Doctor, doctor, will I die? Count to five and stay alive . . .
It never occurred to me, as an act of conscious kindness, to reach out in her defence, to stand by her and to try to reclaim the innocent time before our gang had given themselves permission to mock her. The relief of honesty was, in any case, too great for them – they were venting what they really thought and the serpent could never be returned to its basket.
I suppose I felt that it was better for her to know the truth. People are nasty; they hate you. That’s the default position. What we do is cover that up with a sentimental carapace of generosity, whether that comes in the shape of religious example or shared humanity. It’s selfish really – I am kind to you in these circumstances because it makes me feel better.
Sarah had moved to one side to sit in her wheelchair; I guess to make a quicker and more dignified exit. I think it was that no one offered her a hand as she awkwardly negotiated the transition from sticks to wheels that prompted me to do something. Or it may have been that it was all playing out at excruciating length. Whatever it was, I stepped into the crowd that day and stood beside Sarah’s wheelchair. The braying laughter subsided briefly to accommodate me in the tableau.
“Shut the fuck up,” I said. “You stupid little bitches. She’s worth ten of any of you.”
I had nothing else. I had to get us out of there. I moved behind Sarah and pulled on the handles of the wheelchair. She jerked violently like a crash-test dummy.
“You have to let the brake off,” she said and did so.
The jeering followed us down the corridor. I’ve learned a bit about pushing wheelchairs since, like turning around to go backwards through swing doors, but I knew none of that then. I used Sarah as a battering ram to get outside.
We went down the old driveway beyond the playgrounds and away from the little girls’ songs, me leaning back and slipping on old grit. If I’d let go she’d have ended her run in the stream at the bottom. I sat beside her, behind the groundsman’s sheds, and pulled two cigarettes from what was left of a packet of ten. She held hers ineptly. I think it was her first.
I looked at Sarah not with pity but with contempt.
“You stupid bloody fool, Sar. How could you have thought those girls were your friends?” I said at last. “The truth is that they’re grateful they’re not you. Get real.”
“I don’t think they’re my friends,” she said. I had expected her to be crying. But she was smiling faintly at me through the smoke.
If I’d been older I’d have liked to say, “They despise you for reminding them of what they are – able-bodied but still useless. They can’t take you into their lives as anything other than a burden. That’s the truth, Sarah, and it’s just sad and pathetic for you to delude yourself that they think any better of you for making them feel superior. You’re a cripple and they want to laugh and point.” As it was, I just said, “They hate you.”
“I know,” she said. “But thanks anyway.”
I pushed her back up the hill. On the steep bit, I started to miss my footing on the grit again and to slide backwards. With my head down between the handles of the wheelchair, I began to laugh helplessly. We were immobilised.
“What are you doing?” she said from the front.
“Nothing,” I managed to say. “I’m stuck.”
She pulled the brake on and I helped her out and on to her sticks, and I pushed the empty chair up slowly beside her, watching each of her careful steps.
In truth, I ignored her for a while after that, just as the other girls ignored me, leaving her behind as an amusing but failed emotional experiment. But I remember she often looked tearful and pained at the end of lessons and of the day. It seemed to be her rightful lot, and I tried to shrug it off inside.
We were both outsiders; I see that now. I started to fetch the wheelchair when it was elsewhere. Push her between classes. Help her with her lunch tray.
I imagined she wouldn’t live long – I don’t know why, as her disability wasn’t that great. But even the teachers let that assumption prevail. And far from fading from my mind, she kept recurring, like a persistent musical phrase.
2
My descent into faith started with a note shoved under my door in a student hall at university. I kept it for a few years. I don’t really know why. Maybe I knew it was an important letter. Maybe I was keeping papers for my biographer.
I can pretty much remember it in its entirety.
Hi dear Nat . . . Don’t leave us. Please don’t leave us. We love you and this is REALLY important, because it’s about the most important thing for all of us . . . YOUR ETERNAL LIFE IN LORD JESUS. You may think you’re just turning your back on us, but really you’re turning your back on HIM. So it’s HIM begging you to come back, not US. So we’re just praying that you will come back to us – and be saved, like us, by His Grace. Pleeease Nat!
In His Love Forever, Noel
It was written on a piece of A4 file paper and had a crucifix drawn quickly as a kind of logo in the top right-hand corner, the hanging figure on it a couple
