Tilda touched my cheekbones. I couldn’t lean sideways any further. ‘Not a hint of wet,’ she said quietly, with an offended gaping of her mouth. ‘Not a single hint of wet.’
‘There’s been so much to take in. I’ve been holding back crying.’
‘Cry now. Go on. Do it now.’
‘I can’t cry on demand.’
‘All I am to you is servicing, aren’t I?’
‘No.’
‘Not love, just servicing.’
‘No.’
‘Say you love me, then.’
‘I love you.’
‘I don’t believe you.’
‘I do.’ It was true enough—remember my alterations. I repeated three I love yous. Tilda refused to hear them. She shook them from her ears.
‘Do you want me dead?’
‘Dead? Of course not.’
‘Is that why you don’t cry? You want me dead so you don’t have to bother with this?’
‘No.’ The only words she would believe were her own. I could have pledged no, no, no a thousand times but as far as she was concerned I was a liar.
‘I’m damaged goods now, aren’t I? What man wants a one-titted woman?’
I touched her shoulder to rub it, pat it. She slid away from me.
I had the idea of putting water on my face. If my not crying was troubling Tilda then rubbing tap tears on might placate her. I said I needed to go to the toilet. She said, ‘Do what the hell you like.’
She flicked TV channels again. A Hogan’s Heroes rerun came on with a burst of canned laughter, which Tilda took personally. She switched the set off. ‘Why are they so fucking happy?’
I closed the bathroom door and leant against it a few seconds, grateful for the peace. I dug water into my eye sockets, creating a damp, bloodshot appearance. Not so damp that water would stream falsely down, but damp enough to look like raw feeling. I tilted my head back to look as if I was trying to stop tears from welling. I stepped into the lounge.
Tilda was sitting cross-legged in front of the TV. She had turned it on again and was watching a newsbreak. She held her hand up. ‘Shsh.’ She pointed to the screen to a girl in jodhpurs mounting a pony. I sniffed and cleared my throat to keep my acting going but got the shush treatment. Three years ago the girl had been given two months to live, and look at her now—happy and healthy; her cancer, to the amazement of doctors, was gone.
‘Gone,’ cheered Tilda. ‘Gone.’ She leapt to her feet, skipped a few strides and flung her arms around my neck. She kissed me with such butting suddenness my top lip was squashed. She had never been so exhilarated in her life, she cheered. All this talk of Roff’s, this cancer talk, his social-issues jabber, the gloom and fear and panic of it all, and there was a little girl who was expected to die and instead was riding her pony to Sydney for charity. ‘Don’t you think it’s exciting?’
The water was drying tightly around my eyes. My performance was past its peak. Tilda skipped and laughed as if all her woes had vanished and her lumps had gone into remission by television. ‘Don’t you think it’s wonderful? What’s wrong with your eyes?’
‘It’s the emotion. It’s all coming out.’
‘Don’t be like that. Don’t spoil this moment. How can you be upset when there’s such hope from that little girl? It’s like her story is my story, or will be. You should be happy for me.’
‘I am. I am.’ I switched to smiling. Tilda held her arms out for me to lift her and dance a triumphant jig.
Chapter 38
Dear honesty box,
With regards to the president-servant principle. From that night on its balance became different. The president side was tilted towards Tilda. I was more servant now—it was part of her privileges. No great discord was created by the tilting, not at first anyway. In fact, quite the opposite: I felt privileged myself. I felt important, called upon in someone’s hour of desperation. To be used in the service of someone’s very survival, to have purpose of that magnitude is to have life beyond our own needs: a greater, nurturing cause.
I patrolled her hospital bed once the operation was done. I ensured blankets were over her toes and not so heavily as to cut circulation. I ran ice around her lips to ease her thirst. I read her the newspaper, the arts section if there was one on the day, or else a few pages of the book she’d brought for comfort reading: The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes. I brushed her hair so it haloed her on the pillow. When food was allowed I cut the crusts off her sandwiches.
I dared not touch the tube draining blood from her wound but I did make sure her smock covered it so she didn’t take fright. When Roff paid a visit I was suitably servile. I stood up and almost bowed to his reverent presence. He had the habit of not looking directly at the face of the person he was speaking to. He peeked under Tilda’s sheets to check his handiwork. I offered to step outside the screen as he inspected her but no, he said, he wanted me to stay: ‘We’ll have a little talk in a second.’ This had a forbidding ring to me, as if he had grave news to impart.
It wasn’t news—it was advice. He studied the tube and said, ‘Good drainage,’ and asked if I would take a seat on the end of Tilda’s bed. The operation had been a success, he reported. The cancer was no longer there. He was confident he had got it all. Tilda whispered, ‘Thank you. Thank you,’ though the effort made her wound hurt.
‘Now,’ Roff said to me, as if I was his patient’s translator. ‘A few things. In a day or two someone will come, one of our lady helpers, and she will have a mirror. She and Tilda will look at the scar together. It’s important this is done as soon as possible so Tilda gets used to the sight of it.’
He put his hands in his pockets and strolled towards me. ‘And may I give you this advice…’
‘Colin,’ I prompted him.
‘Oh yes, Colin. On the anecdotal evidence we have, it’s important for Tilda to show you the scar before too much time goes by. Don’t let it drift or it becomes dreaded and affects her wellbeing.’
‘Understood.’
Tilda was muttering ‘Thank you, thank you’ sleepily. Roff nodded his pleasure at her gratitude. He reached down and stroked her hand, her right hand. He stared at the hand, at where a needle was taped to her vein connecting her to a baggy drip with a spirit-level bubble of clear liquid in it. He became agitated. He tugged his cuffs out from under his suit sleeves. ‘Nurse,’ he said with a raised voice. ‘Nurse.’ He flicked the bed screen apart. ‘Nurse.’
He lowered his voice when the nurse arrived, spoke very quietly, but my cocked ear picked up the gist of his complaining. The needle should not be in Tilda’s right hand, it should be in her left. Her right side was the ‘removal zone’ side. ‘For heaven’s sake, did you not check this? It’s basic. Basic.’
He ordered the needle be changed this instant.
The nurse, chin tucked down, cowed by Roff’s gentlemanly anger, hurried past me with a cool ‘Excuse me’ and did as he commanded.
I leant out of the screen. ‘Is there a problem?’ I asked Roff.
‘Nothing. A minor matter.’
Fair enough, I thought. It seemed logical to me that the more status someone had the more minor matters would annoy them. I said as much to the nurse out of sympathy for her.
She had rust-red hair, a thick stack of curls. This ward, 7D West, was not a red hair ward, or a brown hair ward or black. All the patients were blonde. All had breast cancer, all were thin. Not sick-thin but fit-thin, as if they ran miles and ate properly. The blondeness was of the same yellow shading as Tilda’s. In eight beds, eight women, none related but so similar. I almost said something to the nurse, a slip of the tongue about coincidence—‘Is there a breast cancer look?’ But I could tell she was too stern a breed for appreciating whimsy.