Incendiary (8 page)

—What does that do?

—It shows that the NHS is fully equipped for the 21st century, he said.

—Are you going to connect me to it?

—Not unless you’re planning on having renal failure, he said. It’s a kidney dialysis machine.

The doctor nodded at me and went off to install the next machine at the next bed. The nurses were frantic by now. They kept popping off to the night station to do their own makeup. They forgot to give us our painkillers. 4 coppers in uniform came on the ward. They stood by the doors. They had curly wires going into their ears. Their eyes were all over the place. Everyone went quiet. Now we were just waiting for Prince William. Then a woman came. She walked straight over to my bed with everyone’s eyes following her. This woman wasn’t a doctor or a nurse. She was wearing an ordinary tweed suit it made me nervous. She pulled the modesty curtain around my bed.

—Hello there, she said.

—What are you pulling that curtain for?

—Well, she said. I’m doing it because I have some news I’m afraid. I thought you might appreciate a little privacy.

—Is it my husband and my boy? Have you found which hospital they’re in?

The woman shook her head. She was middle-aged. 50 maybe or 60. She looked like she hadn’t slept in days.

—They’re not in any hospital, she said.

—Well then. Just tell me where they are. I’m nearly better. I should think the doctors will let me go home soon. My boy’ll be missing me and I bet he’s not eating properly. I mean he’s a good eater but you have to cook his greens just right or he won’t touch them. Kids eh?

I laughed but the woman didn’t. She just looked at the floor. She swallowed. She looked back up at me. Now she looked 500 or maybe 600 years old.

—I’m very sorry, she said. Your husband and your son are dead.

—No. No I’m sorry but you’ve made a mistake. They’re just missing. If they were dead they would of told me so straight away.

The woman took a deep breath and spoke very softly.

—The identification process took a long time, she said. Because their bodies were so badly degraded.

—Degraded?

—Burned, she said. In the end we were able to establish their identities only by recourse to their dental records.

I lay there propped up in bed. I was looking at the green modesty curtain that hung all around us. It was nice in there. It was like being in our tent the one and only time my mum took me camping. The woman in the tweed suit squeezed my shoulder. I smiled at her.

—Dental records eh? That’s funny. My boy used to love going to the dentist. He got all excited about the special chair. The dentist used to give him toothpaste to take home. You want to take care of your teeth the dentist said. You might need them one day.

I looked at the woman.

—And he was right wasn’t he? The dentist I mean.

The woman looked at me.

—You’re in shock, she said. It’s going to take a while to sink in. What I’m going to do is I’m going to fetch a chair and bring it next to your bed. I’ll sit right here with you and be with you and we’ll talk it over.

—Alright. He always had such lovely teeth. My boy.

Then the woman reached up and pulled back the modesty curtain and there was Prince William stepping into the ward with the photographer walking backwards in front of him. There were a dozen people in suits walking all around him.

—Oh, said the woman in tweed.

She took a step back. I watched Prince William looking up and down the ward. So tall and handsome. We always liked the royals in my family Osama I don’t care what people say about them. I wasn’t thinking about anything much except maybe oh look there’s Prince William. I grinned at him and he walked over to my bed. He stood over me. Doesn’t he have his mother’s eyes? I thought. He looked bigger than he seemed on telly but then we always did have quite a small telly.

—Hello there, he said.

He was smiling. He was
RELAXED BUT SINCERE
. Well that’s what it said in the
Sun
the next day. In the caption underneath the photo the photographer was taking from the end of my bed.

—How are you feeling? said Prince William.

I looked up at him. Prince William had nice teeth very bright and even. I was remembering how I used to sit our boy on the edge of the basin to clean his teeth. They’re only your milk teeth darling I always used to say. But we’ve got to get into the habit of brushing. Then when you’re my age you’ll have teeth like Mummy’s. Zero cavities. Well we did get into the habit of brushing. It was fun. I never did imagine that teeth was all that would be left of him. I mean you don’t imagine such things do you? I looked up at Prince William. I knew it was my turn to speak but I couldn’t. I felt a huge misery welling up inside me. It was physical. Prince William frowned. Relaxed but sincere.

—How are you feeling? he asked again.

I leaned my head out of the bed and puked all over his shoes.

I puked again after Prince William had jumped back. It was like my whole life was coming out of my mouth and spattering on the green lino floor. When it was finished I felt so empty. Prince William stared at me while one of his men wiped my puke off his shoes. He had this strange expression on. It wasn’t cross. It was far away and sad. You could see him thinking to himself well I suppose I am the prince of all this then. I am the prince of this poor blown-up kingdom and one day all these blown-up people will be my subjects and I’ll be able to do nothing for them. I’ll live in palaces pinning medals onto lawyers and architects while these people watch their tired faces get older each morning in dirty bathroom mirrors. It was that sort of an expression.

I stared back at Prince William. I felt so bad. The smell of my puke was rising from the floor. He smiled at me but you could still see him thinking I am the prince of puke and one day I shall be king of it.

—I’m so sorry your royal majesty.

—Please don’t worry, he said. It’s quite alright.

But we both knew it wasn’t.

After Prince William was gone they unplugged all of the kidney dialysis machines and they wheeled them out but they left us where we were.

*                  *                  *

That woman in the tweed suit was a grief counsellor. All the time I stayed in hospital we met twice a week to talk through my loss. She honestly thought it would help. She’d never lost anything more serious than car keys. One day she said I might want to join a group of other mothers who lost their children on May Day but I said nah I mean I’ve never been much of a joiner.

In the end the view out of my window did me more good than talking. They moved me to a bed by the window where there was day and night again and I could look out on the whole city. The hospital I was in was Guy’s. Maybe you know it Osama? Maybe you’ve studied just how to blow it up?

Guy’s is tall and grubby and full of poorly people. You can see it from all over London if you ever need reminding you’re going to get very poorly and die one day. From my window at the top of Guy’s Hospital I could see everything from Canary Wharf to St. Paul’s with the Thames cutting under it all like a fat slow wound.

London and me healed slowly. They worked on the city to make it stronger and they worked on me too. How they fixed me up was they put plaster casts on my broken hand and knee and stitched me up inside to stop the bleeding. I had 4 operations and then that was that. There was nothing to do except lie there and wait for myself to get better. For 6 weeks I just stared out of the window watching them fortify London.

Mena was my favourite nurse. She was a nice girl. She lived in Peckham but her family was from the East. Kazakhstan or Uzbekistan or one of those Stans anyway. She told me 2 or 3 times the name of the place but I never could recall it. I remember she said it was much nicer than Peckham but that doesn’t rule out much of the world does it?

Mena’s shift was earlies. She took my temperature at 5 a.m. every morning she always started with me because I was always awake. Then if the other ladies on the ward were still asleep she’d sit on the end of my bed and we’d watch the sun rising up over the docklands. First the towers glowed rosy pink. Then the sun rose huge and dirty orange like a soft warm egg yolk. It wobbled up through the haze getting smaller and harder and brighter until you couldn’t look at it any more. Mena used to hold my hand while we looked out over the city. Her hand was small and hard like the sun.

—So many people down there, she used to say. So many people under this sunrise. So many people waking up right at this moment. And all those people want is to get through today.

She was like that was Mena. Philosophical. I’d definitely of killed myself if it hadn’t of been for her.

Mena’s philosophy started with Valium. Every morning she brought me 2 of them from the medical store. Little blue pills they were. I took 2 of those pills each day. One for my husband and one for my boy. Mena used to take a couple herself. That’s how come she was always so calm. You can’t blame her for that Osama you’d probably be the same if you had to live in Peckham.

The weeks went by like that without any fuss. 2 Valium to be taken with sunrise. The nicest prescription. Me and Mena watched each morning what they were doing to London. First they stopped boats using the river. All those boat buses and disco ships and sightseeing barges. Well they just stopped them. They did it so you couldn’t blow up the Houses of Parliament Osama. With some horrible floating disco full of Semtex and Dexys Midnight Runners. They drained the life out of the river till it was just an empty vein with police boats drifting up and down it like white blood cells.

Next they closed some of the bridges. I never did work out how that was meant to help. Maybe they thought it would demoralise your Clapham cell Osama if they had to go via the M25 to bomb Chelsea. Tower Bridge was the strangest. They raised it early one morning while me and Mena watched and they never lowered it again. It just stayed open after that. It looked like London was expecting something big to come up the river.

What really changed the view though was the barrage balloons. One night I went to sleep as normal and the next morning there they were. Me and Mena watched them shining silver in the rising sun. Bobbing on the ends of their cables. It gave me the shivers. It was like a dream. Mena gripped my hand and I could see the goose bumps on her arm.

—This is terrible, she said. This is grotesque. The world has gone crazy.

—I don’t know about that darling. It all makes sense to me. I reckon it’s to stop them flying planes into the tall buildings.

Mena looked at me. She had the nicest eyes Mena did. They were the colour of caramel creams.

—Listen, she said. I know this might sound awful considering what you’ve been through but we have to get things in perspective. After I finish on this ward I go down to the cancer ward. I’m telling you it is like going into hell. Do you know how many people die in this country each year of lung cancer?

—No.

—33 thousand, she said. 33 times more people than died on May Day die mainly avoidable deaths every single year. I watch them suffer with tubes jammed in every hole of their bodies. It takes them months to die. But does this country declare war on smoking? No it does not. Instead we turn London into a fortress. As if that could possibly stop the terror. As if they couldn’t blow us up just as easily in Manchester or Pontypridd or the queue for the ice cream van on Brighton beach.

I could feel Mena’s hand trembling. I watched a tear run down the side of her nose. It stopped on her upper lip. She had these very fine golden hairs there the way some Asian women do. I held her hand it was warm and strong.

—You’re very young. You don’t have any kids of your own do you Mena?

She shook her head. Another tear fell from the end of her nose. It fell glittering in the sunrise down through the barrage balloons and the disinfectant smell. It splashed down on the lino out of sight.

—If you had kids. Well. If you had kids I reckon you’d be all for anything they can do against the terrorists. It doesn’t matter if it’s logical or not when it’s your own kids.

—It matters if you’re Asian, said Mena.

—You what?

—Look, she said. My family is Muslim right. Do you have any idea what it’s been like for us? I don’t think you can imagine how it feels for me just to walk to work since May Day. To see the hate in people’s eyes when they look at me. I have become the enemy number one. There’s this one caff I walk past on my way here. The builders and the market traders go there. This morning I saw this old man in there. He must have been 80. He was reading the paper and the headline on the paper was
THE CRUELTY OF ISLAM
. He looked up when I walked past and he sneered at me. He actually curled his lips. That is the nature of this madness. It fills the sky with barrage balloons and people’s eyes with hate.

We sat there very quiet me and Mena while we watched the streets waking up far below. London was a misty floating city with the thousand thick cables of the balloons lifting it into the sky. When it was time for Mena to go she turned to me. Her face was so young but the tears ran down it old and empty like the Thames. She took 4 little blue pills from her top pocket and popped 2 into her mouth and 2 into mine. She crunched her pills between her teeth. They worked faster that way.

—Merciful pills, said Mena. Now we’ll forget about it all for another day. The hours will go by like a dream.

—Lovely.

—Yes, said Mena. My god isn’t cruel. A cruel god wouldn’t help us forget. This is why we say Allah Akbar. God is great.

I smiled at her and crunched my pills and felt the bitter taste spread across my tongue.

—Allah Akbar.

Mena gave me this lovely smile and touched her right hand to her heart.

—I must go, she said.

—Thank you darling. I’ll see you tomorrow.

But I didn’t see her tomorrow. In fact I never did see Mena again. The next morning the sun turned up just like normal but Mena didn’t. A new nurse came instead. She was Australian. She was blond and cheerful. You couldn’t look at her without thinking
19 YEAR OLD PARTY GIRL SHARLENE IN HOSPITAL ROMP
.