I couldn’t believe it had slipped my mind. And, a month ago, when the appointment had been given him, I’d solemnly promised to go with him and hold his hand. He hated hospitals. He hated anything that smelled of an institution. “Institutions smell,” he told me, “of gravy, flowers and fresh excrement.”
“Who’s gone with him?” I asked.
“Colin did,” said Aunty Anne, leading the way back to the path. “Even though he hates those places too. They depress him, and I’m not surprised.” She sighed.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I thought you knew!”
“Why didn’t you go?”
“I hardly think that’s proper. I’m his ex-wife. They’re poking on with all his insides.”
Sometimes I just didn’t understand Aunty Anne.
When we got back to the flat it was empty.
There was a postcard on the met from Timon. It showed a picture of an egg-headed alien, glowing yellow.
Wendy, who are these people you’re knocking about with? What are you doing, telling them they can write to me? I’ve never met any of them in my life. Are you giving out my address to just anyone? This Belinda woman is obviously bananas. And lonely. I got a card from her the same day I got your note. A kind of preface to telling me what she calls, ‘the whole shazam shebang and kit kaboodle.’ She thinks I’ll write a story about her. I dreamed last night that it was me being abducted. You know I hate that shit.
love (even so)
Timon.
SEVENTEEN
They didn’t know what was wrong with Uncle Pat. He came back late that afternoon and how we fussed around him.
“I can sit my own self down!” he grumbled, heading for his favourite swivel chair, in the brightest patch of light. It was strange seeing him in clothes. He was wearing a tweedy suit with a beautiful silk tie, loosely knotted, a peacock green and blue. He tilted his head back, sighed and closed his eyes. “Serious things don’t seem so serious once you get home,” he said. “Once you step through that door, it’s like they all fall away.”
Aunty Anne said, “Hush now and get some rest. Do you want something to eat? There’s some bacon I could fry.” I could see her big hands twitching, keen to do something practical, which for her usually meant one of her slapdash fry-ups.
For a moment Uncle Pat looked vexed. Then the strength drained out of him. “No, I’m all right. Colin fetched a...muffin, I think the word was, from the stall outside the hospital. I ate it in the waiting room. Do you know, the whole business of being looked at has tired me out.”
We all sat down and watched him. I don’t know why. If I’d come back from something serious—the acute surgical out-patients’ consultancy, no less—I wouldn’t want faces peering at me afterwards. But we were waiting for him to tell us that everything was all right. It made you realise how thin he’d become, seeing him in his best suit like this. We were too used to him swishing about like Prospero in his voluminous scarlet gown.
Colin said, “They were very nice to us. They let me go in with him.”
Uncle Pat opened his eyes. “In case I forgot to tell them anything, or didn’t listen properly to what they told me.”
“I didn’t have to do anything. He was great,” said Colin. Then he turned and gave me a distinctly funny look. I blushed.
“What did they say?” asked Aunty Anne. She went to put the kettle on, her feet shuffling impatiently on the flags, wanting to dance.
“They felt all over my abdomen,” said Uncle Pat. “All my skinny old stomach. It was a very nice, very young Canadian girl with cool fingers and a very lucid way of talking. She said there’s very definitely a mass down there.”
“A mass?” said Aunty Anne.
“Something inflamed, she thought,” said Colin. “They don’t know. They want to do emergency scans.”
The phone rang in the hall. There was no answer phone. Or rather there was, but it was faulty and only recorded actual phone conversations and played them back to the next person who called. Not very useful. I dashed into the hall, straining to hear about Uncle Pat’s scans.
“Wendy? It’s David.”
“It’s a really bad time,” I said.
“What?” He was at work and the shop noise was fierce behind him.
“It’s a really bad time to talk,” I shouted. Behind me I could hear Colin counting things off on his fingers.
“He’s got to go back for an X ray, a barium drink...”
“A barium meal,” his father corrected him.
“Whatever. It’s where they light you up inside and video everything swishing about. And an ultrasound, too.”
“That’s what they give pregnant women!” cried Aunty Anne.
“Maybe it’s twins,” said Uncle Pat gloomily.
“Wendy, listen,” David was saying. I could tell he was serving someone at the till at the same time. “Right. If I could just ask you to sign where it says ‘signature’...”
“What? David...”
“Going Places on Friday night, Wendy. It’s a club.”
“I can’t do this now, David.”
“You can’t come out?”
“Yes I can come out, but...”
“I can’t stay on long...Seven o’clock at the Assembly Rooms on George Street. Friday at seven! Dress up retro! See you then!” The shop phone went dead.
“They say that the barium meal tastes disgusting,” I heard Uncle Pat say. “For some reason I picture sitting down to this funny, lumpy plate of chemicals, forcing it down with a knife and fork. Or the foaming jug of poison that Dr Jeckyll swigs down.”
“Oh god,” said Aunty Anne, sitting herself down as I came back into the kitchen. “This is just awful.”
I looked at the three of them. For the first time they properly felt like my new family. At the back of my mind I could hear that voice of Mandy’s singing, as she had of our mother: ‘It’s cancer-cancer-cancer.’ Mandy demystifying everything as usual. Mandy saying the unsayable, singing the unsingable. I was gripped by the need to say
