What about having a shite? He lay there and hoped she could see this question floating around as well. She could begod. The Lovely Voice told him he was to tell her when he wanted to move his bowels and she would give him a hand. How in God’s name was the Lovely Voice going to help move his bowels? Was there not a cat eater they could assign that horrible duty to? She took his good hand and guided it back and up towards his head to what felt like a big knob and told him he was to press that when he needed a nurse. She would be going off duty soon but there would always be someone there for him. And then there was the sound of a rattling trolley and a singsong townie voice said Hello love, will you have chicken or beef or pasta salad for your di-nnerrr, and he said Beef, thanks, and the Lovely Voice said she would give him a hand with it if she was still here, sometimes they did this ward first because they were near the kitchen. Johnsey prayed to that treacherous God that they would. If he was going to be spoonfed like a big mangled baby, his mortification may as well be accompanied by the Lovely Voice.
It would soothe you, that voice. You could just lie there, listening, and lose yourself in it. You could pick it out from away down the corridor, and follow its approach in laughs and greetings and delicious words being flung carelessly here and there. And that’s what Johnsey did for the rest of that long Apriclass="underline" he listened for the Lovely Voice and waited for the light to come back. Like the flowers abroad in the gardens, pushing up through the darkness towards the sun.
Some flower he was.
May
MAY IS always lovely, no matter what. You’re meant to seal the borders of your land against piseogs on May Eve by sprinkling holy water on the ditches and praying to Our Lady for protection from badness. May was Daddy’s mother’s name. She was a famous beauty. She could make the stones laugh, too. May was Daddy’s favourite month. Was that because it was the month for which his mother was named? Maybe it was because it was a month of grace and beauty and smells that could make your heart feel like it was going to burst. Daddy wasn’t inclined to explain himself, though; it was his favourite month and that was all there was to it.
There was a May altar abroad in the corridor outside his room. The Lovely Voice told him about it. If you saw the one that put it up, you know, and she decorating Our Lady’s feet with daffodils as much as to say there’s a pair of us in it! She’ll be looking for a halo of her own next. Silly slapper!
SOME THINGS IS easy do, when you have no choice in the world but to do them. Like shiteing into a bedpan, in front of a nurse. Or having bits of you felt and examined and talked about by doctors in quare words that don’t sound like normal English. Thinking about it, it seemed as though it was always that way. It’s easy have things happen to you. All you have to do is exist. Making things happen back is the hard thing. Like words: they’re grand to listen to from other people, and when they’re words spoken by the Lovely Voice they’re like a 99 with a flake in the middle of summer, but it’s fair harder to try to arrange them for yourself. There’s no pleasure in listening to yourself, that’s for sure, only hardship in the knowing of your own stupidity.
The faithful Unthanks came nearly every day to see him. Himself would shuffle around the bed and Herself would tell him sit down and he would huff through his nose like he was annoyed. She would say to Johnsey You poor pet, and Himself would huff again as if in agreement. One day, when he was gone to the jacks or the shop or somewhere, she leaned in closer to Johnsey’s face so that he could smell perfume and bread and Mass off of her and she said Himself never stops talking about it, you know, you getting bet up like that. It’s after upsetting him more than anything ever upset him before in all our lives.
All Johnsey could do was nod.
She said he charged off bald-headed over to the Ashdown Road like a bull, and into the Villas, that first night you were here in the hospital, and he nearly went in the front window of the Penroses’s house and there was four or five of them there, you know, but he saw no fear he was so cross and he effed and blinded and cursed every one of them and told young Penrose if he so much as looked at you sideways ever again it’d be the last thing he ever did, but that crowd only laughed at him.
There was a stinging behind the bandages. Salt on his wounds. Himself came back and she leaned away again. He was huffing more now, after the stairs.
Will you eat a Twix, Johnsey?
I will. Thanks.
A Twix was easy ate.
THE GUARDS had come, of course. A fella with a beard in a shirt and tie — a detective no less — and a skinny lad in a uniform, the Lovely Voice had told him. That was shortly after he had come round. They had asked him what happened and he had told them he didn’t remember too much except the bit of pushing and shoving and he was knocked and a fella he didn’t know with birds on his neck had taken an awful dislike to him, it seemed. The guards laughed a bit at that. They told him don’t worry, they’d come back when he had his sight back and he could look at a photo and formally identify the bird-neck lad, but he had been questioned already and so had his three mates and they had been told in no uncertain terms that they were to stay local. Johnsey told the guards he’d rather they fucked off to be honest and they laughed again and Johnsey nearly felt good about himself for a second or two.
There was a doctor who was a specialist in eyes. He came in most days for a look under his bandages and he’d let a hmm or two out of him and he’d go away again about his business. He sounded foreign. His name was Doctor Fostiwaw or Fastibaw or something quare like that. One day, the Lovely Voice told Johnsey that she just called him Doctor Frostyballs and he laughed so much he could feel his cat eater nearly slipping out. A real card, Daddy would have called her. What would he do when he could see again? When his eyes were right and there were no more worries about his swelled head or his bruised kidneys or his cracked arm, he’d surely be given the road. He wouldn’t be left malinger in this bed, that was for sure. And there’d be no Lovely Voice breezing in and out of the rooms of his cold old house.
PACKIE COLLINS came in to inspect the patient in his bed and Johnsey imagined him with his face scrunched and his nose all wrinkled up and he looking down through it like a fella would look at something that was stuck to the bottom of his shoe. He wanted to know what in the Jaysus was he at, fighting on the street like that? Johnsey didn’t answer him. He there and then made a decision: he would never again darken the co-op door. He’d minded his little job long enough. That must be the secret to making decisions — don’t think about them beforehand, just do whatever makes you feel most like a proper man. Like Daddy in the mart deciding on a beast or your man in ER deciding to leap up on the operating table and ram his hand down a lad’s throat to save his life.
Packie said he’d had to get a little lad in to give him a digout. Things was gone fierce busy. There was going to be a lot of building starting up around and the co-op yard was going to be a sort of a staging area for the builders. A little foreign lad, he is. A good little worker now, mind you. Packie must have gotten over the powerful aversion he had to foreigners. Johnsey said You may hold on to him for good, Packie, I won’t be back to you any more, and the minute he had the words said he started to disbelieve that he had really said them; he listened for an echo of them in his brain and waited to feel them settling back down on his face like the fine mist you’d feel off of that waterfall beside the hotel where Mother’s cousin got married that time when he was a small boy. He started to think he hadn’t said them at all when Packie said Well! Well, well, well. Well, that’s the solid Jaysus finest! Oh begod, don’t worry at all! Sure I was only being foolish thinking Master Cunliffe would appreciate my holding his post open while he recovered from his injuries!