Some Here Among Us (13 page)

‘I’d like a cup of coffee.’

‘I wouldn’t bother with that if I were you.’

Afternoon sunlight, slightly begrimed, shone through the window. Pigeons were cooing out of sight on a ledge nearby, and the sound of traffic on K Street soughed through the double glazing.

‘How’s your leg?’ said Toby.

‘My leg?’

‘Your femur.’

‘My femur?’

‘You broke your femur. And your tibia.’

‘No, my boy. You must be confusing me with someone else. I have never broken a bone of my body in my life.’

‘What’s this, then?’ said Toby, touching the cast with a light finger.

‘That?’ said Bernard. ‘Oh, I let the girls here do all that to keep them happy. They have very little to occupy their time.’

A nurse came in, addressed herself wordlessly to various checks and balances, covered Bernard’s empurpled toes with the blanket and departed.

‘I suppose you find these nurses highly attractive, sexually?’ said Bernard.

‘I guess,’ said Toby. ‘How about you?’

‘Well, I
am
rather selfish in these matters,’ said Bernard. ‘How about you?’ he said to Merle.

‘I’m going out,’ said Merle, standing up and putting on her hat. ‘I have some shopping. I leave Romulus with you for ten minutes?’

‘Leave him with me,’ said Toby.

He followed Merle into the corridor and stood over Romulus.

‘It’s you and me, kid,’ he said. ‘What are you doing?’

‘Science,’ said Romulus, not looking up from his writing. Toby read over his shoulder:

Our own Sun rings like a bell, according to Nasa scintists. It pulses and make a ringing as it does so. We cannot hear the sounds, but we can see oscillations in our Sun’s brightness every few minutes

‘Wow,’ said Toby.

He went back into Bernard’s room and sat on the straight-backed chair with the plump, taut seat which Merle had vacated.
Steatopygia
, he thought.

‘I suppose you’re wondering about my walking stick,’ said Bernard, his eyes closed. ‘Of course, I’d like it back because it is an
item
.’

‘That’s fair,’ said Toby.

There was a long pause.

‘They said at the Manchester laboratory: “We can’t afford Bernard Drake, he’s too highly paid,” said Bernard. ‘I was on thirty shillings a week. But Colin McClintock put in a word for me. He said “He’ll be value for the money” .’

‘I bet you were,’ said Toby.

There was a silence. Bernard seemed to have fallen asleep. Toby looked out the window at the westering sun.

‘It’s the only thing I do well now,’ said Bernard, half opening his eyes. ‘Sleep, I mean. I am very old . . . And lazy.’

‘How are you feeling now?’

‘It’s very hard at this end of life.’

‘I meant today, here.’

‘Here?’

‘In hospital.’

‘Hospital!’ said Bernard.

‘We’re at the University Hospital,’ said Toby.

‘
Are
we?’ said Bernard. ‘What are we here for?’

‘I’m visiting you. What do you think of the place?’

‘They’re a bit bloody zealous. I intend to leave shortly.’

‘You can’t leave yet. You need nursing. There are no nurses at Barleycorn Street.’

‘Thank God for that.’

There was a long pause. This time Bernard began to snore. Toby went out of the room.

‘Come on, Romulo,’ he said.

‘Where’re we going?’

‘Fresh air,’ said Toby.

They took the elevator down and went outside and stood in the concourse by the street. Toby lit a cigarette.

‘Whyn’t you quit?’ said Romulus severely.

This made Toby laugh. He took the school book from Romulus’s hand.

‘Let’s have a look,’ he said.

‘ “The earth moves round the sun at twenty-five (25) miles a second round the sun,” ’ he read.

‘Twenty-five miles a
second
!’ said Toby.

‘That’s nothing,’ said Romulus. ‘The sun’s going round the galaxy faster than that. And the galaxy’s going somewhere else as fast as hell as well.’

‘Oh,’ said Toby. He looked along the street. The lights changed, the traffic came forward decorously.

‘You’d never know it,’ he said.

Two hospital porters came out and stood on the concourse, big men, burly, about thirty, wearing white T-shirts and hospital jackets. Then a third came after them. He was much younger, also black, with a limp.

‘You’re a good man, Pete,’ said the younger man, ‘you’re giving me advice as a family man, I like that, it’s important.’

He was looking anxiously from face to face.

‘My kid’s eighteen months old,’ he said. ‘He knows me. His mother calls and says: “He wants a word.” “Put him on,” I say. “Dadda!” he says. She wants a romantic affair with me again but I don’t want it. After we split up she was full of animaversity to me, all kinda stories which ain’t true, that I’m a junkie, that I’m a closet, that I beat her up. I never beat her up – she beat
me
up.’

The other two said nothing. Romulus was listening with frowning brow, like a
Times
critic on a first night.

‘Pete, you look good, you look well, you always do,’ said the man with the limp. ‘So do you, Pete, you
both
do. I love you guys even though you used to beat me up, even when I had a crippled knee.’

The two Petes said nothing. The traffic changed again at the lights.

‘Come on,’ said Toby.

He and Romulus went along the street as far as the intersection. Then they turned back, went in the main entrance and took the elevator up to Bernard’s room. Merle was already there, sitting beside the bed.

‘Hey!’ said Romulus. ‘Which entrance you come in?’

‘The same one I went out of,’ said Merle.

‘You must have walked straight past us,’ said Romulus in admiration at the universe.

The TV set, hung above the bed and angled down, had been switched on. ‘Bloodshed in Gaza!’ said a richly timbred voice.

‘The news,’ said Merle. ‘He’s asleep but he likes the news when he’s asleep.’

‘Four boys aged between five and twelve were on their way to class at about seven a.m.,’ said the television voice.

‘I’m worried about my wife,’ said Bernard, opening his eyes. ‘It would be foolish to pretend at this point of our lives that we have a lot of time left together.’

Chadwick walked into the room. He was wearing a suit of some magnificence and carrying a newspaper. The dark suit, without any further agency, seemed to change the interpersonal dynamics on the wing. A nurse came in and then a doctor appeared for the first time that afternoon. He glanced briefly at Bernard and then turned to Chadwick to say that Bernard was doing well. Chadwick shot his cuffs and listened to the prognosis. The doctor and nurse went out again. Chadwick sat on one of the tautly plump chairs and winked at Toby.

‘Body parts were strewn scores of yards away,’ said the television voice.

‘I saw smoke rising,’ said another voice. ‘I went running and I saw pieces of people on the ground – legs, hands. Children’s legs and children’s hands.’

‘Funny business, that,’ said Chadwick, watching the television from the side. He tapped the paper, then unfolded it and looked at the front page, and then back at the TV.

‘Same old thing,’ said Toby. ‘Arabs and Jews.’

‘I know,’ said Chadwick. ‘But if a country does something like that – us, the Russians, Israel – the first thing you do is deny it. It’s only human nature. States are just like people – more primitive and cruel, but just as cunning. And yet here are the Israelis saying: “Oh, yeah. We did that! That was us all right!”’

The doctor came back in and indicated with an inclination of his head that Chadwick should come out to the hall to talk to him.

‘I don’t get it,’ said Chadwick.

He tossed his copy of the
Times
on Bernard’s bed and went out. Merle got to her feet heavily and took the paper off the bed and put it on the third chair. She then went around the bed and picked up the glass water-jug from the locker. She tilted it, looking in, then left the room. Toby picked up the paper to read the story:

It was about half an hour after sunrise. The boys were on their way to school, following the lanes between tumbledown houses and greenhouses and out to a
f
ield of bright green peppers. Then they climbed a steep sand dune: there was a roar and the ground shook.

‘I have come to a momentous decision,’ said Bernard, his eyes closed.

There was a long pause. Toby watched him.

‘I have determined,’ said Bernard, ‘taking full responsibility for my actions, to tell the Surgeon-General that I will not comply with his directive. I consider that I am not in a position to do otherwise. I will therefore
not
go to Cincinnati.’

‘Well, OK,’ said Toby.

‘There is a matter of grave importance which requires my presence here,’ said Bernard.

There was another silence. The pigeons cooed.

‘I was on the tram with Father,’ said Bernard, his voice now light and far away. ‘I was reading the paper to him. The headline said: “Woodrow Wilson – Too Proud To Fight”. I read that to Father. And a man on the tram said: “Some men fight and some won’t.” And I said to Father: “You’re a poor blind man.
You
won’t fight.” ’

There was another silence.

Bernard opened his eyes. He stared all around in alarm, then he set eyes on Toby.

‘
Someone
said that,’ he said. ‘Some boy – half jokingly – suggested that Father should be in the war. But it wasn’t me.’

‘OK,’ said Toby. ‘It’s OK.’

A look of fear, and of woe, filled Bernard’s eyes.

‘It wasn’t me,’ he said. ‘Reuben.’

‘That’s OK,’ said Toby.

He took Bernard’s hand – weighty, thin-skinned, dramatically blotched – amazed at the heavy costs of time.

Merle came back in the room with the glass jug of water, now full, and put it on the glassed top of the bedside locker. Toby let go of Bernard’s hand. Merle put on her hat, then called: ‘Romulus’. Romulus came into the room with his book open. Chadwick followed him in and picked up his newspaper.

‘Say goodbye to him,’ said Merle to Romulus, pointing at Bernard.

‘Goodbye,’ said Romulus.

Bernard seemed to be asleep. Romulus jiggled Bernard’s uninjured foot under the blanket. Merle smacked the back of Romulus’s head without force. Bernard opened his eyes a little and looked at the ceiling. Then he crooked his head on the pillow and looked at Romulus.

‘Goodbye,’ said Romulus.

‘Goodbye, old man,’ said Bernard.

He sat up a little more and gazed round at them in mild puzzlement.

‘You’ve all had – plenty of, of, of – what you need?’ he said.

‘Plenty,’ said Toby.

‘Very good,’ said Bernard. His gaze wandered the room.

‘Oh,’ he said. ‘
Look!
’

He pointed at the shining wall beyond the end of the bed. They all looked at the shining plaster.

‘Egypt!’ said Bernard.

Romulus’s eyes started.

‘No, Grandpa,’ Toby said. ‘Egypt’s not here. Egypt’s at home at Barleycorn Street.’

Bernard gazed at Toby. There was a long pause.

‘Of course Egypt is not here,’ said Bernard. ‘Egypt is a cat. And this
is
, I believe, the University Hospital.’

Part III

1969

1

They were going up the hill fast, in the dark, Adam and Candy and Morgan and Race Radzienwicz. It was raining so hard you couldn’t talk, you could only laugh. It was raining with a kind of passion. They were running, and laughing – what did the rain mean by this passion, what on earth did rain want? It was as if it was in a rage or trying to make copies of itself. They ran across Willis Street through the sluicing headlights and under the neon signs of the Hotel St George, and then up Boulcott Street, water sliding in scallops down the steep black pavement. Race had almost forgotten that he was going to miss Chadwick’s wedding the next morning. Chadwick was the first of the gang to get married. The night before, Race had caught the train from Auckland. A plane, with the whole wedding party on board, was leaving Wellington at ten-thirty the following day. But at six that morning, sitting in the second-class carriage, Race was woken by a sudden stillness and silence: the train had stopped. The sun was not up yet but he could see the faint green of a field in the early light. Then an announcement was made: there was a slip on the line further south.