Further Under the Duvet (39 page)

I get lots of visitors. Some I’m more aware of than others. The girls from work came and tried to create the atmosphere of the office by bringing countless bars of chocolate and arguing heatedly about how milk chocolate was so much
nicer than dark chocolate – a big chorus of ‘Barf! Ooh,
dark
chocolate – puke! I’d rather go without – almost!’ broke out.

Lots of laughter at this but it was happening a long way away. I can’t always control how conscious I am, I come to and fade out again like a badly tuned radio. Or maybe I just wasn’t interested this time. Maybe I was afraid they’d start talking about work stuff. Because I so did not want to know. In many ways, this has been like a little holiday for me. Nicer than a holiday, actually, because the only person down here is me.

With a fright, I’m jolted out of my dark nothingness. My room seems to have filled up with irate cockneys. Several of them shouting angrily: someone has slept with someone else, and the someone else thought the first person loved them but now they’re going to effing kill them. Shouty voices and horrible aggression – what’s going on? This business to stimulate me has gone too far! I want them out of my room.

My bed is shaking. Now what’s happening? A cockney-related earthquake?

‘What on EARTH is going on here?’ The voice of authority. Some sort of nurse, I’d be bound. ‘Mrs Coy and Orla Coy, get OUT of Laura’s bed immediately.’

More bed-shaking and my mum’s mortified voice. ‘Sorry, sister, we were trying to recreate watching
EastEnders
at home. When Laura comes over, we watch it snuggled up on the couch.’

‘But she’s critically ill! Her head must not be moved! And you could have dislodged one of her tubes, that’s the tubes that are keeping her alive, Mrs Coy.’

I’m not sticking around for this. I sink back down, wafting
slowly like a feather, waiting to be subsumed by dark comforting nothingness.

But something must have gone wrong when they invaded my bed because I’m not suspended in the balm of nothingness, I’m standing beside a river. This is new.

‘Laura, Laura, over here, Laura!’

On the far bank is a collection of people, young and old, and they’re smiling and beckoning energetically. Who the hell are they? As I keep looking, some start to seem familiar; they look like my dad, who is prone to roundy-facedness and high colour. Cousins of mine, they must be. And there’s more. There’s Aunty Irene, Mum’s sister, who died when I was a baby; I recognize her from photos. And there are other Mum lookalikes. I am related to these people.

The whole tableau is strangely familiar. It looks… actually… it looks exactly like a family wedding. They are all happy and red-faced as if they’ve just been flinging themselves around some manky ballroom in their wedding finery to ‘Let’s Twist Again’ and ‘Sweet Caroline’. Any minute now it’ll be time for the rubbery chicken. I shudder.

And then I clock Old Granny Mac, grim and upright in a hard-backed chair. In her hand is her blackthorn stick, the one she used to hit me and Orla on the ankles with when we were young. Well, fuck that, I’m not going someplace where someone else can hit me.

‘Get in the raft, Laura,’ they call. ‘It’s there, behind the rushes.’

I take a look. The raft is a gammy, leaky-looking thing, more like a pallet; there aren’t even sides to it. No way am I getting on. I might drown. Although from the looks of things, it seems I’m already dead.

‘No!’ I say loudly and it seems to boom in the sky overhead. ‘I’m not going.’

A clamour of ‘But you have to, it’s your time. Your time is up!’ reaches me from the other bank.

‘I don’t give a flying fuck,’ I say, ‘I’m not going.’

Family above me, family down here. I’m trapped.

‘… heart-rate stabilizing…’

‘We nearly lost her that time.’

‘She’s a fighter, this one.’

‘Oh yes? Might explain all those old bruises on her then.’

Fiona’s been here before, but I’ve only barely been aware of her. This time I can hear her clearly.

‘Laura,’ she’s beseeching, ‘don’t die, Laura, just don’t die and it’ll be okay. I will help you fix it.’

I can
feel
her desperation. She’s suspected for ages. She hasn’t actually said anything but there have been a lot of meaningful looks and coded suggestions. I should have told her, but I haven’t. Haven’t been able to. Even though she’s my best friend. Because it’s too shaming, you know?

Chris is back. The nice smell and the low, intense voice is beside me. ‘Laura, remember the time I was looking out into the garden and I said, “Laura, look at the beautiful red poppy”? But it wasn’t a poppy at all, it was just a chipsticks bag. But because I wasn’t wearing glasses, I thought it was a poppy. Remember how we laughed?’

Yes, Chris, I remember. And I remember what happened next
.

Next person to show up is my bossman, Brian the sweat-meister. Chris thanks him for coming. Apparently I’m very conscientious at work; if anything would get through to me, it would be the reminder of how many people I was letting down, while having the temerity to be lying in bed with a life-threatening head injury.

‘You sure it’s okay to talk to her about work?’ Brian asks and a chorus of voices assures him it is the Very Best Thing for me.

A bulky, sweaty presence arrives at my bedside and Brian is not comfortable, not one bit, with talking to the closed face of a woman deep in a coma. He’d never make a children’s television presenter; they have to have convincingly vivacious conversations with carrots and flaps of felt and all kinds of inanimate stuff.

Hold her hand, someone urges him. So – gingerly – he does. I’m liking plenty of this coma stuff, but having sluicey bosses, who take all the credit for your work, hold your hand, is a little too much.

‘Hello, Laura, I don’t, er, know if you can hear me. If you can, I’d like to tell you that all the gang at work misses you and is wishing you a speedy recovery.’
Lifted straight from some crappy greeting card
. ‘And let me see… um… Janet has hit her target weight on Weight Watchers and… and… oh you’ll love this! You know that new young fella, bit of an eejit… anyway didn’t he walk into the car park the other morning, just after a car had gone through, and he’d forgotten about the barrier – which had gone up to let the car in obviously – and next thing it came belting down on top of the young fella’s head! Broke his nose and cracked
his skull. Ah sure, as we’re all saying, it can only be an improvement!’

Thanks for that, Brian. Telling a woman in a critical condition with a head injury about someone else getting clunked. No wonder they no longer let you anywhere near the clients
.

‘So, ah, Laura. As you know the launch date for Acideeze – sure of course you know – you set it up! Well, time marches on and we’re all depending on you, Laura. You’re the best we have, Laura, no one charms those doctors like you do. The others are doing their best, pulling all the showcases together, but we need
you
. Come back, Laura!’

I sense the others in the room are impressed with his bravura plea. That will surely have me lepping out of the bed and into my worksuit, they are thinking.

But behind my blank face I am doing a bit of thinking myself. Hmm, let me consider this now, Brian. So what are you offering me? Going back to work with a broken head and working my arse off on the launch of some new stomach antacid, which if it’s a success you’ll take all the credit for and if it’s a bomb, I’ll get the blame? Or staying here where it’s restful and peaceful most of the time except when you show up to badger me? Let me just have a little think…

You’re on your own, bud
.

Chris is back at my side. ‘Laura, remember the weekend we had in Galway and we saw the dolphins? Remember, there were loads of them, maybe twenty, playing with each other, jumping and diving, like they were putting on a show for us. Such a glorious day and we had the whole beach to ourselves.
Do you remember, Laura? We felt like we’d been personally chosen for a little miracle.’

I remember, Chris, course I remember. Mind you, I remember better what happened next. Remember driving back to the guest house, we accidentally went the wrong way and somehow it was my fault and you swung your arm almost casually across my face, delivering such a blow to my nose and mouth, that blood spurted over the dashboard? Remember that, Chris? Because I do. I had to tell the people in the guest house I’d slipped climbing the rocks. Remember that? And they marvelled at how unlucky I was, how only the day before I’d had that accident on the sailing boat that made my eye close up
.

You’d never believe it to look at me, not even when I’m patterned with cuts and bruises. I wear high heels, I’m bossy at work and my hair is always nice (except when clumps of it have been torn out). I manage to explain away my injuries on a sporty lifestyle which people buy because the truth would be so shocking. And, of course, everyone loves Chris. (Well,
nearly
everyone; I think Fiona has her doubts.) They say what a sweetheart he is. So devoted to me. So devoted that if I’m home ten minutes late, he dashes my face against the wall, or punches me in the kidneys, or dislocates my shoulder.

Looking from the outside in, I should have left a long time ago. But the first time he hit me it was a one-off, a unique aberration. He was in the horrors, crying, begging for forgiveness. The second time was also a one-off. As was the third. And the fourth. At some stage the series of isolated incidents stopped being a series of isolated incidents and just became normal life. But I didn’t want to see that.

I was too ashamed. Not just by the humiliation of being smacked and punched by the man I loved but because I had made such a big mistake. I’m a smart woman, I should have known. And once I’d known I should have legged it.

It complicated things that I loved him. Or had loved him. And, shallow as this may sound, I’d invested a lot of time and trouble in him being The One; seeing how wrong I’d been was hard to suck up. Especially because we sometimes had our good days. Even now. There were times when he was like the person I’d first met. But I wasn’t. My stomach was always a walnut of nerves, wound tight with anxiety, wondering what would happen to tip his mood. A telemarketer calling when he was having his dinner? A button missing from his shirt? Fiona ringing me?

The more he hit me, the less sure of myself I became. At times he almost had me convinced it was what I deserved.

I used to lie awake at night, my head racing, wondering if there was any way out of the trap. Perhaps he’d grow out of it and eventually stop? But even I could see he was getting worse, as he got away with more and more stuff. Go to the police? But they wouldn’t help if I didn’t press charges. And I couldn’t do that. It would make my mistake, my shame, so horribly public and tawdry.

I could leave him, of course. Well, I’d tried that, hadn’t I? And look where it had got me. Him going ballistic and flinging me down the stairs and fracturing my skull.

Down here, in the silence, everything seems calm and logical. Sometimes all you need is a little time out to see these things clearly. It’s a bit like being on retreat. (Not that I’ve ever
been on one, but I like the sound of them. Just not enough to submit to a weekend without telly and double-ply loo roll.)

Imagine, if I die, he’ll have murdered me. He’ll have done what he’s threatened to do so many times. Although I never really believed him. In fact, I don’t think he did either. He might have scared even himself with how badly he’s injured me this time. Bottom line is, if I die, he’ll be guilty of murder. But I’m the only witness. So if I die, he’s in the clear.

But if I don’t die…? Well, it’s obvious: I will leave him. Even press charges. Why not? You can’t go round hitting people and flinging them down flights of stairs. It’s just not on.

But I might be too late, because down here something is changing… The darkness is filling up with white light. Not just ordinary white light, but super-intense, as though it’s being backlit with cleverly concealed halogen bulbs, the type they have in boutique hotels. And the light is forming itself into a shape – a roundy tunnel, with a pulsating circle of fluorescent white light at its end. Suffused with well-being and serenity I am compelled to walk towards it. It’s exactly like the stories in the
National Enquirer
from those near-death merchants!

I’m dying! Other than a small tinge of regret that I won’t get to fix Chris, I’m, actually, excited.

I keep on walking towards the white light, which throbs hypnotically at me. And then… surely I’m imagining it… is the light fading a little… are the walls of the tunnel becoming more insubstantial? Yes, they are. They definitely are. Going, going, fast. Now there are only wisps, like dry
ice; now they’re entirely gone, the whiteness replaced with familiar darkness.

‘Hey, what’s going on?’ my head calls.

‘It’s not your time,’ a voice booms.

‘But I’m all set. I liked the feeling. Bring it on.’

‘It’s not your time.’

‘Well, make your bloody mind up!’

A pause. Have I gone too far? Then the boomy voice, sounding a little sheepish, murmurs, ‘Sorry. Administrative error.’

I wait a little while, to see if the white light returns. Nothing. Nada. Rien. For countless hours, I eddy about in the silent nothingness, and for the first time since I came down here, I’m a little… well…
bored
. I watch carefully, alert to any signs that the light might return, any little chinks at all in the darkness. But there’s nothing; it won’t be back.

Well, I decide, if you’re not going to let me die, I might as well live.

I take a deep breath and dive towards the surface. I’m coming up from under.

Previously unpublished
.

*
You can read about it in
Watermelon
.

†
You can get the gory details in
Rachel’s Holiday
.

*
You can get the fully story in
Angels
.