Side-Effects

‘His first words were me-like, do you remember, dear? Two syllables for a first word.’
‘Like ma-ma, or da-da.’
Peter shook his head. It remained shaking for some time as though it was a guitar string that had been twanged. ‘No, no, no, that’s what separates him from the hoi-polloi you see. Me-like, it’s very different. It’s very, very unusual.’
He raised a finger to summon the waiter, a tall, blonde man who’d been all sly glances and smiles throughout. He spoke little English and Peter didn’t trust him.
‘Sir, again, are we ready now, something to end with?’
He stooped slightly as he spoke. Being thin he couldn’t help casting a light shadow upon the table.
Peter looked the man in the eye before turning his attentions elsewhere. ‘Coffee everyone?’
There was wine in several glasses still. Emily’s avocado mousse remained unfinished in front of her. Maureen Shoreman wasn’t keen on spicy dishes and had opted for something simple and with an absence of clutter. Both John and his father had mirrored tastes in food.
‘Cof-fee,’ said the waiter with emphatic loudness, at the same time writing something down in his notebook. He’d been like this all evening, first repeating what table number six had ordered and with little respect, making clicking noises with his teeth and even complaining about the prices to himself. He appeared to underline what he’d written more than once. Heads would occasionally turn towards their table but not in this instance.
‘Hells bells,’ cried Peter, ‘can’t you even remember a simple order in your head, son? Four coffees.’ He held up four fingers. ‘Four, see?’
The waiter fluttered his eyelashes. ‘Sir, again, I have no choice. I must be, how you say, on the ball.’
Peter’s illness would kill him. It had got into the blood and his blood was now bad. His hands were fine and so were his feet, the lower arm and leg regions, his extremities perfectly able to function. It was just his insides, fuck it. They were becoming ever more abnormal.
Purely out of curiosity he’d turned sixty-eight the day before yesterday and Hawks Garden Larder had been fully booked, presuming he could ring up a couple of days before and get away with it wasn’t meant to be easy. They let him down gently. ‘No, sorry Sir, I’m afraid we are complete with custom that night.’ The woman on the other end was obviously still learning the language, he decided. He was an expert at languages; he knew three or four minimum but then he had started over sixty years ago. Complete with custom. He’d wanted to ask her what she was talking about but she wouldn’t have understood. She would have stumbled onto another page, something similarly hysterical. He wondered whether she was lying down when she answered the phone. Just now, complete with custom, how does that sit with you amidst all this mad hysteria? In that moment anyway he said nothing of the sort. When can you fit us in, there’s four of us you see, it’s my birthday, or it will be. He shouldn’t have said that and he knew it almost instantly, hearing her warm up like that, the words coming in chronological order, the way she’d been brought up to sing happy birthday and with some form of animation no doubt. It didn’t last long and she must have been checking her diary throughout for he could hear rustling, pages being turned, notions of semi-emptiness about to be filled by a party of four. And so they were here tonight, coats and similar belongings left at the entrance, cigarettes already extinguished although none of them smoked. Maureen had worn her most expensive coat and it looked beautiful on her. The woman in charge of left-behind fashion shuffled away from the counter before coming back with tickets in exchange. She had his wife’s expensive coat still draped across her arm, flopping limply and looking just like any other everyday coat would.
‘Did you see his eyes? He was making bloody eyes at me?’
‘I never saw a thing,’ said his wife. ‘You’ve reached the age where you’re imagining more than is good for you.’
Peter reached for his glass and held it in midair. ‘With respect dear I know what I saw. I saw his eyes move, you know, they moved like a gay man’s eyes would move.’
John leant forward and whispered. ‘I’ll ask him when he brings the coffees back, Dad. Put you out of your misery.’
Maureen turned towards her husband. His hair and teeth were going their separate ways and when he drank these days it was occasionally because he had to drink. ‘How on earth do you know about gay men?’ Peter shifted in his chair. ‘Happened before has it, the look?’
‘You watch too much television, dear. I can just tell. We can just tell sometimes, can’t we boy.’
John pulled a face. ‘Hey, don’t bring me into it. You’ve talked yourself into a corner.’
Nothing was proven. The doctor had an academic duty to be honest. The ageing process, a lifetime’s accumulation of insults. ‘Exposure to certain chemicals maybe, as a profession we don’t know for sure.’ The doctor had large hands and when clasped they looked like two pieces of wood nailed together. ‘Sometimes the immune system has weakened and that can trigger the illness although we have no proof.’ They had no proof. His condition, the condition he now carried about with him like a donor card or a badge of honour, the symptoms merely physical, the observations they would make over the coming months and years, they were symptomatic of his condition also. Beyond Christ, beyond even the most electric brain operating in the world today.
He finished what remained of his drink and quickly poured himself another half-glass. ‘Jesus made a threat,’ he went on, ‘and Jesus failed in his threat, taken from us.’
John raised his eyes. ‘Oh give it a rest.’
Emily reached across and grabbed hold of her father-in-law’s hand. ‘It’s his birthday. Let him say what he wants.’
He seemed grateful. Her hand was warm and he sensed the warmth. ‘Jesus and the gays. He made some sort of threat didn’t he?’
His son appeared less indulgent. ‘He may have mentioned something.’
‘You see, if he hadn’t been taken from us we could have been spared all this.’
‘I could have stayed at home tonight,’ Maureen interrupted them. ‘There was a play on the radio I wanted to catch. It was a repeat but at least it would have been worth listening to. That man was in it with the voice I love, you know the one.’
Peter glanced at his wife and then looked back across the table. ‘In order to save others they simply saved themselves. Cowards, the whole bloody lot of them.’
Emily squeezed the old man’s hand. ‘I think I agree with you there.’
People were leaving now because it was late but people were still coming in because it wasn’t that late and their reservations naturally could not be held. Women with hourglass figures mingled alongside men in martini jackets, quickly ushered to their tables, the necessary arrangements made, menus being unfolded, pompous words spoken, a telephone ringing somewhere backstage followed by clumsy noises emanating from the kitchen, the sound of pencil-ends being licked, small bones dislodged in movement, six seconds to write out a traditional English dish in either French or Italian, the crass abandonment of national cultures, a restaurant both overpopulated and remote, the centre of culinary ecstasy, a roomful of case histories, a furled flag going down out of loyal respect.
‘Sir, coffees, here we are.’ He cast a further shadow as he began busying himself. ‘Milk, cream or sugar? Brown or white?’ He looked directly at the old man. ‘Black?’
Peter coughed. ‘Thank you yes, and go away, go on, off with you.’
The waiter bowed, the silver tray held stiff like a tambourine against his side. ‘I’ll bring you the bill next,’ he called over his shoulder in perfect English.
The tension eased slightly. Smiles permeated their small area of table. Maureen inclined her head and caught her son’s eyes looking elsewhere.
It remained quiet for a moment and then Emily came forward. ‘Did you hear the way he said milk? Just like Bradley.’
Her son’s first words had been me-like. He’d just been fed and was perched on John’s knee at the time, Emily resting her head on John’s shoulder when it happened. It had been expected. Around about now the experts had noted, no need to concern ourselves yet, it not being a crime. She’d been quietly going on at him, persuading the boy to say something, anything that would change them without question and he’d smiled and made a noise almost on cue before finding his own voice and then saying something like me-like. They pronounced the moment as unusual. Her own parents were thrilled at the news and Emily could sense the relief in their voices because according to her mother you could never be sure, not with youngsters. John’s family had a dossier of their own. ‘Me-like?’ asked Maureen, ‘like milk I suppose, his mother’s milk. It must make you feel a lot better now that its happened.’ Peter, who had hardly ever held the child, kept wiping his cheeks free of emotion. ‘The exploration of body. It can put a strain on the heart you know. Were you feeding him dear?’ he wondered, ‘just before maybe, were you feeding him? You see he may well have associated his actions …….. It’s quite extraordinary what a human being can summon up even at that age.’
Peter had stopped short of sipping his coffee. He was breathing in the grounded aroma whilst studying his daughter-in-law across the table. That last statement of hers, the revelation of their grandson. Those were happy times. Or to put it another way they were a wine perfectly chilled, or a good book only half read, the button of a woman’s blouse hanging marginally loose. They were days before the scribbling of prescriptions became manifest and when his little fancies were no longer simply fanciful. He much preferred it that way.
A drop of blood formed on the end of his nose. Then another. He sensed the blood and dabbed at his nose with a serviette.
‘Peter?’ cried Emily anxiously.
‘First time,’ his voice loud and a little shaky. He drew the napkin away from his nose and glanced down in inspection. Another single drop fell as he held his hand forward. ‘That blasted doctor said it may happen, side-effects.’
‘We’d better get you home,’ said his wife.
‘No, no, no, now don’t start fussing. It will stop when it’s good and ready.’
She grabbed his hand, clenched it with fond regards. Another drop of blood raised itself and then fell like a snowflake into his palm. He put the serviette back to his nose and increased the pressure slightly. Her breath he noticed contained a complete lack of spice.