“Well, I went spark out all right. Next thing I know, I seem to come to and there I am thinking it’s just like sleeping, nights you go to bed and you’re so tired you can’t as much as remember your head hitting the pillow but the next second you’re waking up and it’s eight hours or more later. So I’m there thinking, okay what did she say this place was, recovery? All right, I’m in recovery, except my mouth is still covered and my eyes are still taped over and I reason I’m still in the operating room, must be going to wheel me out any minute.
“They don’t wheel me out. Nobody’s about to wheel me out.”
“Even though I’ve got this tape across my eyes, somehow I can see these bright lights right there above me and it’s like, you know when you’ve been looking up at the sun and you close your eyes and for a while you can see this hot blur, like it’s printed on the inside of your eye, that’s what it’s like. Not only that, I can hear voices. Not too clear what they’re saying, not clear at all, so I try and say something, speak to them, what’s going on? Only there’s no way I can say anything, not a word. I try to move, can’t move a muscle. Just stretched out there and I realize, shit, they haven’t done this operation, taken out this damn gallbladder, haven’t even started yet. My head’s panicking and my body can’t move and I can’t shout or scream and all I can see is the blur of those lights and I’m thinking, no, it can’t be going to happen, no, it can’t be going to happen, no, it can’t and then it does.
“It’s like wire being pulled clear through me. Thin wire. Only it’s hot. It’s a piece of red-hot wire and I swear I can hear the flesh tear when he pulls it through. And all I can do is pray for it to stop. Pray to die. ’Cause I know it won’t stop ever. Won’t stop till it’s done.”
Carew was drinking his second single malt, savoring it, the look he gave the stupid little cow behind the bar when she asked him if he wanted ice in it should have made her pee her pants. Where was the point in drinking the good stuff like this, only to water it down with frozen algae out of the Severn-Trent?
“D’you ever come in here?” He looked round at the wide room, stuffed red chairs and shiny black-top tables, like something off a P amp; O cruise ship.
Sarah Leonard shook her head. It was only after he made a fuss about ordering bitter lemon-what kind of a celebratory drink was that? — that she’d relented and had a dry white wine and now she was regretting it.
“We should have gone somewhere a bit livelier. More style.” He leaned forward across the table exactly as she knew he would. “We still could.”
“Oh, no.”
“Come on. Let’s go dancing, for heaven’s sake. When was the last time you went dancing? Venus. New York, New York. God, we could even go to the Irish.” He reached for her hand and she pulled it away. “How about it?”
The wine tasted sour and old, as if the box it had been squeezed out of had been moldering in a cellar somewhere for years.
“Why don’t you ever give up?”
“It’s not in my nature,” Carew smiled, “to accept defeat.” Sarah put down her glass and stood up.
“Where are you going?”
She pointed towards the door alongside the bar. “Ladies.” Carew nodded.
“Sarah,” he called when she was halfway across the room. Swiveling her body, she stopped to look back at him. “Don’t go slipping out the back way now, will you?” And he laughed.
“You could tell from their faces, the way they were all over me, fussing with this, fussing with that, you could tell they knew something had gone wrong. But they never said, never said a thing to me and I couldn’t … at first, when they pulled the tube away from my mouth, all the time I’d been wanting to shout out and scream and cry and when I could do it I couldn’t get a sound to come out.
“Later, yes. Then I would scream and call them barbarians and butchers and they would come running and slide this needle into my arm. Keep me quiet. Take away the pain. That’s what they say, make you feel comfortable, take away the pain. It’s too late, I say, it’s too late for that. And they slide the needle home.”
“What’s that?” Sarah asked, pointing at the glass.
“Bitter lemon.”
“And?”
“Ice.”
“And?”
“Gin.”
She picked it up and carried it over to the bar. “There was a misunderstanding,” she said. “I didn’t want this.”
“I’m sorry,” said the girl behind the counter. “You can’t have your money back.”
“Fine.”
Sarah gave Carew a quick look, see how he was taking that, and headed for the door. A picture in denim, that was how he saw himself. Mr. Irresistible. She wondered when a woman had last turned him down and what had happened to her when she had. She had thought he might jump up and come after her, flash another of those practiced-in-the-bathroom-mirror smiles, but Carew continued to sit where he was, drinking his malt whisky, looking cool.
A quarter of a mile on, she was less angry about it already, just another bloke trying it on, this one, maybe, a touch more persistent than the rest. Approaching the road that led down towards the old Raleigh factory, Sarah’s face opened to a smile. Had he really imagined she was going to go off with him, dancing, dressed like that? The badge on her uniform that spelled out her name and rank. Ridiculous.
And suddenly there he was in front of her, posing at the corner of the side street, having to struggle to control his breathing and pretend he hadn’t had to sprint fast to double around that block and get ahead of her in time.
“Now what?” Sarah said, angry again.
“Easy. I walk with you to your door, say good night, turn right around, and go home. End of evening. Okay?”
“No.”
Ian Carew didn’t say anything; he didn’t even smile. He just looked.
Sarah began to walk and he danced into step alongside her, not attempting to talk, simply walking. All right, Sarah thought, five minutes, another five streets and it will be over.
“When I got home from the hospital I could still feel the pain. I didn’t go to bed at night, I wouldn’t lie down, as soon as I did I’d be waiting for it again, waiting for it to start. The cutting. The wire. I slept sitting up, wherever I was and even then, though I wasn’t lying down, I would scream.”
“At first my wife, she would come to me and try to calm me down but if she went to touch me I screamed all the more. I couldn’t ever bear to have anyone touch me.”
“My Marjorie … she was little then, she says to her mother, why does daddy shout at me like that, why won’t he let me near him, why does he hate me?”
“In the end they couldn’t take it any more and they left me and Calvin he stayed. No matter what that boy does, I’ll always love him for that. He stayed by me when nobody else would.”
Sarah’s house was in a short terrace that backed on to a playing field. She had bought it when prices in the city had been lower than almost anywhere aside from Belfast, which was just as well because on her salary it had been all she could afford. She stood with her back to her front door, hands in her coat pockets, fingers of one tight about some loose change, the others round her keys.
“Right,” Sarah said.
“What?”
“Good night.”
The smile was back. “Good night.”
Sarah didn’t budge. “Let me see you walk away.”
“Just one thing …”
“No.”
“Just …”
“No!”
“Tim Fletcher, I wanted to ask …”
“What about him?”
“You were getting pretty friendly with him, running errands and all that …”
“Errands?”
“You were buying books for him, remember?”
“The condition he was in at the time, he wasn’t exactly in a position to do that for himself.”
“That’s what I wanted to know. How is he? His mobility? I mean, is he ever going to regain that?”
“He’s made a lot of progress, yes.”
“I’m sure he has,” said Carew, “but no matter how hard he tries, however much you do for him, he’s never going to get it back fully. Is he?”