I’m reaching out across the bed, most of the way to the other side. It’s not long after dawn, and something has hit the front steps with a thump. That’s what’s woken me. Since it’s a Lily-sized thump, that’s what it becomes in the next dream. The Bean, tumbling down onto the first of too many steps, falling under my feet.
There’s no point in trying to sleep after that. I need to show myself she’s not here. I need to show myself it’s not her.
Her room is empty, as it’s supposed to be, and on the step there’s a kilo of tea. Halliday Tea. Much smaller than the Bean. She’s never weighed a kilo.
It’s vacuum-sealed, like a large, light brick.
I don’t understand last night, the end of last night. All of last night, but it’s acceptable not to understand the Oscar part. But what happened at the end? I don’t even know what kind of situation it was. If it was a situation.
That’s all I can think of as I turn the block of tea over in my hands and see the label, the sketch of a homestead, the description of the blend. It’s Ash’s voice I hear when I read it. Ash’s voice turned to advertising, with gusto and a hint of irony that almost no-one will get.
Last night I didn’t want to leave her. I didn’t want to watch her run off up the path, and then drive home. Which doesn’t mean I’m sure of what I did want, but I didn’t want the night to end then. I wanted to take hold of her, tell her she meant something. I don’t want her to struggle with money and loneliness. I don’t, but that’s only one side of it. One small part, and the rest of it’s less valiant and much more about me. I wanted to cross those last few inches between us, but I froze. I’m not sure what I was waiting for, if I was expecting some kind of sign. I don’t know what to do any more. It’s been so long.
But I never knew what to do, from the night of my school formal on. Who am I trying to kid? What do you do? Eighty per cent of what you’re going in with is the hope that you won’t look like an idiot, whatever the outcome. That’s the dominant feeling in that instant and, until the need to make the move becomes greater, becomes compelling, nothing can happen. The instant passes, to the catalogue of missed opportunities.
I take the tea to the car and I drive to Ash’s in my running gear.
She’s waiting at her door, but her shoes are off and she says, I really don’t know that I’m up to it today.
Is it more of what was wrong with you last night?
Yeah.
Do you think you should do something about it? What do you think it is?
She swings her shoes by the laces, and they seem too big for her. She’s not looking the way she usually does. She looks younger, delicate rather than compact.
Preservatives in last night’s dinner, maybe? I’ve always been a bit allergic to MSG. So, why don’t you run without me?
Well, do you want a drink or anything?
That’d be good, thanks. Hey, I’ve got something in the car. I’ll be back in a sec. Do you want to put the kettle on?
Oh. Okay, she says, and smiles for the first time today, like someone with a surprise to prepare for.
I go down to the car to fetch the tea, and come back into the house holding it behind my back. She’s getting two mugs out of a low cupboard, and she stands and turns. I show her the packet, and there’s surprise on her face, but not the look I’d expected. Not the mild pleasure of recognising something familiar.
Where did you get that?
I thought you might like it. Something from home.
But I left home. And she says it as though there’s something wrong, as though I’ve done something wrong.
Oh. I ordered it on the Internet a couple of days ago. From the web site.
Oh . . . Thanks. It’s a really nice thought. Let’s have some. And I can tell you more about the taxonomy of biscuits.
I’d like that.
She laughs at herself. I’m sorry. I’ve never been caught off-guard by a tea packet before. I was just dizzy standing up quickly – you know the way it goes – and things were looking a bit wobbly, and suddenly there was this tea from home. When I least expected it.
The glories of the Internet.
Yeah.
That stuff on the box . . .
The text? The young leaves picked for maximum tenderness’? ‘Shrouded in Tableland mists’? That’s mine. Mainly mine.
I thought so. Shrouded in Tableland mists. Very persuasive. Very mysterious.
Exotic?
Definitely exotic. I could end up drinking a lot of this tea.
Well, it was blended to be your everyday tea, so that would be okay. The best and most exotic everyday tea, of course. She opens the packet, holds it up to her face and takes in the aroma of the leaves. I nearly drove off the road in one of those damn mists once, I was so shrouded. But let’s have some. If only I had a connoisseur’s array of biscuits to complement it.
Or even food for your own breakfast, I’m thinking, as I’m on my way to my parents’ later.
She had some sugar, a carton of milk and some Vegemite. Not much else. So it’s no wonder she’s not feeling well, and dizzy when she stands up quickly. It was hard not to get parental, force money on her. But everything sensible that came to mind sounded like some kind of telling off, and finally all I could say was, You have enough Coles Myer shares for a discount card, but you can’t buy a loaf of bread?
And she said, It’s a temporary cash-flow problem. It’s the deal I’ve got going with my family. I get the computer. I get the bomby car, but with four new tyres. I get the junior share portfolio so I can learn about being grown up, but for the day-to-day stuff I fend for myself. I’m on at Bagelos at ten today, and I’ll scrounge something there. And she sounded almost proud about it. And then I’ll get paid and everything’ll be fine.
So I left when we’d finished the tea, feeling I’d been told that her empty fridge might not be my business. And worrying about her not eating, missing home and not eating. Or just not eating. Trying to think back to my time in psych and remember everything I know about eating disorders. But I don’t think that’s her. And maybe I shouldn’t be over-analysing someone’s interest in self-sufficiency.
And I don’t want to be parental. I’ve already got someone I can be parental with. The best I could do was make sure she’d come round to dinner and let me cook for her again.
How was the poetry? my mother asks, when I get there. But she does it with the look of comic wariness that I’d expect.
You know how it was. You know Oscar’s poetry. Give me two fans, a Mikado costume and a lot of spit and I could show you the latest.
Wonderful. Knew he wouldn’t let you down. What does it all mean, though?
Almost anything if you listen to him explain it for long enough.
I gave your father a copy of Oscar’s last book, and I don’t think he understood it at all.
And for once we’d agree completely, I tell her. I can’t even imagine him reading it. Poor man. Page after page, waiting for Inspector Morse to walk in and the whole thing to start to make sense.
He knows some poetry.
He can recite the chunks of Tennyson they forced him to learn at school.
Tennyson? my father’s voice says, as he emerges from his study with the Bean in his arms, and he zips right into the first couple of stanzas of one of the Crimean War poems, turning it into a comical horse ride, and the Bean cackles and grabs what’s left of his hair, pulling it till his eyes water. Oh don’t, love, he says, wincing and gently unfolding her fingers. I’m just an old cart horse, really. I was only pretending.
Ash turns up at four-thirty, and tells me she feels better after a day in airconditioning and a few bagels. She says she’s up to walking, so we load Lily and Elvis into the car and drive to the river bank at uni.
She’s quieter than usual, so, as we walk, I find myself lapsing into the baby commentary, naming the obvious out of habit, helping the Bean towards memory.
See? Ash says. If only someone had given me this kind of campus orientation when I’d arrived, instead of just that big map. If they’d gone, ‘There’s a bird, See the big tree’, I’d have known my way around straight off
And to the right, Lily, you’ll see a new engineering building, and behind that a small brick place where all the rude people get sent. That’s where Ashley has meetings with her supervisor.
Look at the big palm tree.
Too late. Did I tell you about my mother, when she was going to a meeting one day? When I was very young?
No.
This was in England, and I think she might have just got her PhD, so I was about one at the time. She was going to something entomological with a few other people and they were driving in her car, and there were fields at the side of the motorway. I think she’d been worried about getting lost, but once she was on the motorway, she knew she was on the right track, so she relaxed. And that’s when she started going, ‘Look at the cows, See the big blackbird in the tree.’ I think she probably surprised them when she actually presented her paper. She says you get over it. But it takes a few years.
And you’re just getting into the habit.
Yeah.
You seem pretty good at it, though.
Thanks.
No, I mean it. In a good way. I think you are good at it.
Like I said before, I think I have to be. I think, since there’s just me, I have to be prepared to make a dick of myself naming every object in the vicinity, and singing along to anything that’s playing. But it’s okay. You don’t have to sing badly in front of people too many times for performance anxiety to become a thing of the past. No-one expects quality from me. The Lemonheads they expect, quality they don’t. I’m sure you know what I mean.
So what was it like? Dealing with Melissa dying, and the time after? That must have been very difficult.
What?
What was it like?
Um . . .
No-one’s asked you that, have they?
What do you mean?
No-one’s directly asked you. About what you’ve been going through.
They ask me how I am. All the time.
It’s the same if I want it to be. I can tell them whatever I want. They’re there for me. I know that. I can talk about anything I want with them.
But you don’t, do you?
Yes I do. I don’t always tell them all the details, but I could if I wanted to. There’s all this bullshit about talking. It doesn’t fix things, whatever people say. It’s only a small part of fixing things. Sometimes you talk, but there are some things you can’t explain. So there are times when you’ve got to keep it to yourself. Work it out yourself.
And present this calm, coping exterior.
What do you mean? What’s wrong with coping?
Nothing’s wrong with coping. I’m talking about the exterior. People who show everyone everything’s working on the surface, while they hide beneath and try to sort things out.
What are you on about?
I’m on about . . . It’s like what you were saying in the Great Court that day, last Saturday, about skin. How it works. Maybe it’s like that. If you want to see it that way. An opaque outer layer. The exterior that stops the interior being seen. And she’s saying this slowly, as though each word needs weighing and measuring before being let go. I don’t know what gets let in, but you don’t seem to let much out.
What am I supposed to be letting out? Am I supposed to be reaching right in and pulling stuff out for people? What kind of pop-psych stuff are you reading for this degree?
There’s a pause. She looks away, shrugs. I should talk. I’ve taken it too far. I wasn’t expecting this. I wasn’t expecting her to wade into it the way she has.
All right. My mistake. You’re obviously totally fine then.
Sorry. Sorry about the pop-psych thing. For all of that.
She looks back at me. It’s almost a glare, but she’s letting it pass. She nods.
But, you know, if you’d like to reinterpret my life in terms of the ‘The rise and fall of Tickle-Me-Elmo’ I’d be very keen to hear that.
A small laugh, but nothing more said.
What I’m saying is, I don’t totally get what you’re saying. So much of this is only mine to deal with. I don’t know how it would be fixed by wearing it all on the outside.
Which is not what I was saying. You have friends. You have been through something that – correct me if I’m wrong – could reasonably be called a very significant loss. I don’t know why you don’t talk to them.
I talk to them. All the time. But in a particular way.
I’m shitty with her again. I’m shitty for ‘correct me if I’m wrong’ and for ‘significant loss’. As though she’s out-debating me, out-flanking me with technicalities. As though what I’m going through can be reduced to technicalities.
It’s not as easy as it seems.
I’m sure it isn’t.
How? How can you be sure? How can you know? Look, this is how it works. This is how life works . . . Sorry, that’s really patronising.
Good pick up. So go on. She smiles, since she’s entitled. I said the dumb thing, and she’s letting me off. Tell me how life works.
Yeah, okay. Here’s what I think. With all the people you know, you’ve got this repertoire. There’s a range of things you can be. And outside that things feel weird. I’ve got a history with these people. I’ve known George half my life, and the others for a while too. Just about as long, even though there was a gap in the middle. There’s a way we do things. Over time, you fall into a way of interacting with each other, and supporting each other. And that kind of talk isn’t what I want them for. I want to be okay. I want them for when I’m okay, even though I know they’d be there, whatever. They make that clear. George deferred his degree to cover for Mel not being there. We said it was just to cover for Mel, but he’s been covering for me too. We both know that. We both know how important it is, in a practical way. And we don’t have to keep talking about it. And I don’t want to handle that another way. I don’t want to change the way I relate to these people. I don’t want to remake my relationships based on how I deal with Mel’s death. I have the right to try to keep some things the same. What can I say, anyway? I don’t know what I’d say.
We walk a few more steps.
I hadn’t thought of it that way.
Well, neither had I until I had to. Plus, you have different relationships with all the people you know. There’s a lot to take into account when it comes to dealing with this. And I know this situation’s not just about me, not just about me and Lily. It’s tough for the others too, but I’m not ready for all those conversations. Not yet. And if that’s selfish, they’ll let me be selfish. They’re good that way.
Lily points at a passing car, so I tell her, Car. Blue car.
I’ve got no idea about this, have I? I’m sorry. I’ve got a headache. I’m not feeling the best today, so . . .
Okay, sorry. I think I wasn’t expecting it, this conversation, and I’ve handled it like an idiot.
I had this idea that you could tell me things. And then I wondered if you told anyone. If it’s not my business to say that, tell me. And tell me how I should handle it. I want to get this right. You told me about Melissa days ago, and ever since then you’ve steered conversations around her. That’s how it seems, whenever I’ve mentioned her, but George did it too, the other night. So I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. She looks away from me, down at the ground in front of her. And you have to try to tell me what to do. If you don’t tell me, I won’t know how to talk to you. I’m sorry if that’s not like George . . .
No. No. Don’t be like George. I’ve got one of those already. Okay. This is how weird it was. We went out one night, Mel and me, about a month before. Or a couple of months. It was a slightly wanky place. I was never into wanky places, Mel kind of was. Goes with the Beemer, I suppose. Which is fine. I’m not being critical.
Ash looks back at me. It’s not fine. Already I’ve swerved from the truth of the story, or at least failed to meet it directly.
Fuck. Okay. We didn’t actually get on. That’s what I haven’t told you.
I didn’t realise.
No, you didn’t realise. You couldn’t realise. I kept that all back. We didn’t tell people. At least, I haven’t told people and, as far as I know, Mel didn’t say anything either. So that adds to the mess, really. How can I tell them about it now? And how can I talk about any of it without getting into that? It makes it hard. Too hard, to be honest, and that’s the real issue. Anyway, there were problems. We were working on them, and one night we went to this restaurant. Wanky place. And what I hate about those places is how they’re all about making you feel like an idiot, when that’s not what I go out for. If I want to feel like an idiot, I can just sing or name nearby objects, or spit on myself.
My favourite was the spitting.
And you haven’t even seen me in action with people’s cats. Anyway, these restaurants. It’s like they’ve got a competition going to put as many stupid words as possible on the menu just to let you know who’s boss. Well, this one had a pasta dish with lardoons of bacon. I saw it on the menu and I said something about it, because the rest of the description made it sound pretty interesting, so Mel said, ‘Why don’t you have it?’ That’s very Mel. Order the thing partly because you don’t know what it is. It’s not me. I always expect those things won’t work out, so I don’t order things with words I don’t know. Mel had a go at me, about how I never take any kind of chances, how I can’t even risk it with a meal if there’s a new word in there. And I was actually really sick of that – I think there’d been a bit of it around at the time, not that I’m saying I was faultless – so I didn’t let it go, which led to an argument, which kind of wrecked the night. Actually, you might have read about it in the paper.
What? Must have been a hell of an argument.
No. It was just, like so many things, misunderstood. I had acutely had enough of it, and I knew the evening was shot, so I decided to go. Leave and catch a cab. Mel followed, and we argued all the way to the cab rank about me and my risk-taking, me and what was my business, all of that. And then we talked all the way to the car park, once we’d decided to go home. And we’d forgotten to pay. And have you seen, in the weekend papers, the articles a couple of times in the last year about people scamming free meals from restaurants? We’re the ‘professional couple having a row’ story.
Couldn’t that just be anyone?
They named the restaurant, and they described us pretty well. As if we’d gone to some trouble to costume ourselves so that we’d look just like a professional couple. Even the seething that went on between the entree and main, so obviously we hadn’t kept that to ourselves as much as we’d thought. And the woman was pregnant, or faking a pregnancy. That’s how I really knew it was us. They even speculated about us doing that to draw focus from the scam. But that’s off the track. It was also very strange reading the articles, since they came out after she was dead, but that’s off the track too. A week or so after she died I was in a pretty bizarre state. She was gone, the Bean was home. I was totally sleep-deprived. I dropped in to work – I don’t know why – and I was walking around Toowong Village and I found myself in the bookshop, standing there with the biggest dictionary they had, looking up ‘lardoon’. Which is the fatty cut of bacon used to lard other meats. So I was entirely justified in not ordering it. And I happened to see, I think, someone who looked a bit like Mel in my peripheral vision, and I turned and I told her, with my finger still in the dictionary, what a lardoon was. As though I was the winner. And then I thought, Oh, fuck, she thinks I’m mad, so I tried to explain. And when I explained I said something like, Sorry, you look a bit like my wife. She’s around here somewhere. And I think it wasn’t a lie. It was wrong, but it wasn’t a lie. I think, just in that second, seeing that woman, I thought Mel was somewhere nearby. See? That’s how it works. How do you find the right way to tell that to people? Because what’s the right way for them to respond?
There’s a message on the answering machine when we get home. Wendy, saying that Flag will be discharged in the morning. Katie’s having a welcome-home morning tea. As you might expect. It’d probably be good if you could put in an appearance. It’s at ten-thirty. And you know the address.
Flag’s the cat, I tell Ash. The cat I stepped on on Monday.
Do cats like morning tea?
No.
I chop garlic and chilli and basil to go with some linguini, and Ash feeds Lily.
As I’m chopping, my mind won’t shift from the restaurant fight, the day in the bookshop. The futility of that night out, the waste of time and money and energy and life. Another game about surfaces, gone wrong. The professional couple, out for dinner close to term. Anger in a double string of pearls. It’s anger we were hiding, not an intent to steal. I’d done something. I don’t know or care what. It’s only every part of it that’s futile, so it doesn’t matter why we were at the restaurant and not getting on that night.
And maybe, a month later, I had some idea that if I found out what the word meant I could close the story, put it away. Perhaps go back to that night and say, I know what the word means, so let’s talk about something else. Not my minuscule sense of adventure. Let’s talk about you. Let’s talk about what went wrong today. Let’s make sure it doesn’t happen again. But by the time I looked the word up, nothing could happen again.
Everything from the time of Mel’s death is too strange and extreme to explain, and I often don’t get it myself. I’d forgotten about the stories in the paper, and the way my brain worked, seeing Mel as I looked up from the dictionary eight days after she was dead. It’s all still stuck in the jumble of that time, all too big to make sense of. None of it’s even medium-sized, so where and how would I start the talking to make the process of talking do some good?
For several weeks it was like driving in fog. Blank and intense. I think I had my friends there to buffer me, keep me from harm. But I don’t even know.
The rules seemed irrevocably different, suddenly. As though everything I’d understood about the world was wrong, everything I’d taken to be certain couldn’t be relied upon. Everything I thought I had to argue about or to fix didn’t have to be battled over any more. And it happened with no effort at all.
Death seemed always likely then, in those first few weeks, in a way it hadn’t since I’d been a hospital resident, when I saw it all around me during some terms. Even now, Lily scares me when she sleeps. As though it’s reckless of her. Sometimes I have to watch and watch.
But I’m doing it again. Standing here, chopping, listening to Ash talk to Lily, and doing it again. Running the tape again in my head, being my own audience of one. Not talking, perhaps trying to wear out the tape, play it so many times it becomes inert.
When Lily’s gone to bed, I cook the pasta and I toss it with everything I’ve chopped. It smells good. The kitchen fills with the smell of garlic and basil. I’ve known Ash three weeks, three weeks and three days. And I lie awake at night, thinking about her. She’s more than ten years younger than me, for god’s sake. I’ve no idea what she wants, what she’s thinking, what her life’s about.
We eat outside. On the monitor, I can hear Lily making murmuring noises and, just when it sounds like she’s building up to something, about to wake properly, she settles.
Well done, I tell her in absentia. Good choice.
It’s useful, having that.
Yeah. It’s better than checking, getting up to check every few minutes. Which is what I’d do if I didn’t have it.
When she’s sleeping?
You don’t think I’d leave her in peace, do you? I never slept at first. I’d have to get people over here during the day to mind her so that I could sleep. And I’d have to tell them we’d had a bad night, which we hardly ever did. She’s always been a good sleeper. I just couldn’t leave her to it. I still can’t really relax when she sleeps. However dumb that is.
I don’t think it’s dumb.
Hmmm. It’s not very rational. She scares me when she sleeps, and that’s kind of off-putting, potentially. It’s a pretty neurotic thing to admit.
Dickhead, she says, in a joking kind of way, and shakes her head. What have I been saying? I was hassling you about not talking. I can’t complain if you do. So what’s it about?
What do you mean?
You’re not a neurotic person. What’s the problem with her sleeping?
Okay. At first I think I kept trying to convince myself that it was safer to believe that she was temporary. That the whole thing was a phase. Having her was a phase. I tried not to get attached. Just in case. I couldn’t believe that someone as comprehensively naive as her could be given something as fragile as life to look after. When her mother was smart and took no shit and paid attention to everything, and she still blew it. But it’s not like that, of course. All Lily’s parts, I’m told, are in great working order, and any problem would come as a complete surprise. But surprises happen sometimes. So there you go.
Yeah, but . . .
Ash, I now notice, is quite pale. She’s been going pale and looking more and more uncomfortable over the last few minutes.
Sorry, should we talk about something else?
No. It’s just my headache. It’s nothing to do with what we’re talking about.
Are you sure?
Yes, I’m sure. I knew you’d think that. She puts her head down on the table. Which is why I wasn’t telling you. Have you got anything I can take? It’s getting worse.
Yeah, probably. Let me go and look. It’s just, you know, a regular headache?
Yeah.
I get to the bathroom and I look through the cupboards. I don’t know where all that stuff’s gone. I pull the drawers open, and there’s all kinds of junk, a lot of it not even mine, but nothing useful.
Ash appears in the doorway, looking unwell in the harsh bathroom light. She says, I’m . . . and then nothing more, as she goes down on her knees, doubling up, curling up on the floor.
What’s happening? Really. What’s really going on? You have to tell me.
Um, she says, and takes a sharp breath in. It’s a period thing, I think.
What?
A period thing. I used to have trouble. I went on the pill and it got better. I’ve been off it for a while now and it’s getting worse. She squeezes up her eyes and clenches her teeth. And it’s been a longer cycle this time, so that makes it worse too.
A period thing?
Yeah, not a headache. I was planning to keep it to myself, but . . . right now it’s better to curl up on the floor and admit it.
I put my hand on her arm. I stroke her hair. I can’t remember what to do. I don’t know what to do for this now, I’ve been lasering so long.
You’re cold, I say to her, and I pull a towel down and wrap it round her.
She sniffs, wipes her eyes, pulls her knees up higher.
Have you got anything to take for it? Anything at home?
I don’t have any money, she says angrily. You know I don’t have any money. How could I get something to take?
Sorry.
Don’t be. Let’s get this sorted out. I’m getting help. I’m going to call someone who’s a gynaecologist, and he’s pretty nearby.
She doesn’t argue. I fetch my mobile so that I can call from the bathroom. That way I don’t have to leave her. I tell her Roscoe will know what to do. And he’ll have drugs for now and free samples for later and he’ll get this fixed. And we can get more of whatever she needs. And all the time, watching her on the floor, curled up, I’m scared and powerless.
You’ll be okay.
I know. Jon, it’s all right. I’ve had this before. This is just the worst time. But it’s okay.
I move her so that there’s a towel under her as well as wrapped around her, and I fetch a pillow for her head.
Sorry, this is stupid.
It’s not stupid. And stop apologising.
I go through the cupboards again and I find a half-full bottle of infant Panadol. There’s nothing I can do but wait. She squeezes my hand hard.
The doorbell rings. It’s Ross Donovan.
Jon, what’s happening? he says when I get there.
I don’t know. I could be over-reacting. It’s just someone who was here for dinner who . . . she’s on the bathroom floor. She thinks it’s gynae. She looks like she’s really in pain, and I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know if I should take her somewhere, because there’s Lily to sort out too.
That’s okay, he says. Just take me in there.
I lead him to the bathroom and he kneels beside Ash, Roscoe Donovan with his wide, rounded shoulders and his big grey head of hair making her look like a broken child.
Could we just have a few minutes? he says to me, when he realises I’m still anxiously hanging around.
Yeah, sure. I’ll be out here.
Now, let’s work out what’s going on, he says softly as I go.
I wait outside the door, telling myself I’m there in case I’m needed. I hear Ash answering questions. I should stop being so concerned. When I hear him ask if she’s been sexually active lately, I realise I do have to go, but I can’t stop myself hearing her answer. It’s no.
I make tea in the kitchen. I’m not sure why, since I don’t want it. I sit and drink it, and the murmur of Roscoe’s voice is still calm, questions with spaces for Ash’s answers, longer stretches of explanation. Elvis trots in and sits at my feet.
Then I hear Roscoe’s footsteps along the hall.
There you are, he says, as he comes into the kitchen and puts his bag on the table. She’s fine, Jon. She wanted me to tell you she’s fine. And that it’s primary dysmenorrhoea.
So, like, period pain? She’s collapsed on my bathroom floor and it’s just straight period pain?
Yeah. It sounds a bit better when you say primary dysmenorrhoea. It’s sometimes this bad in young, thin, healthy women. Occasionally you end up having to look at other possibilities, but not usually. I’ve got a daughter that age. She got almost that bad. Kept it to herself. You know how they do. You don’t know anything’s wrong with them when they’re that age until you work out the house is being overrun by echinacea and saint someone’s bloody wort.
Okay. Thanks. That’s good isn’t it? I’m sorry. I got you round here for dysmenorrhoea?
It’s not a problem. It still needed something done about it, even if it’s not going to . . . do her serious harm. Why haven’t you got her to see anyone before?
This is the first cycle I’ve known her.
Oh.
She’s from up north.
That’s the moment when Roscoe realises he doesn’t know who the hell Ash is, and it’s followed by the moment when he realises he’s going to take ‘She’s from up north’ as a respectable attempt at an answer.
Thanks for coming round.
No problem. I was in the neighbourhood, as you probably figured.
Maybe I did, but I didn’t call you because you lived nearby. I called you because it seemed like it was going to be gynae and, you know, you’re the best. Obviously we didn’t really need the best for this, as it turns out, but who else would I call? Who else would I hassle about Saturday evening period pain?
Glad I could help. And they’re taping The Bill for me at home so, like I said, it’s really not a problem.
Do you want a drink? How about a scotch?
Only if you’re having one.
Sure. Why not?
Why not? Well, several reasons, but I keep them to myself. I don’t like scotch for a start. Not on its own, not with anything. Not since a bad Med Ball experience with scotch and dry, many years ago (perhaps even the legendary Med Ball of 1986). Once any drink has mixed with your stomach contents and been passed out your nose, you can’t feel the same about it again. But Roscoe likes scotch. He’s known to.
Black Label, he says when I find the bottle. That’s a nice one to be offering me. But don’t go opening a new one on my account.
I’m sure it was due to be opened anyway.
I didn’t know you were a scotch drinker.
Oh, from time to time.
I sip, and try to take my mind off the Med Ball incident, but the smell is powerful and olfactory memory hard to shake. Ash is okay. She’ll be okay. For that I can drink scotch, and recall the disappointment of however many Med Balls I managed to fit in, and not care too much about it.
So how have you been? Roscoe says.
Pretty good.
He turns the tumbler around in his hand and nods. Good.
It was tough for a couple of months there, but things are starting to fit into place, I think.
That’s good to hear.
The baby’s well. Lily. She’s doing really well.
He nods at that too.
Roscoe, Mel . . . these things happen.
Yeah . . . I did a term as her father’s resident in about 1972. Did I ever tell you that?
Yeah, I think so. On one of our antenatal visits, probably.
Ashley’s going to come and see me next week, so that we can get on top of this, he says, and finishes his scotch. But she’ll be right for tonight, and the rest of the weekend. She’s in bed now. I thought that was better than the floor. He forces a smile. So I might be off. Might go home and watch that tape.
Okay. Well, thanks for coming. I really appreciate it. I might have over-reacted a bit there, calling you, but she looked pretty bad and I didn’t want to mess around.
It’s no problem. Any time. If you’ve got any worries, call me. The Bill can keep. But this’ll be okay, so don’t be too concerned. At the door, he shakes my hand and says, It’s good to see you. Good to see you looking all right.
When he’s gone, I go to check how Ash is. She’s not in the spare room. I walk in, and the bed is as made as it was after my parents last stayed, and I wonder where she is, if something’s not right.
I only get one door down the hall before I see her. In my room, in my bed, the hall light coming in as far as the bedside table, but putting enough diffuse light in there that I can see her, curled up. I walk in – doing a quiet check of her breathing, I realise, once I’m most of the way to the bed. I’m too used to checking on Lily.
I stop, and I watch her. Her head on the pillow, facing this way, but with her hand there to brush the light off, and now half-closed with sleep and covering only one eye.
She wakes and sees me, says, Oh . . . I’m sorry about all this.
It’s quite all right.
No, I should just go home.
That’s not likely, really. Now, you’re okay? Is there anything you want?
No. I wish I felt better. How can a normal process be so foul?
Well, hopefully Roscoe can do something about that.
I walk over to the bed and she reaches out and takes my hand.
Thanks. He gave me something. It’s getting better. It hasn’t been this bad before, but it’s better now. I was hoping I could keep it to myself earlier, but obviously not. And I think I need to lie down.
Which is exactly why you aren’t going home.
So take a seat.
She lets go of my hand and pats the bed. I sit there and she starts to doze. Her hair is spiking up here and there, and I stroke it back into place without thinking. She holds my hand there, and it seems to be a signal. I sit, stroking her hair. She curls up, so that she’s almost curled around me. Her knees bump into me and her eyes open again.
Hi.
Hi. I should warn you. If I stay here any longer, there’s a risk I could sing.
I wouldn’t mind.
When she’s properly asleep, I leave the room.
But I don’t sleep myself, even when it gets late. I check Lily, I check Ash. Elvis follows me on my rounds.
Chicks hey? I say to him. You’ve got to watch them.
I make another cup of tea and he sits nearby, staring at me, giving me the stare that says, What madness is this? Where the hell did our routine go tonight? And when did you start liking tea?
I’m becoming my mother, aren’t I? I admit to him. This is my third cup today.
I screw the top back on the scotch bottle. I haven’t seen Roscoe since the funeral. We probably talked then. I don’t remember.
The bottle was his. His well-known favourite, bought to give to him on the day when Mel and the baby would have been discharged from hospital. A thank you for seeing us through it all, delivering Lily, making sure everything went to plan. Which it didn’t, and the scotch sat there.
Mel’s death was nothing to do with Roscoe. It really was just one of those things. I’ve never seen him respond so quickly. It simply didn’t work. He’s good. I don’t know who’s the best (if there needs to be a best), but he’s good. I should have talked to him months ago. But that was never going to happen. And that has to be okay.
Mel’s father was a surgeon. A surgeon of the old school, a big surgeon. Which meant big incisions, heroic procedures and an expectation that crowded hospital corridors would part before him. Which they did. He died when we were at uni, before I really knew Mel and before I’d heard much about him. He lingered as a phenomenon, in the way patients revered him, in the sweep of his scars across abdomens.
Mel was an only child, born when her parents were both in their forties. She was, it seems, something of a surprise. She was always spoiled, and always destined to do medicine. Mel didn’t even know she was spoiled. She thought childhood was about getting everything you wanted, preferably right when you wanted it, and that affection fitted in around that, as part of it, somewhere. So we weren’t going to be similar as adults.
She liked my parents, once she worked out that they did things differently. She never quite worked out the basis of the difference, though. They were younger than parents, as far as she was concerned, and that’s what she put it down to. She never questioned the way her own mother and father had been.
My parents took a while to adjust to her, but they got there. It was my mother who had named my dirty-dog phase, after all, and Mel was clearly something new. They were amused at the way she organised me. I always thought you needed one of those, my father said. And maybe I did, sometimes.
Her mother’s death in 1995 was unexpected. She was in her seventies, but she seemed healthy and her family had a history of long life. Longer life than that. So we had one set of parents to share from then on. A set of parents who were particularly good about that. About Mel’s birthday, about doing things with her and treating her as more than simply the person I’d married. The ‘morally wrong’ cut of her wedding dress became something she and my mother could laugh about.
Mel inherited everything her mother had owned. We sold the family home. Since we’d come back from England Mel had been trying to get her mother to sell it and move to somewhere smaller, so it didn’t surprise me that we didn’t keep it. It covered our share of the practice start-up costs. It also let us upgrade from our own small house to something much larger – too many bedrooms, I thought, but it didn’t seem fair to get in the way of Mel calling the shots. And it gave her the first of her two BMWs.
So our money was Mel’s money. At least, that’s how we came upon it. And the last of our debts was paid off by her life insurance.
That’s all easier to accept if I tell myself the money’s Lily’s, not mine. I’m holding it in trust for her, in an informal way.
And Roscoe got no closer to knowing how Ash fitted in than being told she was from up north. And I said it as though I take in strays from there, and it needs no further explanation. How do I deal with that? He’s seeing her in a few days. Should I call him? What would I say if I did? No-one’s forced me to define this relationship before, not seriously. Does any definition, any attempt to define it only lead back to ‘dirty old man’, or is that just George getting to me? I can’t see myself calling Roscoe and trying anything about a running buddy.
I watch TV with the sound down, and I’ve got a choice of old movies. Two black-and-white versions of people falling madly, stupidly in love with each other, and one in colour. Epic situations, swollen soundtracks, hardly a regular experience in there.
I channel-surf mindlessly, slide down into the sofa and sleep till my dry, open mouth wakes me, and it’s almost light and someone’s demonstrating a mop on a home shopping show. The compere says, That’s truly remarkable, and I miss those old movies, and all their more sincere lies.