‘They’re running some further checks on my heart,’ he said. A quick spurt of words like he was overcoming a stutter.
‘I know.’
‘OK.’
‘OK.’
‘OK.’
It was going to be OK, wasn’t it? She looked at him.
There’d been a girl in History who’d overcome a stutter. They’d made a thing of it at school assembly last December, and when she got up to give her speech about overcoming a stutter, guess what. Yep. Awful awful. It was so awful Freya had given her a bar of chocolate afterwards, a bar of the size you usually only find in airports. Giant Toblerone. ‘Snow-Capped’ limited edition. The sharp peaks were probably not that good for the roof of her mouth (the roof of the mouth and the tongue’s relationship to it were apparently key to the overcoming), but it was a gift and, like all gifts, it was the thought that counted, and failing that the resale value. The playground at Blatchington Mill was a vast black market: caffeine pills, candy sticks.
She asked him if it was still serious. He said probably not. She asked him whether he’d have to have another operation after the tests. He said they’d know more in a couple of days.
‘Even if they do their tricks with another artery,’ he said. ‘Even then, it’s no major thing. It’s like clearing leaves from a gutter, a different gutter.’
‘So your veins are gutters, in this analogy.’
He pursed his lips. ‘It’s like fixing a bit of wiring, Frey.’
‘Wiring, though — it’s complex.’
‘You’re thinking of the Napoleon Suite. That was down to a bad electrician.’
‘What if these electricians are bad?’
‘Who?’
‘The doctors.’
He seemed to consider this closely. ‘They’re expensively educated.’
‘How can you tell?’
‘Their vowels. Their assumptions.’
‘This is bad. This is, I mean, heart attack, I mean — fucking hell.’
‘Appears I may have eaten a few too many fatty foods,’ he said.
‘Yeah, no shit.’
‘No,’ he said, ‘the digestive system is working well.’
‘You’re not funny, Dad.’
‘You’re not funny either, daughter.’
They went on like this for a while, touching on the dangers of Mrs Peachsmith’s driving (she’d given Freya a lift here last night) and whether it was possible to blame his current health on the stress induced by Lady Di’s abuses of refuse-collection etiquette. Di lived opposite. She’d been putting her bin bags on the Finch household’s section of pavement each Tuesday. Once or twice under cover of night Moose had moved them back to their proper place with notes attached. Last week a response had arrived taped to the windscreen of his Škoda: ‘This car belongs to a very silly man.’
She asked him if the nurses were treating him well. He said yes, of course, NHS, brilliant brilliant. They’d given him this amazing little room to recuperate in. Loads of privacy. It was a word he kept using: privacy. She thought of Susie and her lectures on private life vs public life, apathy vs activism, on terrorist attacks and the distinction between victim and witness and culprit, and her dad said with fake cheeriness that there was a TV lounge somewhere down the corridor. Strictly, this wing was probably for patients with unaffordable private health plans. Lucky.
‘How did you get that Marshall guy to move you here?’
‘There are various ways to get an upgrade, Frey. As a front-desker you should know that.’
‘Shouting?’
‘Come on. Shouting sometimes works, fine, but then the front-desker resents you, don’t they? Items like your fox drape may go missing … Anyway, saying nothing — that never works. And being quietly rude is the worst of both worlds. Best method?’ He shifted in the bed and winced. ‘You tell the person in charge that you appreciate how busy they are, but you’d be hugely grateful for anything they could do for you, and then you give them a tip.’
‘You gave the doctor a tip?’ She was a little bit appalled and a little bit impressed.
‘Voucher,’ he said, yawning. ‘Twenty-five per cent off doubles. Keep some in my wallet at all times. Only applicable during low season, of course.’
‘No one’s ever given me a tip.’
‘No?’
‘Well, a couple of times. And you feel … I mean …’
‘I feel right as rain,’ he said, and a mean desperation rose up in Freya. Please, she thought. Please do not go on to explain my mother’s investigations into that phrase. She was with another guy now, her mother. Back in London it seemed. Postcards sometimes came stamped from ‘Mount Pleasant’, which was almost funny given how mean she could be.
‘Well —’ might as well lie — ‘you’re looking much better than yesterday, anyway.’
‘Yeah?’ He nodded. ‘That’s good. Really good. Marina said I looked washed out. That I looked blank.’
‘Blanco,’ Freya said.
‘Ahhh,’ he replied, winding up into his mock-Mediterranean accent, ‘so you speak-a da Spanish?’
‘If you’re going to travel around somewhere you’ve to make an effort, haven’t you?’
He looked defeated by this, shoulders sagging around his breastbone like a tent around a pole. Duke of Edinburgh expedition. Hills, winds …
‘Had a few new guests arrive,’ she said.
His features lifted a little. ‘Who?’
‘A couple of people.’
‘Good. That’s very good.’
‘Someone on crutches. I put him in the old RAF guy’s room. He finally checked out.’
‘As in?’
‘As in he checked out. Paid his bill. Went to Worthing.’
‘“Went to Worthing” would make a pretty good metaphor, actually.’
‘For a lawn bowls competition, he said. Televised. Does that happen?’
‘Only on earth.’
‘Also a couple of honeymooners.’
‘Rose petals?’
‘Already arranged.’
‘The non-itchy ones. The fake whatsit ones.’
‘Yep.’
‘What about the little strawberries in chocolate tuxedos?’
She stared at him.
‘Thatcher won’t even turn up,’ she said. ‘That’s my bet. She’ll have booked the Metropole too, kept her options open.’
Moose gave her a stony look and she felt a prickle of guilt. Why the need to jab at him, even now? Why did she feel, at some level, annoyed that he was ill?
‘All I meant was, her plans must change all the time. So you shouldn’t get your hopes up, right? She could still end up in the Metropole again, so I’m just saying don’t rush your …’ What was the word? ‘Your recovery.’
Her dad’s stony look had become his Special Stare. It was the stare he used to give her when, after one of her nights out with Sarah or Susie, hearing a floorboard creak under her feet, he’d wake in his armchair and ask her into the living room for ‘a chat’. She’d walk through the door and sit down next to him, narrowing all her remaining energy, all her concentration, into making short sober sentences that corrected the boozy drag in her voice.
She got up and moved to the end of the bed, smoothing out a blanket. She remembered the grapes. ‘Here you go,’ she said. ‘This is, you know, supposed to be the sort of thing that helps.’
‘Thank you. That’s very … thank you, Frey.’
He plucked some grapes and held them cupped in his right hand. Reached for his water glass with his left. After a sip of water he began to wrinkle his nose. She leaned forward and scratched it for him.