‘All in good time. We must prepare in the right way to ensure success.’
My frustration spilled out in a feeble croon. ‘You don’t get it. There is no time.’
I made a quick estimate of the effect a confession might have on him and the agreement we’d made. Whether it would be the fire that would hurry us on to our shared destiny, or the foam that would suffocate the plans we’d made. He had to believe I was strong enough to break him. He had to share responsibility for the condition of my soul when I gave it to the darkness for inspection.
I told him I had cancer. The word tasted like toffee in my mouth, thick and childish.
Bibhuti stroked his moustache for a minute or two. Then he promised to cure me. There was no doubt in his mind that he could.
16
The bellyaches came a couple of months after I first saw Bibhuti on TV. They started to bother me and they didn’t go away. Movements were getting harder and my energy was gone. I knew what it was before I was told. I’d been feeling like the end of something was coming for years but it had been coming so slowly that I could call it my imagination if I wanted to. The scans made it all real. They gave me a reason to be feeling the way I’d been feeling that wasn’t just grumbling at life’s failing to live up to expectations. My expectations didn’t come into it. It was a real thing, a disease. It was something I’d done to myself.
The consultant showed me a picture of the tumour. It looked like an alien being, something out of science fiction. She used a technical name, I can’t remember what it was. It reminded me of the word they’d used when Ellen wouldn’t stop bleeding: ectopic. I wondered if it had hurt her like this hurt me, the same kind of way in the same kind of place. Probably everyone’s pain feels different, something they alone can feel. Ellen wasn’t with me, I’d gone on my own. I didn’t want to be responsible for another disappointment. I’d told her nothing, hidden the letter with its hospital stamp. She had enough to worry about.
They wanted to open me up and cut a section of my bowel out, stitch the two new ends back together again.
Wasn’t it complicated down there? Would I be walking funny for the rest of my life?
She promised they’d put me back the way I’d always been. Chemo to mop up any traces that were left and more cameras up the bum to check it hadn’t come back. Five years of monitoring and optimism. She wanted to give me another twenty years.
I watched the creases round her eyes ripple as she spoke and wondered if all the bad news she carried around with her meant she couldn’t enjoy slapstick anymore. I thought about sliding off my chair to test her laughter reflex but I couldn’t figure out a way to do it that wouldn’t look premeditated.
There was outrage and at first it was directed at fate. Then it turned back in on me. I heard the rotten cells racing around inside. They made a high-pitched whizzing sound and they were hell-bent on killing me. I couldn’t blame them. I’d done everything wrong and the payback was a fair one. It was my fault for all the meat I’d eaten and for going too slow. The animals were getting their revenge on me and I was being taught a lesson for my lethargy, for my lack of gumption. Another twenty years sounded like a bad joke. I didn’t know what I’d do with them. I was very tired.
I asked the consultant what would happen if I didn’t have the op. How much time would I have and when would it start hurting. She gave me her best guess.
It’s not that I wanted to die particularly. I just didn’t think I had the fight in me. I was too old and it was too big a thing to go through. It would be too hard. Ellen would have to look after me and that wouldn’t be fair. I was supposed to look after her. I thanked the consultant for everything and told her I’d take my chances.
The cleaner was blocking the corridor with her bucket. I couldn’t wait for her so I took a run up and jumped it. For the split second I was airborne I still hoped a mistake had been made. When I landed again the hope was gone. The mercenary cells were raging. It felt like the years I’d been alive were all in my head. As if I hadn’t really lived them, just been watching them on TV. Now the programme was finished I could hardly remember what it was about. All I could see was Bibhuti taking the sledgehammer, choosing not to crumble. Standing up and smiling shyly for the cameras. He knew how to hold himself when death came marching at him. He knew it even if I didn’t.
The birds were singing too loudly for the time of day. The light was brighter and I smelled freshly cut grass. I dipped my foot in a puddle and pasted my shoeprint down on the tarmac in front of the car so I could watch it dissolve while I worked out the best way to leave so that Ellen wouldn’t blame me.
I stopped off for fish and chips on the way home. The boy who served me was wearing an earring in the shape of a skull. I told him to go to Niagara Falls if he ever got the chance. He said he would but it lacked the substance of a genuine promise. Nobody ever took me seriously.
Ellen was out when I got back, buying things at the market to turn into my dinner. I looked through her drawers and found nothing incriminating. No proof that she’d had an affair, no bundled letters or pictures of strange men. Just the special knickers she used to wear sometimes, balled up at the back under her everyday pairs. I took them out and held them. There were pulls in the satin and the lace was coming away at the trim. I pretended I knew what it meant to be a woman. I felt her hope and her fear and I was in awe of her, of the kindness she showed in reaching for a quiet inelegant man when there must have been other better handholds out there in the world.
Her fish and chips went cold but she ate them anyway, happy not to have to cook. That night in bed when the darkness hid me I brought up the dream she’d had, the one I’d tried to make true. The one that proved I was once as kind and honourable as her.
‘Do you remember?’ I said. ‘The one about the piano?’
She didn’t say anything for a while, and the silence was stifling. I lay beside her in the dark and wished I could undo all the moments when she’d felt like a stranger to me.
‘I was hoping you’d forgotten.’
‘I’ll never forget it. I’d rather die first.’
‘Don’t say that.’
I meant it.
She’d had a dream that she could play the piano. It felt real, more than any other dream she’d had. She’d woken up with the music still in her fingers. The feeling was so strong she’d been convinced something magical had happened, that somehow the capacity to play had been breathed into her while she’d been sleeping.
She’d pawed me awake to tell me. She went through it all while it was still fresh, and her eyes were sparkling. I breathed in early days asbestos and listened to her, enchanted. She could play. She was sure of it. It didn’t matter that she’d never played a note before, the dream had changed all that. A miracle. She got up and went to the window and played the windowsill as if it was keys. She played the kitchen table the same way, and she knew she was putting her fingers in the right places, she could hear the music, flawless in her head. It felt true, as true as anything she’d known, and she had to find out for sure before it wore off. She had to see for herself if dreams could come true.
We skipped breakfast and drove to the nearest music shop, a cluttered vault on the high street with ukuleles hanging like fruits in the window. She told me on the way how she’d always wished she could play but she’d been scared of never being good enough, that her hands could never reproduce the sound inside her head. The dream was a gift from herself, a wonder that happens sometimes after a trauma or an injury or just because you want it and it’s your turn.