She sat down. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘The lamb. He was here yesterday.’
‘I saw.’
‘He brought hay for the sheep.’
‘I saw that too.’
‘I keep thinking you’re a gymnast.’
‘What?’
‘The kind that does floor exercises.’
‘That’s a first.’
‘When you walk, when you sit, when you’re sawing or digging.’ She went to light another cigarette, but didn’t, because then she would have had to smoke it and all she wanted to do was have a bath. To have a bath, then leave. She stood up. ‘You say “we” a lot,’ she said.
‘That’s because we’re here together.’
‘I think that’s what made me cry.’
‘Liar.’
‘Yes.’ She left the kitchen. In the bathroom she pressed the last three paracetamol out of the strip and took them with a couple of mouthfuls of cold water.
*
She drove very slowly; the narrow roads weren’t gritted and she kept a tight grip on the steering wheel going downhill. The dual carriageway to Caernarfon was gritted, but here, too, the few cars she saw were crawling along, as if everyone expected it to start snowing again at any moment. I mustn’t bask in the security, she thought. Curling up by the stove. Allowing him to take charge. Letting the dog lick my hand. She pulled over in a lay-by and got out of the car without putting on her coat. She dragged herself over a fence, walked a good distance through the snow, then turned round. She looked at her footsteps, she looked at the car, she shivered. This is it, she thought. This is the situation. Her shoes were wet, her toes cold. An empty car by the side of the road, bare trees, hills, cold. A badger that no longer appears; standing in a pond with water up to my waist, no heavy objects in my pockets. The smell of an old woman in my body. This is it. This is the situation.
42
Once again, there was no one in the waiting room, which was immediately inside the front door. No receptionist; a bell announced that someone had come in. She sat down on one of the four chairs and waited. After about five minutes, when she still hadn’t been called in, she lit a cigarette. She couldn’t hear any voices on the other side of the surgery door. Now and then people walked past the window, looking in inquisitively. There was a clean ashtray and a pile of magazines on a Formica coffee table.
‘Ah, the badger lady.’
She looked up and sighed.
‘Don’t be so dismissive,’ the doctor said. ‘I’m only joking. Come in.’
His desk was empty, there were no documents he had just been working on. She was already so used to people here smoking almost everywhere that she hadn’t stubbed her cigarette out in the waiting room. She did it now, in his half-full ashtray. She looked at the cross, which someone had straightened.
‘Your hair’s nice like that. A bit on the short side.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Shirley is a very experienced hairdresser. What’s more, she’s the last hairdresser.’
She looked at him.
‘So you thought it was necessary now?’
‘What?’
‘Coming to see me.’
‘Yes.’
‘What can I do for you?’
‘Painkillers.’
‘You can get them at the chemist’s. You don’t need me for that.’
‘I’m not talking about aspirin or paracetamol.’ That last word sounded strange. She wasn’t sure it was English.
‘What are you talking about?’
‘That’s for you to say. I have no idea.’
‘Sit down over here first. I need to look at your foot.’
‘There’s nothing wrong with my foot. Not any more.’
‘Please.’
I mustn’t be difficult, she thought. It can’t do any harm. She sat on the bed and took off her wet shoe and sock. The skin of her foot was wrinkled. I could just lie down, she thought. Lie down and surrender and see what happens.
The doctor took hold of her foot. ‘That’s healed beautifully. Has it given you any more trouble?’
‘No. Baking soda does wonders. You were absolutely right.’ She stared over the doctor’s shoulder at the wall. Only now did she realise — perhaps because it was lit from a different angle or because she was now looking at it without really focusing — that the HIV poster showed the torso of a dark-skinned man. Not from the front, but from the side, soft focus, a pert arse. Only now did she understand the ‘Exit Only’ at the bottom. The poster must have been ancient. She wondered why this man had a thing like that hanging in his surgery. She couldn’t imagine it striking a chord with many patients in this small town.
The doctor held her hand and felt her pulse with two fingers. ‘Hmm,’ he said. He took her head between his hands, raised the skin above her eyes with his thumbs and looked into her eyes carefully. Then he ran one hand down her arm, while laying his other on her knee. If I were a non-smoker, she thought, his breath would be incredibly foul. ‘Headache?’ he asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Is that all?’
‘No.’
‘What else seems to be the problem?’ The bell rang in the waiting room. He glanced at the door and took advantage of the interruption to cough, without raising a hand to his mouth.
She slid down off the bed, standing up against him for a brief instant before he took a step back. There was some forgotten stubble on the Adam’s apple in his scrawny neck. For someone who had just laid a hand on her knee, almost like Sam resting his head there, he jumped out of the way extremely quickly. She sat down on the chair and lit a cigarette. For the first time, she felt she had the measure of this man.
The doctor sat down too and wasn’t going to be outdone. Together they sat there smoking. ‘You do realise that I can’t prescribe strong analgesics just like that?’
‘I don’t see why not.’
‘There is such a thing as a medical code of ethics.’
‘That didn’t seem to bother you very much the other day in the hairdressing salon.’
‘Aha. You think I shouldn’t talk to Shirley about my patients? That’s not the same as prescribing medicine without a reason.’
‘Without a reason? Who said that?’ She blew a cloud of smoke in his face.
The doctor blew a cloud back. ‘Then I’ll ask again, what’s the problem?’
‘I’m ill.’
‘How ill?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘You’re not being treated? In Holland?’
‘Of course.’
‘So why won’t you tell me what it is?’
‘It’s none of your business.’
‘I’m a GP. I have to abide by rules and I have a conscience.’
‘I’m a coincidental patient. I might leave again for Holland in the morning. That business with the badger was an incident. I’m a tourist.’
‘Where’s the pain?’
‘Everywhere. Sometimes it’s like toothache through my whole body.’
‘Toothache?’
‘As if you go to the dentist because of the pain and you think you know where it is and the dentist goes to work on a completely different tooth, which surprises you, but the next day the pain is gone.’
‘Hmm.’
‘I smell things too.’
‘That can only be healthy.’
‘No. Things that aren’t there. Or things I imagine and then I really smell them.’
The doctor let that go by. ‘If I prescribe this medication for you…’
She looked at him and tried to guess what he was suggesting. ‘I’m a tourist,’ she said again. ‘I’m here by coincidence alone. I could have gone to a doctor in Bangor just as easily.’