‘I’ll look in tomorrow morning,’ she says.
‘Okay.’ He wonders what time of day it is now.
She puts her coat on. It seems to take for ever. Then she says again, ‘I’ll look in tomorrow.’
She has already opened the door, letting in noise from outside, when he says, ‘Joanna.’
She stops in the doorway, very aware now of how much she wants to leave.
‘Thank you.’
She doesn’t know what to say. ‘That’s alright,’ she says finally, and leaves.
—
An hour or two later — it is already dark outside, the light on the ceiling is on — a doctor arrives. He is very young. Not much more than thirty, by the look of it. A nice-looking man. He asks how Tony feels. ‘Okay,’ Tony says.
‘Do you feel sick?’
‘Sometimes. A little bit.’
‘Headache?’
‘Slightly. Not really.’
The doctor says they will do a CAT scan in the morning. If everything is okay — if there is no haemorrhaging inside his head — he might be able to go home tomorrow, or perhaps the next day. ‘You have been very lucky,’ he says, smiling.
—
In the morning he feels more or less normal. He has, which he didn’t quite have before, a normal awareness of his surroundings. He is in hospital. He is very much aware of that now. Already this year he has spent many weeks in hospital. He has already spent more time in hospital this year, he thinks, than in his entire life up till now. And here he is again. He is sitting on the edge of the tall bed staring at the scuffed grey floor. And there’s just going to be more and more of this, isn’t there? Hospitals. Doctors. His only purpose in life now, it seems, is to stave off physical decay and death for as long as possible. His life, in terms of any sort of positive purpose, would seem to be over already. He feels very depressed. Amemus eterna et non peritura. The words pass through his mind from somewhere. Painfully, he eases himself off the bed and plants his pale feet on the floor. The sink is two light-headed steps away. Over it there is a mirror. His face is a shock. No one told him about that. ‘Fucking hell,’ he says, furious. He stands there for a few seconds, leaning on the sink until his head stops spinning. The tap is weird — a horizontal lever about six inches long. He fiddles with it until water starts to flow. Fills one of the plastic cups and lifts it to his split, disfigured lip.
He is still looking at himself in the mirror. At his monstrously enlarged face, his partially shaved head. At the overall patheticness of the figure he presents.
Those words again.
Amemus eterna et non peritura.
Pomposa.
Memories of the hour or so he spent there materialise in his mind. It is almost disconcerting, the way they are just suddenly there. Walking through the plain spaces of the abbey. The inscription in the porch: Amemus eterna et non peritura. And the thoughts he had while waiting for his soup, his minestra di fagioli, and staring through the window at the still, winter day outside, winter daylight on leafless trees.
So what is eternal?
Nothing, that’s the problem. Nothing on earth. Not the earth itself. Not the sun. Not the stars in the night sky.
Everything has an end.
Everything.
We know that now.
6
Joanna drives him home in a car provided by the insurance company. She has already sorted all that out.
He had so looked forward to leaving the hospital. On the drive home, however, his spirits are low. He isn’t sure, now, what he was looking forward to. It is snowing lightly, ineffectually. Small flakes that won’t settle, that melt as soon as they touch anything.
They arrive at the house.
They stopped at the Lidl in Argenta first and they take the shopping in, Joanna doing the heavy lifting.
‘That damp patch needs seeing to,’ she says.
‘Yes.’
‘And you know that we have mice?’
‘Yes.’
They sit down to have lunch together. It is strange, them being here together like this, in this house. It has been many years since it was just the two of them, here.
‘I have to leave tomorrow,’ Joanna says.
‘Okay.’
‘I spoke to Cordelia,’ she tells him. ‘She’s going to come and stay with you for a while. A week, she said she might be able to manage.’
He tries not to show how pleased he is. ‘That really isn’t necessary.’
‘I don’t think you should be on your own.’
‘I’ll be fine.’
‘She’s already got her plane ticket, Tony.’
‘Well, it’s very kind of her.’
Joanna says, picking at potato salad, ‘I’m sorry I can’t stay longer myself.’
He sort of waves that away with his fork.
They eat, for a minute or two, in silence.
‘It’s a shame about the Passat,’ he says, obviously perked up by the news about Cordelia.
‘Oh, come on, it was ancient. It was time to junk it, anyway.’
‘I liked it.’
‘So did I,’ Joanna says.
‘Remember we used to drive down in it?’
‘Of course.’
‘That was fun.’
She says, pouring herself some more wine, and in a tone which is almost drily flirtatious, ‘It had its moments.’
They used to drive down in the Passat — and before that in an old Volvo 740 — down through France, through the Mont Blanc tunnel and out through the Valle d’Aosta into Piedmont, the shimmer of Lombardy. He always particularly loved driving through the Valle d’Aosta — the drama of the valley, and the way that heightened the sense you had there of passing from northern to southern Europe.
How wonderful those long drives seem now. Thinking about them makes something ache in him.
Memories of fresh damp air.
He has a sip of wine. Notices that his hand is shaking.
Anyway, that all stopped when the Passat was domiciled in Argenta, about twelve years ago. It was already fairly old then.
Joanna is telling him something: ‘Cordelia’s going to help you find a new car, she says.’
‘Is she?’ he asks.
It seems there was a hint of scepticism in his voice — Joanna says, ‘She does know about cars.’
‘Yes, she does,’ he agrees.
‘She’ll help you find something. In Ravenna, I suppose.’
‘Or Ferrara,’ he suggests.
‘If you like. Have you finished?’
He nods, and she takes his plate, with hers, to the kitchen.
—
Outside, it has stopped snowing — it’s just miserable. A frozen, damp day. Joanna spends some time on the phone. He doesn’t know who she’s talking to. She speaks to several people. It sounds like work, he thinks, eavesdropping from his wing chair with Clark’s Sleepwalkers on his lap. He’s not making much progress with it. He’s just not that interested, is the main problem. Things just don’t interest him as much as they used to.