Mr Toppit (10 page)

Why couldn’t there just be a single person who came and told us everything all in one go? It would have been better for Martha: she needed one person for her magic to work. A procession of different people did not play to her strengths. It distracted her, diminished her throw. At a party, she never stayed in a group. You always found her in a room other than the one where the party was taking place with some man she had extracted. She would be deep in conversation with him in the kitchen, or upstairs in a bedroom sitting on a pile of coats, or in a study perched on the edge of the desk. By the end of the party her head bobbed gently, as if it was floating on a rippling sea, her eyes misty as she talked to whoever was the chosen one.

Even if we were ready to leave, there was always time for another cigarette or another drink. Normally, Arthur, Rachel—if she had deigned to come—and I would be standing, powerless, by the door in our coats as the guests were leaving, making awkward conversation with the wife of the person Martha was talking to. Finally, she would appear and make her way towards us, negotiating each step carefully with her small feet and elegant shoes. At the door, she would take the hand of the person she had been talking to, might hold it in both of hers and, oblivious to the rest of us, finish off her conversation while we waited. The man, having first thought she was going to shake his hand,
was now unsure whether to take it back or to leave it in her grasp, so it lay there in a kind of limbo like a small, hibernating animal. Then, often in mid-sentence, she would stop talking, give the man a distracted smile and—ignoring his wife—walk out of the door without another word. Martha always had a problem with good-byes.

As Dr. Massingbird went out of the room on his ashtray hunt, Martha looked up at me. “It was a broken leg, that’s what she said, the woman on the phone, that’s all she said,” sounding as irritated as if a stranger had given her the wrong directions in the street. Then she sniffed and wiped her nose on the back of her hand.

When Dr. Massingbird came back, Martha appeared to have rallied a little. He had brought with him a little foil container that might once have held a cupcake. He smiled apologetically. “I’m sorry. That’s the best we can do, I’m afraid.” He cleared his throat. “Mrs. Hayman,” he began.

Martha put her head at an angle and smiled at him. “Where are you from?” she asked. “Where’s your accent?”

He had been about to start on the matter in hand, so the question threw him off track. “Ireland, actually,” he said, as if he was not entirely sure.

“Ireland! Whereabouts? Which part?”

“Well … Skibbereen. It’s just near—”

“Skibbereen,” Martha repeated dreamily, exhaling a trail of cigarette smoke, as if the sound of that one word was the only way of defining a perplexing set of emotions. Then her voice hardened quizzically: “But isn’t Massingbird originally a Suffolk name?”

His hand flew up and covered the name badge on his chest, as if he had unwittingly let out a secret. “Well …” he said.

“A Father Massingbird accompanied Richard Coeur de Lion on a crusade. He died before he got to Constantinople. His body was sent home to Walberswick in a cask of brandy.” She got up and, ignoring the ashtray he had brought, walked over to the sink in the corner and turned the tap on. There was a little fizz as she put the cigarette under the stream of water, then dropped it into the basin. She gave a curious little sniff. “I think someone’s urinated in this,” she said.

I gazed at the floor.

Dr. Massingbird cleared his throat again. He was gearing himself up for another try. Now we were going to hear. “Mrs. Hayman,” he said. Then he glanced at me. “And …?”

“Luke,” I said.

“Luke,” he repeated, with a little nod, as if he had just needed his memory jogged. He took a deep breath and brought his hands, now clasped, up to his chin. “What we have here is … not a good situation. Not good, I’m afraid,” he said, bobbing his head up and down as if he was agreeing with himself. He turned to Martha and made a little gesture towards me. “Would you like Luke to …? Is it all right if …?”

Outrage is not good for the breaking voice. “What am I meant to do? Go outside and read a comic?” came out as a petulant squawk, but Martha had already given a get-on-with-it flick of her hand, so Dr. Massingbird continued.

“We haven’t succeeded in getting your husband stable yet. There’s been internal bleeding. An enormous amount, in fact.”

Martha had gone white. I don’t know what color I was. She swallowed and her throat made a rusty squeak.

“Do you have any questions you would like to ask me?” Dr. Massingbird said. Suddenly I couldn’t think of anything I wanted to know. In fact, I really wanted him to go away.

Martha obviously felt the same. “I don’t think so. You’ve been so kind. Thank you,” she said graciously. “We’ll wait here. For news.” She was dismissing him.

A flicker of panic passed across Dr. Massingbird’s face. He hadn’t finished and he didn’t know quite how to continue, so when he said, “We’ll probably have to amputate his legs,” it came out more brutally than he’d perhaps meant it to. I turned to the wall, and found myself almost kissing the faces of Charles and Di on the poster. Martha put a hand over her mouth as if she was about to be sick.

“There’s been some major trauma to the lower half of his body, I’m afraid.”

“Both his legs?” I whispered. I didn’t even mind that it sounded inane.

He nodded. “We’ve been trying to get him stable enough to operate for the last hour.”

“And then what would happen?” Martha asked.

“We would operate as soon as we can.”

“No. After the operation,” she snapped.

“Well, there would be a long recovery period, if we were successful. Really quite extended. Before he could come home, that is.”

Martha shook her head. “No. I’m sorry, no.”

“I’m afraid an operation is the only chance.”

Martha looked like a wax figure that was melting in the sun. Her eyes were wide, but everything else on her face was collapsing. “It’s quite impossible,” she said flatly.

“Well …” Dr. Massingbird said awkwardly.

“No, I’m sorry,” she said.

I walked over to her and put my arms round her, but she slipped out of my grasp, her gaze directed intently at the doctor.

“It’s not possible,” she said, emphasizing each word. “We don’t have the facilities.”

Dr. Massingbird glanced at me, as if to elicit my help. “Mrs. Hayman—”

“To have him at home.” Then she cried out, “Do you know how many stairs we have? We don’t live in a
bungalow.”
She slumped into the chair and put her head in her hands.
“Ohhhh,”
she moaned, “where’s Rachel?
Where is Rachel?”

When Rachel arrived, the first thing she said was, “Where’s Martha?” her eyes darting suspiciously round the room as if she might be hiding in a cupboard. Martha had left a few minutes before: Dr. Massingbird had come back to say they were getting ready to operate on Arthur, and she could have ten minutes with him.

Rachel sat on Martha’s chair and she, too, pulled out a packet of cigarettes. Her hair was all over the place. “Couldn’t they have brought him somewhere closer?” she said. “Claude drove me. Damian was sulking and Claude actually had to
pay
him to take over the tour group. How’s Arthur’s leg?”

“It’s not a broken leg, Rach, not really,” I began.

“But that’s what Claude said.”

“That’s what Claude said because that’s what I told him. That’s what I thought. Until I got here.” And then I told her.

Afterwards—for a moment—she was like she used to be, when she was part of us, when you could say something to her and her response was reflexive, not like talking to someone on the phone whose voice was being routed through a succession of different exchanges before it got to you. She listened in silence and then she said, “But what about his books? What
happens if he wants to write another?”
Darkwood
, the fifth, had been published a year before.

“Has he said he’s going to do another one?”

“He doesn’t
normally
say anything much, does he?”

“It doesn’t mean he can’t do another book. They’re not saying he’s not going to get better.”

“How many negatives can you fit into one sentence, Luke? Of course he’s not going to get better,” she shouted at me. Then she started crying. “Mr. Toppit’s only just come out of the Darkwood.” She bit her lip and put her hand over her mouth as if she was trying to stop herself screaming.

I went over to where she was sitting and put my arms round her. It felt odd. I couldn’t remember the last time we had hugged. She smelled of cigarettes and joss sticks and old scent. Then she pulled away. She was trembling. “I must get Claude. I can’t leave him downstairs.”

I couldn’t face him. “He’ll be fine,” I said.

“He’s having a horrible time.”

“Just
leave
him. This is nothing to do with him.”

She was shaking her head, her hands clasped by her mouth. Like Martha’s had, her face was collapsing. “He’s the only person I’ve got now,” she wailed.

“Apart from me,” I said, as neutrally as I could. “And Martha,” I added, but that didn’t come out quite so neutral.

She managed to observe the civilities. “Yes. I know that. But Claude has nobody. Nobody at all.”

“He’s got a mother, hasn’t he? And that grandfather who gives him money?”

“You have no idea. His grandfather’s
horrible
. Oh, it’s so
humiliating
for him.”

“Why are we talking about Claude?”

“What would you rather talk about? The funeral?”

That was unfair. We sat in silence.

“He’s not going to die,” I said.

“I don’t know anybody who’s died.”

“Me neither.”

“Except …” Rachel’s voice tailed off.

Animals have some kind of instinct to warn them of danger in the air. People like Rachel and I had it, too. It’s a sort of familial code, a dog-whistle signal so obscurely pitched, so far off any conventional tonal scale, that even those NASA computers monitoring sounds in space couldn’t pick it up. What Rachel had said had left a residue of something chemical in the air, a kind of static that set off a chain reaction, which forced the ions in the atmosphere to flow back on themselves, like a hand brushing suede against the grain.

“Except who?” I said. I knew perfectly well. I was just trying to brush the grain back the other way as fast as I could.

She looked at me and said, “Nothing’s gone right for us since then … Since …”

I knew what she was going to say and prayed she wouldn’t. What defines a secret? Is it just something that one person knows and nobody else does? If it’s something that everyone knows, it can’t be a secret because they all know it and it isn’t secret. But we all knew it and it was still a secret. I was willing her to stay silent, but she went on.

“…  since Jordan,” she said.

She had said it, and in a funny way I admired her for it. I thought: How brave, how fantastically brave. It had been unsaid for such a long time that I wasn’t sure what would happen when the word was uttered. And, of course, nothing did. When a train roars through a station without stopping, the sound, that
clacking, rushing noise, doesn’t stay with you. It’s gone in a second, but your ears still throb.

We held each other’s gaze. “But that’s all our lives, Rachel.”

“I don’t think
time
’s got anything to do with it,” she said. “It doesn’t just go away because we don’t talk about it.”

I didn’t know what to say. There wasn’t anything
to
say unless we wanted to go on. My bravery was nil. Rachel didn’t seem to have the appetite either.

“Are you cold?” she said. “I’m freezing.”

Actually, I was rather hot but I could see her shivering. “Why don’t you go and get some coffee or something? I’ll have some, too.”

She looked relieved. “Yes, shall I? Maybe something to eat as well.”

As she went out, I said, “It’s going to be all right.”

“I doubt it,” she said.

I wasn’t on my own for long, although I seemed to have lost all sense of time. I could have been sitting for days in that room. Then the door opened and it was Dr. Massingbird, followed by a young nurse, followed by Martha, clutching her handbag. The door stayed open until the nurse eased behind Martha and closed it.

“What’s happened?” I asked. Martha was staring at the floor.

Dr. Massingbird cleared his throat. “I told you how serious the situation was. While we were trying to get him stable enough for an operation his heart stopped beating three times, probably due to loss of blood.”

“So what happens now?” My voice had gone trembly.

Dr. Massingbird looked back at Martha. “Mrs. Hayman?” he said gently. They all stood there rather awkwardly.

I suddenly realized. “He’s dead already, isn’t he?”

Dr. Massingbird put his hand on my shoulder. “We did everything we could but we were unsuccessful. I’m so sorry.” For someone who probably had to say the same thing several times a day, I was impressed by how freshly minted he made it sound.

I wished I’d been directly involved in a death before—then I’d have known how to behave. Adam had some experience of it: his grandfather had choked on a roast potato in the middle of Sunday lunch. His father had given the old man mouth-to-mouth resuscitation but he had died anyway. “Well, you’d probably want to die if your father stuffed his tongue down your throat,” Adam said.

Adam had this theory: it didn’t matter what you did because the day of your death is fixed from the moment you’re born. I said, “You mean that if your grandfather hadn’t choked on a roast potato he would have choked on something else, like a parsnip?” It wasn’t the
method
of death that was preordained, Adam said, just the day. If he hadn’t choked on a roast potato he might have tripped on the front step on his way home and cracked his head open. I asked what would happen if you were on a trip abroad and your preordained day was actually the day before or the day after because of the time difference. “No, no,” Adam said, “there’s no way you can ever beat the system. Sometimes there’s a malfunction and people get taken before their time: they become the undead and they’re in a state of limbo until their preordained day comes round, which might not be for another twenty years.” Adam didn’t think his grandfather had been one of them.