Anthem for Jackson Dawes (4 page)

‘Now, now, I know my jokes are bad …'

‘Worse than Dad's,' she managed.

‘Worse than her dad's.'

Another little gap. Maybe it was dawning on Grandad that talking to him was OK, but talking to Dad would have been good too. More than good.

‘Have you spoken to him yet? Has he managed to get through to you?' Megan couldn't speak. Grandad rushed on, suddenly having plenty to say. ‘Can't be easy being out there in some Russian oilfield. Suppose there's not much in the way of telephones.
Too many people wanting to use them. Wouldn't rightly know, but I'd say that's the size of it.'

Even if she could have spoken, Megan couldn't explain even to herself why she'd made Dad promise not to ring while she was in hospital, except that he was always saying how difficult it was, being so far away. So she had told him to wait until she was home. It would be something to look forward to, she'd said when he tried to change her mind.

‘It's the time difference, it's hard to get it right sometimes,' Megan said, wishing she'd never made Dad promise anything at all, she
so
wanted to hear his voice, so wanted to see him.

‘I wonder,' Grandad said, ‘I wonder what kind of birds he'll get out there? Should have sorted a book out for him before he went. Could have kept a list.' Grandad and his lists. ‘That's what you can ask him when he phones. Tell him your grandad wants to know what he's seen. He'll need something interesting to do, fill in his time.
I'm saying he should watch birds
.'

There was a muttering in the background. Megan managed a giggle. Watching paint dry is how Dad described birdwatching. Maybe it was the same with Mrs Lemon.

‘I'll tell him,' she promised.

There was a loud noise suddenly, a long drawn out wail, as if something horrible was happening to a baby in another room, then a phone rang and rang.
Just outside her door there was the scramble of feet, some loud voices, a stab of laughter, then silence once more.

‘Wish I didn't have to be on a children's ward. Wish they'd let me be on an adult ward.'

‘No, you don't,' came the reply. ‘Full of old codgers. You wouldn't want that. Do nothing but complain, the lot of them. Nurse this, Nurse that. I should know. I was one of them.' He laughed then. ‘Give them a right runaround, I did, even with my wrists in plaster.'

There was another gap full of silence, where maybe she was supposed to laugh, and allow him to tell her again about breaking his wrists doing the hokey-cokey.

More muttering in the background.

‘
Yes, yes! I will …
Mrs Lemon wants to know if they've done anything to you yet?'

Megan didn't know where to start. There was so much, she couldn't remember what order it had all happened in, everything confusing, some of it just a bit frightening. ‘I've got a drip,' she said, gazing up at the bag, the metal stand with its wheels, all part of her now, of this world she had to be in.

‘That'll be for the pop, I suppose,' Grandad said, as if she wasn't almost fourteen but still five.

‘For my
chemo
, dafty.'

‘Ah, that. Suppose it's better down a tube than having to drink the stuff. Tastes like dandelion and durdock, apparently. You'd hate it. Which arm?'

It wasn't in her arm. The end of it, or the beginning of it, she couldn't decide which, was in her chest, burrowed under the skin near her collarbone. It stopped above her heart. The rest of it coiled like a tiny snake under a dressing, then out to hang between her and the drip stand.

‘Jackson's got one as well,' Megan said. ‘It's a central line or something.'

Grandad sounded impressed. ‘
Central line
,' Mrs Lemon was informed. ‘Means you can use both hands for doing your hair and your nails with. You girls! Always fussing with your hair.'

He laughed. Megan laughed. He was trying to cheer her up, and she wanted him to think that he had succeeded. Grandad began to cough, which signalled that this had been a long phone call and his voice was tired, or he was just gripping the phone, the way he always did, had worn out his fingers.

‘There now,' he said, when the coughing stopped, ‘best be going, Pet Lamb. Kiss, night-night,' as if she was little again.

‘Kiss, night-night,' Megan said, feeling as little as anything.

She waited for him to put down the phone.

No point in spoiling things. Best not to tell him that her hair might fall out with the chemo, that one day she might be as bald as Jackson.

Good guys versus bad guys. Chemo versus Cancer. All happening in her veins and arteries, all heading off for that place in her head where things had gone wrong. Megan wondered if Good always won over Bad, the way it did in films and fairy stories.

It was late; it was dark. She should have been asleep. Instead, she lay listening to the hospital, the noises from the ward, the sounds from outside, the baby who seemed to have cried on and off for hours in a room further down the corridor.

Night-time was all so different.

Her door was half open. Megan didn't want to be shut out of everything that was going on, preferring the wedge of pale light which leaned in and took the edge off the darkness.

The nurses' voices were subdued, yet they still seemed to sing out, with nothing to mask them, no everyday bustle. There was hardly anyone about, no trolleys, no wheelchairs, no toddlers trying to escape.

The ring of phones haunted the place.

An odd shuffling footfall outside her room made Megan struggle up to see who it was. A parent in slippers and dressing gown was making her weary way along. Half an hour later, the steps returned, hesitating outside her door.

The woman looked in. ‘Y'all right, love? Need a nurse or summat?' The kindness in her voice made Megan swallow, made her feel more lonely than ever.

‘No, thank you.'

‘Fust night on ward, is it?'

‘Yes.'

‘Never mind, you'll be right. Shall I get you a cup of cocoa or summat, help you go over? Just had one myself. These places weren't meant to help you sleep.' She gave a tight little laugh.

‘I'm fine,' Megan said. ‘Thanks, anyway.'

‘Kipper's my little girl, by the way.' The woman paused, as if about to say something else, but thought better of it. ‘All right, love. Nighty-night.'

‘Excuse me,' Megan called out.

‘Yes, love?'

‘Is it her real name? Kipper?'

Another pause. ‘No, but it's what she calls herself.
Ever since she got ill. Don't ask me why. And I'm not allowed to tell anyone her real name.'

‘I like it,' Megan said, wondering if changing your name made it all feel better.

‘Aye, well. It's what she wants while she's stuck here. Anything that helps, you know. Right. Best let you get some shut-eye. If you can. Night, love.' Off she went, her footsteps fading away until they were just whispers along the corridor.

When she heard the noise, Megan couldn't quite believe it. A cat? Outside? What was it doing all the way up there? A horrifying thought struck her. Perhaps it had climbed the walls and was on a ledge, unable to move with fright. It might need rescuing. She slid out of bed, heading for the window, but something tugged hard at her skin.

‘Ouch, stupid thing.' Megan grabbed hold of her drip stand, patting down the dressing that held everything in place. Nothing had shifted, the line was still there, but the tape had lifted slightly. ‘Fancy forgetting you.'

She gently drew back the curtains to look out, not wanting to frighten the cat should it, by some strange chance, be sitting right outside.

It wasn't. How could it be, twelve floors up and no windowsills?

But where was it?

Megan looked at a dull black sky with no stars, just
a faint suggestion of clouds, a sharper black, scattered like litter across it. Below was a collection of curious shapes, made almost sinister by the lamps, with gauzy skirts of light dropping into the darkness.

They were the roofs of the old buildings with their chimneys and ridges, gutters and piping; the oldest part of the hospital. Any number of cats could be living there.

They'd walked past these buildings in daylight, her and Mum and Dad, on that day they told her she had cancer. They seemed ordinary then. Red-brick walls. Grey slate roofs. Chimneys. Towers.

There were trees growing out of small patches of grass, wooden benches for people to sit in the sun. There had been patients out in their dressing gowns doing just that. And smoking, some of them, which was a bit daft, ill people smoking.

She didn't notice anything much the next time she came to hospital, just headed for St Peregrine's, named after the patron saint of cancer patients. That's what it said on the brochure, anyway.

The wing was a shining, glassy tower built on the side of the old Outpatients Department. Its windows glinted in the sunshine. You couldn't see inside.

Standing at her window now, Megan thought of Rapunzel. They did a play about her at school once, an alternative version
with attitude
according to the drama teacher. There was still a tower, made out of
scaffolding, from which Rapunzel, Rapunzel had to let down her hair. There was still a prince to rescue her. Megan had been behind the scenes. The hair had to tumble from top to bottom. They made it out of yellow wool. Hundreds of strands of it, each strand twice the length of a man, all made into a wig for the girl who was playing the lead role. Megan ran her hands through her own hair and wondered how long it would last and if she'd ever be able to let it down from the top of a tower.

‘What're you doing?'

Megan snapped the curtains closed, feeling a fool, thinking about fairytales and cats twelve floors up. ‘Nothing.'

Jackson was silhouetted in the light from the corridor. ‘You weren't climbing out, were you? It's easier to go through the door, catch the lift. That's how I do it. I can tell you the door code.'

Megan resented the tone, like a smirk, in his voice. Jackson who knew everything about anything. But he didn't know a thing about her and never would. ‘I wasn't climbing out.'

‘Good. Can I come in?' He was already in. ‘If I stand out there, they'll catch me.' They should catch him, lock him in his room, stop him bothering people. ‘Want the door closed?'

‘No.'

‘Suit yourself. What
were
you doing?'

‘Are you always so nosy?' It was one of those questions which didn't need answering. ‘I heard a cat. At least, I think it was a cat.' It all sounded pretty daft now. She expected him to laugh.

‘That'll be Mr Henry. He's the moggy round here.'

‘Ha-ha.'

‘Keeps the rats down.' Jackson sat in the chair without waiting to be asked. There was a soft sigh as he sank into it. ‘You get them as big as dogs in this place.'

‘Big as dogs? I don't think so.' Nevertheless, Megan shifted a glance at the window and climbed back on to her bed, toes tingling at the thought.

‘We're only metres away from a rat, you know, every single one of us in the whole wide world.'

In the dark room, he was just a solid, featureless shape, though it was a shape which moved constantly. His feet slid about on the floor, his fingers tapped the arms of the chair, as if he was made entirely of tightly wound springs, or had swallowed a whole tub of E-numbers and additives.

‘But
we're
on the twelfth floor,' Megan reminded him.

‘Well, maybe not
here
, exactly.' A small laugh. ‘But on the ground, they're under us, gnawing away at the pipes and the walls. They eat anything. One day it's all going to collapse like an old mine and they'll be there clapping their tiny little hands, ready to chew on our bones. Not that they have hands. Not really. They have …'

‘You're a complete nutter, do you know that?'

There was another laugh from Jackson, then silence, but for the thrum of his fingers on the wood of the chair. ‘Mr Henry's been with this hospital since it was built.'

‘So?'

‘Since the
old
bit of the hospital was built … and you know what that means …' His words were a whisper, slow, menacing.

‘No, but you're going to tell me, anyway.' Megan tried to make out his face in the dark, but all she could see were his eyes, gleaming. She yawned dramatically, pushed herself into bed and pulled the covers right up to her neck.

‘Well … all
those
buildings must be hundreds of years old …'

‘Not listening,' Megan said, sleepy now. ‘Can't be bothered. If Mr Henry's been around that long, then he can keep for another day. Tell Becky and Laura, they'll like a spooky little cat story – you could call it
The Ghoooost of Mister Henry
.'

Jackson shifted in the chair. ‘That's the chemo,' he said.

‘What is?'

‘Making you scabby to anyone who's trying to be nice to you. Making you laugh at things you shouldn't.'

‘Like a ghost cat? Yeah, right.'

Jackson didn't reply.

Hah! She had him at last! Megan wished she could see the expression on his face, but just as quickly was glad that it was dark. Maybe he believed in things like that. Maybe she'd upset him. No. Not him. It was all just a joke, wasn't it? Just stupid stuff?

But the silence was like a wall between her and Jackson.

The door eased open. A nurse stood there for a moment, then switched on the light. The room swam with brightness. Megan screwed her eyes shut for a second.

‘So this is where you are, Jackson,' the nurse said. She was small and mousy, with darting eyes, as if she was being hunted by someone, something. Mr Henry, perhaps. The thought made Megan want to smile, it made her suck in her cheeks, bite down on them. ‘I've been looking all over for you. It's very late. You should be in your own room, not wandering the corridors. It sets a bad example to the little ones.'