The Correct Amount

I hadn’t been there long when Phyllis showed up with an O’Neills bag full of inpatient supplies. 

‘Ah, you finally got up off your arse for a visit,’ she said, commenting on my shyness about coming to the hospital.  It had been three days since Oran took his turn so you might have expected an acquaintance of my adjacency to pay him a visit sooner. 

Phyllis began emptying the bag of its contents: a big unlabelled bottle of cordial and a small one of Lucozade; and some of Oran’s T-shirts which she started to refold and place inside the bedside drawers.  She had a fair old spring in her step as she did all of this.

‘What has you in high spirits?’ I asked.

‘I finished the play,’ she said.

‘The one you started in the seventies?’

‘Yes.  To resolve in my seventies.’

‘What’s it called?’

‘A wrap is what I call it.  No, it hasn’t a title yet.  All I can tell you is it’s done.  And it is what it is.’

‘And what’s that?’

‘A play in four acts.’

‘Four?  Is that the correct amount?’

‘What do you mean . . . the correct amount?’

‘I thought there was a correct amount.’

‘If there was I’d know about it.  But there isn’t.’

‘Four sounds about right.’

‘I’m pleased to hear you got back to it,’ I said.  ‘You appeared to have lost your direction.’

‘I’d more of it complete than initially I thought.  And recent events were to energise me.’

‘Oh did your theme alter significantly?’

‘Not an awful lot.  Although, I suppose one major shift is that the town of Earlship now gets off lighter on the whole.  I went and changed who the poisoners were.’ 

‘Who were they originally?’

‘Everybody.  Now just some of them are responsible.’

‘Very optimistic of you.’

‘Still – continued word of caution about the macaroons.’

‘Of course.’

 

A nurse approached Oran’s cot.  She looked excited to see both of the Berrills but neither of them seemed to know who she was.  For a second I thought she might have been a friend from back in the day, someone they’d knocked about with at school maybe, but she was younger than them – by about a decade or so. 

‘Ah, it is you,’ she said to Oran.  ‘How are you feeling?’

‘In-between everything,’ said the invalid. 

She had a look at the clipboard at the end of his bed and kept chatting while checking the IV drip.

‘So they’ve demolished the Pompadour, did yous hear?’

‘We have,’ I answered.  ‘Me and him saw them do it.’

‘My ma worked there with yours for a few years, you know that?  Caitriona Allen?’

Even after hearing the woman’s name, Oran and Phyllis were none the wiser.  But they nodded respectfully.

‘She was on the kiosk.  Jesus she was at it for a bunch of years.  She always said Mrs Berrills was a class woman to work for.  What a shame nobody looked after that building better.  It’s in fashion now to be pulling things down.  Folks round here have lost their conviction in things.  They’ll change up at the drop of a hat.  People used to be savvier in this town.’

‘We’ve been trying to stay optimistic here,’ I said, in a bantering way, so as not to come across impolite.

‘Oh, I beg your pardon,’ said the nurse.  ‘Well, there’s plenty to be positive about.  The economy’s doing well.  I hear.’

‘I do remember your mother,’ said Phyllis.  ‘Was she from up the north?’

‘She was.  She held on to that accent her whole life.’

 

Before the kind-natured nurse left us, she stopped herself to say, in a voice packed with decency:  ‘For what it’s worth, I never thought you two were riding one another.’

‘Thanks,’ said Oran. 

‘Gossip used to be cleaner in this town.’

 

I sat for about an hour more at Oran’s bedside while he dozed off, which he did with a composure that offered the world a picture of good and normal health.  And seeing as the man appeared to be alive and more or less well, I decided now was a good time to make my own departure, before machines started going off around me and the penumbra of mortality descended.  I left Phyllis sitting there with a book she’d brought: David Niven’s autobiography – I’d heard it was pretty good.

 

At a point, on my way back to Tristan Terrace, I braced myself for someone with retaliation on their mind to leap from the shadows and get to pummelling me.  But even so I wasn’t entirely quaking in my boots the way I would have been earlier in the year.  Truth is, I’d shed some apprehension in the last few days, and especially now having had a positive experience at the hospital I was less sceptical about life in general.  There was also an abandoned mood in the air which although woebegone in its tenor delivered a peace of mind; to be clear, a sense of desertion always existed in the town at a certain time of the day but for some reason it resonated more now.  B. Bluster wasn’t at home this minute but you could be sure some of them were at their desks writing angry letters to somebody.  They had no bogusness to moan about at present but soon they’d surely stumble on the issue closest to their hearts and give the paper of record the grief that by rights it was due.  The way things are meant to be: a municipal dialogue where nobody gets battered.  That’s a good thing.  Definitely better they complain about something than seethe quietly and bitterly in their grottos. 

 

At least after all the tragic rowing Earlship had seen there were still newspapers left to converse with.  Other institutions were not so lucky.  Ernest Gilgan being one of them.  The Pompadour being another.  Some things just can’t be saved and end up devoured by the maws of impermanence.  One by one our artefacts vanish.  Sometimes we see the puff of smoke as they leave, other times we don’t even notice they’ve gone away.  They simply diminish.  Like the memories of a worn old master.  Who did it all only to forget it all.  Save what you can, Oran would say.  It’s only jetsam when made redundant by the cosmic drift.  (I believe he was referring to a stack of Eagle comics he had when he said this.)  I didn’t like to think about the cosmic drift and all that got lost in it.  You knew there were loads that did get swept up in the sand and forgotten.  All you could hope for was not to be forgotten.  Most went out of their way to ensure that would not happen and their names would live on beyond their stay on Earth, but not everyone would be so lucky and survive that bloody churn. 

 

As usual, there was nobody there when I got home.  Not that I’m complaining.  It was enough to put the kettle on.  Then Police Academy 5.

 

    

 

        

Photo: by the author