Staring At The Light (8 page)

He saw the piece of wood in John Smith’s hand, the size of a piece of fence, crashing into his face as he made to stand, his
mouth open in a scream of protest. Felt three of his teeth crack, his jaw shudder. Rose to his feet with his hand clapped
over his lips, backing away, choking the scream, hawking blood into the carpet of leaves and damp grass.

The fat man bowed and showed him to the gate of the garden, as if he had been an honoured guest.

No-one was going to get close to John Smith.

Whistling on the walk to work; that was the way to do it. Planning as she went, but not a precise form of planning. Thinking
with glee of the excuse Ernest had given her to bunk off work, wondering if he had realized it yet; contemplating the rest
of the week and how to
manage it. Go to see one of the lovers, the one she called Mole, pick up a tip or two on how to form an art collection: he
would know, there was always someone who did. Look up where that exhibition was that showed them all; check on Cannon, and
if he rang, as he often neglected to do, ask him to go with her. With all that, the done and the undone, the other clients
with their divorces and problems, Sarah was glad to be alive.

She stopped by the fruit-and-flowers stall. Michaelmas daisies, shaggy and purple, or should it be three of the monstrous,
drooping orange chrysanthemums, or no flowers at all but pounds of the cold russet apples for biting later? When in doubt
buy both, and take a full five minutes in a talkative set-the-world-to-rights chat along with the purchase. Early yet. The
reception hall was empty. She paused for a minute, picturing those barren walls alive with decoration and, as she envisaged
some large canvas of huge colour and conspicuous obscenity fit to make the senior partner choke, she grinned to herself. Then
she whistled up the endless stairs, proving she could whistle without breaking step or breath – it was the swimming that did
it – kicked open the office door, which was scuffed from this daily attention because she always seemed to arrive with her
arms full.

There was that peculiar smell, instantly recognizable only to those who knew it. Blood, unmasked by antiseptic. Andrew Mitchum
sat in the chair facing the desk on which he was more accustomed to place his feet, stemming blood from his lips with a teacloth
he had found, rocking back and forth, moaning
incoherently, dabbing at the droplets on her desk, mixed blood and tears. There was a hideous sense of
déjà vu
. Her step arrested in horror, until the horror receded into a kind of weariness. He, too, had got up all these stairs; he
wasn’t dying, only bleeding. She should be used to this, seemed to attract it. Don’t make a fuss. And don’t run screaming
for help without checking first. When she had been rescued after being attacked, it was the last thing she had wanted anyone
to do, so she herself was not going to do it now. Touch him, tell him it’s all right. Don’t scream and dial 999 until she
had found out what he needed. She should know by now that not every walking wounded wanted to go public. She dropped the burdens;
the apples rolled across the floor while she pressed his shoulders lightly to quell the shaking. ‘There, there,’ she said.
‘Tch, tch, what have you been doing? And you such a handsome man, too.’

He quivered. Gently, she prised the cloth from his fingers while his eyes remained fixed and wide, looking in terror for a
verdict on the damage. Vanity mixed with fear, a sign of health. She remembered what she had done, looked for a mirror, wanting
to know the worst.

‘Seen worse,’ she commented. ‘You’ll be as gorgeous as ever inside a week, I wouldn’t wonder. Who did this, you daft bastard?’

Seen worse. Herself. Cannon’s wife, Julie. She was trying to shake herself free of the purely personal remembrance of injury,
the shame of it, the humiliation; trying to make him realize that it was temporary
while already it must feel endless. Trying to refine her own memory of what it was she had needed then. Touch; reassurance;
the apparition of despised common sense. A joke in bad taste.

‘A man … I thought he fancied me … Didn’t …’

‘And what did he want? Sex? Something easy like that? You shouldn’t be so desirable.’

The nod was painful but clearly negative.

‘Yesh. But he didn’ wanna. I didn’, either. Hit on me … hit me …’

‘Sure about that, are you?’ she asked, chafing his hands, examining him. If she buttoned the blue serge of his jacket and
wrapped him in her shawl, favoured today over the favourite coat, the blood on the shirt would not show sufficiently to shock.
She could pass him off as a nosebleed; she suspected that that was what he would want.

‘Inna club … Nithe place … Nithe client …’

You made a pass at him, you little tart, she thought without saying it. Andrew was always making passes at clients with money.
Oddly, the thought of ambition frustrated made her more sympathetic. The boy had had injury
and
rejection, not nice at all and not any easier to bear just because he was a creep. There were sounds downstairs, Matthewson’s
voice shouting an order, his first-thing-in-the-morning attempt to exert control. Andrew’s eyes closed in a different kind
of terror.

‘You were moonlighting, weren’t you?’

He raised a hand in acknowledgement. The shaking was slightly less.

‘And you wouldn’t want anyone to know that, would you?’

The hand moved.

‘So I think we’ll go out the back way, don’t you?’

When Isabella came to William’s surgery, she was treated like royalty, red-carpet service except that the front-hall carpet
was claret-coloured already. The thought of her filled William’s day with a shadow of grief.

‘Mummy’s got a bib on!’

‘Yes, she has, hasn’t she? Are you on any medication, Mrs Oakley? Turn your head slightly to one side for me … Feeling OK,
are we?’

William knew he should get out of the habit of asking more than one question at a time. Even during a check-up, which in this
case was half designed as a pantomime exercise to teach the child to feel at ease. Mummy first, you next, the child a new
patient, three years old, and William with no idea of what he would find – a mouthful of caries or nothing at all.

‘I’m on the pill,’ she whispered, as if the information was classified or somehow embarrassing in front of the child. ‘Doth
that coun’?’ He was probing the gums, half of his mind elsewhere, with the muted sound of the radio, the joyful memory of
the previous patient, the disturbed memory of the night before, while the other half registered what he did and heard. The
surgery was blissfully quiet. He had taken in what she had said about the pill and shaken his head. Long may she remain on
it: the previous pregnancy
had wrought havoc with her teeth and he did not want his mending undone. Isabella and he … Would it have been different with
children? No, she didn’t want them; she wanted the perfect house; she would still be searching for it now.

‘An X-ray this side, I think.’ Nor should he ever say I
think
: he must sound definite. ‘Bite down. Lovely. Thanks.’ He moved to the door, beckoning the child with him, stepped back after
the button was pressed to remove the saliva-coated square and hand it on behind her head. Never pass anything across the patient’s
face, least of all a syringe: let it find its way into the mouth before they knew it was there. William’s mind went back to
the last patient. Such a nice man. Impervious to the whine of the drill, the hiss of the aspirator and the final ignominy
of the impression. Lying there dreamily peaceful, with his mouth full of bright red gum, so gentle and vague and comfortable
that he had had to be persuaded to bite. William wondered if he would insist upon crowned teeth at that age – such a nice
old man. Probably not, but everyone was allowed their priorities. The rules in this practice were dictated entirely by what
came through the door. William strove to see himself merely as an engineer and a pragmatist. It wasn’t the demands that fascinated
him: it was the challenge of technique.

The child clambered into the chair without a qualm and happily revealed a set of even milk teeth. Mother’s dental history
made her careful; she would be strict on his diet and do her damnedest to make
Baby brush, although no-one would save him from accidents; no-one could.

‘Very
good
,’ Mummy was crooning. William’s mind wandered again. An unbusy morning, but he missed the hyperactivity of his former National
Health practice, as well as the anonymity of sheer numbers. Conversation had been minimal in those days, the patients mainly
stoic and silent. He did not miss the ignorant and terrified children who had to be anaesthetized to keep them still. That
had been barbaric. What he resented now was the expectation from every one of his fee-payers that he should form some sort
of personal relationship with each of them.

‘Do you like sweeties?’

‘Yeth.’

Such beauty would not last. Better to eat the sweeties and never bother brushing at all.

‘Do you mind if I take a photograph? I’ll give you a copy. The teeth are so perfect.’

‘Course.’ The mother was pleased, as if he had complimented the child’s brain. He could see it now: a photo of the child’s
teeth alongside one of his face in school cap. A photograph for the family records, alongside those of innocent, babyish nudity,
produced some time to embarrass a girlfriend, a reminder of fluoride, genetic good fortune or sucrose-free babyhood. The child
obliged for the camera, then waved from the door. William felt the vaguest stirring of affection, and then remembered the
children of his nightmares: the one with the suffocating chest and the one with the missing teeth, the others crowding crooked
into the gap.

His receptionist, a young Australian female of whom he was secretly afraid, sat at the outside desk engrossed in conversation
with Tina and an ancient rep flourishing a fistful of brochures, who had failed to notice in the waste-bin the similar stack
of adverts for new hygiene aids deposited there every morning. William hurried by, baring his own teeth in a semblance of
a smile, carrying with him the wax mould from the old man’s teeth, making a brief wave with it. There was a humming from the
autoclave, which was sterilizing the implements.

Past the pictures in the corridor, the coffee machine in the immaculate waiting room, the silk flowers, the greenish carpet
and the newly painted walls, through the door, past an old, decrepit dental chair he could not move, and down the stairs.
Shabbier with each step, full of crap, the detritus of an old surgery, the residue of the last dentist and his father before
him, neither of them, like William himself, ever quite able to throw away anything. There were oxygen supplies; there was
the heart defibrillator he had never had to use. There was an outdated sterilizer, kettle-sized for small implements and awaiting
repair, an old Hoover, ditto. Three cupboards, one with sundry dried and diet foods and the girls’ supply of tea, coffee,
sugar, snack soups, which they made down here; another with stocks of crystallized mouth-wash, throatwash, plaster for making
moulds, an old chair or two awaiting rescue, a blanket, looking worn in the light from the window leading on to the dim well
of the basement. One of these days he would
spring-clean in here. William liked making moulds for crowns. He found it restful.

He picked up a plastic bowl already scored with the remnants of the last mix, half filled it with water from the single cold
tap, which dripped into a sink spattered with white. By the sink was the telltale sign of Tina’s unwashed ashtray, also covered
in white dust. He shook the powdered plaster into the bowl, small amounts at a time, swirled the water until all the powder
was absorbed, stirred it, picked up the brush and quickly painted the plaster mix inside the impression left by the teeth.
Such cunning contours they had, teeny little ridges, grooves and dents: the liquid was refined, but not enough to reach them
all. He painted again, added more, wandered round, waiting for it to dry, sighed with sheer pleasure.

There were rows of models on the table: imprints of jaws with three teeth left; distorted jaws; facsimiles of huge mouths
and others of adult mouths so small he could barely insert an instrument. He had once felt a vague envy of a veterinary surgeon
invited to treat the totally articulated jaw of a rhino. The conversational requirements would be nil and the teeth accessible
with a pickaxe handle; the dentist as carpenter. He came here to fiddle and to dream, to quell the dread of the next hello!
and because it was archaic, the whole damn thing, far removed from the gleaming refinement upstairs. And also because it was
quiet and draughty and full of souvenirs. He could shut the door on it. His own small flatlet was above the surgery. He liked
the sense of occupying
this extended fragment of a house but, best, he liked the self-contained peace down here.

Until he heard the feet on the stairs and Tina, yelling out of more than a need for attention, her shoes clattering on wood,
her face flushed. ‘Jeez,’ she said. ‘Disgusting. Get outta here.’

He didn’t know if she meant the room or the situation downstairs. ‘Got some bloke needs a hospital bleeding all over the furniture
… and a friend.’

‘Drunk?’

‘Hurt.’

He was a privately paid dentist now, at the front of a big, protective house, only an entryphone to connect him to the street.
He did not need to deal with the unruly, the occasional inebriate suddenly aware of pain in his mouth. His duty was to existing
patients, not to the rest of the suffering public.

‘Your other patient brought him. Sarah.’

‘Oh. Bring him through to the back.’

‘I can’t stop them, can I?’

A strange procession came into view at the top of the stairs. The man of the pair sat abruptly in the old dental chair, obviously
under the impression that this was the end of the road. He held a folded, blood-soaked tea-towel over his mouth.

Sarah Fortune was patting his shoulder, beaming anxiously at William. ‘Hallo,’ she said calmly, as if she had not seen him
in a while and this was an everyday occurrence. ‘I found this in my office so I thought I’d better bring him here. He won’t
let go of me, anyhow.’ The young man was holding the cloth
in one hand and using the other to clutch at Sarah’s coat. His face was runnelled with tears. William put his palm to the
boy’s forehead. This
was
still a boy: William regarded thirty as the threshold of the martyrdoms of adulthood and anything below that as boyhood.
His hands were ice-cool from the plaster; the skin of the boy’s forehead searingly hot.