Escher
He’s already thinking of her as he walks the hundred yards to the bus stop, and she’s still troubling his thoughts by the time the bus pulls up. Through three successive bus rides he broods about nothing else. By the time he’s reached the car and begun the snail-paced drive to work remorse and denial are waging pitched battles, each wave of guilt repelled by a counter-wave of excuses. As midday approaches, Daniel’s defences finally give in. Okay, he needs to apologise. Yet somehow, by the time lunch has been queued for, chosen and paid for, eaten and cleared away, he has only ten minutes free-time left. The risk of having to cut her off mid-conversation is too great. He’ll leave it till the afternoon break and phone her then.
It was all down to Alex – having to face the fact that he hadn’t returned after all. And because of getting lost on the way from the ICU, and being plagued by all those shadows of the past. That was why he’d drunk so much, no reflection at all on Gulnaz. And he really regretted leaving her to make her own way home. He’d thoroughly enjoyed her company and, if she’d allow him, he’d love to make it up to her, perhaps tomorrow night (ah no, Saturday: the quarter-final of the pool tournament). Daytime then. And maybe they can do something together for New Year’s Eve. Of course he’d go easy on the alcohol, just a toast for the sake of Auld Lang Syne. They could go to the… (no, not the Millwrights. Vinny’s wine lodge in town. Altogether classier. After all, drunken louts don’t sip white wine spritzers and perch on stainless steel bar stools eating tapas).
It all sounded great. But could he do it? When the three-thirty tea break arrives, a lot sooner than he would have wished, he goes to wash his hands and heads for the public phone by the entrance. For a moment he freezes before the booth, fists clenching and unclenching. A passing customer gives him a funny look; Daniel pretends to check his watch as though waiting for an incoming call. Once the coast is clear he grabs the receiver, only to slam it back in its cradle.
“Yeah, like I’d have known to bring her number with me.”
Gulnaz will have to wait until tonight.
In the end, he does ring her. Several times. First time around he gets her recorded voice and decides it’s too impersonal to leave such an intimate message. Second time, he bottles out before the phone even connects. Third attempt and his courage fails him during the ring tone. Finally, before a fourth excuse can be found, there’s a click and suddenly she is there, her voice sounding exhausted, yet her manner surprisingly soft and welcoming. All at once he’s a shy teenager at the school gates offering to carry the satchel of a first crush. Three openers are launched simultaneously: the remorseful child, the chirpy mate and the cool lover, all churned up into a right scotched broth. Yet amazingly she swallows it – sounds relieved to hear his voice. Of course she understands how difficult it must have been for him yesterday. She’d rather enjoyed the solitude of her walk back along the canal, and her bike ride home from the hospital. She’s glad that he didn’t risk taking the car after so much drink. Tomorrow? She’s working all day at the nursing home, but if he wanted to come over in her break, there’s a nice park opposite where they could sit and chat for half an hour. And she’d have been happy to spend New Year’s Eve with him, but for the fact that again she’s working. The residents are having their own New Year’s Eve knees-up (Daniel has visions of thickly stockinged knees going up very slowly and not very far), so it’s going to be all hands on deck. Maybe she could call round in the morning instead, after church.
They may be titbits she’s throwing him, but the relief from his guilt is more than compensation. He’ll see her tomorrow lunch time then, and, yes, he knows how to find the park.
Anyone who gets to have Prince Albert Gardens on their doorstep must be seriously in the money. God knows what this care home charges its residents. Newlyn House stands imposingly behind ornate, iron gates, just one of the many grand Georgian and Edwardian buildings that surround the park with deep-fronted gardens and high-bricked walls. As Daniel pulls into the drive, Gulnaz is already waiting on the porch. She’s sorted him a parking space and waves him in. She looks nice. The jumper is the one she’d been wearing on their first trip to the hospital, the overcoat the one from their walk into town. But something about the collar is different. As Daniel approaches, a little unsure whether a kiss – even a formal one on the cheek – is permitted, it dawns on him that she probably has her nurse’s uniform on beneath the other clothes. The stuff of dreams.
They cross the quiet, leafy avenue and walk the short distance to the park entrance. He wonders whether they ever let the inmates in through these gates; whether the locals would allow it. Daniel has been here a few times over the years. Prince Albert Gardens (or Prince Albert Gardens, as some wise-guy has renamed it through a judicious painting out of letters) is one of the town’s few true escapes, a world away from the dog-shit and garbage, factories and flats. Given that entry is free, the humorist’s jibe presumably targets the neighbourhood. This is where the moneyed people live: the bankers and lawyers, the university professors, the senior executives, the surgeons and consultants. Who knows, one of those proud brick chimneys breaking surface through the ocean of treetops might even belong to the palatial residence of a certain doctor Prentice.
It’s a thought that must be shoved aside. There are bridges to be built today. It’s important to stay positive. “Of course this place will look better in the spring,” he throws off casually, “but I must say, they’ve not done a bad job with these evergreens.” He proceeds to detail the subtle reds, whites and yellows brought to the borders by pittosporum, photinia, aucuba, dogwood and Christmas box; the hollies and skimmias with their brilliant crimson berries. Textbook stuff, he declares (which is precisely where he’s learnt it. It has been a long hard struggle getting to know his horticulture, and Daniel has never been shy in flaunting it in front of a woman).
Gulnaz nods and wheels around with outstretched glove. “Yes, and a fine spread of oak, cedar, beech, hawthorn, ash and rowan.” She reels off the species in a single sweep. Touché. “Shall we take a stroll?”
Together they follow the winding path, Gulnaz leading the way. The route inscribes a figure of eight, working slowly through the mixed borders, down towards the bandstand. It’s only then that Daniel catches sight of the duck pond beyond – so like the one to which he’d imagined taking his wheelchair-bound twin on his daily outing, rug, drool and all. Two care workers from the home are already there doing precisely that. As Gulnaz approaches, each of them acknowledges her with a wave and inquisitive glance towards Daniel. She returns their greeting but denies them their introductions.
“I’m afraid it’s not exactly private here,” she concedes, drawing Daniel away from the water. “Come on, I know somewhere better.”
She turns her back on the pond and takes him directly uphill to a secluded spot on the edge of a clearing, where a dainty wooden bench has been strategically placed against a backdrop of cedars. She runs a forefinger over a little brass plaque on its top slat.
“‘In memory of John Barnes, who loved to sit here’. So, what came first, the bench or John Barnes’ backside?”
Her riddle makes Daniel laugh. Either way, that backside had made a smart choice. Not only is the seat well sheltered, but it would also have afforded Mr. Barnes a commanding view of the entire park, from east boundary to west and all the way down to the bandstand and duck pond. Gulnaz flops down, pulls a packet of cigarettes from her coat, lights one and offers him the rest.
“No thanks. I didn’t think you would. Being a nurse.”
“It’s only the odd one now and then. After a hard day. It helps me unwind. You don’t?”
He makes a face. No, smoking is one of the few vices that Daniel has never indulged. Too many associations. It was what the big boys at school would do. And Alex – Jesus, before he was nine! Not to mention his mother.
Pulling on the cigarette, Gulnaz begins to offload about the party, the amount of work it has already taken to organise, and how much more there is
still to do. “We’re short-staffed as it is,” she grumbles, “but we’ll be three staff down tomorrow. The place is going to be heaving. They’ve decided that each resident can invite up to two guests. But I suppose we’ll cope, somehow.
“And how about you, Daniel, how are you coping, now you’re so sure that man isn’t Alex?”
“You really want to know? To be honest, it’s a relief.” Daniel drops his head. “I’d kept dreaming up one horrible scenario after another. You know, for the things that might have happened to him. I had this one idea of a man with a dugout in his garden…”
The image of a tortured Alex without teeth, fed nothing but Mars Bars, some burly, sweaty maniac leering over him in the semidarkness of his bunker, puts an immediate stop to the telling.
“And being in a coma like that. I mean, what happens if someone never wakes up? How long before they…? You know. And who decides?”
For the first time in days Gulnaz touches his hand. “Dr Prentice was sure he’ll come round.”
“Yeah, but say he’s all messed up, in his brain. If he’d been Alex, I’d have been the one left to take care of him.” He points back at her workmates. “Doing what those two down there are doing. That could have been me from now on.”
Every weekend for the rest of forever. Goodbye to Sundays at the Millwrights. Goodbye to pie and chips and a leisurely few pints of Pedigree. Goodbye to setting the world to rights around a beer-stained pool table. Hello to responsibilities. Changed priorities. Like becoming a parent to a helpless infant.
Yes, unquestionably a relief.
“Oh, I’m sure it wouldn’t have come to that,” Gulnaz insists. “He’s receiving the best of care. There’s no reason to suggest that the poor man, whoever he is, won’t make a full recovery.” She takes a final drag on the cigarette and stares upwards at the clouds. He watches her lips make an oval, and follows the trail of her smoke slowly disperse until caught by the wind and annihilated. If that unconscious, bedridden stranger is not Alex, then might it be better if he never recovered? Wouldn’t it be easier all-round just to have him deleted from history? To think how close he’d come to ripping out the tubing from the guy’s nose and limbs. The memory of it makes him shudder.
“You’re cold,” she says, as if reading his character as well as his movements. “And I’d best be getting back anyway.”
Apparently, Daniel’s thirty minutes is up.
She stands and turns, brushes ash from her coat. “I’ll call by tomorrow then, shall I? After the service. Unless you fancy coming?”
“No, you’re alright.”
Of course he’s keen to see her again.
But not that keen.
“I’ll meet you at the north gate.”