To Be Someone (39 page)

“I’m fine. I’m sorry if I sound a bit off. I guess I’m just disappointed not to see you.” I rushed on, before he could suggest another meeting. “Actually, I came over to give something to Ruby. I’ve been thinking a lot about … her, and, you know, now that I’ve recovered and I’m about to start work again, I figured that it might be a nice gesture to pass something of mine on to her. It might seem a little weird to you, but I really want her to have the box of letters and bits and pieces that Sam and I first started keeping as kids. There’s quite a lot of mementos of the band in there, old fanzines and photos, that kind of thing, as well as the letters.”

Another pause, but this time a reverential one. “Are you sure, Helena? That’s … that’s just an incredible gift! Why do you want to get rid of it? I mean, those are memories of Sam. Surely you want to keep them?”

“No,” I said firmly. “Actually, I really don’t. I’ve spent far too long dwelling on them. I need to move on, stop living in the past. I would be honored if you’d accept it, on Ruby’s behalf. If you could just keep it for her until she’s old enough to decide what she wants to do with it. Maybe people can come to her when they need to do research on the early days of Blue Idea, or whatever. I don’t know.”

“Why wouldn’t people come to you if they need to do research on Blue Idea?”

I hesitated, feeling caught out. “Yeah, of course they would, and do. I’m talking ten, twenty years down the line here—you never know, maybe there’ll be a huge Blue Idea revival in 2020, and who knows where I’ll be then? I just thought it might be something Ruby would like to have, one day.”

Toby still seemed overcome. “What can I say? Thanks, Helena. This is the most amazing present Ruby will ever receive. I promise we’ll take care of it for you.”

Ruby and Lulu came back downstairs, and Lulu hid the Hel-Sam box behind a large cushion before Ruby saw it.

“Just one more thing, Toby. Can I trust you not to look in it yourself? I mean, of course you can one day, but … not just yet, eh?”

“I promise that, too. Ruby should be the one to open it, when she’s old enough.”

“Thanks. Listen, I’d better go. Ruby’s off to bed now. We’ll be in touch, okay?”

Toby started gabbling. “I’ll be back tomorrow, leave your number, I’ll ring you then. Why don’t we go out next week? Just as friends, of course, but I’d love to see you—”

“Bye, Toby.” I put the phone down, sick at heart
.
Have a nice life. I wish things could have been different.…

Ruby was sitting on the floor by the sofa, one of Lulu’s feet in her lap. When I came back over to join them, I heard her say, “I’m the lady, you be the man. I wash your feet, yeah?”

“Bit young for a Mary Magdalene complex, isn’t she?” I said to Lulu, relying on flippancy to push down my anguish.

“Yeah. I keep telling her that she should stop reading that Bible so much,” Lulu agreed, and I managed a laugh. For a second we exchanged a look that said, loud and clear, we could be friends.

Ruby stopped pretending to anoint Lulu’s foot with tears and dumped it unceremoniously back on the floor. “Where’s my present?”

“Oh, yes. We got interrupted by your daddy on the phone. Oh, Ruby, I hope you won’t be too disappointed. It’s only an old box full of letters and stuff, but one day I hope that you’ll enjoy looking through it and owning it.” I retrieved the Hel-Sam box from behind the sofa cushion and put it on the floor in front of her.

Lulu squinted at the faded label and smiled, reading it out loud: “ ‘The Hel-Sam Box of Important Stuff! Keep Out! Unless you are Helena Jane Nicholls Or Samantha Grant! In the event of the untimely death of either of us, this box is to go immediately to the other one’s house and stay there. No one else is ever, ever, allowed to look inside. It’s all Top Secret.’ So how come it’s not at Samantha Grant’s house, then?” As soon as she’d said it, she bit her lip, and I realized that Toby must have told her about me and Sam.

I grinned faintly and painfully, through gritted teeth.

“I’m sorry,” said Lulu.

“It’s okay. Don’t worry. I hope you don’t think it’s weird, but I want Ruby to have it.”

Ruby was tugging at the lid of the box. “Are there sweeties inside?”

“No, darling,” said Lulu.

“How ‘bout
Toy Story
video, then?”

We shook our heads sadly.

“What, then?”

Lulu put an arm around her. “Sweetheart, it’s just a special box for you to keep for when you’re older. It’s a bit hard to explain for now, but it’s really a very special present. Say thank you to Helena.”

Ruby stuck out her bottom lip and rubbed her eyes. “I like special box,” she whined.

I wished I’d had the foresight to bring her some chocolate buttons as well.

Lulu picked her up. “Okay, tired girl, now it really is bedtime. Say good night and thank you to Helena.” She leaned toward me so Ruby could give me a kiss, and for a brief intoxicating moment Ruby nuzzled in the side of my neck, her hair tickling my cheek.

“Tanks, Ellna. Any fireworks, any scaries?”

I glanced at Lulu for the answer, and she shook her head. “No, Ruby. No fireworks, no scaries. Sleep well, sweet dreams.”

Ruby waved at me as she was carried up the stairs, finger in mouth, her head already drooping on Lulu’s shoulder.

By the time Lulu returned several minutes later, I had regained my composure. She offered me another glass of wine, some supper, a coffee, but I declined. We did chat for a while longer, and again I marveled at what easy company she was, but it felt like a snare. The Middleton way of drawing me into their family so I wouldn’t want to leave—God, they all did it! If I stayed any longer, I’d be tempted to ask about Toby and Kate—if it was true that they really were getting back together—but I was desperate not to. It would be so demeaning, and the truth was that I simply didn’t need to know.

“I’ve taken up enough of your time already.” I stood up. “I really have to go now. I’ve got tons of things to do.”

This was true. I had to start thinking about getting my affairs in order: canceling my next outpatient checkup at the hospital, the smear test I had booked for October, all my standing orders.

At least Toby and Ruby had been dealt with, anyhow. I expected to feel less guilty, now that I’d closed the book on that episode, but to my horror the guilt merely transferred itself to thoughts of my parents instead, which was far worse. I felt like the biggest, yellowest coward that ever lived.

But as I said good-bye to Lulu and left the house, I changed my mind. I wasn’t a coward. It was surely more courageous to end a worthless life than to live in misery. Anyone who truly loved me would have to understand that.

Blur
THIS IS A LOW

W
ITHIN SIX MONTHS OF OUR RETURN FROM SANTORINI, SAM’S
health had deteriorated even more dramatically. She couldn’t walk more than a few steps without getting exhausted and breathless, and had to have constant recourse to an oxygen mask and cylinder. Her need for a new lung finally became extremely pressing—it was no longer a matter of choice. She agreed to go on the waiting list, so the hospital gave her a pager, and she was on twenty-four-hour standby for a call to say that a donor lung had been located.

I still went down to Salisbury every weekend, and spoke to her on the phone every day. I’d have stayed down there permanently were it not for the fact that I had to do my show. My heart was torn to see her getting thinner and weaker every week.

On my last visit, she was just sitting hunched on her sofa, gray-faced and skeletal, with the oxygen tube now permanently fixed to her nostrils, a slave to the heavy metal tank next to her. She looked so sad and ill that all I could do was sit next to her and hold her in my arms like a child, rocking her gently against my shoulder. I couldn’t stop tears from rolling down my face, and she frowned at me faintly.

“Crybaby,” she whispered. Then she wrapped her arms around my waist, sighing heavily. She was so thin that I could feel all the bones in her shoulders and back as I rubbed them gently with my hand.

Everything in her little flat was as bright and cheerful as ever: the crisp blue and white stripes of the sofa, the pictures on the wall, the thick, colorful rug on the floor. I always used to think how well she fitted this little basement. Like dogs who resembled their owners, Sam’s flat was the essence of herself, full of light and color and energy. Now she looked incongruous in her own place, almost inappropriate, like a gray vase full of wilting flowers in the middle of a florist’s shop, surrounded by a riot of fresh-colored blooms. I couldn’t bear it.

I tried to push the image away, and talked to her in a low voice about how wonderful things would be once she’d had the operation, reminding her again of all the things she would be able to do and see once more. How she’d have to lose the disabled sticker on her windscreen, and take her chances with the city’s traffic wardens like the rest of us. How she could come to gigs with me, and we could stay out till four in the morning, if we wanted. We’d live together, and cook, and try finally to bag ourselves a couple of decent blokes.

Sam just leaned against me and listened until I ran out of steam. Then we sat, in an undeniably depressed silence broken only by the soft hissing of oxygen from the cylinder into her poor, useless lungs.

Finally she fell asleep, and I maneuvered her into a horizontal position on the sofa, lifting up her feet and swinging them gently around and up onto the cushions. I covered her with a quilt, kissed her forehead, and crept upstairs to tell Cynthia that I was leaving.

When I climbed into my car, inhaling its faint plastic and air-freshener smell, I was overcome with a feeling—empathic, perhaps—of utter exhaustion and desolation. I leaned back and closed my eyes, trying to fight away the emotions of frustration and grief at seeing Sam that way and not being able to help her. I would willingly have donated one of my lungs to her then and there—both, if it were possible—and I cursed the fact that she didn’t need an organ I had spares of. For the first time ever I really thought that she might die, and the sensation overwhelmed me with pain.

Then suddenly, out of nowhere, the fog in my head lifted and all my senses sharpened up completely. Everything around me felt hyper-real, and I experienced a huge rush of adrenaline. The leaves on the tall trees across the road became a green so deep that they took my breath away. I sat bolt upright, surprised and stunned by this emotional transformation. Into the empty palette of my focused mind sprang five distinct words:
She’s going to be fine
. They stayed there, so clear that I could almost read them in bold black letters, for several seconds, until my grief was replaced by euphoria. I almost rushed back into the house to tell Sam and Cynthia, but changed my mind when I realized that I didn’t want either of them to think I’d ever doubted it. Instead, I drove back to London feeling a deep sense of calm, and a cautious joy.

One freezing November day a couple of weeks later, for want of anything better to do, I was cleaning the outside of my bathroom window with balled-up newspapers (the cleaner, who didn’t speak English, had indicated via a sketched window with a big X through it that this was a task she declined to incorporate in her routine; I’d felt that it was time to do something about it, since there were ribbons of bird crap festooning the panes, courtesy of the family of pigeons who lived in the bathroom gutter).

I was sitting almost in the sink, with one arm hooked around the closed side of the window, when the phone rang. Cursing, I extricated myself and went to the top of the stairs so I could hear the machine pick up the call. I didn’t want to talk to anyone except Sam or Vinnie. With a click and a crackle, I heard Cynthia Grant’s voice come onto the line, so I bounded downstairs two at a time and lunged for the receiver, my fingers numb with cold and terror.

In one sick moment I had a flashback to the time I’d called her from Ringside’s offices ten years before.

“Cynthia! What’s the matter? Is Sam okay?” I picked up the phone’s body with my free hand and started pacing around the room with it, leaving black newsprint all over its cream trunk.

“Now listen to me, Helena, don’t panic. She’s all right, but she was having so much trouble breathing that they’ve taken her into hospital, to put her on a ventilator until the donor lung comes through. She needs to get her strength up for the operation—she was using too much of it trying to catch her breath the whole time. This is the best thing for her; she needs the rest. But she’s fine, and in good spirits.”

“Can I have a phone number for her? When can I see her?”

I was horrified and relieved at the same time. I sat down heavily on my pale armchair and, before I noticed, left more sooty fingerprints on the arm and seat.

“Well, there’s no point you phoning her—she can’t talk. She’s got a tube in her throat from the ventilator.”

“Oh my God, poor Sam,” I said, appalled.

“She shouldn’t really have visitors, either, but I’ve spoken to the nursing staff and told them that you should be allowed to come and see her regularly. Only once or twice a week, Helena, mind, and just for a few minutes. She won’t be able to cope with more than that.”

This felt terrible, final and deadly serious. I knew then that if Sam didn’t leave that hospital with a new lung, she wouldn’t leave at all. It was, I supposed, what people called “make-or-break time.” After I hung up from Cynthia, I sat in the chair taking long deep breaths and wishing I could do the same for Sam. Then I remembered what I’d heard the day I last saw her, and repeated it softly out loud, over and over again, until my fears were calmed. “She’s going to be fine, she’s going to be fine.”

Eventually I decided that the only thing I could do was to go and visit her immediately. As I left the sitting room to conduct my habitual pocket-rummaging for keys, in coat-cupboard and wardrobe, I happened to glance back over my shoulder, the black marks on the chair and phone finally catching my eye. I ignored them.

Sam was on the ventilator for four weeks, every moment of which felt measured by the rise and fall of each of her machine-manufactured breaths. I carried on doing my show, on autopilot, crying quietly off-mic every time someone requested a song for a sick friend—a sick anyone, really. Someone mourning their dead hamster would’ve set me off just as easily. I could have claimed any number of other people’s records for myself: “The Bitterest Pill,” “Bridge Over Troubled Water,” “Us and Them.” The requests all seemed to feed my grief and worry, plumping them up like raisins in milk, the pain of others mingling secretly with my own.

I commuted to Sam’s hospital in Oxfordshire as often as the staff permitted, even if I could only see her for a few minutes at a time, and I monitored every little change in her condition, for better or worse. After a week, I decided that I was going to talk to Geoff and Gus as soon as I could, and ask for some compassionate leave so I could be with her until she had the operation. I didn’t care how long she had to wait for it—they could fire me if they didn’t like it.

Of course, as soon as I announced this to Sam, she wouldn’t hear of it. Her thin fingers picked up the felt-tip pen beside her right hand and wrote on her notepad in surprisingly firm letters, “It might be months before they find me a new lung.” I had argued with her, but she retaliated by scribbling, “If you don’t stay at work, I won’t tell you when I have my op!”

“Blackmail!” I said—but felt much better about it. She placated me further by adding, “You know I’m much stronger now.”

It was true—although she still had an ethereal, almost ghostly quality about her, she had put on a little weight and her eyes were regaining some of their old spark. The doctors were very pleased with her progress and had told us that should a donor lung become available, she would be strong enough to have the operation immediately.

“You just don’t want me around because I’m better at crosswords than you are,” I whined. She rolled her eyes and grinned at me.

The message from Cynthia came through in the fourth week, just as I was finishing the show one December morning. A donor lung had turned up for Sam, from a young biker killed on a patch of black ice the day before. She’d had the operation immediately, and was in Intensive Care, very ill, but alive.

I must have wondered whether it was the last time I’d ever see her, but my brain would not allow the thought to articulate itself. I created a huge roadblock in my head, complete with armed soldiers barring entry to the enemy territory. It was four days after the operation, and I’d been at the hospital as much as the nurses allowed me to be, catching a few hours’ sleep whenever forced to at a nearby hotel.

I had made two phone calls: One was a message I left for Geoff, to say that I was taking compassionate leave, and that I’d keep him posted, and one to Vinnie, to ask if he would come and be with me at the hospital. I was desperate for the solid reassurance of his body, a real human body to ground me, when it seemed like Sam’s might be slipping away. I’d given him the address and phone number of the hotel, but two days later there was no word from him. I wasn’t surprised.