Again Arthur interrupted. “Why don’t any of you listen? I don’t care if it’s understandable! I’m going to kill the bastard! You hear? Some fucking bastard took her away and none of you do anything about that, do you? You’re useless, the police are useless. You’re all fucking useless!”
“Look, hold on a minute. I can see why you feel that way, honest I can. But the police are doing their best. They might still get him. We’re all doing our best, mate.”
“So bloody what? That bastard’s going to get what’s coming to him. I’m going to get him myself and strangle him with my own bare hands, it’s the only way to get justice in this bloody country! Now leave me alone, will you? Fuck off and leave me alone!”
As the kitchen door opened I darted back upstairs into the darkness. Tony came out and paused in the hall, blowing out his cheeks. He rubbed at the carpet with his foot, turned back for a moment as if he had one last thing to say, but thought better of it and left.
A few minutes later Arthur appeared. He raised his head in my direction but I don’t know what he saw. He fumbled along the wall and switched out the lights in the hall. He seemed to have aged. I ventured down far enough to see his outline against the street lamps’ aura from the door but I remained in the shadow of the turn of the stairs and did not move. Then, in the dark, he called for me in a breaking, plangent voice-Ruth!
That was all. We both listened to the sound of it dying on the air. He called again. I didn’t go to him. He was sending out the name like a flare. He was experimenting, testing the house Ruth had arranged and kept for half her life to see if it would withstand the speaking of her name, if the sound of its one syllable wafting through the darkness to the edges of the walls and curving back would lapse and cease eventually, or would prove restless, an unruly echo roused easily from the corners. The quiescent, returning silence was like watching a white curtain fall back to stillness after the air has been disturbed.
He had called out for me at last.
Still I didn’t go to him. I stayed in the dark of the stairwell, unable to move. Arthur swayed across the hall below me and disappeared into the kitchen. I guessed he had gone out to sit in the conservatory. I slumped down on the stairs, leaned my head against the wall, and waited.
After a while he returned, clutching the letter. He dropped it on the floor, looked up, called my name again, and shuffled away. The borrowed light in the hall was somehow absorbent; he seemed to be sinking and losing form in a way that might be irretrievable. I hurried down and read what he’d written in the glow from the street lamp.
12:30 am
Dear Ruth
I’ve called for you and you won’t come, but I know you’re still here. I know you’re still here.
I have to talk to you. TALK.
PLEASE ANSWER.
It’s all up. Done with.
Still you’re not answering-you’re here, aren’t you?
We’ve got to do something.
Ruth, they’ll be back in the morning.
The Tony fellow. I hadn’t got my bandages on, that was the start of it. I was minding my own business, getting through a burnt sausage in a bun. Was perched on their swinging garden seat thing so ankles on display,and T leans forward, grabs my trouser bottom, pulls it back, and says AHA! As if finding a leg inside a pair of trousers required some special brilliance.
Thought so! Chronic ulceration!
Very officious.
There’s your National Health Service for you!
You know the way people get offended when they find out something they think you should have told them? Especially when it’s none of their business?
I tried to stand up for myself but it was no good.
Chronic ulceration! he says again, meaning “I’m the medical expert round here and don’t you forget it.” Here’s a condition directly related to personal care and nutrition and what’s the Primary Care Trust’s answer to that!
He was the only one not embarrassed. Even Mrs. M (she of elephant hide) said, Now Tony, Arthur’s here for a nice quiet time, you leave him alone.
Which didn’t shut him up.
Bloody PCT hasn’t bloody got one, that’s my point! Look at the poor bugger!
Then even HE knew he’d said enough. Mrs. M starts flapping around offering people more of everything. The women start making stupid remarks in big surprised voices, mainly about the food-you’d think Mrs. M invented potato salad. Tony leans in and says, Sorry about that, mate, but I’m not letting this go, we’re gonna get you taken care of, right?
Other people still milling around, laughing too much. I just ate my pudding and took no notice. You were the one for the small talk and the laughing. Mrs. M gave me a second helping of peach pavlova and when I’d finished everybody had gone. The Great Tony insisted on walking me back over.
You saw.
Ruth, where are you?
And then I was sick in the hall. Too much excitement, I suppose, not used to rich puddings. Tony cleaned up.
But I WOULD NOT LET HIM help me upstairs and I LEFT HIM IN NO DOUBT that I could get into pyjamas unaided-did not reveal that I have no need of pyjamas as am generally up and about while others are snoring their heads off.
But Tony says he’ll be back over again first thing and he’s going to phone the doctor and get something done. He says he’ll be making a strong case for hospitalization because I’m deteriorating, and if the doctor doesn’t visit and arrange it ASAP he’ll call an ambulance personally. Or he’ll get me into an A & E himself even if it means picking me up bodily and shoving me in the back of his car.
We’ve got to do something. Nobody listens to me and they’ll take me away again.
I can’t leave you again. We’ve got to stay together.
You’d have liked that pavlova. Wish you were around more.
We have got to do something.
With love
A.
So I went to him at last. He was rocking to and fro in an armchair. I kneeled down and pulled his hands away from his face, and closed his arms around me. He wept, and clasped my head against his neck. I could taste his tears and feel the loose, mulchy lips and his cheeks, so flimsy against the faintly rotten flaps of his mouth and the chipped bones of teeth. I embraced him as was my due and my right. I kissed his face and head, I pressed my mouth against the salty hide of his neck and chin, the skin flaking and wrinkling like cloth over gristly bones, over transparent veins and blood vessels like pulled threads. I breathed him in as if I were swallowing all the minute ebbings of fluids, the smells of wax and little trapped signs of age and illness, the thinning muscle that would one day slough and fail.
We said nothing. After a while his weeping subsided, and in one movement I drew away, took his hand, and led him upstairs. In the bedroom we arranged ourselves as if resuming a lifelong pattern after a period of abstinence or absence. I took him to his side of the bed and settled him on the pillows with a single kiss and a stroke of his hair. He smoothed the sheet for me and turned and smiled as I got in. I watched him fall asleep and then I lay awake thinking, trying to still my breathing.