse
,’ he groans, ‘not a fucking
tea
hostess.’

‘Yes. Of course.’ I clear my throat, nervously. ‘Sorry.’

‘Well don’t apologise to
me
,’ he pants.

(Is that an American accent? Australian? Canadian?)

He’s silent for a while, struggling to breathe, his left hand shaking, uncontrollably.

‘
Lovely
room,’ I say.

No response.

‘Certainly looks like you’ve been in here a while…’

Blanked
.

‘Made yourself
quite
at home,
eh
?’

‘I’m fucking
dying
,’ he snaps.

(Funny, isn’t it, how these death’s door types lose all sense of propriety?)

He turns and attempts to push his face back inside his mask. I jump up and help him. He brusquely nods his acknowledgement.

(Australian. I’m almost certain now. And sharp as a damn kumquat).

I slowly sit down again (I mean should I just
leave
? Or will things pan out better for me–legally speaking–if I stay a short while longer and prove myself
obliging
?).

‘Fantastic chair,’ I say.

‘Can’t take it with you…’ he gasps (Vader
style-ee
).

‘Of course not,’ I say (chastened). ‘Wouldn’t
dream
of it.’

‘No.’ He rolls his eyes and points weakly to his chest. ‘
I
can’t.’

For some reason, the image of a dying man struggling to carry a Philippe Starck chair into the afterlife strikes me as rather droll.

‘The Ben Nicholson’s a better bet,’ I opine, ‘less bulky.’

He snorts (and I’m not sure whether it’s actually with amusement), then he’s quiet for a while, his breathing laboured, as if he’s slowly gathering his resources together. ‘Aphra?’ he eventually asks. There’s definitely an edge to his voice (Christ knows
I’ve
been there).

‘Fine,’ I say immediately.

Silence.

‘She was gonna come in,’ I continue, ‘but I think the scented candle might’ve scared her.’

‘Fucking thing,’ he murmurs, continuing to fix me with a demanding glare.

‘The oven in her flat broke down,’ I burble on, shifting uncomfortably, ‘so she came over to my place to cook…’

‘Food?’ he asks, almost excitedly.

‘Of
course
,’ I say (I mean what
else
?).

‘For you?’ he asks.

‘Are you kidding?’ I bleat pathetically. ‘She brought it all over
here
, packed up in Tupperware.’

He’s smiling. He seems to’ve been immeasurably heartened by this news.

‘Where?’ he eventually gasps.

‘She gave it to the nurse.’

He slits his eyes.

‘Bring it,’ he says, and motions his hand clumsily towards the door.

I don’t move.

‘Maybe later,
eh?
Once nurse is off her war path–’

‘Good cook,’ he butts in.

‘Oh
yeah
,’ I heartily concur. ‘I mean the way that girl handles a
leek
…’

He chuckles, dirtily (giving final confirmation–if any were necessary–of the indelible link between sex and the sickening).

‘It may well interest you to know,’ I say, ‘that she prepared the entire meal in a short skirt and knitted bra. My unsuspecting flatmate almost had a
seizure
…’

He laughs even harder.

The nurse marches back in bearing a plastic cup of lukewarm instant coffee (holding it haughtily aloft like it’s some manner of precious, ancient, papist artefact–perhaps St Paul the Apostle’s
index
finger). She frowns when she sees him laughing.

‘Don’t make him laugh,’ she says, ‘it
hurts
him. His stomach muscles are extremely fragile.’

‘What?’ I tease her (she seems quite teasable). ‘He can’t laugh at
all
?’

She gives me a stern look.

‘Not even the odd
giggle?
’

She sucks on her tongue.

‘A small snigger?’

(His chest starts to move again.) She hisses.

‘A tiny
snort?
’

Now he’s really shaking. The beep from the heart monitor speeds up slightly.

She kicks me (like a vicious little Shetland), adjusts something on his arm (there’s a tube entering there, and a bag of fluid hung up above the bed), straightens his oxygen mask, and tells him, ‘
Please
press the button if you’re in serious pain,
okay
?’

He nods.

She turns back to face me again. ‘So did Aphra send you here tonight with the
express
purpose of knocking him off?’ she enquires.

I slowly shake my head.

‘Then read him the
book
,’ she says, tapping the cover with an aggressive finger, ‘and less of the
other
stuff.’

She heads for the door.

‘Bitch,’ he murmurs.

‘I
heard
that, you cheeky
sod
,’ she rebuffs (quite some
lip
on her for a nursing professional).

His chest shakes a little more (he’s pretty, bloody
genial
for a man with more wires in him than a computer terminal).

I open
Shane
, flip through it, discover the point at which the corner of the page has been turned over as a marker (Doesn’t that girl have even the vaguest
idea
of how to treat a book respectfully?): chapter 6 (
Hmmn
. Much as I suspected), then start to read him the section about Sam Grafton’s general store…

Before I’ve completed more than a couple of sentences, though, he puts out his hand.

‘No,’ he says. ‘
She’s
reading that.’

Ah
.

I grab the next book down from the pile:
The Future of Nostalgia
by Svetlana Boym (She’s given the first chapter the nifty title ‘Hypochondria of the Heart: Nostalgia, History and Memory’. Yo-ho! Well isn’t
this
going to be a rip-roaring half-hour?).

As I begin to read (a little shakily at first) I see his hand snake out towards a small, custom-built table which he yanks around to face him. There’s a notebook affixed to it–the pages held in place with strips of elastic–a pencil and a tiny reading light. He clicks the light on and grabs the pencil between his shaky fingers.

‘
Slower
,’ he barks, then proceeds to take a series of the world’s most detailed and laborious notes.

In longhand.

With page references.

He’s an Athlete of Pain. An
Olympian
. In the hours that follow I watch him vault and parry a thousand
searing
hurdles. But I don’t stop. I don’t comment (he clearly doesn’t want that). I simply read on.

I see him grit his teeth,
gnash
them. I see the top-half of his torso jerk–uncontrollably–towards the bottom in a series of random, horrible,
pitiless
spasms. I see beads of sweat forming on his brow as his free hand clenches, then unclenches, then clenches again (but the working hand
still
diligently continues writing).

Sometimes there’s a sudden, hog-like
grunt
–as the pain shoots from the back of his neck, to the back of his throat, up into his nose–and a small spray of mucus blasts out. His feet, under that eiderdown, are in constant motion, dancing an endless, joyless
jig
of torment.

The knees pull up, then flatten down, then pull up again. His shoulders lift, then rotate, then drop. He gasps. He pants…

Hard not to remember S’omogyi, the Hungarian Chemist, in the Primo Levi, and how difficult it was for
him
to give up the mortal coil. Almost three days of struggle, punctuated, only, by the awful, repetitive murmuring of ‘Jawohl.’

‘I never understood so clearly as at that moment,’ Levi whispers, ‘how laborious is the death of a man.’

Jawohl.

Jawohl
.

Jesus Christ
I
wish
he’d press that button.

Kill
the pain.

Press the button.

Go on.

Press it.

You know you want to.

It’ll make things better.

It will.

It
will
.

Go on.

That’s what it’s
there
for.

Go on.

Go
on
.

Just press the damn thing
!

But he doesn’t. He won’t. He
can’t
.

I replace his notebook with a fresh one on two separate occasions. It’s then that I discover (to my palpable
horror
) that he has a huge
pile
of the bastards in a suitcase by the wall. In fact there are
two
cases: one containing the notebooks he’s already filled (numbering approximately seven to eight
dozen
), the other holding the empty ones (numbering approximately twenty-odd).

I’m literally
gagging
for a piss by around 4 a.m. (fine for
him
, he has a catheter). We’re halfway through
St Petersburg, the Cosmopolitan Province
(page 124, chapter 9) when I grind to a halt, uncross my legs and beg a short intermission.

‘Ever
been
to Russia?’ he croaks agonisedly as I stand up.

‘Never.’

‘Pity,’ he hisses, through pain-gritted teeth, ‘
I
have.’

I bump into a nurse, outside, in the corridor. A different nurse. A night-nurse.

‘Is Brandy
still
up?’ she asks (in a thick but confident Eastern Bloc accent).

‘Afraid so,’ I say.

‘In agony?’ she enquires.

I nod grimly.

‘Only damn thing keeping him going,’ she phlegmatically opines.

Then she pauses for a moment and smiles. ‘Same as the rest of us,
huh
?’

It’s 4 a.m. I’ve been clumsily articulating Russian place names for over five hours. For once in my life I’m not entirely certain how to respond.

‘Admire your stamina,’ this kindly philosopher-nurse murmurs (conserving my breath for me), then she pats me firmly on the shoulder and points straight down the corridor, ‘Toilet’s
that
way, okay?’

I am awoken at 8.15 by the book falling. It clatters off my lap and down on to the linoleum.

What?!

(How long’ve I been sleeping? One hour? Two hours?)

Brandy Leyland is flat out (Face battered and pocked like the head of an antique hammer. Skin like silver birch bark. Breath coming, then going, in racking bursts. Hands still clenched so hard his knuckles glimmer like alabaster).

I lean down and pick the book up. A young man enters. He seems surprised–and not entirely delighted, either–to see me there.

‘Hi,’ He holds out his hand. ‘Punch Leyland. Don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure?’