Thurlestone
“But why couldn’t you? Surely Prentice would have let you go. Okay, okay, so he’s not your boss. Whoever, then. No, I’m not. I just felt let down… Well, because I needed you there.”
Daniel makes a scowl at Alex, rocking his head like a metronome.
“Yes, yes, if you must. Bye.”
He doesn’t quite slam down the phone.
“That was Gulnaz,” he grunts. “One of your ex nurses. Said she was too busy in the children’s ward to see you off. She’s on her way over. Probably to check that I haven’t accidentally killed you.”
Barely has Daniel sat down and caught up with the game show again when the main front door buzzer sounds. Just getting back on his feet feels like torture, and the walk from the bedroom, through the kitchen, out of the flat and across the lobby seems as interminable as the walk of shame over which he’s just taken such voyeuristic pleasure. At the threshold, he and Gulnaz glare at each other, the pair of them visibly wilting with fatigue and all but keeling forward and buttressing the other for support. Only the force of their gaze keeps their heads from touching – like repelling magnets. Somewhere along the way, someone’s pole has been reversed.
“What’s all that stuff doing out here?” Gulnaz asks, allowing Daniel to break eye contact. Surprisingly, no-one has yet reclaimed the junk he’d turfed out.
“Just clutter.”
Released from the standoff, Gulnaz takes a step forward and brushes against his shoulder. Daniel turns and leads her through to his flat.
“How is he?”
“He’s fine, of course. I told you, I’m taking care of him. It’s all sorted.”
She sees the new door handles and there’s a shift in her mood. A near smile expands into a yawn.
“I’d like to say hello, if he’s not resting.”
Daniel indicates the lounge. “Looks like you could do with a drink. Want one?”
At first she shakes her head, then rubs her temples. “Actually, yes. Tea, please, black.”
She steps out of sight and shuts the door. The sound of her voice drifts through from the sitting room, but not the words. When Daniel lays the mugs down on the kitchen table and calls to her she fails to appear, only giving some indistinct answer before resuming her muted conversation. When she does emerge her face is like thunder. Very deliberately, she pulls the door closed behind her, places herself on the far side of the table and folds her arms.
“What?”
“You can’t leave him like that. He’ll go insane! No TV, no radio, no music, nothing to read. And for goodness sake, most of the time he’s going to be in bed. The folding bed was meant for you, not for Alex. He must have your room. A proper bed. And everything else.”
She shouldn’t be tackling it this way. Not on day one. She should be winning him over: allowing him to show off his DIY handiwork, acknowledging his achievements in getting everything ready and, crucially, offering an apology for having failed to show up at the hospital. Maybe then he could just about tolerate some criticism. But not handled like this.
“Have you any idea what kind of a day I’ve had?” he barks out.
She gestures to shush him. “Of course I have, Daniel. I do this every day. I know just how demanding it is. It’s why I never thought it was a good idea. I saw this coming the moment you told me what you planned to do.”
“Oh, you did. Well, clever you. And what would you have done? Prentice wanted him kicked out, anyway. You’d rather see him begging on the streets, is that it?”
Gulnaz turns her back. “Shall we talk outside? It’s not good for Alex to overhear this.”
That’s fine by him. In the kitchen, on the doorstep, all gathered cosily together around Alex’s bed, whatever she prefers. So long as everyone knows just where they stand.
Out in the forecourt now, Daniel braces himself against the wall, leaving Gulnaz with her back to the night.
“All I’m saying is you need to give him a better deal. I know it’s a sacrifice, but that was your choice. Look, there’s something Dr Prentice perhaps should have made clearer.” The little shiver in her shoulders might only be the cold, or might mean something more. “There was really nothing else the hospital could have done. They believe Alex’s illness isn’t physical. They think he’s suffering from a psychological condition brought on by trauma – his brain’s way of protecting him from some terrible ordeal he’s been through.”
“Maybe so, but…”
“Under no circumstances should Alex be put under any unnecessary stress. We’ve got to lower his anxiety levels. He was making good progress in the hospital, but there’s a real danger now of a relapse.”
She shuts him up with that. Having already witnessed Alex’s response to interrogation, Daniel has no desire to see it repeated. So, what is she saying – it’s all in his mind? Nothing really wrong with him at all? Alex is putting them all through this just to escape a memory? Okay, a stroke was one thing. A stroke was nobody’s fault. Or a blood clot pressing on the brain and causing blackouts or personality changes. But to con himself into a coma, into paralysis, to cripple his own powers of speech just to escape a memory, surely Alex hadn’t the capacity – or the gall – to do that.
“In time, he’ll probably need some psychiatric help, followed up with counselling. They’re very good at it these days. It’s what the police get, and the army, if they’ve suffered or seen terrible things. It’s called Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. It’s…”
“Okay, okay, I know what it is. You’ve made your point; I’ll swap the rooms around. We don’t need any quacks snooping around here, thank you. Alex just needs time with me. I’ll have found a way into his head long before anyone else would even get close. You’ll see.”
There’s nothing more to be said. Daniel turns to go back inside. Gulnaz might well have foreseen their encounter ending this way. She’s left nothing in the flat and has no reason to follow after him. He closes the door on her without a word.
The remorse kicks in just a little too late. A minute sooner, and he could have called her back from the driveway. He could have apologised for his rudeness, held her in his arms and kissed her. Because of course she was right about Alex. If only she’d eased off a bit, been a little less intolerant. All this is so new to him – there are bound to be mistakes to start with. This is the worst possible time for them to be falling out. If ever he’s needed someone, someone with specialist skills, someone with whom he could share his innermost thoughts, then it’s now. He massages his face with both hands and groans. Perhaps he can ring her later, once things have cooled off a bit. But first he has to sort out this whole bloody fiasco. He sniffs and runs his knuckles along his spine.
In itself, making the change will be no big deal. Alex’s bed has not yet been slept in; both sets of towels are unused. There’s stuff in his room he’ll need to remove, but much of it can stay. When he needs clothes from his wardrobe he’ll go and get clothes. He’ll return the music system to the lounge but leave the TV. He kicks again at the bikes on his way back inside and grazes his right foot.
Lying sleepless on the hard and noisy springs, staring up at the centre swirl of Artex, Daniel comes to a decision. For hours he’s been thinking about Gulnaz and the things she’d said. Suddenly it made everything so much more complicated. Before, it was a straightforward case of nursing Alex back to physical health and coaching him to talk again. Now it turns out that all his ailments stem from the same place – his sick mind. It made curing him so much the harder. Thinking of his own therapy sessions, he’d wondered what Joan would do in his shoes. Maybe she would judge it best to leave things firmly buried. But then nobody would ever know what had taken place up on the cliff, or where Alex had been hiding ever since, or how he’d found his way to their mother’s grave. Could Daniel cope with never knowing? Or maybe Joan would spin her web of clever words, stir up memories and feelings – like she’d done in the sessions – in order to persuade Alex to reveal all. But at what cost to his health and
sanity? All so way beyond Daniel’s comprehension; he didn’t even pretend to understand it. He could only hope that in the one short month he had to devote to this job, his instinct might show him the way – and that he too wouldn’t go crazy in the process.
Out go the streetlights, and the lounge falls into darkness. Across the black screen before him their sprint to the cliffs begins again. He may have watched it a thousand times, but the details are always changed – those he can’t remember newly invented around those that he can. Sometimes it’s a road down which they run, sometimes a sandy track. Sometimes they see the boat from the beach before arriving at the cliff tops; other times they reach the edge from across neatly manicured hills. Always Daniel runs breathlessly in the wake of his faster brother. But then this other memory, the one that only surfaced when Alex was found at the graveside, which throws everything else into question – his mother running ahead of him. Something about that memory refuses to fit; where she was and what was she doing while they played their games, and how next thing she’s on the scene, first to arrive, first to find the glove.
This is why, just before drifting off to sleep, he makes up his mind. For better or for worse, the moment Alex is fit enough they must drive down to Devon. Together they will revisit the scene of the fall. For Alex, it might prove to be the very miracle he needs to escape the grip of his trauma. For Daniel, it might be a chance to put each piece of the jigsaw once and for all into its proper place.
In the dead of night their journey begins. The three of them, Alex, himself and Gulnaz, are retracing the pathway from the village to the shore. The wheelchair bumps along the rough track, Daniel guiding and Alex feigning the moves with his fingers perilously close to the spokes. Gulnaz seeks out the safest route ahead of them. They can already hear the waves as a glistening steel horizon pops up from behind the hillock. Gulnaz pulls off her shoes and socks and picks her way down onto the beach till her toes are tickled by foam. She and Daniel now stare up from the water’s edge to the towering cliff face beside them, its forehead of crumbling shale fringed by treacherous grass. But the chair is no longer at Daniel’s hands. The two of them stand alone. A gull takes flight at a disturbance in the gorse bushes high up on the rocks, sending a cascade of small stones down into the water. A figure, no, a carriage – but containing a figure, pushes through the branches and teeters to a halt at the very lip; nothing beneath but a few centimetres of soil. Alex is trying to stand. He’s seen something down below. He’s pointing. He’s dropping to his knees. He’s trying to call, trying to form the words.
The images dissolve, leaving only a disembodied voice in their wake. Every muscle in Daniel’s body aches like buggery. Someone has glued his eyelids together. Slowly he prises them apart; the swimming clock-face reads 4:19. So this is it: the cold reality of being a carer once more. How tempting just to ignore the cry, just to bury his head in the pillow and wait for Alex to tire. How many times had his wretched mother woken him this way? How many times had he missed registration and assembly by oversleeping, how many detentions for lateness and poor concentration, all thanks to another night of broken sleep? But what was the saying – ‘You’ve made your bed and now you must lie in it’?
They couldn’t have got it more wrong.
He fumbles around for his trousers in the curtained darkness, then wanders, fly-zipping into the kitchen. The worktop fluorescent that Gulnaz had told him to leave on at nights throws its light through Alex’s open doorway. The room is empty. A second light summons from the hallway. Incredibly, Alex must have got himself out of bed and all the way to the toilet unaided. Daniel discovers him squatting there, pyjamas around ankles, wheelchair and sliding board off to one side. It takes a moment to register the problem. Oh, please God, no. Daniel doesn’t do bottoms. He does not do bottoms.
Kindred spirits. The same DNA. Try not to think about it. Just make sure to use lots and lots of paper…