“There’s a photograph of you in today’s papers,” he says. “You look like a banker rather than a ‘Most Wanted.’?”
“I don’t photograph well.”
“Julianne gets a mention. They describe her as being ‘overwrought and emotional when visited by reporters.’ She told them to fuck off.”
“Yeah, that’s what I figured, too.”
I can hear him blowing smoke. “I got to hand it to you, Joe. I always took you for a boring fart. Likable enough, but virtuous. Look at you now! Two mistresses and a wanted man.”
“I didn’t sleep with Catherine McBride.”
“Shame. She was good in the sack.” He laughs wryly.
“You should listen to yourself sometimes, Jock.”
To think I once envied him. Look at what he’s become: a crude parody of a right-wing, middle-class chauvinist and bigot. I no longer trust him, but I need another favor.
“I want you to stay with Julianne and Charlie— just until I sort this out.”
“You told me not to go near her.”
“I know.”
“Sorry, I can’t help you. Julianne isn’t returning my calls. I figure you must have told her about Catherine and the letters. She’s pissed off at both of us now.”
“At least call her; tell her to be careful. Tell her to let no one into the house.”
3
The Land Rover has a top speed of forty and a tendency to oversteer into the center of the road. It looks more like a museum piece than a motorcar and people honk when they pass as if I’m driving for charity. This could be the most perfect getaway vehicle ever conceived because nobody expects a wanted man to escape so slowly.
I use the back roads to reach Lancashire. A moldy road map from the glove compartment, circa 1965, keeps me on track. I pass through villages with names like Puddinglake and Woodplumpton. On the outskirts of Blackpool, at a near-deserted petrol station, I use the bathroom to clean up. I sponge the mud from my trousers and hold them under the hand dryer before changing my shirt and washing the cuts on my hands.
The Squires Gate Hospice is fixed to a rocky headland as though rusted there by the salt air. The turrets, arched windows and slate roof look Edwardian, but the outbuildings are newer and less intimidating.
Flanked by poplar trees, the driveway curves around the front of the hospital and emerges into a parking area. I follow the signs to the palliative care ward on the ocean side. The corridors are empty and the stairways almost tidy. A black nurse with a shaved head sits behind a glass partition staring at a screen. He is playing a computer game.
“You have a patient called Bridget Aherne.”
He looks down at my knees, which are no longer the same color as the rest of my trousers.
“Are you family?”
“No. I’m a psychologist. I need to speak to her about her son.”
His eyebrows arch. “Didn’t know she had a son. She doesn’t get many visitors.”
I follow his smooth, rolling walk along the corridor, where he turns beneath the staircase and takes me through double doors leading outside. A loose gravel pathway dissects the lawn where two bored-looking nurses share a sandwich on a garden seat.
We enter a single-story annex nearer to the cliffs and emerge into a long shared ward with maybe a dozen beds, half of them empty. A skinny woman with a smooth skull is propped up on pillows. She is watching two young children who are scribbling on drawing paper at the end of her bed. Elsewhere, a one-legged woman in a yellow dress sits in a wheelchair in front of a television with a crocheted blanket on her lap.
At the far end of the ward, through two doors, are the private rooms. He doesn’t bother to knock. The room is dark. At first I don’t notice anything except the machines. The monitors and dials create the illusion of medical mastery: as though everything is possible if you calibrate the machinery and press the right buttons.
A middle-aged woman, with sunken cheeks, is lying at the center of the web of tubes and leads. She has a blond wig, pendulous breasts and tar-colored lesions on her neck. A pink chemise covers her body, with a tattered red cardigan hanging over her shoulders. A bag of solution drips along tubing that snakes in and out of her body. There are black lines around her wrists and ankles— not dark enough to be tattoos and too uniform to be bruises.
“Don’t give her any cigarettes. She can’t clear her lungs. Every time she coughs it shakes the tubes loose.”
“I don’t smoke.”
“Good for you.” He takes a cigarette from behind his ear and transfers it to his mouth. “You can find your own way back.”
The curtains are drawn. Music is coming from somewhere. It takes me a while to realize there is a radio playing softly on the bedside table, next to an empty vase and a Bible.
She’s asleep. Sedated. Morphine perhaps. A tube sticks out of her nose and another comes from somewhere near her stomach. Her face is turned toward the oxygen tank.
I lean my shoulder against the wall and rest my head.
“This place gives you the creeps,” she says, without opening her eyes.
“Yes.”
I sit down on a chair so she doesn’t have to turn her head to see me. Her eyes open slowly. Her face is whiter than the walls. We stare at each other in the semidarkness.
“Have you ever been to Maui?”
“It’s in Hawaii.”
“I know where it fucking is.” She coughs and the bed rattles. “That’s where I should be now. I should be in America. I should have been born American.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because the Yanks know how to live. Everything is bigger and better. People laugh about it. They call them arrogant and ignorant, but the Yanks are just being honest. They eat little countries like this for breakfast and shit them out before lunch.”
“Have you ever been to America?”
She changes the subject. Her eyes are puffy and dribble has leaked from the corner of her mouth.
“Are you a doctor or a priest?”
“A psychologist.”
She laughs sarcastically. “No point getting to know me. Not unless you like funerals.”
The cancer must have struck quickly. Her body hasn’t had time to waste away. She is pale, with a neat chin, graceful neck and flaring nostrils. If it weren’t for her surroundings and the harshness of her voice, she would still be an attractive woman.
“The problem with cancer is that it doesn’t feel like cancer, you know. A head cold feels like a cold. And a broken leg feels like a broken leg. But with cancer you don’t know unless you have X-rays and scans. Except for the lump, of course. Who can forget the lump? Feel it!”
“That’s OK.”
“Don’t make a fuss. You’re a big boy. Have a feel. You’re probably wondering if they’re real. Most men do.”
Her hand shoots out and closes around my wrist. Her grip is surprisingly strong. I fight the urge to pull away. She puts my hand under her chemise. My fingers fold into the softness of her breast. “Just there. Can you feel it? It used to be the size of a pea— small and round. Now it’s the size of an orange. Six months ago it spread to my bones. Now it’s in my lungs.”
My hand is still on her breast. She brushes it over the nipple, which hardens under my palm. “You can fuck
