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Authors: G. L. Watt

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BOOK: Live to Tell
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He sighed. “Are you sure? You know this?”

I nodded. Reluctantly, it seemed to me, he got up to leave again. This time he kissed me on the mouth, very sexily I thought, and I had to stop myself from clinging to him and asking him to stay with me, after all. I carefully closed the door behind him and locked and bolted it. Then I walked around the apartment again, checking the rooms and locking each window in turn.

 

CHAPTER FOUR
 

Three weeks later, Aidan came home from hospital, a broken man. Swathed in bandages and walking on crutches, even around the apartment, he didn’t want to go out, and seemed to me to be utterly devastated. His life revolved around visits from district nurses, his therapist, and the TV schedules. But I didn’t mind; I was just happy to have him back with me.

I attended the college in Warwick Avenue every day, but my heart wasn’t in it. I tried desperately to concentrate and worked hard at the projects I was given, but my creative spark was missing.

Despite my poor performance, I was sure the lecturers made allowances for me, as everyone knew what had happened to Aidan. Even though I planned to tell them that he was involved in a road accident, the police had been to the college, and spilled the beans. Somehow I felt tainted and even more isolated than before. I shopped and cooked and cleaned. Without Jurgen’s contribution to the rent, Aidan and I were like an impoverished married couple without the consolation of sex.

Our financial situation was getting worse. I economised as much as possible but, although he never went anywhere, Aidan’s condition was a drain on our resources. The other students in my course often went out together after work but I never went with them, and when they stopped asking me, I wondered if I should end the misery by leaving college completely and getting a real job.

One evening, after my last lecture, I was walking away from the classroom when the lecturer followed me. He had been discussing the relationship between the ecclesiastical art of the church and its effect on the 18
th
and 19
th
century home, and had been utterly boring. I felt weary. Perhaps it’s me, I thought. Maybe everyone else understands it. I think I’ve reached the point where I couldn’t care less.

“Have you got a minute,” he asked catching up with me. “My room’s just down here on the left.”

I sighed. Oh, here it comes. This is where he tells me how much I’m wasting everyone else’s time, as well as mine, I thought. He held the door open for me and showed me to a seat on the opposite side of the desk from his. He smiled.

“Smoke?” An old fashioned silver and pearl cigarette box sat on the desk and he lifted up its lid and offered me one of the contents. I shook my head.

“No? Well perhaps something else? How about a joint?”

I almost laughed, surprised at his openness. “No, thank you,” I said. “I don’t.”

“Wise girl. A habit best not to start. Unfortunately, no-one ever told me. Now, well, I know things have been a bit tough lately.” He lit a cigarette, settled back in his seat and inhaled deeply. “I’ve noticed that you seem to be shouldering the whole weight of what’s happened to your house mate, on your own. I know he isn’t your boyfriend, by the way. You are very young to have this burden to carry, you know. The college has a whole support network geared up, waiting for just such an opportunity as this. So you are not alone.”

Yeah, I thought cynically. So far, it felt as if we were invisible. This was the first time anyone from the teaching staff had approached me, even to offer any sympathy.

“Aidan’s father has written to the Principal. He wants him home, to be cared for in Ireland,” he continued.

“He won’t go!”

“So you carry on, caring for him here?”

“Looks like it.”

He closed his eyes and rubbed his temple where his greying hair was starting to recede. Then he took another deep drag. “I can’t force you to accept help, although seeing you in my class today, it concerns me that you might need it. I am always here, and if you, or Aidan for that matter
don’t
want to formerly approach the college for help, you can always come to me. I’ll just be a shoulder to cry on, if that’s all that’s needed.” He nodded earnestly at me and then smiled.

Money’s what’s needed, I thought, but tried to smile back at him. It was the first time I had been able to have an objective conversation with a sensible adult since Jurgen’s departure and I desperately wanted to talk to someone, but I felt too down-cast to say much. Also, I was frightened to describe Aidan’s experience, in case I was talking to the “wrong” person. My world felt closed in on itself.

“What about your family,” he continued, running his fingers over the desk edge. “How do they feel about what’s happened? Are they happy for you to stay where you are?”

“They don’t know about it. I’m trying to keep it from them. I’m sure my dad would be upset and insist I went home. I can’t leave Aidan to cope alone. It wasn’t his fault, what happened.”

“It’s commendable what you are trying to do, but it isn’t your responsibility, you know.”

If you only knew, I thought, just how responsible I am.

Later, when I got home Aidan seemed especially touchy. Quite early in the evening he picked up his head phones and went to bed, leaving me alone. I sat on the sofa, feeling glum and tried to think rationally about the money we needed. He wouldn’t entertain the idea of another lodger so I knew that if we were to continue, I would have to get a part time job. Bar work seemed the only viable option, but I was terrified of venturing north into Kilburn, the obvious place for pubs and where our troubles began. Instead, I’d have to try my luck farther down Maida Vale and the Edgware Road, near Marble Arch and London’s West End. West End pubs were probably always looking for part-time bar staff, I thought, and they’re kind of anonymous, so no-one will know me.

Having planned my foray into employment territory, when I arrived home the next day, I felt quite cheery and wanted to tell Aidan about my plans.

“Hiya,” I called from the door. He grunted a reply and from the sofa kept his back to me. He wore an old baseball cap and as I went in, I said, “Gosh, it’s too hot for that old thing. Here, take it off.”

“Don’t touch it,” he shrieked. “Just leave me alone!”

“What’s wrong,” I whispered, putting my arms around him from behind.

“Nothing.” Then, he buried his face in his hands and starting to sob. “They took off the bandages today from my head. Well if you want a fright, look at this.”

I walked around the sofa and lifted his defiant, tear-stained face to mine. Aside from the black and yellow bruising that still permeated his skin, his forehead bore the scars of the attacker’s knife in graphic clarity. The top of his head had been shaved, leaving straggly black hair at either side that was dull and lifeless, with traces of grey running through it.

“Don’t worry,” I said. “I know it looks bad now, but when it starts to heal…”

“Rubbish! And what am I supposed to do in the meantime?”

“Look, when you are here leave it alone, so the air can heal it, but when you go out you can have a dressing on it, not touching, just to cover it. Then, when it’s better, you can have plastic surgery.”

“I’ll look like a frigging freak.”

“Would you like me to trim your hair so that it’s all the same length?”

He looked up. “Would you? Thanks, that would be a help,” he muttered, sniffing.

I cut the remains of his hair really short and used my girly razor to smooth down the edges, and he didn’t look quite so bad. I fetched us both a cup of tea and sat beside him. He sniffed again and took a sip of the hot liquid.

“Do you want to tell me, what happened that night,” I asked quietly. “If you want to talk about it…”

“You’re not my fucking therapist. Leave me alone and mind your own business. I had a frigging priest come round today. Why can’t you all leave me alone?”

“I’ll get dinner then,” I said, while trying to keep calm. I stood up again, taking my tea with me.

A few minutes later he followed me into the kitchen and hovered behind me as I peeled some potatoes. “Sorry,” he mumbled.

“That’s OK. I understand why you are upset. What did this priest want? Did the hospital send him?”

“No. My da spoke to the bishop. He contacted the local man here and he sent him round. You know, I used to be an altar boy, yet I feel I’ve got nothing in common with those bloodsuckers. Frigging waste of space! What do they know about anything? This one was younger than me. What does he know?”

As Aidan was only twenty one, I couldn’t believe the priest was really younger than him and I guess he realised too, how unlikely that was.

“He said they’ve got a home they send sick people to in the West Country. He’s going to put me on the list. Bet it’s full of frigging geriatrics.”

I knew there was no point in arguing with him, in the mood he was in, so I got on with the task in hand.

“I’ve decided to take a part time job, work in a bar, three nights a week,” I said. “Would you mind that? The money would come in useful. This home, you mentioned, it wouldn’t be all the time would it? You would be coming back?” I looked round.

I must have seemed anxious because he hastened to re-assure me. “No, only a couple of weeks, more a convalescence really. In fact I’m not well enough to go yet. Until I’m discharged from the hospital, they won’t consider me. God knows how long that will be.”

I found a job in a Wetherspoons Pub, near Marble Arch, just off the Edgware Road, and the summer came and went. The pub was large and airy, but I usually worked in a smaller bar to the side of the main one. Aidan’s health was still very poor, as his leg was not responding to treatment and despite the liberal application of vitamin E cream, the obscene scar on his head was still all too obvious. He sent me out to buy an assortment of baseball caps to better hide it from view, but as he never saw anyone except the health care professionals, the caps didn’t get much use.

Because he was still officially under the care of St. Mary’s Hospital he was unable to go to the convalescence home. Apart from hospital, the farthest he ventured out was on an assisted hobble around the block. His parents came to stay in the middle of the summer and while they were there, I took a week off work and went back to visit my family, glad of the chance to be pampered for a change.

The priest that Aidan had dismissed as useless became a regular visitor.

“Probably thinks of you as a challenge,” I said one morning, before heading off to college. “Give him my best. He is coming today, isn’t he?”

“Yeah, regular as clockwork. But I’m at the outpatients this afternoon, so I might not see him. But if I do, I’ll give him your love.” He blew me a kiss across the kitchen.

When I got back home from college that evening, the flat was illuminated only by the dim light of the setting sun. Aidan sat on the sofa staring at a blank TV screen, a baseball cap jammed down hard on his head. He didn’t turn to say hello to me and I could see he was still wearing the duffle coat he used when he went out.

“How did you get on,” I asked quietly, switching on a lamp and pulling the curtains. “Cup of tea?”

BOOK: Live to Tell
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