Feeding time, p.16
Feeding Time, page 16
An almighty thump grounded Cornish and distracted the girl from her work. It seemed to be coming from the stairs. The girl was looking at him, a glimmer of concern in her enquiring eyes. Cornish held a finger to his lips.
A couple of screams rang out. This didn’t sound good. The girl was still looking at him. He shook his head, mouthed ‘wait’. A moment of silence, then a patter of footsteps up the stairs.
Cornish braced. This was it. They were coming for him. A rush of bovver-booted police officers were about to burst into his office, cart him off, lock him up with the prison bugger and throw away the key…
Except it wasn’t his office door that opened, but the closet. Ever since he had mislaid the key he had tried that locked door every morning, and every morning it had refused to yield. But now it did… accompanied by a strange noise, a fierce rush of air, a giant’s inverted snore, that lasted for a few seconds before cutting out as the door slammed shut.
He knew he ought to investigate, but…
‘Cigarette,’ he barked, standing abruptly, clipping the tip of his half-baked hard-on against the lip of the desk. She’d heard him say something, but not what, and grimaced at him to repeat.
‘Cigarette?’ he said again. She squinted at him for a few seconds before nodding.
He handed her a cigarette, struck a match and offered it to her. Cupping his hand in hers and pouting forward, so that the tip dipped into the shivering flame, she accepted. He felt a baptismal fervour, the dark ritual energy of initiation hanging over them. She took a long, slow drag, and then, rather than expelling the smoke, let it escape from her at its own rhythm, lazing out of her mouth in luxuriant arabesques. She looked as if she had been doing it a hundred times a day for the past half-century. When had teenagers become so damned sure of themselves? It was almost obscene how at ease they seemed in their skins. Wasn’t adolescence supposed to be the time when one was humbled by the world? That was how it had been in his day – at least, how it had been for him. His stomach still turned when he thought back to the failures and humiliations of that time. They had begun with Lisa, his first love, who had spitefully rebuffed his request for a dance at the end of term disco the summer before Whitby…
‘What’s under there?’ the girl asked, nodding at the sheet. Cornish pulled it back, revealing the model. As she stooped to examine it, her arm pressed against his hip.
‘Funny,’ she said. Cornish stooped too.
‘What’s funny?’
‘That whoever made the model didn’t take the time to finish it. Why would you paint patches of the walls and the roof like that, and not finish it off?’
She was right. There were painted patches. Painted, in fact, in quite splendid detail: sections of the brickwork pranked with lichen, a minuscule smother of bird shit on the roof tiles. How odd that he had forgotten…
‘My house looks kind of like a model from here,’ she said, crossing to the window and gesturing at Meanwell with her cigarette. ‘Next to the church.’ Cornish didn’t want her to see him squinting, so he just nodded. ‘My bedroom’s in the roof.’
His heart flexed against his ribcage. She had mentioned her bedroom. He knew the code, but did she?
‘What’s your name?’ he said, so as to put off the question he really wanted to ask, the question that could mean the difference between liberty and incarceration. She smiled.
‘You’re Raymond, right? Raymond Cornish.’
‘Right,’ Cornish said. ‘How did you…?’
‘Every kid in Meanwell knows your name.’
‘They do? How?’
She hesitated, then mumbled something.
‘What?’ Cornish said. ‘What was that?’
Her cheeks were burning.
‘Raymond Cornish,’ she said, clearer this time, though still shyly. ‘King of the Crazies.’
Cornish lifted his cigarette to his lips and, after a long drag, left it hanging from his mouth, planting both hands on his hips. Was that what all these years of quiet service to the sick and dying earned you? Raymond Cornish, King of the Crazies – he could already hear the children chanting it as the refrain of some villainous playground game. And there was undoubtedly some vicious parental whispering that had led them to it. All those years of boring tie-sporting, invisible hat-doffing, sensible hair-wearing effort to be considered a beacon of normality, and this was how they thought of him in Meanwell: Raymond Cornish, King of the Crazies. How little one knew about the role one played in other people’s stories. If he had been pushed, he might have guessed he was seen as a kind of Micawberish everyman. Or, at worst, a Walter Mitty. But it seemed Boo Radley would have been a safer bet. He would even have preferred Dracula.
‘But in fact, you’re not crazy, are you?’ she said, turning to face him, letting a curtain of smoke rise from her mouth like some fantastic, inverted waterfall, and enwrap his face. He was about to agree, then stopped himself. Who was he to say? After all, none of the Greys – not even Ruggles – would have confessed to even the slightest lack of lucidity. Perhaps the first sign of madness was convincing oneself, unequivocally, that one wasn’t mad. He swiped the cigarette from his lips, rocked back on his heels and laughed. How gloriously free her words had rendered him. As if, with that one revelation, that one quick slice of her tongue, she had amputated a hump that had been weighing on his shoulders for years. If the parents were determined to make a monster out of him, they shouldn’t be surprised when he came for their children…
He reached out and ran his hand up her neck, into her hair, stopping when her quail’s-egg inion rested in his palm. Under his touch he felt her tense at first, but she didn’t pull away. Then, shifting her shoulders, she relaxed and just let her head be cupped.
‘How old are you?’ he asked, massaging her skull with his fingertips. She hadn’t looked at him since he had taken hold of her head.
‘Fifteen. Sixteen next month.’
An unparalleled joy coursed through his body.
‘Let’s celebrate your birthday together,’ he said.
5
‘Skulduggery!’
‘Keep it down, you old bastard!’
‘Skulduggery, I said!’
‘What’s wrong, Windsor?’
‘I can’t see a blasted,
buggering thing, Betty!’
‘Night’s always darkest
before the dawn, Sir.’
‘Codswallop!’
‘Lanyard! Smithy!
Let him speak.’
‘It’s half past eight in the morning.
Where’s the bloody sunlight?’
‘Blind!
Someone help me!
I’m blind!’
‘Olive, shhh. It’s alright…’
‘Hold up, Windsor!
How do you know the time if…?’
‘It’s not alright, Dot.
I can’t make out anything.’
‘None of us can, woman!’
‘Somebody throw the curtain!’
‘Nothing.’
‘We’re all blind then.
They drugged the meat!
The little shits!’
‘Olive, nobody drugged the food.’
‘Naive, Dot. Naive!
‘Windsor, what makes you
say it’s half past eight?’
‘Body clock, Smithy.’
‘Tick tock, Field Marshall.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Timepieces are of the essence, here.’
‘You’d better shut your
bleeding trap, man!
‘Both of you!
Shut your bleeding traps!’
‘Easy, Bets.’
‘He’s right, though. I
know because…’
‘Speak up!’ ‘Speak up!’
‘My morning motion. It’s starting.’
‘Oh Jesus!’
‘What was that?’
‘Eeeeeeeeeeee!’
‘Olive!’
‘My lighter.
Whoever saw it can’t be blind.’
‘I saw it, Betty!’
‘Which means I’m tempted
to second Windsor?’
‘Second him, Bets?’
‘I think he’s right, Dot.
There’s something wrong.’
‘Now what?’
‘I suppose we should organise…’
‘Form a…’
‘Council of War?
Splendid idea, Soldiers.’
‘Oh, this won’t end well!’
‘Atten’hut! All those awake say aye!’
‘Aye!’
‘Aye!’
‘Aye!’
‘Uh huh!’
‘Yup!’
‘All present and correct,
Field Marshall.’
‘Now… huck! heurk!
Excuse me… Heeeuurrrk!’
‘Are you alright, sir?’
‘Fine, fine!
Now, it’s ten to nine in the
morning, and none of us
can see a blasted thing.’
‘Door’s bolted too!’
‘Thank you, Smithy.’
‘And the windows.
There’s nothing outside.’
‘Blackout! This could be
the end game. Our boys
advancing over the tundra!’
‘Nonsense, you cretin!’
‘If anything this is a black-in.’
‘With all due respect,
Field Marshall. Watch… it!’
‘Stop your squabbling!
We need to organise!’
‘Quite right, Bets!
I’m famished.’
‘And Lanyard isn’t the only
one with morning motions.’
‘Enough with the potty talk!
Organise we must.
Being too unwell myself,
I nominate Ruggles.’
‘Me, Field Marshall?’
‘Sir? Are you sure that he…?
Of all people?’
‘Desperate times, Lanyard.’
‘But, Sir? Him?’
‘Do you accept the charge, Colonel?’
‘Sir! I really must…’
‘Captain!’
‘Don’t make me regret this.’
‘I accept.’
‘All those in favour?’
‘Aye!’
‘Aye!’
‘Aye!’
‘Hmm!’
‘Carried with aplomb!
I humbly accept.’
‘Now, if you’ll excuse me,
I do feel rather un…’
‘Question!’
‘What now… Smithy?’
‘You still haven’t told us
what makes you so damned
certain it’s morning.’
‘Surely that became moot the
moment we decided to organise.’
‘Moot?’
‘Moot.’
‘Moot, Smithy! Moot!’
‘Shut it, Lanny. How is it moot?’
‘Drop it, dear.’
‘All I’m saying, Bet’s,
is that it’s hardly…’
‘Can’t we get on with…’
‘… he said ten to nine. Ten to!
No body clock is that accurate.’
‘Do… you… MIND?’
‘Yes… I… DO!’
‘Darling, please!’
‘Field Marshall. Time to own
up wouldn’t you say?’
‘Own up?’
‘About the watch?’
‘What watch? Who’s got a…’
‘Smithy, ssshhh!’
‘Bastard!
Nosy, bloody, buggering bastard!
After what I just did for you.’
‘He’s got a watch?’
‘After what you’ve been
doing these last months.’
‘And what’s that supposed to…’
‘Delivering intelligence to the enemy.
For a few poxy home comforts.’
‘Windsor?’
‘It’s only a watch, for
goodness sake!
Shouldn’t go nosing about other
people’s things like that.’
‘Shouldn’t go around selling
out your own side to the
rat-faced Nazi…’
‘Captain!’
‘Easy Bets!’
‘Windsor?
Do you have a watch?’
‘It was Sheila’s.’
6
Beneath the plaster, Dot’s leg had come alive. Twitching, fluttering, prickling with pain as if her body was conducting a series of experiments on itself. How alien that hidden limb had become to her these last weeks, without her even realising it. It was as if that part of her body had been erased, tippexed out. If she’d been told that beneath that plaster boot there was nothing but hot air and sawdust, bad breath and cobwebs, she would have had no trouble believing it… At least until now. Now it was pulsing into existence again. Now you feel it, now you don’t! It could have gone either way – reappearing fully formed, or vanishing again, and for good this time.
The intrusion of an outsider’s name into the ward was overwhelming. Olive howled, Smithy panted, even Betty whimpered. Dot felt sick to her stomach. It churned and clenched just as it had when, as a small girl, her father had told her that they – all of them, somehow, even though she hadn’t done anything – were at war.
‘Who is this Sheila?’ Lanyard asked, with a tremor of jealousy.
‘My wife,’ Windsor said after a long pause. ‘I had a wife and her name was Sheila.’ It rang like a confession.
‘And they let you keep her watch?’ Betty asked. Dot couldn’t tell if the noise Windsor made was a deep and pained sigh, or just the tracheal tube sabotaging his breath.
‘After she went blind, the doctors gave her a Braille watch. This one. Sometimes she’d get so frustrated she would hurl the bloody thing against the wall. But it never broke. In the end…’ – he sniffed back a balloon of snot – ‘…in the end she mastered it. After that, she never took it off. It kept her connected to the world. She could use her fingertips to see the sun rise and set again. See the moon too. After she… After, I would wear it myself, but then they banned watches. I wasn’t going to let them take it, so I hid it…’
‘Up your jacksy?’ the Captain chirped.
Windsor wheezed with laughter. Dot had never heard him laugh before.
‘No, Ruggles. I hid it under my pillow. But they found it, of course. That’s when we came to our… agreement. I’m truly sorry about that.’
The Captain sniffed. As close to a conciliatory handshake as he could muster just then.
‘This watch is all I’ve got left of our fifty-two years together. How could I let them take it? Once it’s gone, she’s gone. If I lose it, she vanishes. Without it, remembering her would be like grasping at a puff of smoke…’
Windsor paused again. His throat was acting like a blocked ballcock, stopping his words.
‘Oh! It’s no bloody fun getting old, is it? Living in a body held up by corns, by calcium deposits, by scars, gas, snot, by… by plastic body implements! That’s the one advantage of the crab, I suppose. After it has you in its pincers it gets to work, transforming you, slowly, until, at one moment or another, you transcend all your other ailments and all that is left is the cancer…’
‘Edward!’
Dot may have drifted off for a moment.
‘Edward!’ It was Betty. ‘That was my husband’s name.’ And she laughed, a deep burble of exultation. ‘How strange it feels to say it after all this time. Edward, Ed… ward. Eddy, too. Sometimes Eduardo, when I was feeling… Well, you know.’
The air in the ward was thick with transgression. Dot felt giddy with it. Afraid too. Afraid of what might be asked of her. Afraid of how they would react upon learning that her husband had been so close by these last three months and she hadn’t seen him once. How could she explain that to them? She couldn’t even explain it to herself.
‘Vera!’ It was Olive.
‘Who’s Vera, Ol’?’ Betty called from across the ward.
‘Who do you think?’ she cried. ‘Me! I’m Vera. You don’t need to know my husband’s name. Better off forgotten now, the miserable old bastard. But my name – mine! – is Vera.’
‘Vera’s a lovely name,’ Dot said, puzzled. ‘Why do you call yourself Olive?’
‘Call myself?’ she said. ‘Call myself nothing! Why would I call myself Olive Oil? I’m Olive for the same reason he’s Windsor and he’s the Blacksmith. For the same reason you’re Dorothy!’
‘I… I don’t…’
‘The baptism,’ Lanyard said.
‘The what?’ Her chest contracted, as if suddenly attempting to expel some parasitic kernel of knowledge. All around her the people she thought she knew were guttering like spent candles.
‘Oh dear. You still don’t remember, do you?’
‘Remember what, Betty?’
‘It happens… to the best.’
‘Your baptism. The tin bath? The awful naming ceremony? That brute? How you became Dorothy?’ She sung, softly: ‘We’re off to see the Wizard…’
‘I didn’t become… I’ve always been…’
Had she? Of course she had. Hadn’t she? Surely she would remember if she’d once been called… something else.
‘I didn’t remember mine either,’ Olive said consolingly. ‘Not at first. Not until I heard them doing yours, Bets. Then it all came rushing back.’
‘And I got off lightly,’ Betty said.
‘The others I understand,’ Lanyard said. ‘I never got yours, Betty.’
It took Dot a moment to realise the sound she could hear was Smithy’s rough, butcher’s hands against his bare chest. Then – ‘Looky looky yonder… Looky looky yonder… Looky looky yonder… Where the sun done gone’ – Perfectly imitating the drawl of a Mississippi bluesman. ‘Wooah Oh! Black Betty!’
