Little Bits of Baby (4 page)

Peter stopped at the flower stall on his way into the hospital to choose a flower. The powerful drugs were affecting Marcus's sight and he found it easier to focus on a single bloom than try to distinguish the shapes and colours in a bunch. Peter was Marcus's only visitor. The nurses had confided that a man rang every few days to ask how he was but never left his name or came in person.

‘I'm dying in splendid isolation,' Marcus had briefed him on their first meeting. ‘But the whole farrago would be wasted without a Boswell to bear it witness and since you arrive knowing nothing about me but my Christian name, bed number and vanquishing condition, you'll make a rather fine one. For my part I know nothing of you but your Christian name and inexplicable charitable impulse so you must feel free to weave me all manner of lies about yourself.'

‘Why ever should I want to do that?' Peter had asked.

‘To divert my thoughts from pain and death? I assume that's why they've sent you. Are you married?'

‘No,' said Peter. ‘Yes.'

‘Such a pity you forgot to take off the ring. That might have been a most rewarding falsehood.' Marcus had paused to look down mischievously at his own ringless hands. ‘Or perhaps you slipped that on, just before coming here and this is a discerning double bluff and you a master deviant.' He looked Peter straight in the eye. ‘Are you devious by nature?' Peter said he wasn't and smiled. ‘Are you afraid of blood, tears or vomit?'

‘We run a kindergarten.'

‘You and ..? No. Don't tell me. Not yet. So. A kindergarten. Then we'll get along like a house on fire. Curious phrase that is. Washington Irving used it first, of course, not that that explains anything. Just gives you a door to lay the blame at. Get along like a house on fire. It seems to imply that the brightest new relationship will be swift, dangerous and end in the destruction of all material security.'

‘It suits ours rather well, then.'

Their house had burned, but not so very swiftly. The volunteer co-ordinator had warned Peter that it might all be over in two months, but Marcus had carried on and on. He would grow worse, acquire rattles in his chest and an array of monitors at his bedside, lead his few spectators to the gates of Beyond, linger there teasingly to bid farewell, then come gliding back to Act One, Scene the First. On his more cynical days, Peter wondered whether it was not his visits that kept Marcus alive, so closely did his new friend's resurrections resemble the generous round of farewell appearances of an adored performer.

Peter stepped out of the lift into the carefully conditioned air of the ward. Months after his first visit, he still felt the clutch of death dread brought on by the smell of the place. No amount of lazar-house groaning could match that silent threnody of bedpan, antiseptic, hot-house bloom and sweated fear. During the last of Marcus's recitals at the doors of Beyond, Peter had sat up drinking machine-brewed cocoa with the night nurse and had asked her how she coped. She had sighed, rubbed an aching foot and said that she didn't, really, but that it helped keep her weight down.

The duty nurse was away from the reception desk so he presumed on familiarity and went directly to Marcus's room. He paused in the doorway. Marcus had plugged headphones into his new toy, a portable compact disc player, and so had not heard his approach. He lay staring away from the door to swaying treetops and a smoking chimney stack. Sweat shone in the exhausted folds of his cheeks and neck. The lavish score brought to life by the machine, seeped out from the edges of the headphones as a pattern of tinny whispers and clicks. The nurses were forever shutting windows with brisk explanations about air-conditioning balance, but Marcus had Peter well trained. He moved straight from shutting the door to sliding back two panes of the double-glazing. The breeze he let in filled out a hated net curtain that was stuffed firmly to one side and gently swung a few Get Well cards that dangled from a washing-line affair at the bed's end.

‘You're late, darling,' Marcus said, too loud for he was competing with his private orchestra.

‘You're soaked,' said Peter. He ran the cold tap over a flannel for a few seconds, then wrang the cloth out and gently wiped it over Marcus's face, across his neck and up behind his ears. His fingers trailed across a thick scab.

‘Bliss,' said Marcus and shut his eyes. Peter rinsed out the flannel once more and arranged it, folded, across Marcus's burning forehead. Then he pressed the stop button on Marcus's new toy (which he had been sent out to buy with a bursting wallet last week). ‘Oy!' said Marcus.

‘Talk to me,' replied Peter. ‘Tell me stuff. What's new?'

‘I'm dying.'

‘I've heard that one before.'

‘No, but really this time.'

‘When did that scab come?'

‘Days ago. But I got bored last night and picked it so it's probably disgusting now.'

‘What were you listening to?'

‘Such Nazi trash, but so glamorous.'

‘What is?'

‘
Ein Heldenleben
.'

‘Sounds appropriate enough. I'm afraid I don't know it.'

‘You don't
know
it?'

‘You know how ignorant I am. I warned you when you sent me out to choose you that machine.'

‘What?'

‘Take those things off. You're shouting.'

Marcus took off the headphones and hung them on a hook by his bed. Peter was changing the water in Marcus's flower glass but watched him do this in the mirror, watched him twice miss the hook like a drunk.

‘How are the eyes today?' he asked, setting the flower on bedside table.

‘For me? How sweet, and
such
a pretty colour!' Marcus exclaimed this over each day's flower. The repetition had passed from joke to ritual; the delight, though still sincere, had crystallised.

‘Who brought in all those compact discs for you? I only got you five.'

‘Miss Birch, my
ancilla constanta
.'

‘Is she still in your pay, or does she work for love?'

‘But of course I still pay her. She has a small empire to run in my absence.'

‘What do you do?' Peter asked, smiling as he sat on the end of the bed.

‘I told you. I'm an arms manufacturer. We sell death in all its colourful variety. Our catalogue is found at the bedside of each world power.'

‘No, but really.'

‘You want God's own truth?'

‘Please.'

‘It's not half as exciting.'

‘Still.'

‘My mother inherited a small fortune in Argentine beef, which she expanded by supplying machinery to abattoirs and children's playgrounds. I never touch red meat and I never had much time for children so I branched out into optics.'

‘Glasses?'

‘And contact lenses and tubes that help people see around corners and down windpipes. Ironic really. Whenever they have to peer up or down at my decaying insides, they do it with a load of vaseline and a machine that bears my name.'

There was a rap on the door and a nurse came in.

‘Excuse me,' she said. ‘Medication time.' She handed Marcus two tiny plastic pots, one with pills in, the other filled with water.

‘Oh joy,' he said quietly and drained them both. Passing the pots back to the nurse, he followed her gaze to the open window and flapping curtain. ‘My friend here has a problem with breathing second-hand air,' he told her, quietly. ‘He apologises for any inconvenience and promises to close it before he leaves.'

‘Good,' she said and left the room.

‘Well, now that I've told you the truth about my work, you can tell me the whole and nothing but about yours.'

‘But I already have.'

‘A kindergarten?'

‘Yes.'

‘But why? You have a brain, a wife, looks of a sort.'

‘When we were first married I was a stockbroker.'

‘Ah.'

‘Why “ah”?'

‘The finance houses are half-staffed with fantasists. They all want to do something else. Weren't you anaesthetised by the money?'

‘Not really. There was never any time to enjoy it. We had a nice house, of course, and short, full holidays, but the quality of life is fairly minimal when all you want to do in your spare time is sleep.'

‘So when did you leave and devote your expensive time to infants?'

‘A little over seven years ago. Or is it eight now? Our son, Robin.'

‘Oh Peter, I'm so sorry. How did he ..?'

‘No, no. He didn't die; he went to live in a monastery. At Whelm.'

‘Good lord! That God-forsaken place. Though, of course, it can't be God-forsaken. Not if it's a … Sorry. Go on. How often do you go and see him?'

‘Never. Well, Andrea has once, but I couldn't face it. I prefer to remember him as he was. Andrea writes most of the letters, too. I think she rather wanted them to be her duty.'

‘
Duty
?'

‘Treat, then. She could go to see him there every six months, I think, but they prefer her to leave him alone and simply telephone. She talks to the man in charge. The Brother Superior, or whatever.'

‘Abbot.'

‘That's it. When Robin gave up everything and went there, Andrea went to pieces rather. He'd already left home, really, by going to university, but this seemed so much more final.'

‘Like a death, in fact?' Marcus suggested.

‘Yes.'

‘Fascinating.'

‘And suddenly it seemed wrong to be spending three quarters of my life away in an office full of people who weren't my friends and never would be, so I left work – although I still have the odd dabble in the market to make ends meet – and we set up the kindergarten. Andrea had been teaching in nursery school for years already and knew the ropes. It got off the ground in no time. It seems that having a husband-wife team was the chief attraction, paternal roles being the fashionable thing then.'

‘Though of course it was you who had done the going to pieces rather than Andrea.'

‘No. I …' Peter met Marcus's smile and capitulated. ‘What makes you so sure?'

‘Women strong enough to teach in nursery school for years don't crack up.'

‘She was very upset.'

‘But not half as upset as you.'

‘You're the one that's getting volunteer counselling.'

‘Did I ask for it?' Marcus held up withered hands. Peter laughed. ‘It's only because patients without friends or family make them nervous, they find things tidier with visitors. Now. It's time for you to keep your assignation with your young gentleman friend and we haven't talked about me nearly enough. So. Business. I've been revising my will.'

‘Why should that concern me?'

‘No reason at all, my dear,' Marcus assured him, eyebrows raised. ‘I won't be leaving you anything – the pleasure of my company in my last months will have been reward enough – but I want you to be my executor.'

‘I'm touched, but shouldn't it be an old friend?'

‘All my old friends are abroad and anyway they're all too decrepit and sentimental or just too plain dead to be of any use. You'd do very well. It won't involve much. I'm leaving everything to one or two people and besides, the capable Miss Birch will be handling all the money side of things, but you're such a charmer you can make the necessary phone calls. I'm getting bored of this filthy view and all this lying around so I intend to be dead within the next two months, which doesn't give you long to organise the concert.'

‘What concert?'

‘Listen, darling, and I'll explain. I have vaguely Quakerish longings in me and I've set my heart on scrapping the whole funeral bit and having a concert of music and readings instead. So much kinder to my
amour propre
than all that stuff about dust and worms. Miss Birch will give you a list of people to contact. The musicians will all be paid handsomely, so none of them will say no, and the readers, well, I'll organise the readers.'

‘But, if it's not too indelicate of me, who'll be coming? I thought you had no friends or family.'

‘Everyone gets friends and family once they're dead.'

‘Where's it to be?'

‘St Mary's, Battersea. I used to waste a lot of pleasant time painting in the graveyard there before I got involved in helping people look into stomachs, and the interior is so light-hearted. Does your wife, er, Angela …'

‘Andrea.'

‘Sorry, Andrea. Does your wife have a lisp?'

‘No.'

‘Does she read Donne?'

‘Not habitually, but she'll have a copy somewhere. She read English before she trained as a teacher.'

‘Then tell her she's got six weeks to learn the last sacred sonnet. Number six. I want her to read it on my special day.'

‘But she doesn't know you.'

‘Precisely. She won't cry or do anything silly. Now you must go or you'll be late for your assignation.' The nurse had come back in, a newspaper in her hand, and looked on approvingly as Peter closed the window once more. ‘What's that? Another bloody prize crossword for me to finish for you?' Marcus asked her.

‘Yes,' she said. ‘Nice and stimulating for you.'

‘And you collect the prize money. Has my anonymous admirer called again to ask after me?'

‘Yes,' she sighed. ‘I wish he'd leave his name. Better still, I wish he'd call in to see you.'

‘No point. I know exactly how his mind works. He'll come in the end. Goodbye, Peter.'

‘Goodbye.'

‘Thank you for the flower. I can see it's white, but what exactly is it?'

‘A rose,' Peter told him.

‘Nice,' said the Nurse. ‘Are you going to solve that last clue, then?'

‘Fire away,' Marcus told her and rubbed his hands.

‘“Virgil's through to Yugoslavia's first with interruption from tail-less doggy.”'