“Sometimes,” Al said, “I have a sort of creeping sensation. Do you get that?”
“Where?”
“It runs down my spine. My fingers tingle. And bits of me go cold.”
“In this weather?”
“Yes. It’s like, my feet won’t walk properly. I want to go one way, and they want to go a different way. I’m supposed to come home, but my feet don’t want to.” She paused. “It’s hard to explain it. I feel as if I might fall.”
“Probably multiple sclerosis,” Colette said. She was flicking though
Al booked herself in at the health centre. When she rang up, the receptionist demanded to know what was the matter with her, and when Al explained carefully, my feet go different ways, she heard the woman sharing the news with her colleagues.
The woman’s voice boomed down the phone. “Do you want me to put you in as an emergency?”
“No, I can wait.”
“It’s just, you need to be sure you don’t wander off,” the woman said. There were cackles in the background: screeches.
I could ill-wish them, Al said, but I won’t, on this occasion. She thought, are there occasions when I have ill- wished?
“I can fit you in Thursday,” the woman said. “You won’t get lost on the way here?”
“My manager will drive me,” Al said. “By the way, if I were you I should cancel your holiday. I know you’ll lose your deposit, but what’s a lost deposit compared to being kidnapped by Islamic terrorists and spending several months in leg irons in a tin shack in the desert?”
When Thursday came, Colette did drive her, of course. “You don’t have to wait with me,” Al said.
“Of course I do.”
“If you leave me your moby, I could call a cab to take me home. You could go to the post office and post off my spells. There’s one going airmail that needs to be weighed.”
“Do you really think I’d leave you, Alison? To get bad news by yourself? Surely you think more of me than that?” Colette sniffed. “I feel devalued. I feel betrayed.”
“Oh, dear,” Al said. “Too many of those psychic hens. It’s bringing your emotions out.”
“You don’t realize,” Colette said. “You don’t understand how Gavin let me down. I know what it’s like, you see. I wouldn’t do it to someone else.”
‘There you go again, talking about Gavin.”
“I am not. I never mention him.”
When they got into reception, Al scrutinized the practice staff behind their glass screens. She couldn’t see the one who had laughed at her. Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything, but when I saw she was booked on a Nile cruise I just couldn’t resist. It’s not, it’s really not, as if I wished her any ill. I only told her.
“This is interesting,” she said, looking around. It was just like the doctors’ waiting room that the punters always described: people sneezing and coughing on you, and a long long wait. I’m never ill, she thought, so I don’t know, first-hand. I’m ailing, of course. But not in ways doctors can cure. At least, I’ve assumed not.
They waited, side by side on stacking chairs. Colette talked about her self-esteem, her lack of it, her lonely life. Her voice quavered. Al thought, poor Colette, it’s the times we live in. If she can’t be in a psychic show, she fancies her chances on a true confession show. She pictured Gavin, stumbling over the cables, drawn from dark into dazzling light, from the dark of his own obtuse nature into the dazzling light of pale accusing eyes. She heard the audience groaning, hissing; saw Gavin tried, convicted, hung by the neck. It came to her that Gavin had been hanged, in his former life as a poacher. That’s why, she thought, in this life, he never does up the top button on his shirt. She closed her eyes. She could smell shit, farmyard manure. Gavin was standing with a noose round his neck. He wore sideburns, and his expression was despondent. Someone was bashing a tin drum. The crowd was small but keen. And she? She was enjoying her day off. A woman was selling mutton pies. She had just bought two.
“Wake up, Al,” Colette said. “They’re calling your number! Shall I come in with you?”
“No.” Al gave Colette a shove in the chest, which dropped her back in her chair. “Look after my bag,” she said, throwing it into her lap.
When she walked in, her hand—the palm burning and slightly greasy from her second pie—was still outstretched. For a moment the doctor seemed to think he was expected to shake it. He looked outraged at the familiarity, then he remembered his communication skills.
“Miss Hart!” he said, with a smile that showed his teeth. “Sit ye down, sit ye down. And how are you today?”
He’s been on a course, she thought. Like Morris. There was a stained coffee mug by his elbow, bearing the logo of a popular pharmaceutical company.
“I take it you’re here about your weight?” he said.
“Oh no,” she said. “I can’t help my weight, I’m afraid.”
“Huh. I’ve heard that a time or two,” the doctor said. “Let me tell you, if I had a pound for every woman who’s sat in that chair and told me about her slow metabolism, I’d be a rich man now.”
Not that riches would help you, Al thought. Not with a liver like yours. Slowly, with a lingering regret, she pulled out her gaze from his viscera and focused on his Adam’s apple. “I have tinglings down my arms,” she said. “And my feet, when I try to go home, my feet take me somewhere else. My fingers twitch, and the muscles in my hands. Sometimes I can’t use my knife and fork.”
“And so?” said the doctor.
“So I use a spoon.”
