The Quarry (4 page)

Guy was sitting in the red chair until he left. He used to always sit in the blue velvet armchair when we had guests, until his back got so bad and getting out of the chair became so difficult. Paul is sitting there instead. Hol and Pris are sitting on the blue velvet sofa. Alison, Haze and Rob are on the brown one.

I’ve pulled out the blue velvet pouffe that usually squats under the table in the bay window. I’m sitting on it, hunched, with my hands clasped between my pressed-together knees. The pouffe has lost a lot of its stuffing, or it’s compressed over the years, so you sit quite near the floor on it, plus it makes a sort of crackling noise when you sit on it and you have to kind of waggle your bottom to get comfortable, but I don’t mind.

I’m sat by the side of the blue velvet sofa, near Hol. Hol has said a couple of times I should sit up on the couch with her and Pris but I don’t want to; I’d feel too big and obvious and people might expect me to join in. From here, low down, I can watch and listen without disturbing anybody.

Hol has put on a faded orange cardigan instead of the green fleece, and big thick blue socks. Paul is wearing neat-looking blue jeans and an open-necked pink shirt. Pris wears tight glittery trousers and a baggy black jumper, Rob wears black chinos and a grey polo neck, Alison is in a black knee-length dress with thick black woollen tights, and Haze has olive trousers and the same dark green Therapy? T-shirt and loose padded tartan shirt he arrived in.

Pris is pretty and curvy and the colour of coffee with milk, with dark eyes and shiny black, scraped-back hair with lots of ringlets. Rob is about average height but quite wide; gym-fit, Hol has said. He keeps his head shaved but he has brown hair, I think. Alison is small and blonde and always wears make-up. Hol says Alison used to be fat and now exists in a state of perpetual semi-starvation. Haze is nearly as tall as me, though he doesn’t carry himself that way. He’s been slowly putting on weight ever since I’ve known him and his thin brown hair is receding in an orderly fashion straight back from his eyebrows, which are usually slightly raised.

Hol’s face looks a little flushed, as does Paul’s. This might be because they have been arguing, or because they have been drinking wine. Paul arrived with a crate of red wine from the French region of Médoc, and so far four bottles have been opened and three finished. I tried some, though I prefer sweet white wine if I feel I have to drink. Drinking isn’t really for me. I suffer from acid reflux but more importantly I don’t like the feeling of losing control. (I think most people drink because they’re not happy with their sober self and wish to alter matters, whereas I am quite happy with who I am.)

Though Hol looks flushed, she seems more alive than she did before, her facial expressions both more animated and drawing from a longer menu. Paul appears deliberately relaxed, as though his instinct is to shout and gesticulate but he’s decided not to.

Guy put on what he calls his Sunday Best to be with the others: the trousers and waistcoat of an old three-piece, lavender-coloured suit and a dove-grey leather bomber jacket. These clothes date from twenty years ago when he was a size thirty waist the first time, but they hang off him now, he’s grown so gaunt. Most people who knew him from the old days and who haven’t seen him for the last few years tend to go quiet and look shocked when they see him because he’s lost so much weight and his face, which was always thin, now looks cadaverous. There are dark circles under his large, blue, hooded eyes and his skin is dry and flaky. His lips look bruised all the time.

The people who don’t go quiet and look shocked when they first see him usually haven’t recognised him at all, and think he’s somebody much older.

He wears a hat knitted from brown wool, to hide his baldness after the chemo treatment. He used to have long blond wavy hair he was very proud of. Originally the hat had a sort of woolly bobble on top like a little fronded pompom, but Guy thought that looked silly so he cut it off with a kitchen knife. As a result the hat has started to fray and unravel at the top, so you can see a little of his baldness through the two-pence-sized hole. Mrs Gunn and I have both offered to repair this – she was going to darn it (I’m not sure what that involves) and I could at least have sewn it back together – but Guy has refused so far. He can be stubborn. Hol says this is where I get it from.

There’s no second bell, so I start to relax.

‘Did I hear a bell there?’ Hol asks nobody in particular.

‘Just Guy letting us know he’s on his way back,’ I tell her.

‘Ah.’

‘Well, there is stuff we could talk about,’ Paul says, glancing at me. ‘But maybe not with Kit here.’

‘Ah,’ Haze says, ‘yeah. The, ah …’ He sticks a finger in his ear and waggles it this way and that. ‘The video. The tape, the … yeah.’ He looks round at the rest of them. ‘Yeah, that.’

‘Don’t see why we have to excuse Kit,’ Hol says, though she doesn’t sound very sure.

‘Oh,’ Paul says, smiling, ‘I think we do.’ He smiles at me. The rest look or glance at me.

I’m feeling hot.

Silence. Suddenly Alison leans over and glares at the bottom of the couch she and Rob are sat on, concentrating on the little fringe of grubby green tassels that hang down almost to the threadbare rug. ‘I thought I could feel a draught,’ she says. She nods at the fringe. ‘Those … That fringe is
moving
.’ She stands, then uses her knees and hands to push the sofa back, making it scrape on the floorboards.

‘
Now
what are you doing?’ Rob asks her, tutting as he’s moved back along with the couch. He is holding a glass of gin and orange juice.

‘Yeah, don’t offer to help or anything, lover,’ Alison says, pulling the rug back. ‘Look!’ She nods down at the floor. ‘There’s a damn great hole.’

We all sit forward, crane our necks; whatever. There is a fist-sized hole in the floorboards there.

‘That’s where a large knot fell out,’ I tell them. ‘Out of the floorboard,’ I add, which is probably unnecessary, though on the other hand they are all quite drunk. ‘Though if you ask Guy he’ll tell you a rat gnawed it.’

‘What?’ Alison asks, looking horrified.

‘Definitely a knot, though,’ I tell her. ‘No teethmarks.’

‘Jesus,’ Alison says, and starts trying to pull the sofa back to where it was, grunting.

‘Fucking place is falling apart,’ Paul says, looking around.

‘Yeah, well,’ Haze says.

‘Guy says he doesn’t think they’ll need to actually pull the house down,’ I tell them (they all look at me). ‘Says it’s only held up by us being in it; him and me. Once we’re gone, once we stop believing in it, it’ll fall down all by itself.’

‘Plausible,’ Alison says, tugging at the sofa. It’s harder to move it that way; I think it’s the grain of the wood or something. She gets the couch to jerk forward a centimetre.

Rob tuts again, licks at his hand. ‘Do you mind?’ he says. ‘You’re spilling my fucking drink.’

‘Oh, help her, Rob, for goodness’ sake,’ Hol says.

Rob shrugs. ‘Wasn’t my idea to start moving the fucking furniture around.’ He drinks his drink. ‘This happens at work, too, you know,’ he tells Hol. ‘She starts out on some irrelevant, seat-of-the-pants new project, causes chaos everywhere and then I have to come along and clean everything up. I’d probably have advanced a lot further in the company if I didn’t spend so much time sorting out Ali’s messes.’

Alison smiles widely at Hol. ‘That’s Rob-speak for I initiate some bold new venture taking the company in an exciting, fresh but entirely course-complementary direction and then he breezes in when all the hard work’s done and takes the man’s share of the credit.
I’d
be a couple of rungs further up by now if I didn’t have him constantly in tow.’ She tugs hard at the couch, grunting.

‘Jesus!’ Hol says, getting up and going round the back of the couch to push it. It slides back to where it was. Hol looks at me as she sits back down again. She’s frowning. I wonder what I’ve done wrong now.

Then there’s a double ring on the hall bell.

Shit. I don’t want to have to go. On the other hand, I sort of do want to go now.

I stand up. ‘Excuse me.’

‘Kit,’ Hol says, extending one hand towards me, ‘you don’t have to—’

‘Yeah, Kit …’ Haze says.

‘No,’ I say, pointing to the door, ‘I have to … Excuse me.’

‘Is there blood?’

‘There is a little blood.’

‘Well, what does that mean? What does “a little” mean?’

‘It means there is a little blood.’

‘Don’t be fucking smart, Kit; just tell me how much blood there is. And what colour? Red? Brown? Black?’

‘Are you sure you can’t turn round and take a look?’

‘Not without going out into the fucking hall, waddling, with my trousers round my ankles and my cock hanging out, so, no.’

‘If I had a smartphone I could take a photo and show you.’

‘I’m not buying you a fucking smartphone. Will you shut up about the fucking smartphone? You don’t need one. And you’ll just post the photos on Facebook. Or find a way to sell them in your stupid game.’

‘Course I wouldn’t,’ I tell him. ‘Though you could have Faecesbook, I suppose,’ I add. Well, you have to try to lighten the mood.

‘Oh, Christ.’

‘There’s only a smear,’ I tell him. ‘And it’s red.’

‘Good, fine. Look, just, just, you know, wipe me off and … Christ, this is … Just, would you? Okay?’

This doesn’t happen all the time but, sometimes, I have to wipe my dad clean after he’s moved his bowels. He can’t stretch round or underneath any more to do it himself; even on the opiates the pain is too much now that the cancer has moved into his spine. Often Mrs Gunn will do this. She is paid to be a carer now, though I’m not sure this whole arse-cleaning thing is really within her remit. Guy cried following the first time she performed this service for him. He doesn’t know that I know this; I heard him through his bedroom door, afterwards.

The first time I had to help Guy wipe himself I tried to do it with my eyes closed. This was unsuccessful, and messy. My compromise these days is to breathe through my mouth so I don’t smell whatever might be in the toilet bowl (I resent being made to look in there but Guy feels a need to know whether there is blood in his stool). Obviously I am wearing a pair of blue surgical gloves; we keep a box by the door. I can let myself into the downstairs loo because it has a relatively modern mechanism that can be unlocked from outside via a slot in a small metal stub projecting beneath the handle. You use a screwdriver, or a penny.

The bell that Guy rings when he needs help in here is attached to a length of string that rises from beside the toilet bowl, goes through a couple of U-nails hammered into the ceiling and out to the hall through a hole I bored using our electric drill. The bell in the hall hangs from another grey galvanised U-nail. It is spherical and from a budgie’s cage, so it’s quite quiet.

You have to listen for it, and once or twice I’ve tried to pretend to myself that I haven’t heard it, but then it’ll ring again, and again, and even if I leave it for half an hour Guy still keeps ringing it and still can’t wipe himself and so I have to go in the end. When I do eventually go to help him he is sometimes crying, and always grateful, not angry, and that is how I know, I think, that he really can’t do this simple thing by himself and really does need help and isn’t just doing it to be cruel to me.

In theory we could just keep our mobiles about us and he could phone or text when he needs me, but Guy is not very good with mobile phones and frequently forgets to carry his, or keep it charged. I’ve tried reminding him about this sort of thing and have offered to make sure he always has his phone and it’s properly charged, as well as taking over responsibility for his meds (he forgets to take his medication, a lot, then sometimes takes too much), but he just accuses me of trying to run his life and tells me to back off.

Guy stands, bending forward to rest on the Zimmer frame. I flush the toilet, to be rid of the sight, then, while his always skinny, now scrawny, legs quiver, I carefully wipe him down. Once you get over the simple unpleasantness of it – I suspect most people would gag, the first time – it is easier to wipe somebody else’s bum than it is your own, because you can see what you’re doing and use both hands at once if necessary. The whole process is much more efficient and uses no more toilet paper than is strictly required, so it’s better for the environment, too. If we were being really green we’d all have somebody else wipe our bums, though I can’t see it catching on.

‘Fucking portable prison,’ Guy mutters, and slaps at the Zimmer. Dad hates his walking aid, even though it helps him a lot. He can still move around fairly easily on the flat, even out in the garden, using his Zimmer frame and, on good days, just a single forearm crutch. On really good days he can get by with just a walking stick.

Guy starts coughing. He sits back down to do this. Probably wise; sometimes when he coughs really hard a little poo can come out. His cough makes it sound like his chest is full of Lego bricks. He stopped smoking five years ago, about twenty years too late. He’s taken it up again recently, reckoning there’s nothing left to lose, and also, I think, as an act of defiance. He’s shared a roll-up with Haze already this evening and I can smell the tobacco on his clothes.

After half a minute or so he stops coughing and goes back to just wheezing.

‘That you okay?’ I ask him.

‘Fucking never been better,’ he says. He hauls some phlegm up into his mouth, shuffles back a little further on the loo, and carefully spits between his spread legs. I choose not to follow the whole process. ‘Christ,’ he says, sitting back against the cistern and breathing hard, a noise of gurgling coming from his lungs, ‘knackers me just having a cough these days.’ He sighs, wipes his lips, looks at me. ‘I hope the shareholders of British American Tobacco are fucking grateful.’

‘Think we’re done?’ I ask him.

‘Done and dusted, kid,’ he tells me. ‘Done and dust-to-dusted.’

I flush a second time, strip off the gloves and dump them in the bin, help Guy on with his pants and trousers and run the taps, holding the towel ready while he rests his forearms on the Zimmer and washes his hands.