S'alright

Clare Knaggs: twenty-three, qualified and benchmarked, a Social
Services care-worker, in a residential unit for six mature adults with
learning-disabilities - why should she feel bad about that, as if it
were something to be ashamed of? She was proud to be. Who were they,
her so called friends - and especially Jaki - to criticise her? If she
didn't find her work as rewarding as she did she couldn't have been
good at it. She wouldn't have been offered the post of acting
unit-manager otherwise, for when Beth went on maternity leave.
Clare thumped both arms of her armchair hard and exclaimed loudly, as
if there were no one else present, "Ohhh . . .!" and it woke Fi up, the
Downs woman stretched out on the sofa. Wasn't she always asleep,
though, this time of night; yet would never go to bed?
Fi groaned irritably; it may have been a word, though probably not,
Clare thought.
At the same time, Michael, sitting in the armchair next to Clare's,
leapt to his feet; his fireman's helmet he always wore for London's
Burning slipped down over his eyes, and he did speak.
"Made me jump, Clare," he told her. "Made me jump."
He didn't think to correct his helmet. He stood there looking at its
inside, as if she'd turned the lights out on him; he couldn't move
until they'd come back on again.
She apologised.
Fi swung her legs over the edge of the sofa and started whining. Her
knees were aching. Though, actually, Clare didn't care a damn right
now. Fi was always complaining that her knees ached, and if they did,
well then, really, whose fault was that but her own? For being so
obese; for not bothering to exercise as she should. Not bothering to
walk anywhere unless there was food in it for her.
But of course she didn't say that. She said what she always said, and
that in that same honeyed voice she pitched just so and knew was
condescending thus passively disabling. Hadn't she herself, only
recently, done a Communication Skills presentation for the team?
"Are you ready for bed, Fi?" she said.
To which Fi, agitated by it as always,
"S'alright . . ."
If she would surprise her just the once, Clare thought. It was
ridiculous, a thirty-seven-year-old not allowing herself to go to bed
until everybody else in the house had gone. No matter she's a
Downs.
"Michael," she said, "you can sit down now."
"Made me jump," he said. "Poor Michael . . ."
"I did say I was sorry," she said. "Put your hat straight."
"Knees . . ." moaned Fi.
"Oh, for goodness sake, Fi!" she said. "If your knees are hurting that
badly, well just . . . go to bed, why don't you. Honestly!"
Even before she'd finished saying that, Clare was chiding herself.
Wasn't that just the kind of short-tempered manner that others on the
team had?; one of the chief reasons they hadn't been chosen to cover
the unit when Beth went off to have her baby.
She thought she had better take herself out of the living-room, away
from Fi, and Michael.
Down the hallway to the kitchen then, for the third time since dinner -
or was it the fourth? She didn't like to think.
Clare opened the fridge, and on the top shelf still was the helping of
stodgy blancmange Michael hadn't wanted after dinner. Well, he wasn't
going to be eating it now: it had gone nine o'clock. All his teeth
would rot in the night, they'd fall out in his sleep and he would choke
on them. His mother had told him so.
She ate the blancmange standing, facing the fridge. Only when she'd
finished eating, then she shut the door. She threw the bowl into the
sink to wash up later, and, as she passed the fridge again, opened it
again and broke the corner off a bar of chocolate she didn't know whose
was. The biscuit-barrel then; the cupboard for a packet of crisps.
Although she did only eat a handful; the rest of the packet she threw
down on the table.
"Wholesome . . .!" she said.
Hadn't she laughed along with everybody else when Jaki'd said that? Of
course she understood, entirely. Clare's father was a local GP -
personally known to Jaki, and others of the group - and her mother a
local magistrate; that also known now, evidently. Of course Jaki would
hold that against Clare. As if she didn't bear grudges enough already,
though, or think she had reason to: two babies taken from her by Social
Services and put out to foster. Clare wasn't self-righteous, though, or
smug; she wasn't a prig. She'd laughed. Jaki wouldn't have had their
roles been reversed.
From the guys Clare had respect. She could say that at least. She was
adored, albeit in that peculiarly filial way. Most of them were older
than her; they all were, in fact. Perhaps it was because she didn't
take drugs and only very rarely drank, she thought. When had she so
much as smoked a cigarette in front of any of them? And of course her
never sleeping with any of them . . .
Although she had held them in her arms, she recollected now, had rocked
each of them almost as if they were babies whilst they had confided
their innermost to her. Mac and Dave, at any rate - the Bains brothers:
she'd only just caught herself in time smiling at some of the childhood
hardships Dave was pleading; then the following week, guessed there
were others behind him in what was turning out to be a queue for her
affections! Well, she supposed, what else could she expect, having as
good as wet-nursed Mac just the week previous? As genuinely upset as
he'd been at the time - Jaki knocking him back again - of course he
would have told Dave, making a boast of it. Won't boys be boys after
all.
So she did understand why Jaki felt threatened by her.
Ohh . . .! though, it didn't bear thinking about; she only was because
she was here, in this house with so little to do.
During the day, when there were two on shift - or three, sometimes -
time passed almost too quickly, there was so much on. But shifts such
as this, night-times, with nobody to talk to, it was all so boring, so
predictable. Of all the folks, it was only Fi, and sometimes Michael,
who even made use of the living-room. After they'd washed up the
dinner-things the others went to their rooms to watch t.v.; would stay
put until who knew when, if you didn't go rouse them in the mornings
with their medication? They'd starve themselves before coming out
again!
And still there was nothing in the fridge: if she didn't do something,
though!
And then she remembered: upstairs in the sleeping-in room, what was in
her duffle-coat pocket. She had forgotten to give it back to Simon,
last night after he had been oh-so kind as to walk her home from the
Cross Keys, the others all heading back to Jaki's. It was quite
incredible, she thought, that he himself had forgotten to ask for
it.
Halfway up the stairs to the sleeping-in room she even wondered if it
was she herself who was mistaken? Pulling open the heavy landing
fire-door, had she forgotten that in fact she had given him his tin
back? But in her mind she'd gone over that walk home with Simon so many
times already - last night at home, as well as today; she knew she
couldn't have forgotten. Well, if he's missing it, she thought, it's
nobody's fault but his own!
And then she found herself reliving the walk again.
Outside the pub, when he'd first made the offer, she had not been
entirely sure of his intentions. He knew she still lived with her
parents, didn't he? Jaki had made a point of telling him. Why then run
the risk of bumping into her mother? Again.
Back in the Cross Keys, Mac, his cousin, had made a presentation of
Simon, slapped him hard on the back on their arrival and proudly
announced that here he was, back in the country only what - a month,
was it? - and already been up for possession; had been fined, in fact.
Dave had introduced Clare shortly after - by her full name, in order to
crack the usual jokes - though Simon hadn't laughed; instead, Knaggs?
he'd said. Not daughter of Hilary K. Knaggs?
But no, the way he'd been regarding her all evening, there could only
have been one reason for his offering. She was flattered in spite of
herself, not a little thrilled in a terribly little girlish kind of a
way she didn't like having to admit to now.
But what if that hadn't been his intention, to come inside when they
got home? What if it had been purely and simply to say what he did at
the gate?
Still, to have forgotten his own gear!
The first road they'd turned down alone together, there'd been a police
car parked up ahead. It broke his stride.
Give it to me, she said, and quite properly, she thought, he had
refused to, though not without a measure of first surprise - umbrage
taken almost, at her presumption - then swiftly softening gratitude:
that slow-spreading lopsided grin she had begun to find so winning -
bashful yet mischievous, too: quietly knowing, she thought.
Shaking his head, he'd walked on ahead of her a little way.
Come, she said. Chances are I know them, as if of course they wouldn't
dream of searching me!
Why had she said that? It was a lie. There was no reason on earth for
her to have known them.
Still he wasn't sure.
But she reached out and tugged at his arm, pulled him back abreast of
her, and then he did, just slip it to her, into her pocket - not a lump
of gear on its own, but a tobacco-tin. And by the time they'd drawn
level with the police car, their arms were linked; she was laughing.
Too gaily, he was thinking; she sensed that in how tense he had become,
and, not a little perversely, that pleased her, she had to admit.
The policeman kerb-side of the car was winding down his window now,
going to stop them and say something. Though she put in before he
could, had she fallen fowl of the law, ossifer, for laughing so, guilty
of weckless happiness and abandon perhaps?; giggling and reeling
drunkenly as she said it as if needing Simon's support. Hiccoughing,
she covered her mouth, and apologised.
See her home safely to bed now! the policeman had said, or words to
that effect; and the relief she had felt, flooding through Simon. He
relaxed his shoulders; the muscles in his arm softened.
She said then, teasing,
Well, dress the way you do and you're bound to draw attention to
yourself.
Yep! That's England! he said. That's here. That's me away again out of
here!
She put the tobacco-tin down on the desk and sat down before prising
the lid off. It was unlike any other tin she had seen before, the lid
home-laminated with Fimo, intricately if whimsically designed, in
spirals and waves and variously shaped concentric arrangements, in how
many colours it was impossible to say; though the aggregate was
mandala-like. And once opened, the smell it gave off: in itself it was
heady; being lined with a soft piece of leather cut perfectly to
measure, that and tobacco combined. She found she liked it. At one end,
flat and wedged widthways, beneath the tobacco, a single packet of blue
rizla showing through; at the other end, in a corner, a thimble-sized
silver pillbox. She picked that out, and pinched the lid off.
It hadn't crossed her mind that he might have been carrying something
more than hash: tabs. And why was that? Because at the bar, when she'd
asked Mac, he'd told her it was only possession of hash that he'd been
charged with; as if Oh, Simon wouldn't dream of touching hard drugs?
But she knew they never bothered to prosecute for hash. She should have
guessed; it would've had to be for something more serious. Mac hadn't
had to lie, though. Why had he? Because of what she'd said when Gordie
induced schizophrenia, and wound up in Fairmile? Honestly! He could
make her feel like such a fuss sometimes.
But Simon knowingly having let her carry his class A's for him!
She put the tab back in the pillbox, the pillbox back in the tin, and
from its other corner picked out that nugget of hash she had been
expecting to find, that was light in weight despite its size. Holding
it up to the light the cellophane it was wrapped in made it glint
prettily, like a misshapen mirror-ball, she thought, if she squinted at
it just so.
Of course she herself had never smoked - or toked, she should say -
though not because she was a prude or was afraid to. Hash is harmless;
everybody knew that. She had only never tried it because she didn't
want to get hooked on tobacco. Now that is an insidious drug.
She wondered though, she couldn't help but: since hash is that
harmless, and if there ever were a time to try it, just the once. A
Sunday night. Everything was done: medication given and signed for,
reports written - nobody would be calling round now.
She knew how to roll. She'd seen it done countless times; and who said
a spliff had to be rolled in that fancy multi-papered way, anyway? A
single paper could be used just as well - she'd seen it, when there
hadn't been much hash left and they'd had to eke it out; plus of course
there would be less tobacco to smoke doing it like that.
All this while, she had been picking at the cellophane, and with some
tenacity evidently, because it was unwrapped now. It smelt like burnt
sausages.
Then a noise from along the corridor made her start and snap her fist
shut tight around it. Colin leaving his room, and letting the door
slam.
Instinctively she swept the tin off the desk into a drawer, spilling
tobacco. He'd ask what she was doing; he knew Clare didn't smoke - he
knew that smoking wasn't allowed in the house full-stop.
But she heard the toilet-door open, close and lock, and watched her
fist unclench again, slowly.
Just the one, she thought. It was like a sign, Simon's having left it
with her; and when might she have the opportunity again - without
others present to make her awkward and self-conscious?
Colin, on his way back to his room, was shouting, "Mrs Thatcher!" and
"Off with her head!" and laughing his deep belly-laugh. Then his
high-pitched laugh he had to suck in for: he'd have one elbow raised
high, palm turned flat against his cheek. "Not my head, please.
Hamsters!" he said.
And then she realised, Damn!; she didn't have a lighter.
There were matches here someplace, though. She knew. She'd seen
some.
She checked the desk's drawers one by one, but found nothing. No, let's
do this properly. She started again, and this time was more thorough.
She moved whatever she did find out of the way: note-pads, stapler,
hole-punch, paper-clips, cellotape . . . Bingo! The very first drawer
she'd checked in the first place. Under a box of drawing-pins.
Did that mean others of the team on their sleep-ins smoked in here
regardless of the house rule? She'd never considered the possibility
before. Probably, she thought. It wouldn't surprise her. Beth was
pregnant and smoked cigarettes - if that didn't stop her.
"Hamsters!" Colin was shouting still, and, "Mrs Thatcher!"
I want what he's on, Beth had said more than once. Clare wouldn't have
put it past Beth to have had the odd spliff herself whilst on sleep-in
duty. She'd said her husband smoked, as if that meant nothing: didn't,
or hadn't, everyone, she'd said?
The match flared, and when it calmed, up closer to her face than need
have been, she set the flame to the nugget of hash she held in her
other hand - only as she'd seen others do countless times, though not
knowing how long to hold it there for, so much more of it crumbled away
than she'd anticipated would. And only then did it dawn on her that
actually she didn't have a clue how much was needed anyway, no matter
she was only using a single rizla.
Though she didn't lose a crumb of it. In for a penny, in for a pound,
she thought, and put the lot in. She licked the remainder off her
fingers, and it tasted like burnt sausages!
On the first attempt at rolling it, hash spilled out of one end,
followed by tobacco. She had to lay the whole works back flat on the
desk and start the process over. The rizla crumpled and began to crease
then: she couldn't pick it up, and she began to curse. She would have
to transfer the entire lot onto another rizla. Really start
again.
The new paper, she didn't even attempt to pick up but folded around the
tobacco as if making a cr?pe. It took an age, but finally it worked.
She had it: angular and fat, though a spliff nonetheless - her first;
and, yes, she was proud of it. She tamped down both ends on the
blotting-pad, and held it up before her to examine from every
angle.
On her way out of the sleeping-in room, she even paused before the
wash-basin mirror briefly to see how she might look with it, over her
shoulder in what became a parody of sophistication only once she'd seen
herself: she ought to wink archly, as if just kidding.
Clare closed the door behind her, quietly, lest Colin pop out to tell
her Mrs Thatcher had eaten his hamster, and then the same downstairs
with the laundry room- and back-door, easing them open and closed so as
not to pique Fi's curiosity. Michael was OK. He wouldn't leave the
living-room until London's Burning's credits had rolled, but Fi, well .
. . wouldn't it be just like her to come out and find her; rouse
herself from the sofa just this once to spite her!
So, Clare wouldn't light up yet but waited awhile, shivering slightly,
rubbing her folded arms when a breeze went chasing through the firs at
the end of the garden; that sudden chill that made her think, really!
How paranoid can you get? Fi wouldn't get up off the sofa if the house
were burning down - come out here on a whim, when it was dark!
But inhaling, she did not want to cough. That would attract Fi's
attention; bring her to the living-room window at least. Yet neither
was there any point in nancying about, as Mac would have it, taking
polite girly drags - although Mac these days considered hash-taking to
be nancying about whatever the means, evidently. Don't do nothing for
me any more! she'd overheard him claim just recently, as if he himself
were taken aback by that, which was his way of boasting.
So, on the patio, she settled herself into one of the plastic moulded
chairs at the garden-table and prepared herself. She was going to enjoy
this. She took several deep breaths of good clean night air, then lit
the spliff. Her first real hit!
She inhaled deeply and held it down for longer than she'd seen even the
most inveterate smokers do - for as long as they always seem to in
films, she thought - and, exhaling through her nose when finally she
did, she didn't splutter once. Yet could she say it made her feel good
exactly? Short of breath, certainly, and dizzy, but high as such; or
what she'd imagined feeling high was like? Mm. She persevered anyway,
inhaling again, and holding it down for just as long the second time;
and a third.
Though having smoked the thing only halfway down, she had to admit she
was beginning to feel rather queasy. Only then did she think to ease up
a little, sit back in her chair and actually relax.
She looked around the garden, and it had the look of being stained, as
if with Indian ink; heavier in some places than others, where it was
darker, the fenced-in corners and borders that were dense with shrubs,
and under the firs, the shed's interior, its door wide open; but also
the lawn that was lit dimly by the living-room, through its curtains,
the towel on the clothes-line she'd forgotten to take down and fold up
earlier - that was yellow ordinarily. Inkily stained all, by the night.
Indigo by night.
Was that a word, indigo? Or had she made it up? Indigo. Indigo-outy'go.
Whogo? Yougo? Mego? Nogo!
No . . .! That was silly. She sounded like one of the folks.
She let her head loll back, and looked up at the sky directly above
her. The clouds were scudding, furiously though silently, and how
enchanting that particular conjunction was, quite entrancing; partially
hiding the moon as they passed, yet illuminated by it also - silverly
around their edges. Clouds with silver-linings, and the moon a balloon!
she thought. Or was it a sixpence? No . . .! The man in the balloon
came down too soon.
He met the cat with the fiddle, was it . . .? Or a goat? Boat. Or soup,
was it, that was pea-green? And then there was the cow who came into it
somewhere. Dancing, or doing something or other, getting off with a
spoon. But they didn't have dishwashers in those days, did they? What
days, anyway! Whose? The Mock Turtle's?
What if she was stoned, she thought, and simply didn't know it? How
would she, could she know, never having been before?
The chair was biting-cold against her backside and the backs of her
thighs, it dawned on her; where they rested on the table, her bare
forearms were cold. She felt sick. She knew at the time she shouldn't
have eaten those crisps. Not the crisps, though: she hadn't finished
those - or had she? It was the blancmange that was sitting so heavily.
If she belched now, she felt she would be sick.
No, don't be sick!
Although she might feel better then.
No, don't be sick!
Though in itself the thought of sick produced the taste of it, on the
back of her tongue, which was expanding now, or seemed to be, not only
in her mouth but further down, too, in her throat. She would choke if
she were sick.
Don't be sick!
It was sticking to the roof of her mouth, her tongue, and squelching
dryly being prised back down.
Was this it then? Was this is it!; and she couldn't help but think of
the others, Mac and Dave, poor Gordie cooped up there in Fairmile still
- at least so far as any of them knew, or had bothered to find out -
Jaki, the whole damn lot of them. They really enjoyed this, did they;
crave it? She felt a long-standing - though deeply-suppressed,
evidently - suspicion, confirmed: there is something wrong with people
who take drugs. They were sick! Only a mind warped at the outset would
beg further warping.
Yet Simon had seemed so down to earth, she thought, so unlike the
others - especially unlike Mac and Dave, his own cousins; just . . .
well, so much more sensible-seeming, mature, and wise even, despite his
being younger than Mac; despite his having jacked in everything, which
they hadn't, not quite. Not just his job in order to go travelling, but
his home, too!
Since his return he'd been on Mac's floor, in fact - and Mac ordinarily
hating hippies! Though it wasn't just a blood thing. You could see it
in Mac's eyes how proud he was of Simon; just to hear him speak about
him! No matter he wore his hair in a pony-tail halfway down his back
and had a Dove of Peace tattoo. And then what Simon had said about him,
after they'd passed the police-car, walking home!
So what made you leave for India in the first place? she'd asked,
keeping hold of his arm.
The fear of winding up like Mac! he said.
On heroin you mean?
Mac? he said. On smack?
The pair of them had cracked up; then both been embarrassed.
I didn't know that, he said. He's not been while I've been
around.
Even the way Simon spoke was different to Mac and Dave: no phoney
London accent. Then,
Is Jaki? he'd said
Jaki? Mmm . . .
That's all he'd said about her, but Clare had found herself wondering:
two years he'd been gone - that would have made Jaki's babies one and
two when he left. And what, a year on from then they'd been taken from
her? Not that long, in fact, before Clare had fallen in with the group
herself. She had never asked after their father - or hadn't dared to a
second time, rather; but surely not . . . no. Simon? Could he have been
Jaki's type? Or her his more's the point. More would be the surprise,
she thought. Though how subdued Jaki had been all evening, for her. Oh,
except for the wholesome comment of course; the wholesome attack, she
should say.
Well . . . Jaki's a bit of a loose cannon, she said.
Oh, yes?
I mean, oh, I don't know. I probably shouldn't say. It's just that I
know she doesn't like me very much.
No, he said.
Which smarted somewhat, she was surprised to find; his not dismissing
Jaki's standpoint as unworthy.
She probably should have been glad of him going on to say,
You're more centred than the others, aren't you, as if that explained
though were not a justification for Jaki's contempt.
But,
Oh, I don't know about that! she'd guffawed; then been embarrassed
because Simon didn't laugh. He'd stolen a sidelong glance at her, as
much to say she knew she was more centred than they: why deny it?
I suppose I do have my job, she said.
Caring.
She'd stolen a look at him then. What else had Mac told him about
her?
That's right, she said.
And do you?
What?
Care.
Of course! she said.
How much?
You can't measure it!
Oh. Well why do you?
At that it was her turn to stop in her tracks. She withdrew her arm
from his, and stood there as though stunned.
Excuse me? she said.
I'm wondering why you care.
He'd stopped and turned to face her, smiling embarrassedly, as if it
were nothing, he'd meant nothing by it.
Sorry, he said, but continued then anyway.
It makes you feel good about yourself, right?
Good about myself?
She had felt quite unexpectedly then that she might have some reason
after all to be wary of this man. Who on earth did he think he was to
speak so freely? A sensation then, something akin to a vision of being
completely exposed before him - by him; and without her having
consented. Yet she could not help herself. He was leaning with his back
against a streetlight now, and she started slowly toward him, hands
behind her back, hips rolling.
I guess you could say it makes me feel good, yes, she said.
And that's the reason for your hanging around junkies, too?
She'd pulled up short, with no more than a yard between them. Junkies?
They weren't junkies. There was a huge difference. If he didn't know
that! There were addicts, and then there were recreational users.
That's all they were, all Mac was; and a thousand times or more she'd
argued their right to - of course only in her mind and to her parents,
but still. He wasn't talking about the guys' habits; it was her, Clare,
he was talking about.
I was only thinking, he was saying, that as bright as you obviously
are, right? - you obviously are - there's got to be something more out
there for you than this.
More? What do you mean more? What more?; and the way they were standing
now - the way she was especially, hand on hips - the situation had
turned, well, almost confrontational, she thought.
Though she didn't, no, she would not, back down.
We can't all just up and leave, she said, whenever the fancy takes us.
Some of us stop and put a shoulder to it. We have
responsibilities!
He smiled, that same slow, lopsided grin as before, only now it was
infuriating, and he knew it, too. Sauntering on ahead of her, he even
said over his shoulder, as if that made it humorous,
Some of us heap responsibilities on our shoulders precisely so we can't
move from under them.
Hah! she said. And you're saying I'm guilty of that?
She had no choice but to walk after him; it was that or be left
behind.
No, he said. No. What I'm saying is, people - and I mean all sorts of
people, from all sorts of walks of life - cheat themselves by never
properly putting themselves to the test. That's all! as if her taking
what he'd said personally were utterly ridiculous; he hadn't meant her
to at all - but actually, since she had, he really found it rather
endearing.
Yourself excepted of course, she said.
She couldn't see his face, but knew he would be smiling still, more
broadly than before even.
Do you know, she said, I think that's just about the most conceited
thing I've ever heard.
Oh, come now, he said. Not ever. Surely. Really?
It was the tone of the Really? that got to her.
And presumably, it takes an exceptional act of courage to shirk your
responsibilities, does it? she said. Or should I say, go test yourself
this way?
He'd thrown back his head and laughed. She could have boxed him for
that - if she'd been closer she might have. He wouldn't even do her the
courtesy of turning around to look her in the eye, when laughing at
her. She might yet. But,
Well, he was saying, more seriously, I don't know about that. No . . .
More likely you just find yourself at the end of your tether and have
no choice but to go. Let go. Yeah, circumstances dictate. Although, and
now he did turn around, though continuing to walk, backwards, it's you
who's determined those circumstances, right?
His two forefingers pointing at her from the hip,
I'd say you have to accept responsibilty for that. And then - what's
even more important - ask yourself why. That's the important thing.
It's always for a reason. Understanding, and he tapped his temple hard
several times with his index-finger.
He turned around and continued walking. She let him.
I live here; but she said it too softly.
And she'd been wondering what would happen when they reached the
house!
Oh, he said, when she called out a second time, Right. Well, I guess
I'll see you around then.
Yes, she said, right. Um . . . Mac said you're off to . . . Thailand,
was it?
Oh, not for a while yet, he said. Got to get the wonga together
first.
Oh, right, she said. Wonga.
And then he'd gone, just like that, hadn't hinted with so much as a
moment's lingering that she should invite him in.
The scream skewered her, right through the base of the spine, then
girdled her. My God! she thought. Fi!
How long had she been sat there like that, slumped, head down on the
table? She hated it when Fi yelled out so. She only did it to annoy.
All that while, most probably, waiting for her moment, Michael to look
so involved, she knew he'd leap out of his skin. Then she did it again,
just for good measure.
Clare lifted her head from her arm on the table, and although it was
still between her fingers, the spliff had gone out. Eyes closed, she
hadn't realised just how vivid her recollection had become. She'd been
recalling it all day, but that time, boy! It could have been real
again. She could have been there.
Flopping heavily back in her chair, she accidentally let the spliff
drop, straight down into the crack between two flagstones at her feet;
Damn! she'd have to pick that out now. Though bend down that low, and
how would she sit back up again? Her head felt so heavy. And she still
felt sick. At least whilst dreaming she had forgotten all about
that.
And Fi screeched yet again then, louder this time. Good God, it irked
her. Any moment now Michael would snap and shout back, and who could
blame him? Really! Fi would start crying then, inconsolably, tears
spouting out of her face, and wailing so loud you couldn't help but
want to stuff the tissues down her. How could anyone help but feel that
way?
But Michael didn't shout back. There was only Fi - and what was that
she was saying; Clare's name, was it?
Clare stood up suddenly, as if to catch herself unawares and thereby
make the effort easier, but in doing so, knocked the garden-chair over
behind her; she herself nearly toppled, then did when turning. She had
to catch herself on the table-edge; and that was stupid now! Deep
breaths.
OK. Just think calm; and she mustn't shout at Fi - mustn't let on she's
annoyed in any way at all. Be calm; be calm now.
Though heading back through the laundry-room, down the hallway to the
living-room, it was intolerable this kind of behaviour, kicking up
fusses so needlessly. There were others in the house trying to sleep,
didn't she know?
She was standing, Fi, pointing across the room, down at the floor to
where Clare couldn't see until actually through the door and in the
living-room herself: Michael! face down on the floor and thrashing
stiffly, groaning from some place deep in his chest.
"Nyyer . . ." said Fi.
"Oh, shit," said Clare.
"Nyyer . . ."
"Fi!" she said, put her fists to her temples and thought, No, this
isn't happening! An ambulance! But then there was all that would
entail; and, I'm stoned! she thought. Her stomach was contracting,
squeezing the panic upward into her chest and throat - she would be
sick!
No, don't be. Think!
His fireman's helmet - get it off him! She couldn't, though. Kneeling
down alongside him, she had to tilt his head way back, hand at his
throat to unhook the chin-strap, and still she couldn't. If only he'd
stop head-butting the floor, but he would not. His nose was bleeding.
Where he must have struck it falling, his chin was grazed and bleeding.
And anyway, what to do when finally she got the helmet off him?
She stood again; and knocked into Fi, who had drawn closer.
"Fi . . .!"
"Nyyer . . .!"
She slung the helmet behind her onto the sofa, and made some room for
herself: she dragged the coffee-table out of the way; then, kneeling
down again, tried to roll Michael over on to his back. He was so heavy,
though. Wasn't there a method she'd learned on a course? Something
about crooking a leg, then do the rolling? But no, that wouldn't work.
Of course it wouldn't. Crook someone's leg when he's lying face
down!
She succeeded, finally, by heaving him, one hand on his shoulder, the
other on his hip. It took it out of her completely. Her heart racing,
her own limbs felt almost as heavy as he did.
Procedures now. Think. Prioritise.
OK, she thought. His head.
"A pillow!" she said to Fi. "Fi! Get me a pillow!"
"Nyyer . . ."
"Oh, for God's sake!" she said.
Clare grabbed a pillow from the sofa herself and wedged it under his
head. But he hasn't had a fit in years! she thought. As far as anybody
knew, not so much as a petit mal. He'd been on epilim for what, ten
years?
His thrashing was abating. That was something at least. They were only
brief spasms he was having now; falling still in between them, though,
so that Clare did think for one awful moment he had stopped breathing.
It was only the saliva and the mucus bubbling out of his mouth that
reassured her; mixing with the blood from his nose, and his breathing
it in again, out again, making a rasping noise.
"Wha's amatter?" Fi said.
"Nothing, Fi. It's all right," she said. "Everything's fine." Although
her own breathing was almost as irregular as Michael's. She was
breathing in time with him, she realised.
The sleeping-in room! Of course! she thought. There'd be something
there, some policy or other she could dig out that would tell her
precisely what to do. The shelves were laden with 'What to do in the
event of's. In the filing cabinet: his care-plan, his medical file -
there would be something!
Struggling to stand again, to leave the room, she had to shake Fi off
her. Fi had her by the wrist, pointing at Michael as though she thought
Clare still mightn't have seen him.
"Wha's amatter?" she was saying still.
"Fi, let go!" she said.
"Nyyer . . .!" But she did.
It was all Clare could do not to slump against the hallway wall once
out of the living-room, slide down it and curl up into a little ball by
the skirting, though. Sleep: she could have, she thought, careless of
everything. Just make everything go away. Motion, any kind of motion,
felt unnatural. She was glad of the extra, the wheelchair-, width of
the hallway: it kept her from succumbing to the walls. Only take away
the floor, and she would be floating. Wasn't that more desirable than
slumping even; better than sleeping? To be moving that freely, unbound
and weightless, as the air itself is now . . . to not even be.
But the door to the stairwell was heavy, and solid. To open it she had
to push hard, all her weight. It insisted she was in the real world,
leaden-limbed and fallible. After that she headed up the stairs with
her eyes closed as if to recapture that illusion of floating; even
turned the first landing blind. It aided her concentration. Ascending
the second flight, Come on now, Clare, epilepsy, epilepsy . . . she
thought, as if through the word's repetition the appropriate action
might present itself - and Bingo!
Of course! In the medicine-cabinet. Rectal-valium. They'd never had to
use it before - he'd never needed it - but in the event of . . .!
She flung open the landing door with purpose now; felt herself
positively impelled down the upstairs hallway. She was conscious of the
workings of her legs, and her calves especially, in a way she'd never
be ordinarily. They were so strong, she thought. So what if Dave had
likened them to hams? Bunching tight, they launched her rolling onward
assuredly; she was a professional, wasn't she!
She flung open the door to the sleeping-in room, and could have been
the lead in a film - an action-woman movie. Opening the double-fronted
doors to the medication-cabinet, drawing them toward her, she saw it as
the camera would have, from inside: pitch blackness, then her filling
the screen. It took a special kind of woman . . . Clare Knaggs, Social
Services care-officer, qualified and benchmarked.
Come on now! Enough! Where was it?
She consciously inventoried everything in the cabinet, clearly
pronounced in her mind each item her eyes alighted on: blister-packs,
gauzes, swabs, paracetemol, nizoral cream, Michael's epilim-halves to
be returned, record books . . . There! inside the door in a flat pack -
of course.
She was cool now, in control; and she'd need surgical-gloves. Having
taken everything she needed, she even remembered to re-lock the
cabinet. The record books and relevant forms she could fill out later.
She was: she was cool now, calm, collected.
Then halfway down the stairs, it struck her: The recovery position . .
.! Trying to crook his leg to roll him over, that's what she'd been
trying to think of - but you roll people on to their fronts, not their
backs! My God, he could be choking!
She ran, as well as she could; nearly dropped the flat-pack of valium
opening the door at the bottom of the stairs, and burst back into the
living-room so startling Fi that she squealed guiltily: she was
kneeling down by Michael's side with a finger up his nose, making
patterns on his upper-lip in the mucus that had gathered there.
Clare shouted out so loud, Fi shuffled away on her backside more
quickly than Clare had ever seen her move on her feet.
"Well!" she said.
The important thing was, Michael hadn't choked. He might have; she'd
been lucky.
Still, she would have to turn him over again, and, God! he was heavy.
Although it was easier than before. At least now she knew what she was
doing; and she wasn't feeling anywhere near as sick - just so long as
she had a clear objective. Keep calm, she thought. You're doing
fine.
Though pulling down his jeans, that wasn't easy. First the button had
to be unfastened, then the fly drawn, and here he was face down - she
should have done those things before she'd rolled him! But, she
managed, finally, somehow. Still she was doing fine. Yanking down his
jeans, though, as far as they'd go, that brought Fi shuffling back of
course.
"What y' doin'?" she said.
She ignored her. Rolling down his underpants after his jeans, Fi
shrieked at that and started laughing so hysterically, shrilly, it went
right through Clare. She was swiping at her before she could stop
herself; caught her on the thigh. She could not help herself. It wasn't
that hard - really it wasn't - but Fi almost threw a fit of her own,
kicking the floor with her heels and shouting like a
two-year-old.
Clare didn't apologise.
She had more important things on right now: the instructions on the
back of the flat-pack to read. It was unthinkable that one of these
tubes should be - could be! - inserted so far up a person. But that's
what it said: all the way, and squeeze and keep a tight pinch on the
dispensing-pouch until fully withdrawn.
Fi was close, but Clare would not allow herself to be distracted now.
She needed both hands, one to splay Michael's buttocks, the other to
insert the tube. It slid in through his anus so easily; his rectal
muscles clenched and drew the tube in for her. Its effect was almost
immediate. He relaxed: she not only saw it, she could feel it, through
her palm that was outspread and pressing down across his
buttocks.
Everything was going to be just fine, she thought. When she'd withdrawn
the tube, she even smiled at Fi.
"What y' doin'?" Fi asked again, grinning broadly now.
"It's all right," she said. "He's going to be OK."
But even as she said it the walls were contracting around her, the
floor was rising up to meet the ceiling, and that was dropping.
Michael hadn't had a fit in his life. The valium wasn't his, it was
Colin's - should he ever have a fit. It wasn't even Michael on epilim.
It was thioridazine he was on: that has nothing to do with
epilepsy.
On her haunches already, Clare fell away, backwards against the
armchair, all her weight; it shifted and bumped the wall behind,
jolting her.
"Shit," she said, and then again. "My God . . ."
It was only valium, right? He'd be OK. Maybe it was that that he needed
anyway - wouldn't it be?
But the fact remained. It wasn't his for her to have given. And she
couldn't cover up now: the seal was broken. They would know. She'd lose
the acting-manager's position. Might she be suspended? Oh no, no, no,
she thought, they would dismiss her.
She was going to cry.
And Fi there, standing over her now, patting her head and stroking her
hair alternately, started laughing. Not her usual cackle that was
pitched just so purposely to set nerves on edge, but an irresistible
laugh, the kind that'd be a pleasure to hear most any time, she
thought.
Through tears, smiling down at Clare, Fi even looked quite the normal
person.
"S'alright?" she was saying. "S'alright, now," laughing.
All the way down the hallway up the stairs to bed, Fi laughed.