The Cinnamon Tree (9 page)

Then he turned to the boy. ‘Fintan, we’d better get this cleaned up before it begins to set.’

Yola couldn’t look up. 

‘Y
ou lucky thing!
Fintan to show you around, oh passion!’ Catherine struck her chest and sighed theatrically. ‘Patients are not allowed in the labs, you know – at least
I’m
not! How did you manage it? He’s gorgeous!’

‘I didn’t
manage
it. I just got a bit upset when they tried to make my cast; they think it may help if I can see how they make them – casts and legs and things.’

Yola was nervous of another attack and she was also
apprehensive
about the boy. She felt he’d seen a side of her that she would have liked to conceal. She had been enjoying having everyone rush to her aid; then she’d noticed him looking at her as if he could see through her – see that the fuss she was making was no longer genuine. She groaned inwardly. It was bad enough having a father who could mind-read you! She tried to picture the boy. He was shorter and darker than Hans, and he had dark, penetrating eyes. His smile before her panic attack had been nice.

‘Look Catherine, please. I want to think.’

‘Thinking’s bad for you. I never think,’ said Catherine with genuine concern.

At that moment there was a knock on the door. Yola saw
the flash of a white lab-coat.

‘Oh
do
come in,’ called Catherine. ‘Sadly, we’re quite
decent
.’

‘It’s Miss Abonda I’m looking for.’

Yola realised she wasn’t going to have time to think. This must be Fintan now. Catherine swooned convincingly, but it was wasted – Fintan didn’t come in to the room.

Yola had been given new elbow crutches with rubber caps that didn’t slip but squeaked on the polished floor. The boy didn’t look up when she came out, he turned to lead the way down the corridor. Yola followed him warily, keeping to the opposite side of the corridor. They came to a pair of swing doors. He opened them for her, giving the far door a flick so that she could get through before it swung to behind her. He still hadn’t met her eye.

They entered a large laboratory. While Yola looked around, Fintan went off to find his boss. Workbenches divided up the room. Feet and legs stuck up in the air from the benches, as if their owners were taking a nap somewhere underneath. A hand rose from a bench and clutched at the air while its owner drowned somewhere among the paint pots and brushes below. A man was working at one bench. He had turned back the stocking sheath on a leg and was working with a screwdriver on a complicated joint, which Yola realised must be a knee. He looked up and winked at her. Then Fintan came back.

‘Mr Dwyer says he is sorry but he is very busy so he can’t join us. He’s asked me to show you around. Do you mind?’

‘No, I’d like to see … well, everything.’

‘Not … bothered anymore?’ he asked tentatively.

‘No, I think not. Sorry, I …’ she wasn’t sure how to finish.

‘I thought it was great.’ He smiled for the first time. ‘Come on, let’s talk to Sam. He’s our paint and colour expert.’

For the next hour they moved through the lab. Yola felt
relaxed
, like she did with Hans. The technicians were delighted to show her what they were doing. Sam, in particular, was pleased.

‘I’m sick of pink!’ he exclaimed. ‘Show me your hands, dear. Beautiful! Fintan, just look at those, stroke them! Pure
mahogany
.’

Fintan went pink; he was good at explaining the workings of the lab to her though. She saw how the metal joints worked and how these were sheathed in carefully moulded and painted plastic so that the limbs looked indistinguishable from the real thing.

‘We’ll cross over to the casting room now,’ Fintan said when they had finished in the main lab. ‘It is rather noisy in there; the pumps are running.’

In the casting room, a white-coated man was sanding down what was obviously the plaster cast of a stump; a second was peering into an oven. Fintan flicked the lights on and off and they turned to see who had come in. He mouthed something to them and they both responded with smiles and thumbs-up signs.

‘The men in here,’ he shouted, ‘are deaf, so the noise of the vacuum pumps doesn’t bother them. But don’t think that they can’t understand what you’re saying. They can lip-read at a hundred metres!’ The man at the stump grinned and wagged a finger at Fintan. ‘See what I mean!’ he laughed and mouthed something to the man at the oven, who raised three fingers in response.

‘Three minutes and the plastic will be ready,’ Fintan shouted to Yola. Then the man looked at Fintan and, with a grin, tapped his jacket and imitated someone playing a flute. Fintan shouted in Yola’s ear, ‘Watch this!’ He fished in his coat and pulled out a
tiny little flute and held it sideways to his lips. He nodded to the technician, tapped with his foot one, two, three, and started to play. Yola leaned close to him, so that she could hear, then to her amazement the technician, who was a big man, suddenly began to dance. She couldn’t believe it; the man was dancing in perfect time to Fintan’s playing, despite the noise. She had seen dancing like this on the television in the ward.

‘Riverdance!’ she shouted in delight.

Fintan nodded without stopping. The music went on, then, without any apparent signal between them, the dancer and flute stopped on the one note and Fintan and the white-coated technician bowed solemnly to each other.

‘That’s our party piece,’ Fintan shouted as Yola applauded. ‘Don’t tell Mr Dwyer, but that’s how we fill our day.’ He
pocketed
his flute.

‘But how–?’ Yola started.

Fintan laughed. ‘It’s a secret! Look. He’s about to make a socket. Come over.’

Yola let him take her arm and draw her over to the oven, from which the flushed technician was taking what looked like a small window frame. Beside him was the machine that was making all the noise; mounted on it was the plaster cast of somebody’s stump. Instead of glass, the frame contained a sheet of hot plastic. Slowly and carefully he lowered this down over the stump so that it draped over it like a shroud.

‘Now watch how the vacuum sucks it tight on to the cast!’ Fintan said in Yola’s ear.

Feeling almost as if it were closing about her own leg, she saw the plastic shrink and tighten to a perfect fit. She gave a
little
sigh and, for the first time, began to feel really comfortable with the idea of a new leg. It had been a good idea to come and see all this.

The technicians were leaving for lunch, hanging their coats
behind
the door. They waved to Yola and Fintan and left. Fintan reached in behind the machine and flicked a switch. A welcome silence fell over them.

‘So the whole thing’s not too frightening, is it?’ He lifted down a socket like the one they had just seen made, blew some dust off it and handed it to Yola.

‘Go on, feel it, this is what you will actually have against your skin. See, it is quite soft and flexible. It will fit you like a glove. As you get stronger your muscles will be able to push this in and out as they work. We can also leave space in the casing that we put around this so that, if you lunge forward, it won’t hurt. The leg is bolted on firmly, and then the whole socket is
enclosed
in an outer casing hand-painted by artist Sam.’

‘Won’t it fall off? How will I keep it on?’ Yola asked.

‘You’ll be shown. First you will bandage your stump tightly – that will make it smaller and your leg will slip into the socket easily. You will pull the bandage off through this hole; your leg expands then, so that when you seal the hole the leg stays on by suction. Simple!’ Yola looked sceptical. He laughed. ‘We’ll have you running in a few weeks if you really give it a try. But look at the time, sorry I’ve kept you so long.’ He turned to put the socket back on to the shelf.

It came as a shock to Yola that this was the end. She would go back to her ward now, but there were things she still needed to ask him, like how the technician had danced without
hearing
, and … and, well, other things. She wanted to see him again, but she couldn’t very well ask.

Fintan was unbuttoning his lab-coat when the doors swung open.

‘Oh there you are!’ It was Mr Dwyer. ‘Sorry to have left you,
but you were in good hands. Fintan, why don’t you take Yola and go to the canteen? It’s lunchtime.’He turned to Yola. ‘
Fintan’s
dad has a project in Africa, ask him about it. I will have half an hour at two o’clock and we can wind up then with any questions. All right?’

They sat in a corner of the canteen within a protective shield of clattering cutlery and lunchtime chatter. Yola was too excited to eat. She was overwhelmed by the noise, the colours and by how everything shone and looked new. She thought about home, where everything was either homemade or mended. Fintan had put down his tray and was deftly organising his plate, knife, fork and spoon. Yola watched and imitated, but got everything reversed. What were they going to talk about? Fintan seemed tongue-tied too and had gone pink. She was amused by how Europeans went pink when they were
embarrassed
. Then, she knew what she would ask.

‘Mr Fintan, how did he do it? The man in the lab, dancing. I could hardly hear your playing above the noise, and you say he’s deaf?’

Fintan smiled and laughed. ‘First, just call me Fintan.
Second
, if I tell you, you promise you won’t tell.’ Yola nodded,
delighted
. ‘Well, his name is Sean – I’ll spell that for you later – he’s been deaf since he got measles as a baby. He has a twin sister – Mary, I think – who was big into Irish dancing. Sean would be taken to watch her. The teacher was a fiddler.’ He mimed a fiddler playing and raised an eyebrow to see if Yola understood; she nodded. ‘After a while, Sean noticed that while Mary was dancing, the teacher’s foot was working up and down in time to the music. Suddenly he thought, I could dance too! All he had to do was to keep his eye on the teacher’s foot and copy Mary’s steps.

‘They were a sensation together. People thought it was a miracle: a deaf boy dancing! They went in for competitions and won. Then, one day, a big competition came up. They waited and waited, but their teacher never turned up; his car had broken down. No problem, there was another fiddler who could play for them. They got up on the stage and Sean had his eye on the fiddler’s foot. Suddenly he saw the bow moving and Mary taking off into the dance, but poor Sean could not move.’

‘Why?’

‘Because this new fiddler didn’t tap his foot. So Sean had nothing to dance to. He told me: “The fiddler’s feet might have been screwed to the floor, and so were mine!” So, that was the end of his dancing career.’

‘So he was watching your foot tapping? He couldn’t hear anything?’

Fintan nodded and Yola’s laughter rang out. Heads turned in the canteen and people smiled.

‘Tell me all about Ireland,’ Yola said, with an expansive
gesture
. ‘Are you going to be a player of the flute?’

To her surprise, Fintan’s face darkened. Had she said the wrong thing? She noticed that his hand had drifted to the pocket where his flute was hidden, as if defending it. A gap was opening in the conversation. Then Fintan seemed to pull
himself
out of his dark mood.

‘Sorry, it’s just that the flute is a sore point at the moment.’ Yola wondered what a sore point was but bit her lip. ‘This is not a proper flute, just a baby one, a piccolo that will fit in my pocket. My real flute’s … well … I haven’t got a real flute
anymore
.’

He got up and brought them both a cup of coffee. Yola sensed he didn’t want to talk about his flute or how he had lost it.

‘Tell me about Ireland,’ she asked, ‘the place you come from. I know so little.’

‘I live in a small town in the midlands of Ireland, it’s called Caherisce,’ he began.

‘Green fields?’ asked Yola wistfully.

‘Lots and lots of green fields, and a brown mountain with goats and sheep on it. There are rocks on the mountain and a sturdy little river. My family were blacksmiths. Do you know what those are? People who work in metal, making
horseshoes
and ploughs and things. Then Grandfather started a factory. He made spades and pickaxes, using the waterpower from the river to hammer and beat the metal. I would go down there as a kid; it was all noise, red metal and white sparks. O’Farrell Engineering it was then. Granddad would say, “Fifty sweaty workers, lad, and that means fifty pay
packets
into fifty homes add fifty wives with fifty shopping bags …” well, he’d go on and on. When my father took over, the business was already in trouble; no one wanted our spades or pickaxes any more. Dad looked around and saw how the
plastics
industry was growing, and changed the factory so that we were making things out of plastic instead of steel. To begin with it was great, people would come, explain what they wanted and Dad would design and make it. Then we found the snag. As soon as we had got the product perfect the
customers
said, “Sorry, we can get this made cheaper in Taiwan or Korea.” The factory closed just before Christmas, and that’s why I’m here.’