A Special Relationship (9 page)

‘And a lovely one too. It’s just we’re both so busy right now. But it would be lovely to see you. Perhaps we could do Sunday lunch sometime soon.’

‘That would be great.’

‘Well, let me have a chat with Roger and get back to you. Must fly now. So glad you’re settling in. Bye.’

And our conversation was terminated.

When Tony finally got home that night – well after ten o’clock – I said, ‘I didn’t know you had lunch with Kate Medford last week.’

He poured himself a vodka and said, ‘Yes. I had lunch with Kate last week.’

‘But why didn’t you tell me?’

‘Am I supposed to tell you these things?’ he asked mildly.

‘It’s just … you knew I was planning to call her to ask about the four of us going out …’

‘So?’

‘But when I mentioned it a few days ago, you acted like you hadn’t heard from her since we’d moved to London.’

‘Did I?’ he said, the tone still temperate. After the merest of pauses, he smiled and asked, ‘So what did Kate say to your idea of an evening at the theatre?’

‘She suggested Sunday lunch,’ I said, my voice even, my smile fixed.

‘Did she? How nice,’ he said.

A few days later, I did go to the theatre … with Margaret. We saw a very well acted, very well directed, and
very long
revival of Ibsen’s
Rosmersholm
at the National. It was an evening performance – and had come at the end of a day that started with the arrival of plasterers at eight am, and finished with me filing two stories and just making it across the river right before the curtain went up. The production had received very flattering reviews – which is why I chose it. But about twenty minutes in, I realized I had let myself and Margaret in for an extended three-hour sojourn through some serious Scandinavian gloom. At the intermission, Margaret turned to me and said, ‘Well, this really is a toe-tapper.’

Then, halfway through the second act, I fell fast asleep – only waking with a jolt when the applause came for the curtain call.

‘What happened at the end?’ I asked Margaret as we left the theatre.

‘The husband and wife jumped off a bridge and killed themselves.’

‘Really?’
I said, genuinely aghast. ‘Why?’

‘Oh, you know – winter in Norway, nothing better to do …’

‘Thank God I didn’t bring Tony. He would have filed for divorce on the spot.’

‘Not a big Ibsen fan, your husband?’

‘Doesn’t want anything at all to do with culture. Which is, in my experience, a typical journalist philistine thing. I mean, I suggested going to a play with a couple of friends of his …’

Then I recounted my conversation with Tony and my subsequent call from Kate Medford.

‘I promise you, she won’t get back to you for at least four months,’ Margaret said when I finished telling her the story. ‘Then, out of the blue, you’ll get this call. She’ll sound all friendly, talk about how “frightfully busy” she’s been, and how she’d just love to see you and Tony and the baby, and might you be free for Sunday lunch six weeks from now? And you’ll think to yourself:
is this how it works here?…
and
is she only doing this because she feels obliged to do this?
And the answer to both questions will be a big resounding
yes.
Because even your good friends here are, to a certain degree, standoffish. Not because they don’t want to be around you … but because they think they shouldn’t be disturbing you, and also because you probably don’t really want to hear too much from them. And no matter how much you try to convince them otherwise, that edge of reticence will be there. Because that’s how it is here. The English need a year or two to acclimatize to your presence before they decide to be friends. When they are friends, they
are
friends but they will still keep their distance. Everyone in this country is taught to do that from a very early age.’

‘None of my neighbours have bothered to introduce themselves.’

‘They never do.’

‘And people are so abrupt with each other in shops.’

Margaret grinned a big grin.

‘Oh, you’ve noticed that, have you?’

Indeed, I had – particularly in the form of the guy who ran my local newsagent. His name was Mr Noor – and he was always having a bad day. In the weeks that I’d been buying the morning papers at his shop, I’d never known him to ever favour me (or any other customer) with a smile. I had tried many times to force a grin out of him, or to at least engage him in a basic, yet civil conversation. But he had steadfastly refused to budge from his position of ongoing misanthropy. And the journalist in me always wondered what was the root cause of his unpleasantness. A brutal childhood in Lahore? A father who beat him senseless for the slightest infraction? Or maybe it was the sense of dislocation that came with being yanked out of Pakistan and dropped into the chilly dankness of London in the mid-seventies – whereupon he discovered he was a Paki, a Wog, a permanent outsider in a society that despised his presence.

Of course, when I once articulated a version of this scenario to Karim – the guy who ran the corner shop next to Mr Noor’s newsagency – I was greeted with serious laughter.

‘Bloke’s never been to Pakistan in his life,’ Karim told me. ‘And don’t think it’s something you’ve done that’s made him treat you the way he does. He does it with everybody. And it’s nothing to do with nothing. He’s a miserable git, that’s all.’

Unlike Mr Noor, Karim always seemed to be having a good day. Even on the bleakest of mornings – when it had been raining non-stop for a week, and the temperature was just above freezing, and everyone was wondering if the sun would ever emerge again – Karim somehow managed to maintain a pleasant public face. Maybe this was something to do with the fact that he and his older brother, Faisal, were already successful businessmen, with two other shops in this corner of South London, and plenty of plans afoot for further expansion. And I wondered whether his innate optimism and affability were rooted in the fact that, though a native Brit, he had aspirations – and a curiously American sense of confidence.

But on the morning after my Ibsen night out with Margaret, I didn’t need anything from Karim’s shop – so my first public contact of the day was with Mr-Bloody-Noor. As usual, he was in sparkling form. Approaching his till with my
Chronicle
and my
Independent
in hand, I said, ‘And how are you today, Mr Noor?’

He avoided my eyes, and replied, ‘One pound ten.’

I didn’t hand him the money. Instead I looked directly at him and repeated my question, ‘And how are you today, Mr Noor?’

‘One pound ten,’ he said, sounding annoyed.

I kept smiling, determined to get a response out of him.

‘Are you keeping well, Mr Noor?’

He just stuck his hand out for the money. I repeated my question again.

‘Are you keeping well, Mr Noor?’

He exhaled loudly.

‘I am fine.’

I graced him with a very large smile.

‘Delighted to hear it.’

I handed over my money, and nodded goodbye. Behind me was a woman in her forties, waiting to pay for the
Guardian
she held in her hand. As soon as I left the shop, she caught up with me.

‘Well done you,’ she said. ‘He’s had that coming to him for years.’

She proffered her hand.

‘Julia Frank. You live at Number 27, don’t you?’

‘That’s right,’ I said, and introduced myself.

‘Well, I’m just across the road at Number 32. Nice to meet you.’

I would have lingered, trying to engage her in a chat, if I hadn’t been late for an interview with a former IRA man turned novelist, so I simply said, ‘Drop over sometime.’ She replied with a pleasant smile … which may have been her way of indicating yes, or just another example of the maddening reticence of this city. But the very fact that she stopped to introduce herself (and to compliment me on standing up to Mr Charm School) kept me buoyed for most of the day.

‘So a neighbour
actually
spoke with you?’ Sandy said when I called her later that day. ‘I’m surprised I didn’t see a news flash about it on CNN.’

‘Yeah, it’s pretty momentous stuff. And get this – the sun was even out today.’

‘Good God, what next? Don’t tell me somebody smiled at you on the street?’

‘Actually, somebody did. It was on the tow-path by the river. A man walking his dog.’

‘What kind of dog?’

‘A Golden Retriever.’

‘They usually have nice owners.’

‘I’ll take your word for it. But you would not believe how pleasant that path by the river can be. And it’s only three minutes from my door. And I know it’s not a big damn deal, but while I was strolling by the Thames, I found myself thinking: maybe I’m going to find my footing here after all.’

That evening, I expressed similar sentiments to Tony after I saw him glancing around the builders’ debris amidst which we were living.

‘Don’t despair,’ I said, ‘it will all get finished eventually.’

‘I’m not despairing,’ he said, sounding forlorn.

‘This will be a wonderful house.’

‘I’m sure it will be.’

‘Come on, Tony. Things will get better.’

‘Everything’s fine,’ he said, his voice drained of enthusiasm.

‘I wish I could believe you mean that,’ I said.

‘I do mean it.’

With that, he drifted off into another room.

But then, at five that morning, I woke up to discover that everything wasn’t fine.

Because my body was suddenly playing strange games with me.

And in those first few bewildering moments when the realization hit that something was very wrong, I bumped into an emotion I hadn’t encountered for years.

Fear.

Four

I
T WAS AS
if I had been attacked during the night by a battalion of bed-bugs. Suddenly, every corner of my skin felt as if it was inflamed by what could only be described as a virulent itch – which no amount of scratching could relieve.

‘I don’t see any rash,’ Tony said after he discovered me naked in our bathroom, scraping my skin with my fingernails.

‘I’m not making this up,’ I said angrily, thinking that he was accusing me of falling into some psychosomatic state.

‘I’m not saying you are. It’s just …’

I turned and stared at myself in the mirror. He was right. The only marks on my skin were those made by my frantic clawing.

Tony ran me a hot bath and helped me into it. The scalding water was momentarily agonizing – but once I adjusted to its extreme heat, it had a balming effect. Tony sat down beside the bath, held my hand, and told me another of his amusing war stories – how he contracted head lice while covering some tribal skirmish in Eritrea, and had to get his head shaved by a local village barber.

‘The bloke did it with the dirtiest straight edge razor imaginable. And, wouldn’t you know it, he didn’t have the steadiest hand – so by the time he was done, not only was I bald, but I looked like I needed stitches. Even then – having had every last hair scraped away – my head still itched like a bastard. Which is when the barber wrapped my head in a boiling hot towel. Cured the itching immediately – and also gave me first degree burns.’

I ran my fingers through his hair, so pleased to have him sitting here with me, holding my hand, getting me through all this. When I finally emerged from the bath an hour later, the itching was gone. Tony couldn’t have been sweeter. He dried me with a towel. He dusted me with baby powder. He put me back to bed. And I did fall fast asleep again, waking with a start at noon – as the itching started over again.

At first, I thought I was still in the middle of some hyperactive dream – like one of those falling nightmares where you know you’re plunging into a ravine, until you hit the pillow. Even before I snapped into consciousness, I was certain that another pestilent squad of insects had taken up residency beneath my skin. But the itching had doubled in intensity since last night. I felt sheer unadulterated panic. Dashing into the bathroom, I stripped off my pyjama bottom and teeshirt, and checked myself all over for blotchy rashes or any other signs of epidermal inflammation – especially around my bulging belly. Nothing. So I ran another very hot bath and fell into it. Like last night, the scalding water had an immediate salutary effect – scorching my skin into a kind of numbness that deadened the all-pervasive itch.

But as soon as I hauled myself out of the bath an hour later, the itch started again. Now I was genuinely spooked. I rubbed myself down with baby talc. It only intensified the discomfort. So I turned on the taps for another hot bath. Once more I scalded myself, and was consumed by itching as soon as I stepped out of it again.

I threw on a bathrobe. I called Margaret.

‘I think I’m going out of my skull,’ I told her – and then explained the war taking place beneath my skin, and how I was worried it might all be in my mind.

‘If you’re really itching like that, it can’t be psychosomatic,’ Margaret said.

‘But there’s nothing showing.’

‘Maybe you have an internal rash.’

‘Is there such a thing?’

‘I’m no quack – so how the hell do I know. But if I were you, I’d stop being a Christian Scientist about this, and get to a doctor fast.’

I heeded Margaret’s advice and called the local surgery. But my doctor was booked up for the afternoon so they found me an appointment with a Dr Rodgers: a dry-as-dust GP in his late forties, with thinning hair and a chilly bedside manner. He asked me to take off my clothes. He gave my skin a cursory inspection. He told me to get dressed again and gave me his diagnosis: I was probably having a
sub-clinical
allergic reaction to something I ate. But when I explained that I hadn’t eaten anything out of the ordinary for the past few days, he said, ‘Well, pregnancy always makes the body react in odd ways.’

‘But the itching is driving me nuts.’

‘Give it another twenty-four hours.’

‘Isn’t there anything you can prescribe to stop it?’

‘If nothing is visible on the skin, not really. Try aspirin – or ibuprofen – if the pain gets too much.’

When I related all this to Margaret half an hour later, she became belligerent.

‘Typical English quack. Take two aspirin, and stiffen your upper lip.’

‘My usual GP is much better.’

‘Then get back on the phone and demand to see her. Better yet, insist that she makes a house call. They
will
do that, if coerced.’

‘Maybe he’s right. Maybe it is some minor allergic reaction …’

‘What is this? After just a couple of months in London, you’re already adopting a “grin and bear it” attitude?’

In a way, Margaret was right. I didn’t want to whine about my condition – especially as it wasn’t my nature to get sick, let alone break out in manic itches. So I tried to busy myself by unpacking several boxes of books, and attempting to read a few back issues of the
New Yorker.
I resisted the temptation to call Tony at the paper and tell him just how bad I was feeling. Eventually I stripped off all my clothes again and started scratching my skin so hard that I actually began to bleed around my shoulders. I took refuge in the bathroom. I let out a scream of sheer, unequivocal frustration and pain as I waited for the bath to fill. After scalding myself for the third time, I finally called Tony at the paper, saying, ‘I think I’m in real trouble here.’

‘Then I’m on my way.’

He was back within the hour. He found me shivering in the bath, even though the water was still near boiling. He got me dressed. He helped me into the car and drove straight across Wandsworth Bridge, then up the Fulham Road, and parked right opposite the Mattingly Hospital. We were inside the Casualty Department within moments – and when Tony saw that the waiting room was packed, he had a word with the triage nurse, insisting that, as I was pregnant, I should be seen straight away.

‘I’m afraid you’ll have to wait, like everyone else here.’

Tony tried to protest, but the nurse was having none of it.

‘Sir, please sit down. You can’t jump the queue unless…’

At that very moment, I supplied the
unless,
as the constant itch suddenly transformed into a major convulsion. Before I knew what was happening, I pitched forward and the world went black.

When I came to, I was stretched out in a steel hospital bed, with several intravenous tubes protruding from my arms. I felt insanely groggy – as if I had just emerged from a deep narcotic sleep. For a moment or two, the thought struck me:
where am I?
Until the world came into focus and I found myself in a long ward – one of a dozen or so women, enveloped by tubes, respiratory machines, foetal monitors and other medical paraphernalia. I managed to focus on the clock situated at the end of the ward: 3.23 pm … with a greyish light visible behind the thin hospital curtains. 3.23
pm
Tony and I had arrived at the hospital around eight last night. Could I have been out cold for … what?…
seventeen hours’?

I managed to summon up enough strength to push the call-button by the side of the bed. As I did so, I involuntarily blinked for an instant and was suddenly visited by a huge wave of pain around the upper half of my face. I also became aware of the fact that my nose had been heavily taped. The area around my eyes also felt bruised and battered. I pressed the call-button even harder. Eventually, a small Afro-Caribbean nurse arrived at my bedside. When I squinted to read her name tag –
Howe
– my face felt pulverized again.

‘Welcome back,’ she said with a quiet smile.

‘What happened?’

The nurse reached for the chart at the end of the bed and read the notes.

‘Seems you had a little fainting spell in reception. You’re lucky that nose of yours wasn’t broken. And you didn’t lose any teeth.’

‘How about the baby?’

A long anxious silence as Nurse Howe scanned the notes again.

‘No worries. The baby’s fine. But
you
… you are a cause for concern.’

‘In what way?’

‘Mr Hughes, the consultant, will see you on his rounds this evening.’

‘Will I lose the baby?’

She scanned the chart again, then said, ‘You’re suffering from a high blood pressure disorder. It could be pre-eclampsia – but we won’t know that until we’ve done some blood work and a urine test.’

‘Can it jeopardize the pregnancy?’

‘It can … but we’ll try to get it under control. And a lot is going to depend on you. You’d better be prepared to live a very quiet life for the next few weeks.’

Great. Just what I needed to hear. A wave of fatigue suddenly rolled over me. Maybe it was the drugs they’d been giving me. Maybe it was a reaction to my seventeen hours of unconsciousness. Or maybe it was a combination of the two, coupled with my new-found high blood pressure. Whatever it was, I suddenly felt devoid of energy. So drained and de-vitalized that I couldn’t even summon the strength to sit myself up. Because I had an urgent, desperate need to pee. But before I could articulate this need – before I could ask for a bedpan or assistance to the nearest toilet – the lower part of my body was suddenly enveloped in a warm, expansive pool of liquid.

‘Oh fuck …,’ I said, my voice loud, desperate.

‘It’s okay’ Nurse Howe said. Reaching for her walkie-talkie, she summoned assistance. Within moments, two large male orderlies were by the bed. One of them had a shaved head and sported an earring; the other was a thin wiry Sikh.

‘So sorry, so sorry …’ I managed to mutter as the two orderlies helped me sit up.

‘Don’t you worry about it, darling,’ the shaved head said. ‘Most natural thing in the world.’

‘Never happened to me before,’ I said as they lifted me off the sodden mattress and put me in a wheelchair. My hospital nightgown was stuck against my body.

‘First time, really?’ Shaved Head asked. ‘Ain’t you had a charmed life. Take my mate here. He pisses his pants all the time, don’t you?’

‘Don’t listen to my colleague,’ the Sikh said. ‘He needs to talk rubbish.’

‘Colleague?’
Shaved Head said. ‘Thought I was your mate.’

‘Not when you accuse me of pants pissing,’ the Sikh said, starting to wheel me down the ward. Shaved Head walked alongside him, their repartee non-stop.

‘That’s the problem with you Sikhs – no sense of humour …’

‘Oh I laugh all the time … when something is funny. But not when an Oik …’

‘You callin’ me an
Oik
?

‘No, I am making a generalization about
Oiks.
So, please, try not to take it so personally …’

‘But if you is making a sweeping general …’

‘If you
are
making a sweeping generalization …’ the Sikh said, correcting him.

‘Know who my friend … sorry,
colleague
… thinks he is?’ Shaved Head asked me. ‘Bloody Henry Higgins.’

‘And why can’t the English teach their children how to speak?’ the Sikh said.

‘Shut it.’

It was like listening to an old married couple in the midst of the sort of comic bicker which had been going on, non-stop, for twenty years. But I also realized that they were carrying on this banter for my benefit – to divert me from my humiliation, and stop me feeling like the bad little girl who’d wet herself and was now in a helpless state.

When we reached the bathroom, the two orderlies helped me out of the wheelchair, then positioned me standing up against the sink and waited with me until a nurse arrived. Once she showed up, they took their leave. She was a large cheery woman in her late forties with an accent that hinted at Yorkshire. She gently lifted the drenched nightgown over my head.

‘Get you cleaned up in no time,’ she said, while running a shallow warm bath. There was a mirror over the sink. I looked up and froze. The woman staring at me appeared to be a victim of domestic abuse. Her nose – shrouded in surgical plaster strips – had swollen to twice its normal size and had turned a slightly purplish colour. Both eyes had been blackened, and the areas around the eyelids were also discoloured and puffy.

‘A nose injury always appears worse than it is,’ she said, immediately aware of my distress. ‘And it always clears up very quickly. Give it three, four days, and you’ll be back to your beautiful self.’

I had to laugh – not simply because I never considered myself beautiful … but also because, at the moment, I looked like I belonged in a freak show.

‘American, are you?’ she asked me.

I nodded.

‘Never met an American I didn’t like,’ she said. ‘Mind you, I’ve only met two Yanks in my entire life. What you doing living here?’