The Enemy Within, page 14
She obviously wasn’t bothered what we got up to as long as we stayed out of her way – in any case we hadn’t seen any more of her that afternoon until she rapped on the door on the stroke of four and yelled ‘visiting hours are over!’ We’d left Clarrie with the promise that I would be back tomorrow, both of us blowing kisses through our facemasks, me at least trying to picture them landing on the elegant figure whose cheek I’d pecked a thousand times, rather than the wizened vision before me now.
Liam had offered to come home with me, but I’d declined. I told him I was going to have to spend most of the evening making calls anyway and I wouldn’t be much use for anything afterwards. He looked disappointed, but he offered up a pocketful of spare change for the phone and made me promise to let him know how I got on. We said goodbye at Paddington Tube – he was getting on the Bakerloo line while I headed for the Circle – and the concourse was crowded, which meant I couldn’t show him just how much I appreciated everything he had done, but I hoped he understood.
And that was us pretty much on hold for the next week. My life settled into the daily commute to and from St Mary’s, taking in ice-cream containers full of whatever I could manage to concoct in my tiny kitchen that was both reasonably nutritious and might still be a bit warm at the other end of the journey. After a couple of disasters – ‘nanti offence, Tommy, but that looks like it’s been through me already’, Clarrie complained of my attempt at beef goulash – we agreed that I should pop in to Marks & Spencers on my way in and pick up ready-made sandwiches instead. Cheese and chutney, egg and cress, even salmon and tomato and prawn mayonnaise; it was no expense spared, even though most of them went into the bin because Clarrie could seldom manage more than a couple of courtesy bites, and obviously no one else could risk finishing them off. But it at least made me feel like I was doing something.
Her consultant, Dr Pinching, turned out to be lovely when I finally got to see him – much friendlier than I expected, and more than happy to listen to my complaints about the meals dumped just inside the doorway and the fact that Clarrie’s room obviously hadn’t had a mop pushed round it once since she had been there. ‘We have had some problems with the domestic staff,’ he admitted when I spoke to him out on one of the main corridors, well out of earshot of Clarrie and anyone else on the ward. ‘We’ve been trying to explain what we think the real risks are, but the problem is there’s still so little known about A.I.D.S’ – he spelled the letters out individually – ‘so there’s only so much reassurance we can offer.’
I was still angry about the attitude of the nurse I’d spoken to as well, but also slightly embarrassed by my reaction to her, and worried it was going to make things even worse for Clarrie. So it was a relief to discover she’d only been on the ward as holiday cover and I was unlikely to run into her again. The other nurses I met over the next few days all seemed a lot more like actual human beings. One day I managed to arrive when Clarrie was on the commode, and although of course I backed out quickly and waited outside the room so as not to embarrass her, from what I could hear, the girl that was helping was really nice about it. I made a special point of saying thank you to her before I left that afternoon.
Of course I had to ask the doctor the big question. ‘It’s very hard to say,’ he told me. ‘The problem is that Mr Jackson is fighting on so many fronts – it’s not just the fungal infection in the lungs, he’s also got a virus attacking his gut, and the Kaposi’s sarcoma is very aggressive, and the state of his immune system means he’s a sitting duck for all sorts of other opportunistic infections too.’
My mind went back to my own hospital training, such as it was: scrub all equipment with Jeyes Fluid to within an inch of its life and wash your own hands as often and as hot as you can. ‘Might we all be putting him at risk coming in to visit then?’
He gave a sad smile. ‘You could be. But Nasa aren’t offering to make me bubbles to put my patients in.’ I remembered the Bubble Boy all right: that awful American news footage of him bouncing about with all his sterilised toys behind the plastic. I also remembered that he had died despite it all. ‘I think the benefit your friend will get from having loved ones around him will probably outweigh any negative effects at this stage.’ At this stage. ‘Several of my patients… Well, they haven’t had that.’
‘You mean they died alone?’ I said, annoyed that my voice was cracking.
Dr Pinching nodded sadly. ‘It’s a very cruel disease.’
‘It’s not just the disease that is.’
The worry still nagged at me, and later that week, after Olly had headed off, having sufficiently delighted us both with details of his recent audition for Emmerdale Farm, I thought I should check directly. ‘Clarrie, you do like people coming in to see you, don’t you?’
She was using the oxygen mask heavily that afternoon, and her voice was muffled. ‘It’s bona, duckie, bona.’ But her eyes were saying something different.
‘Because, you know, if you’re finding it too tiring, or…we could always spread people out over different days, or…’
She pulled the mask aside. ‘I don’t think so, do you? Not so many days left.’
You can always tell things are serious when Clarrie isn’t speaking Polari any more. I didn’t trust myself to say anything, and for a few moments the only sound in the room was the low hiss of the oxygen supply.
‘I just wish…’ she said, and then stopped.
‘What?’
‘Oh, I just wish none of you had to see me like this. This great dirty thing on my eek. This hair.’ She gestured despairingly at her lank locks.
‘It doesn’t matter. You’re still you.’ I had to sit on my hands to stop myself reaching out to her.
‘Am I, though, dearie?’ She pushed the mask back over her mouth and nose. Beneath the plastic was a patchy but undeniable bloom of blue-grey stubble.
‘Of course you are,’ I said firmly, but she already had her eyes closed.
I woke up the next morning certain of what I had to do. My delayed tutorial with Mal was supposed to be that morning, but I had no hesitation about phoning the department secretary to postpone it again. I hadn’t even thought about Shakespeare in days.
‘I hope you’re not poorly!’ she said brightly.
‘No, I’ve got to go shopping,’ I told her, and put the phone down.
I went to the bank first. I had about £100 in my account, which needed to last me the rest of the summer. I’d been spending money like water lately, but I couldn’t worry about that now. I took out fifty, tucked half the notes into my sock – old habit – and headed for Oxford Street.
I got to the hospital a bit late that afternoon. Eve was already there, her red hair clashing horribly with the green plastic cap that failed to contain it.
‘How is she?’ I whispered. Clarrie looked to be asleep. The movement in her chest had got visibly less as the week had worn on.
‘Been spark out since I got here,’ Eve murmured back. ‘You got the stuff?’
‘Yeah. I don’t know if it’s right. I did my best to find what you told me.’
I opened the Boots bag I was carrying so she could rifle through the contents. ‘No, this is good, Tommy. Ooh, very nice.’ She pulled out a Revlon lipstick and popped the top off to inspect what colour Misty Cinnamon actually was. ‘Wouldn’t mind a bit of this myself.’
‘We’d better not,’ I warned nervously.
‘No, no, of course.’ She put the top back on and gingerly dropped it back into the bag. ‘And you got the heavy foundation I said about – good. It’s all lovely stuff this, Tommy. You must have spent a fortune.’
‘I want her to look her best.’
‘Of course. She glanced towards the door. ‘Do they know?’
I shook my head. ‘Thought we were better off acting first and asking questions after. It’s one of the nice ones on today, at least.’
‘Yeah.’ Eve’s own heavily made-up eyes – all I could see of her – looked nervous.
‘Don’t worry, I’ll tell them it was all my idea,’ I assured her. ‘I just need you to…’
‘No, it’s not that, I…’ she said, and burst into tears. ‘Oh, sorry, Tommy, I… And now I’ve gone and woken her up…’
‘Hi Clarrie,’ I said brightly while Eve sorted herself out. Thankfully she had a plentiful supply of tissues up her sleeve. ‘How are you feeling today?’
The eyes above the oxygen mask looked to be having difficulty focusing. I wasn’t sure she knew who we were. ‘It’s Tommy,’ I told her. ‘And Eve’s here too. We’ve come to sort you out, make you a bit more presentable. Not that you don’t look gorgeous already.’
A frail hand waved vaguely before falling back on the pink cellular blanket.
‘Right,’ I said, much more bravely than I felt. ‘Where do we start?’
It took the two of us the best part of half an hour, working around the oxygen mask, to get Clarrie smeared and powdered enough to disguise her indoor pallor. It took several layers to fully cover the mark on her cheek to the point where it could at least be mistaken for a shadow. Then Eve did her eyes, loading thick black mascara onto lashes that were barely there and gently thumbing smoky shadows onto lids that were as thin and dry as paper. She had brought an extra pair of gloves with her for the job – pink marigolds that she slid on over the hospital ones while all three of us tried not to think about how awful it was to be afraid of tears. The fingers were black by the time she peeled them off and dropped them into the plastic bag we had kept specially for the purpose: I hoped I would be able to slip it into one of the clinical waste bins when we were finished. Otherwise I supposed I was going to have to take it away with me and burn it somewhere else.
Then it was my turn: having held up the lipstick for Clarrie’s approval, and received a trembling thumb-up in return, I lifted the oxygen mask and, working as quickly as I could, gave chin and upper lip as thorough a dusting of powder as I could before running the dark purple stick over her thin, cracked lips with a hand that was neither steady nor expert. The effect was slightly more clown’s smile than cupid’s bow, but once the mask was back in place you couldn’t really tell. ‘I’ll leave this here for you,’ I told Clarrie, sliding the top back on to the lipstick and placing it close by on the bedside locker, ‘so you can do a proper job when you feel up to it. And now…’
I gave it a bit of ceremony as I lifted the last surprise out of my haversack, even though it really wasn’t worth it. ‘I’m sorry; it was the best I could do.’ I’d been to Selfridges but the proper wigs turned out to be really expensive – mind-blowingly so. I’d ended up in one of the tourist shops further down the road – one that had a set of stockinged legs on pistons can-canning from the sign above it. ‘It’s supposed to be a Lady Di. I thought, you know, blondes have more fun. Probably shouldn’t get it near any naked flames though.’
Clarrie’s freshly-painted eyes gleamed. I leaned over her and placed the wig on her head, carefully poking the greasy straggles of her real hair back beneath its synthetic fibres. When I was sure it was properly straight I went back into my bag for the hand mirror that had proved the final expense from Boots, and had me kicking myself for not thinking ahead and just unscrewing the front of my bathroom cabinet before I came out. ‘There you go.’
We watched as her face lit up and crinkled in pleasure behind the oxygen mask. Eve’s hand groped for my own, both of them still swathed in latex, and she leaned her head into my shoulder.
There was only one thing to say, so I said it. ‘Bona to vada your dolly old eek!’
She died in the early hours of the next morning.
TWENTY
She was very nice, the nurse who phoned up. ‘It was very peaceful in the end. He went in his sleep,’ she said, and whether or not that was true it was good of her to say so.
‘OK,’ I said, because all other words were suddenly somewhere out of reach.
‘If you’d like to come by the ward later, you can collect his things.’
For some reason all I could think of was the Lady Di wig. I really didn’t want it back. I was about to open my mouth to say so, but she carried on. ‘We’ll have a few forms for you to fill out, I’m afraid. And you’ll need to make arrangements for the funeral, but we can sort all of that out when you come in.’
I hadn’t even thought about a funeral. I hadn’t thought any further than this exact moment.
‘Charles actually left some instructions about that. We’ve got them here safe. Don’t worry about visiting hours; come by any time.’
‘Oh… OK.’ It seemed to be the only word I could manage right now. I wondered how far it would get me.
‘And again, I’m sorry for your loss,’ she concluded, and with great effort I managed a thank you before putting the phone down.
I sat at the foot of the stairs in the hallway for a while, looking at the twin shafts of bright sunlight that streamed through the glass panels in the front door. You could see all the motes of dust dancing through them, flickering in and out of invisibility. All of that stuff must be going in and out of our lungs, all the time, I thought. With every breath we took, in and out, in and out, right up until there were no more left.
There was a radio on somewhere in the building, I could hear David Jacobs. My grandmother used to listen to him. Back when it was still the Light Programme. How many years had she been gone now?
I should call people, I thought vaguely. I have to tell people; that’s my job now. Only I haven’t got any change left.
There was a sudden noise as the door nearest to me opened. Shafiq, the guy who lived on the ground floor, came out, but then stopped and wavered on his threshold as he saw me: ‘Oh! Sorry.’ He gestured at the phone. ‘I was just going to… Are you…?’
‘No, it’s OK.’ I shook my head, but he still made no move forward. I realised he was waiting for me to go away. That was what I ought to do; it was obvious. So why wasn’t I doing it?
‘Sorry.’ I managed to get to my feet, turn around and, with the help of the banister, start up the stairs. An easy enough manoeuvre, but somehow I had to think through every part of it individually.
‘Are you all right?’ Shafiq called after me. We only really knew each other to nod to. I knew he went out to the Muslim Welfare Centre for prayers every Friday and the rest of the time he was a computer programmer, but that was all.
‘Fine,’ I lied without turning around.
My room felt safer. The TV was on: I’ve got in the habit of having it on most of the day when I’m in, just for company, all the way from Frank and Selina right through to closedown sometimes. The sound was right down, but Mark Curry was on screen wearing an epically horrible shirt. I walked over and switched it off.
I haven’t had breakfast yet, I thought; I ought to eat something. I was still in my dressing gown, I ought to get properly dressed. I ought to go to the corner shop and get some change for the phone. I ought to pull myself together.
I sat down on the bed. Then I lay down flat, telling myself I would just give myself a minute. Then several minutes passed, and I didn’t move. There was a damp patch on the ceiling, underneath the upstairs bathroom. It had been there for ages. It was beginning to get spotted with black mould.
I was still lying there I don’t know how much later when I realised the noise I could hear was Shafiq calling my name, and then he was banging on my door, and then I was opening it and he was telling me Liam was on the phone. And I don’t remember going down the stairs and picking up the receiver but I must have done because I was speaking into it and telling him Clarrie was dead and asking him to come.
God, he was fantastic. I don’t know how I could have got through that morning without him. He arrived at my place about an hour later and took control of everything, running me a hot bath and practically pushing me into it and setting about sorting me out something to eat. I could barely taste the tomato soup and cheese on toast he put in front of me, but I felt a hell of a lot better for having eaten it, and once I’d also drunk the cup of coffee that he’d made almost strong enough to stand the spoon up in I felt as ready as I ever would to face the journey across town to the hospital. He still had to talk me through every step of leaving the house, checking I had my wallet, keys and travelcard, and convincing me that my red sweatshirt was fine when I had a slight panic that I ought to be wearing black and, apart from my leather jacket, I don’t have anything that’s black because it’s really not my colour. But eventually we made it out into the offensively bright summer sunshine, where, unaccountably, the rest of the world seemed to be going on just as usual.
We hit the Tube at the same time as the Saturday football crowds, which was a bit alarming, but thankfully I managed to hold it together all the way until we got to Edgware Road, where I realised I didn’t have to get out so I could go to the Marks & Spencers food hall on the way like usual, and started to snivel a bit. It seemed unbelievable that it was only a week since the two of us had first made this journey. A lifetime had surely passed since then. But here we were: the same Saturday girl behind the front desk, the same weekend deadzone feel to the waiting rooms and corridors. The same wait at the doors of the ward to be admitted. The only difference was that the door to Clarrie’s room now stood wide open. Inside, a bare bed frame stood in the middle of a floor that was gleaming wet, mopped so hard that the antiseptic fug as you passed stung your eyes.
Liam took care of most of the forms, pointing to the places I needed to sign and initial and accepting the photocopied sheets with details of where we needed to register the death and telephone numbers for local funeral homes. ‘Just to warn you, you might have a bit of trouble with some of these,’ the nurse said with an apologetic grimace. ‘And here’s the envelope that your uncle brought in with him too; he was very organised.’ Liam passed them all on to me, and I took them without even looking. And then, no more than twenty minutes after we had arrived, it was all over, and we were back out in the sunshine and noise and normality.
