“Oh, fuck,” said Wendy.
Aunty Anne appeared in the doorway. “Belinda’s on her way up, everyone.”
They went very still.
“Have a drink,” Colin told Wendy.
Timon was sitting beside Astrid now and the both stared at Aunty Anne in the doorway. Now they could all hear Belinda’s heavy tread on the stairs beyond the front door. She was walking very carefully, trying not to drop something. The door clashed behind her and she was coming up the hallway. No haste, almost ceremonially.
Timon looked at the others’ apprehensive faces. Then at the doorway. Aunty Anne stood aside, and there was Belinda.
The same Belinda as ever, in her best pink frock, her massive arms held out before her, carrying a home-baked, home-decorated cake. It was overrun with pink sugar mice and she had piped on the top: “Welcome, Timon!” A number of indoor fireworks hissed and burned merrily all around his name. Above them her face was radiant, expectant. She’d put on a new colour of lipstick. Fuchsia, fresh, sticky, and her hair was tied up in ribbons.
Timon was standing slowly, out of his chair.
“Welcome, Timon!” cried Belinda, stepping in the room, as if she was reading the cake aloud.
“Belinda!” he laughed, and ran to her.
TWENTY-FIVE
Captain Simon was not a happy man. When Uncle Pat came home and gently installed himself in the kitchen, the door was flung open and the Captain came crashing in, brimming with complaints about his sister’s behaviour. “They’ve taken over,” he moaned. “They’re at it day and night. Humping and pumping like animals. Whenever my back’s turned. Belinda is becoming a floozy and it’s an embarrassment. She told me yesterday—while I was eating my tea, mark you—that she’d been ravished by her black boyfriend on the very same table that very morning.”
Pat chuckled. “It’s their honeymoon period, Simon. It’ll all fizzle out soon.”
“Big black bastard,” glowered the Captain. “I’ve asked her, what does she want, taking up with the likes of him?”
“Oh, hey, now,” Pat said, wincing. “I don’t hold with that kind of thing. Timon’s a nice enough chap. And he thinks a lot of your sister. There’s not a lot you can do about that.”
Captain Simon felt reprimanded. “Ay, well. I get possessive, you see. No-ones come between me and Belinda. A fella is likely to be protective of his little sister, isn’t he?”
“She’s doing all right, Simon. She’s having the time of her life, by all reports.”
It was from Wendy, on her last few visits to the hospital, that Uncle Pat had learned of the most recent events at the Royal Circus. He was glad of anything going on, any distraction from his coming home. He didn’t want a lot of fuss around him. As far as he was concerned, the doctors had given up. They’d looked right inside him and seen how far the disease had progressed. Far too far. A man who’d hardly been ill all his life, who’d never actually spent much time in a hospital before, had become too ill for surgery. Now he was home, supposedly waiting for them to decide what to do with him next. More queues, more botch-jobs. He was waiting, he knew, to die. He was pleased things were going on around him when he returned. He didn’t want a whole load of weeping and wailing. Everyone round here acted like a bunch of old women already as it was.
Aunty Anne appeared, lugging his things from the hospital, all of them wrapped in new, shiny NHS bags. She looked overly bright and cheery. “Shall I put these away?”
“Sit still for a while, Anne. Come and talk with us.”
“I’ll just…”
“Come and sit down, woman.”
She obeyed him then, which was surprising. It was like having a whole new range of faculties, he thought, this business of dying. People actually started to listen to you. He’d have to try that out some more.
“We’ve just been talking about Belinda’s new young man,” said Pat.
“It’s her first real boyfriend,” said Captain Simon.
“She’s running about like a young girl,” said Aunty Anne. “There were out dancing last night. He’s certainly very taken with her. He says it was instantaneous: as soon as he clapped eyes on her. He would have known her anywhere, he said.”
“They’ve gone mad,” the Captain tutted.
“It’s nice to see people in love,” snapped Anne. “I believe in true love, don’t you?”
The Captain glared at her.
“It’s very odd being out of the ward,” said Pat suddenly, gazing out of the window. “I was thinking all the way here in the taxi. Whenever do you spend two whole weeks indoors without even stepping over the door? Never. It was like the rest of the world had stopped existing.”
“Well, it hadn’t,” said Anne brusquely. “Quite a lot has been going on.”
“Good,” he said. “Now I think I could do with a little siesta, before Colin and Wendy come in. I’ll need some strength for talking with the young’uns and catching up with their gossip.”
Anne helped him down the hall to his room.
It wasn’t the same. Whenever Wendy managed to get Timon to herself and Belinda wasn’t tagging along, they still never talked the way they used to. He was holding something back and she wanted to tackle him about this. He admitted that when he was with people, all he was thinking about was Belinda. About her grand, brave, soft white body. “She envelops me! She covers me! She takes me in and won’t let go.”
“That’s more than I need to know,” said Wendy.
“You’ve never had this,” said Timon. “You can’t appreciate it.”
She scowled. “And you used to be so cynical about all that.” She couldn’t believe that Timon was hankering after someone other than himself. That he no longer felt free to roam about and take things in, lose track of the time in his explorations. She’d been looking forward to showing him
