Parallel Life (29 page)

Lisa was not as uninformed as she pretended. She knew all about Gus's friend, had made a note of the address he visited, and had immediately recognized the woman skulking outside the shop. So. Gus's chosen companion had followed them here, presumably to look at the competition. There was no competition. However, some devil in Lisa made her play the situation for all it was worth. ‘I wonder how your father's getting along in New Zealand?' she asked.

Harrie wiped off her frothy moustache. ‘As long as he has an audience, he'll be happy. I do hope he wears a new shirt to his lectures. Frankly, most of the germs in the world are probably attached to that suit of his. He's had it since Noah emptied the ark.'

‘Oh, I bought him a new one,' said Lisa. ‘Marks and Spencer – two pairs of trousers with it. If he remembered to pack it.'

Sheila stirred her coffee. He wasn't wearing a suit. He was in her back bedroom reading books and making notes on his laptop. It wasn't worth her getting an Internet provider, he had said. All the work he needed to send electronically could wait until he got home. Or back from New Zealand, because that was where the family believed him to be.

‘Such a brilliant mind,' said Lisa loudly. ‘I hope he gets the recognition he deserves at the end of his search for hospital safety.'

Harrie stared at her mother. What the heck was she going on about?

‘Just a minute,' Lisa went on. ‘I'll finish this list, then you can see if you have anything to add.' She scribbled for a while, then tore the sheet from her notebook.

Harrie read the note: ‘The woman to our right is your father's friend. She lives near the psycho you were visiting. DON'T STARE AT HER.' Harrie passed it back. ‘No, that's fine, Mother. Though you must remember to get some single malt before Father comes home. You know how much he loves a good scotch.'

Lisa managed not to choke on her drink. Gus hated alcohol. Apart from the odd glass of red wine with a meal, he was almost teetotal. Happy that her daughter was partaking in the naughtiness, she dabbed her mouth with a napkin and told Harrie to add whisky to the list. ‘And chocolate mousse. He enjoys that, as well.' Gus never ate chocolate mousse. Would the woman go and buy the items they had listed? Was she so desperate to impress him that she would follow such ill-advice?

Sheila drank her coffee. They were beautifully dressed, these Compton-Milne females. The younger wore a suit of blue-grey, the elder a dress and coat in milk-chocolate silk. Chocolate mousse. She must remember that. They were talking now about furnishing a bungalow, about a melee of modern and traditional, some bunk beds in case Annie's children wanted to stay. Oh well. Let them get on with their empty little lives.

She stood at the bus stop. In her bag, she had a bottle of Cream of the Barley
and some chocolate mousse from the food hall at Marks and Spencer. She would keep him happy. Perhaps he would not want to go home ever again.

Meanwhile, Lisa and Harrie were giggling about their own delinquency. The thought of Gus returning from the Antipodes to a diet of scotch and mousse was too funny for words.

‘Were we cruel?' gasped Harrie eventually.

‘Probably.' Lisa dried her eyes. ‘But she isn't his lover, I am sure. She thinks the relationship is pure and beautiful. Wait till she serves him a shot of single malt – he'll be so polite, yet forceful. She'll get the lecture on liver disease—'

‘And the mousse will attract a homily on type-two diabetes.'

They ordered a second coffee and talked about Annie. That subject led them into territory that was occupied by fear. James Nuttall. ‘We haven't seen the last of him,' Lisa predicted. ‘But let's hope the next time we catch sight, he'll be under arrest and on the six o'clock news.'

Harrie shivered. She was in nominal charge of his children, and she hoped that he would not discover where they were living. If he was vindictive enough to batter a small woman halfway to death, he'd be well capable of trying to take her children from her.

They left to return to their respective shops. Harrie found herself hoping against hope that the twins were behaving themselves for Woebee; Lisa's mind was more happily occupied. How was Gus's woman going to explain away her odd purchases? Or had he told her about his aversion to hard liquor and over-sweet puddings? She imagined him on his first visit after his return, pictured him kneeling among his precious trains, then going into the dining room to be greeted with scotch and rich, sweet stuff.

When she entered the shop, Simon was grinning like the Cheshire cat. ‘They're letting Annie out,' he cried.

Lisa grinned. ‘Throwing her out, more likely. Simon, put the kettle on. Coffee leaves me so thirsty. Bring on the Earl Grey.'

Ben had locked himself in the van. He needed space not for the usual reason, but because he had something to do. Solitude had become a sudden necessity. After a quick dip in a stream, he was not in a state of real cleanliness, yet that scarcely mattered any more. There was no longer a need for such rigid control in small day-to-day details, but he wanted to be alone for a couple of hours from time to time. For now, he had to be totally in charge, because he had discovered a project.

The first chapter – if it was a chapter – had been written. It was in longhand and in pencil, because pencil was easier to erase. And there had been a fair amount of erasing. Starting a story was difficult. He knew the ending, had a rough idea of the middle, but a beginning was where the reader started, of course. ‘Not that it will sell,' he told his grubby fingernails. It was therapy. It had grown from the diary he had kept, but the start altered from day to day, so his tale had an open opening. He'd heard of open endings, but open openings? That would never do.

Compromise was a necessity. He would write down the performers, choose names for them, describe them, then give an account of them. Names would have to be changed to protect the guilty, but that was probably normal. Normal. He gazed round his living space, saw that it was a mess, though hardly filthy.
That
was normal. Bathing in a stream into which fish had defecated was all right, too. There was no need to worry; he was learning to live and share space with humans and other creatures.

A title had invented itself right from the start.
A Head over my Roof
might seem odd, but he knew what he meant. He was controlling his need to control. He was the head, while the roof was a cap worn by the life he had known thus far. There had been too many ceilings, too many no-go areas.

What was it Mr Martin said? Mr Martin was reputed to be the best teacher of English and creative writing this side of the moon. ‘Speak as you find, write as you speak, and never fear language.' Yes, that was it. So the way to write this . . . whatever it was, must be as if Ben were speaking it. Gran had what she called a talking-into-it machine, a voice-activated recorder that helped her remember lists.

Thinking of Gran, Ben found himself grinning. She was useless with lists. Woebee's opinion was that Gran wrote the lists then ate them, as she believed they were top-secret documents. He could hear Woebee, too. ‘She's never got over reading about Burgess and MacLean – they were spies for the Russians.' Were Woebee and Gran suitable material? Because truth was very strange indeed, a great deal less credible than manufactured stories.

He looked out, saw Josh leading out a mare recently acquired at the Appleby Fair, watched children at play, noticed one of the women hanging out washing. Berated and vilified wherever they went, the travellers held on to their corporate temper for the most part, lived from hand to mouth, loved each other, loved their animals. Their homes were, on the whole, ramshackle wrecks that could be driven or towed at short notice, since moving on was a part of everyday life. Nobody wanted them. Yet they retained a remarkable sense of identity.

They had taken him into their camp without the slightest hesitation. He ate some strange foods and was set to chop wood or fish the stream in return for being fed. It was a barter system seasoned with kindness; it was a way of living he had come not just to endure, but also to enjoy. He'd ridden a horse and had his fortune told; he had experienced more real – and surreal – life in a few weeks than in the previous ten years.

Was he a writer? Writers were meant to be a bit weird, he supposed. But he had been more than a bit weird; he had been off the bloody radar altogether. However, writing was a channel and a challenge. Even if the exercise proved to have no more use than to empty his soul of debris, it would have done its job.

When Annie left the hospital, she behaved in the manner of the Queen Mother, waving from her wheelchair with a slight movement of the hand, almost as if bestowing a blessing on her people. She had so many flowers and planted baskets that she was likened to a trolley emerging from some garden centre after a massive sale.

Outside, she turned, sneezed when a fern interfered with her a nostril, then looked at her pilot. ‘James,' she said. ‘Take me home.'

‘I'm Simon.'

‘Who's counting?'

Lisa helped Simon to install Annie in the back of the car. Floral attachments were removed from her: some stowed quickly in the boot, others left to chance in the spare rear-seat. Annie, with a colourful turban covering her dignity, chattered almost all the way to Weaver's Warp. Her list of grievances against the hospital was long. The beds were uncomfortable, and no one should be expected to sleep on plastic. ‘I've never wet the bed since I was two,' she said. ‘And why they have central heating on at the end of July – God only knows. It's like living in a Turkish baths.'

Simon and Lisa exchanged sideways glances.

‘No air-conditioning. Food like chipboard and blotting paper. They must have boiled that cauli for a month before serving it up. As for bedside manners – they should all get a refund from whichever charm school they went to.'

Lisa hid a giggle behind her hand.

‘It's all right you laughing, missus. That bloke from the fat police is lucky to be alive – I nearly crowned him with me bedpan. There again, bedpans aren't what they were. Fancy having to wee in cardboard. Re-bloody-cycled cardboard at that. Say everybody in the ward did a lot of wee and they had overflow and leakage, it would've been like the streets of Venice after a storm. They used to have enamel bedpans— What's so funny?'

‘You are,' answered Simon.

‘Oh, aye? You want to try it some time, love. They start sticking bits of cameras up people's dooh-dahs without so much as a by-your-bypass. And every one of them's a flaming Dracula. They want blood for this, blood for that – liver function, kidney function, probably even for social functions. Well, it's free, isn't it? Another way of making a Bloody Mary without the blinking tomato juice. I'm running on empty here.'

Lisa giggled. For somebody running on empty, Annie was getting up a fair head of steam.

‘Old woman opposite me – a hundred and three, she looked. They brought her teeth with her breakfast, and when she put the teeth in, they were some other bugger's. She looked like a horse winded after Beecher's Brook – it was awful.'

‘Be careful,' Simon suggested to their driver. ‘She'll have you off the road.'

Lisa slowed down. Tears of laughter were impeding her vision, but Annie was on a roll. ‘Annie, will you be quiet so that I can get us all home in one piece?'

‘All right.'

Silence reigned for about ten seconds, then was forced into abdication by the Queen Mother in the back seat. ‘And her catheter leaked.'

Simon turned round. ‘What? Whose catheter?'

Annie sighed in an exaggerated fashion. ‘Her with the teeth. Red Rum, we called her after they gave her the wrong ones, but it didn't matter because she was as deaf as a post. She sprung a leak. If the pancreas in the bed next to mine hadn't spoken up, we'd have had to swim out of there. Never mind a bloody wheelchair – it would have taken a life raft.'

Lisa gave up and parked the car. ‘Stop it, Annie,' she said. Then, overcome by curiosity, she asked, ‘What do you mean by the pancreas in the next bed?'

Annie thought for a moment. ‘Oh yes. Her. We called each other by our diseases and accidents, so's we would remember why we were there. She had a pancreas with an I-T-I-S on the end. She nearly died.'

‘Then there was Red Rum,' added Simon helpfully.

‘Ah, she was different because she had everything wrong.'

‘And you were?' Lisa turned and raised her eyebrows.

‘I was brains. Obviously.'

Lisa nodded. ‘Now, Annie. There are two ways of tackling this. Are you listening?'

‘I am.'

‘We can call a taxi – I have my mobile here. You may ride home in splendid isolation. Or you can shut up properly. Because if you carry on making me laugh, we'll crash. All right?'

‘OK.'

All was quiet until they pulled into Weaver's Weft. The gate to the house swung inward when Lisa used her remote control. ‘That was clever,' commented Annie. ‘If I'd had one of them at the hospital, no bloody doctor would have got near me.'

‘You'd have died,' said Simon.

‘Happen I would. But there'd be air-conditioning in heaven, wouldn't there? And no blinking plastic mattresses.'

To that final comment, neither found an answer. There was going to be some fun, Lisa thought ruefully. With Annie, Hermione, Eileen, Craig, Billy and the dog, Weaver's Warp was about to become a national institution. Its name would be Bedlam.

Sheila opened her front door and walked up the hall into the kitchen. After placing her purchases on a counter, she removed her coat, then went upstairs to enquire about the state of her patient. She hadn't yet offered him chocolate mousse or single malt, as he had not seemed well enough. His appetite, which ought to have picked up after he left hospital, continued poor. He was fast reaching the soup followed by rice pudding stage, so she didn't want to tempt fate by offering the goodies advertised by his neglectful wife.