Death's Jest-Book (41 page)

'It was nothing really .. . just
a sort of feeling down, you know. . .' said Rye, a small nugget of
caution resisting the solvent properties of the alcohol.

'Hey, listen, none of my
business, some troubles are best shared, some are better kept to
yourself, don't I know it! What happened to decent reticence? When my
husband died, suddenly everyone was a counsellor, wanting me to sit
down and let it all hang out, when all I wanted to do was go
somewhere quiet and sort things out for myself.'

'Yes, I know. How did he die? Oh
God, I'm sorry . . . there I go . ..'

'Don't be silly. Funny, now I'm
ready to talk, no one ever asks. It was a car accident. Multiple
pile-up on the motorway. Just one fatality. Carl. I felt targeted!
Like it would have helped if there'd been dozens dead instead of
having to read in the papers what a miracle it was things hadn't been
a lot worse!'

And that had been enough, plus
another glass or two of wine, to bring it all out, the crash,
Sergius's death, the broken vase . . .

'It had been there too long. I
don't know which was worse, being aware it was there or forgetting
all about it. I'd been thinking about it, now that Hat, that's my
boyfriend, and me are ... an item, you know, it didn't seem right
somehow

'Oh, I don't know. I had a
boyfriend once who found it a real turn-on to screw in churchyards. I
dumped him after I was having a shower at the squash club one morning
and a friend asked me why I had RIP stencilled backwards on my left
buttock.'

After they recovered from the
outbreak of laughter this brought on, it had been easy to tell her
everything - or rather that mangled version of everything which she
would have given almost anything to be the truth and which she almost
believed much repetition might make so. She had even been able to
make a joke of the farcical possibilities of her hoovering if, as the
Bible promised, our bodies were reconstituted on Judgment Day. It had
been a long time since Rye had talked so frankly with another woman
and it felt good. Next morning when she tried to recall cloudily what
she had said, it didn't feel quite so good, but when she saw Myra
again and found her bright and friendly but with nothing pushy or
knowing in her manner, the good feeling returned.

Suddenly with the New Year
approaching, the future had begun to seem - not possible - but not
impossible either. As if through love and friendship and maybe
confession (but, oh, how her heart cracked at the thought of
confessing to Hat!), some kind of atonement might be within her grasp
. . .

Now here she was on the first day
of that bright new year, lying in a hospital bed, talking again to
her dead brother.

'Listen,' she said urgently. 'I
know you're not there. I know you never have been ... all that
stuff... I don't know... I don't know ... it wasn't me . .. someone
else ...'

But it had been her. And Sergius
was here, standing before her, silently accusing, but of what? Oh
God, no, not accusing her of stopping when she was getting close -
not urging her to start again and go on to the bitter end till enough
blood had been spilt to give him his tongue - no, she couldn't start
down that path again, she would run mad. Perhaps she was running mad
...

'Sergius, Sergius,' she cried.
'Don't ask me. I can't... you're not really here

And to prove it she reached out
her hand, and he reached out his to her and she took it and he
squeezed her fingers hard. She closed her eyes and didn't know
whether to sing out with joy or cry out in terror. And when she
opened them again it wasn't Sergius after all but Hat who was sitting
there, holding her hand as if he felt that only his strong grip kept
her from plummeting into a fathomless pit. Maybe he was right.

'Oh, Hat,' she said.

'Hi.'

'Hat.'

'You said that. You're meant to
say, "Where am I?"'

'Don't care where I am so long as
you're here.'

To her distress she saw his eyes
fill with tears.

'Don't cry,' she urged. There's
nothing to cry about. Please. What time is it? Come to think of it,
what day is it?'

'Still New Year's Day. Just. They
said all the signs were you'd got past whatever it was and gone into
a deep sleep, but you've been out of it a lot longer than they
thought.'

He kept his tone light, but she
could tell how deep his concern went.

'Well, I'm back now. So I've just
been sleeping, have I?'

'And talking.'

Talking.' Now it was her turn to
keep it light. 'Did I make sense?'

'About as much as you ever do,'
he said, grinning.

'Seriously.'

'Not a lot,' he said. 'You kept
on calling me Sergius.'

'Oh shit. I was ... dreaming
about . .. I'm sorry.'

'What for? In hospital again, the
smells, the sounds, it must have taken you back subconsciously to
that time after the accident.'

'You work that out yourself, Dr
Freud?' she said, striving towards lightness, towards the light.
'Have you been here all the time?'

'Most. And when I wasn't, Myra
was. She's been great. I like her a lot.'

'Not sure if I approve of my
boyfriend liking a good-looking widow a lot,' she said. 'Do they have
doctors in this place or are they all still drunk after last night?'

‘I
think the ones who matter probably still are. There's this kid
looks younger than me looking after you. Whenever I ask him what's
wrong, he talks vaguely about tests and talking to Mr Chakravarty,
the neuro-consultant. I'd better tell someone you're awake.'

'Why? So they can give me a
sleeping pill?'

'So that if there's anything they
can start doing to make sure this never happens again, they can start
doing it.'

Gently he disengaged her hand and
stood up.

She said, 'Hat, I'm sorry. Great
way to start the year, yeah?'

He looked down at her, smiling.

'Can only get better. And it
will. This is the greatest year of my life, remember. It's the year
I'm going to marry you. I love you, Redwing.'

He went out of the door.

Rye turned her head and stared at
the uncurtained window against which night was pressing like a dark
beast eager to get in.

She said, 'Serge, you bastard,
what have you done to me?'

And burst into tears.

She
woke up the next morning feeling, rather to her surprise, much
better. Not physically, though it was fair to say she felt as well as
she'd felt at any time in the past month, but mentally. She had made
no New Year resolutions either this year or any previous year of her
life, but it felt as if a resolution had been made for her.

The hours drifted by. Nurses did
their mysterious things and promised that Mr Chakravarty would see
her soon; her adolescent doctor examined her and assured her Mr
Chakravarty was imminent; she had visitors - Dalziel with a large jar
of loganberries pickled in Drambuie which he ate with a teaspoon;
members of the library staff in their lunch break with books and
enough gossip to suggest she'd been away for weeks rather than half a
day (New Year's Day being of course a holiday); Myra Rogers with a
basket of fruit and, wise woman, a small grip full of clothes and
other necessities. And Hat came too, of course, with flowers and
chocolates, and love, the only gift which made her want to cry,
though she felt a bit weepie as she saw Dalziel finish the last of
the loganberries.

She dozed off a little (it was
funny how lying in bed all day makes you so sleepy) and woke to see
Hat in deep confabulation with a couple of nurses. She felt no
jealousy, just a kind of languorous pride in the effect his youthful
charm clearly had on the young women.

She dozed again and woke to find
she'd almost missed Mr Chakravarty. He was looking down at her from a
great height. He was tall, slim, dark, extremely handsome. He might
have been one of those Indian princes who, she seemed to recollect,
went to the great public schools and played cricket for England back
in the thirties. And, like a prince, he stayed only long enough to be
adored then went on his way.

She asked the nurses and the
adolescent doctor the questions she'd failed to ask him. They talked
of tests and scans, all of which it seemed must be delayed till the
necessary facilities became free. It sounded as though there were
waiting lists to go on waiting lists.

Alone at last about teatime, she
lay fully awake and pondered these matters. Several things were quite
clear to her.

Whatever needed to be done was
going to take time. During that time she was going to be treated like
a poor dependant. And Hat was only going to have to smile for
everything concerning her diagnosis to be made immediately available
to him.

She got out of bed and took the
grip Myra had brought her from under the bed.

The ward sister summoned the
adolescent doctor, but Rye simply said, 'I will sign anything you
want me to sign as long as I have it before me in the next sixty
seconds.'

She then went down to the
reception area where there was a large diagram of the hospital,
studied it for a while, then strode off with such a certainty of
purpose that no one felt it necessary to enquire what that purpose
was, not even when she entered areas not accessible to the commonalty
of patients.

Finally she arrived at a door
with the name she sought printed on it - Victor Chakravarty - and
went in. A stout young woman behind a stout old desk viewed her
without enthusiasm.

'I want to make an appointment to
see Mr Chakravarty,' said Rye. 'My name is Pomona, initial R. He has
all my details, or at least they are available to him in Ward 17.'

'You're a patient?' said the
woman, as if it were a nasty condition. 'Sorry, but you really
shouldn't be here

'I was a patient. I wish to
become a client. A paying client. I understand that there are various
tests I may have to undergo. I should like to make an appointment to
see Mr Chakravarty fairly early one morning so that, after our
consultation, I might undertake these tests and hear his
interpretation of their results later the same day.'

'He's really very busy

'So I've gathered. So I won't be
too demanding. It's Wednesday the second now. Let's say the start of
next week. Monday the seventh would suit me very well.'

The stout woman, her alarm at
being confronted by an NHS patient alleviated, now came briskly to
the most important point.

'Do you have health insurance?'

'No. I shall be paying for my own
treatment. Would you like a deposit?'

The stout woman's eyes said she
reckoned this wasn't a bad idea, but her mouth said, 'No, of course
not

'Good,' said Rye. 'Shall we say
nine thirty, Monday morning, January seventh? Here's my home number
in case of problems. My work number too. I'll be there between nine
and five from tomorrow. Thank you.'

At the door she paused.

'Of course, as
a private patient, I shall expect complete privacy. Any leakage of
information to anyone - friends, relations,
anyone -
I should
view very legalistically.'

She left without waiting for an
answer.

On
the morning of Saturday January 5th Edgar Wield looked at the
over-the-top decorations festooning Corpse Cottage and thought
with relief that tomorrow would see the end of them. He'd have had
dow after New Year but his born-again-nalist partner declared it
was well known to be tremendous bad luck if you laid hands on them
before Twelfth Night.

Now Digweed said sadly, 'The
place won't be the same without them.'

'You're right there’ said
Wield with undisguised irony.

His partner
regarded him seriously. Perhaps, thought Wield, he's thinking that in
this relationship he makes all the adjustments and when he asks me to
go along with one little thing like having bells and baubles all over
the place, I make a big fuss. Maybe I should try harder. I
will
try harder! 'Edgar’ said Digweed. 'Yes?'

'Tonight we're going out’
'OK’ said Wield. 'Where?' Tinks.'

If Wield's features could have
shown aghast, that's what they would have shown.

He said, 'You mean Tinks?
Krystabel's? The club? At Estotiland?'

'As always you are right in every
respect. Tinks, the night club’

Wield still couldn't believe it:
Digweed was even less of a hot-spot night-owl than he was. In his own
case, professional discretion played a large part. But for Digweed it
was simply a deep-rooted distaste. And of all the clubs available,
Wield would have picked Tinks as the one his partner was least likely
to be seen dead in. Whether the Estoti brothers had planned it as a
gay club, no one knew. But within weeks of its opening in Estotiland,
its street name had changed from Krystabel's to Tinkerbell's,hence
Tinks, and the management seemed set on running it as almost a parody
of what straights thought a gay club ought to be. All this Wield knew
by report. If he'd anticipated visiting the place, it seemed likely
it would be in the line of duty. Never in his wildest fantasies had
he thought he and Edwin would go there as customers.

He said carefully, 'Are you sure
this is a good idea? It's a night club, yes, but perhaps not in the
way you remember them’

'And what way
is that, pray? Discreet lighting, dinner jackets, a string trio to
dance to, and perhaps the Western Brothers or Inkspots as cabaret? I
assure you, I am completely
au fait
with modern trends’

'In that case, why . . . ?'

'My good friend, Wim Leenders, is
celebrating his fiftieth birthday there, and he wants me to join his
party, and he said I've been hiding your light under my bushel for
far too long and insisted I bring you. And if he hadn't insisted, I
would have done because you cannot imagine I could contemplate
entering such a place without your moral support’