In Ward ten, where all the patients were waiting for Acute Surgery, the bed sheets were pink like blancmange and the curtains were a streaky green, the same green as the pyjamas given to the man who was meant to be in the bed next to Uncle Pat. He was rarely where the nurses put him. He told Pat that it was when they got you into bed that they had you where they wanted you. This pot-bellied neighbour hobbled around his bed all day, ignoring the nurses and the three old women who came to visit, bringing books about the war. Uncle Pat couldn’t tell which woman was his wife. Still standing, his neighbour listened to the woman gassing and he pointed to the picture of the ship on which he had served. “It’s famous then!” said one of the old women. He went back to looking for things in his bedside locker, and checking the level on his bottle of dilute orange. A tube led out of his pyjama fronts and hooked into a bag of custardy pee, which swayed on a small wheeled rack at his feet. This he tugged along after him carelessly. “Watch your… little bag,” one of the old women warned.
“It’s all right,” he said. “It’s firmly attached.” To prove the point he gave his bag a sharp kick.
It depressed Uncle Pat looking around the ward too much. The floor had black and white tiles and the room smelled—as he had once gloomily anticipated—of flowers, gravy and shit. “It’s all bums this week,” the sister had informed him happily. “You’re all in for your bowels down this end.” Uncle Pat lay and stared at the ceiling and eavesdropped on the next bed.
Until Wendy arrived with her carnations. She kissed him on his white hair, which looked almost yellow on the pillow.
“You should get me put down. I reckon they should put all old people down when they get to be a burden on the State.”
Wendy thought of the last time she came visiting with Aunty Anne. Her aunt, aghast, standing on the NHS lino, going: “And you a millionaire! A millionaire in a room with twenty other bodies! As far as I can see, a millionaire is obliged to go private!”
Uncle Pat was looking up and down the ward. He hated chuntering on like he was doing now, especially when Wendy was here, giving up her time. Yet he couldn’t help it. She arrived and he started to speak and it all came rushing out. “Look at these old buggers in here. I get this cruel streak, you know, all over me, when I looked at them. That old woman over there, opposite, getting propped up by the male nurse. She can’t even sit up to get her pills. They have to hold her till they go all the way down. I think it’s cruel, keeping her alive. What’s she got to look forward to?”
Wendy wanted to rally him and make him feel more optimistic. Then he blocked her by shifting the subject. He started talking about old people’s Homes. The places you got shoved into when there wasn’t much hope. Wendy tried to say that needn’t worry him now. His money put him out of reach of anyone else. It could save him.
“You could be one of those wily, rich old men. Who own islands and wear silk cravats and sailor caps. The ones who marry bimbos eighty years younger than themselves and get into the papers. With your money you could end up a father again at a hundred and three!”
“That’s just grotesque,” he smiled weakly.
Her uncle was a winner late in life. His millions had come too late to make him comfortable. Getting put away with everyone else was still a fresh fear.
“I’ve got a scheme, you know,” he said with sudden relish. “For a much cheaper old people’s Home. Do you want to hear it?”
She wasn’t sure that she did.
“I reckon that they could save money by cutting their heads off. They could transplant three heads onto one old body. What do they do now? Bicker and do jigsaws. It would save space. I can see the day when they’ll do that. At first the idea appals you, but they’d sell it as a good, modern concept and pretty soon we’d all be saying, ooh, yes, it’s sensible really. Three heads are wiser than one, and all. Three sharing one old body’s pain. And we’ll have old people with three heads. Or maybe three brains in one huge, old skull. Like the Mekon, in a dressing gown.”
“Who’s the Mekon?” Wendy asked.
“Don’t you know who the Mekon is?”
She shook her head.
“Eeh, lass,” he smiled. “What about Dan Dare? Whatever happened to Dan Dare?”
Wendy didn’t know what to say.
“I know, I know. He’s my age, and pulling his pee around after him, in a plastic carton on wheels.”
TWENTY-ONE
Dear Wendy,
I’m having a kiddie. That’s given you a turn, hasn’t it? I’ve just fiddled on with the litmus test that I bought from Boots, dabbing it in my wee. You’re the first person I’ve told—Aunty Wendy. I want you to be a crazy, maddening Aunty like our Aunty Anne. I’ve decided that’s what you’ll be. By the time you get this I’ll have told Daniel too, so technically, you won’t be the first.
A sprog. A fucking sprog. That’ll put the tin lid on my degree as well.
And I was getting it sorted, too. Maybe next year, starting here, in Women’s Studies. I’ve been getting to know people on campus. I’ve talked to them in the white plastic, smoky luxury of the Nelson Mandela coffee bar. I look at them and think, I can do what you do. I can think the things you think.
I’ve bought this shaggy black coat from Oxfam. I look like a bear in it. I sit on the mini bus and ride through town to
