Close Your Eyes (24 page)

‘Harper?’

‘Yeah. She and her boyfriend were going to take off and ride a motorbike across the States.’

‘When did she tell you this?’

He waves me away dismissively, as though the details are unimportant, but it’s something else that Blake Lehmann failed to mention.

‘I thought Harper wanted to go to Falmouth University,’ I say.

‘That was my mother’s grand plan. Harper had her sights set on travelling for a year.’

‘Who else knew this?’

He bends forward, clutching his stomach, as though his internal organs are persecuting him. His tremors are different from mine. Self-inflicted. Drug-related. Withdrawal symptoms.

‘Are you using?’ I ask.

‘I’m clean.’

‘What’s wrong, babe?’ asks Ant.

‘I haven’t eaten today.’

The cramps hit him again. He’s coming down off something, huffing, puffing. His face is slick with sweat and a fleshy animal stink rises from his overcoat.

‘You should see a doctor,’ I tell him.

‘I don’t need a fucking doctor.’

We’re near the centre of town, opposite a pub called the Harp.

‘You can drop us here,’ says Ant.

She opens the door before the car has stopped moving. Elliot trips over the gutter and falls; Ant lets out a squeak and helps him to stand. He looks at his grazed hands as though he’s forgotten what they’re for. Pedestrians have to step around him.

‘I can help you,’ I say.

‘Good,’ says Ant. ‘Get out of his house.’

Ruiz pulls away. Turning to watch them through the rear window, I see Elliot and Ant heading for the pub, searching through his pockets for money.

Julianne’s arm slips through mine as we walk up the steps of St Michael’s Hospital in Bristol and follow the signs to the pathology screening rooms. She has a particular lightness to her step, as though feeling positive about today. A young man with an Abe Lincoln beard is sitting behind a glass partition. He gives Julianne a form to fill out and we’re told to wait in a small room with chairs and a low table covered in magazines and medical leaflets.

‘Do you want something to read?’ I ask.

‘No, thank you,’ she replies.

‘A drink of water?’

‘I’m fine.’

‘It’s going to be all right.’

‘I know.’

‘What’s the oncologist’s name?’

‘Alex Percival.’

‘A man or woman?’

‘Woman.’

Outside I can hear a jackhammer thudding into concrete and vibrating the air. I stand at the window. Men in hard hats, protective boots and high-visibility vests are digging up the footpath. Some toil, others watch. A bus disgorges passengers. A mother crosses the road holding tightly to a child’s hand. Resting my forehead against the glass, I can see the hospital entrance. A middle-aged man and woman are sitting on the steps having a cigarette. Two nurses wave to them as they pass. The world is carrying on. Nature is neither cruel nor capricious. It is indifferent. It doesn’t care that my wife has cancer and is waiting for a medical test and contemplating surgery.

The door opens. A West Indian nurse with a lovely lilting accent takes us through to a changing room where Julianne is given a gown and thick socks to keep her feet warm. She begins to undress, slipping out of her summer dress and unhooking her bra. When was the last time I saw her naked? Two years ago.

‘You can look away now,’ she says, holding her bra against her chest. I turn my back.

‘You can look now.’

Standing pigeon-toed in a green gown and socks, she looks like an orphan. I have to wait outside the MRI room, watching as she lies on a narrow bed that slides her into the space-age sarcophagus, which will fire magnetic pulses through her body, examining her inner workings.

Left alone, I begin to daydream. I picture sitting in the doctor’s office and getting the news that the tumour has miraculously disappeared. Julianne’s ovaries are clear. They are the pinkest, healthiest, most perfect reproductive organs the doctor has ever seen. Other staff members are called in to marvel at the results. Papers are published. Dr Percival is asked to tour. Julianne becomes famous.

An hour later the first part of the daydream is made solid as we wait for the oncologist. Her office walls are decorated with diplomas and photographs. Some of the pictures show a field hospital in Iraq or Afghanistan, or somewhere else with deserts and mountains.

The door opens. Dr Percival peels off a pair of latex gloves and drops them into a
HAZARD
bin before leaning over her desk. A tiny bird-boned woman with pepper-and-salt hair and veiny white arms, she takes a large white envelope from radiology and reads the report. Glancing up, she cocks her head to one side. ‘Joe?’

‘Yes.’

‘You don’t remember me?’

I rack my brain. She prompts me. ‘London. Medical school. It must have been…’

‘…1980,’ I say.

‘Close enough.’

Her whole face lights up. She shakes my hand and tells me how well I’m looking, which we both know isn’t true.

‘We were at university together,’ I say to Julianne, who has gathered this much. ‘But your name wasn’t Percival.’

‘I married,’ says Dr Percival. ‘I took my husband’s name, which is rather old-fashioned, but I was desperate not to be called Grimes for the rest of my life.’

‘Alex Grimes, of course.’

She grimaces and takes a seat. Her hands are resting on the open file. ‘How is your father?’

‘Semi-retired.’

‘I was one of his interns for a while. That was a tough three months.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Not your fault.’

Dr Percival looks at Julianne, who is feeling a little left out. The jackhammer has fallen silent for a moment.

‘Right, let’s get down to business. We’ve done all we can to identify and map the tumour. The mass is about seven centimetres, which is what we expected.’

Julianne nods. She’s holding my hand.

‘I wish to schedule an exploratory laparotomy. I’ll make an incision through the abdomen to the ovaries and then, with your permission, I’ll try to remove all the visible tumour and see if it has spread any further.’

‘What stage?’ asks Julianne, struggling to get the words out.

‘I can’t be certain until I get inside.’

‘And my ovaries?’

‘I’ll remove both ovaries, the uterus and some of the surrounding tissue.’

Julianne’s fist tightens around my fingers. Nothing shows on her face.

Dr Percival is still talking. ‘After the surgery we’ll decide on a programme of chemotherapy.’ She looks at me. ‘Do you have any questions, Joe?’

I have several hundred but I’m not going to upset Julianne by asking about survival rates and the risk of recurrence.

‘Right then,’ says the doctor. ‘We’ll bring you in to hospital on Friday night and operate first thing Saturday morning.’

‘So soon,’ says Julianne.

‘The sooner the better. You’ll be in hospital for four to seven days. Initially you’ll have an intravenous drip in your arm and a catheter in your bladder and possibly a tube down your nose into your stomach, but these will be removed gradually over a few days. Some women also have calf-compression devices or elastic stockings to keep the blood in their legs circulating. Once you’re mobile, we’ll take the compression devices off, but you’ll still wear the stockings to avoid blood clots.’

There are more instructions, but the words jumble, collapse and wash over me. I cannot believe that something so insidious has taken root inside my beautiful wife and that now they’re going to cut her open.

Julianne nudges me. I look up. I’ve been asked a question.

‘I’m sorry.’

‘I was talking about her recuperation,’ says Dr Percival, ‘which normally takes about six weeks. She’ll have to take things easy. Avoid heavy lifting. Only gentle exercise. No driving for a month.’

Julianne looks at me. ‘Is that OK?’

‘Of course.’

‘Penetrative sexual intercourse should be avoided for about six weeks. I’m quite strict about that,’ says the doctor.

‘That’s OK, we’re not—’

‘I’ll make sure he keeps his hands off me,’ interrupts Julianne.

‘Good,’ says the doctor, making a note on the file. ‘So I’ll see you Friday evening. Judy will get you to fill out an admissions form and give you an information pack. If you have any questions, please call the nursing sister. And if you want to talk to a clinical psychologist – someone other than your husband, I mean – we have one on staff.’

‘I’ll be fine,’ says Julianne, sounding more confident.

Dr Percival closes the file and walks us to the door. ‘We should catch up,’ she says, and I agree, but both of us know it’s not going to happen. Too much time has passed and the circumstances aren’t right.

Forms are signed and brochures collected before we take the echoing walk and descend in the lift and cross the foyer. I sneak a glance at Julianne. Side by side, we’re an odd couple. I resemble a broken-down film director next to his newest leading lady.

‘I don’t want to go home yet,’ she says. ‘Let’s get a coffee.’

We walk up St Michael’s Hill and find a café on the next corner with tables on the footpath beneath an awning. Nurses and hospital workers queue at a hissing machine being operated by a dreadlocked barista who keeps up a constant patter, flirting with the women and winking conspiratorially at the men.

Julianne finds a table while I order at the counter. Waiting my turn and watching the barista’s floorshow, I notice Becca Washburn seated in the corner. She’s dressed in her nurse’s uniform, beige slacks and a blue-and-white-striped blouse with epaulettes on the shoulders. The chair opposite her is empty. Ahead of me in the queue Dominic Crowe is sugaring a coffee and carrying two cups back to the table.

Becca looks up. She sees me and frowns. Dominic follows her gaze and walks over to me.

‘Are you following me?’ he asks accusingly.

‘No.’

‘Are you following Becca?’

‘I’m here with my wife.’ I point to Julianne.

Momentarily lost for words, he eventually mumbles an apology and turns away.

‘I thought the family hated you,’ I say.

‘Mrs Washburn called me this morning. She and Francis had a visitor last night. Elliot came looking for money. Things got a little heated and Francis threatened to call the police. Elliot broke a window and woke the baby. He frightened a family who have been through enough.’ Dominic has delivered this explanation with his head down as though unable to look at me. He adds, ‘I love my son, but he has a sickness. He’s been in rehab twice. Twice. I’ve been trying to get him a place at a high-dependency unit in Bristol, but there’s a waiting list and he needs a court referral.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ I say. ‘Where is Elliot now?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘He came to Windy Hill Farm yesterday looking for money.’

Dominic doesn’t reply. He’s waiting for me to say something more and looks embarrassed when I don’t continue.

‘Well, I just thought … I didn’t want…’ Unable to finish, he turns away and crosses the café, looking like the lone survivor of a plane crash, picking his way through the wreckage.

‘Who was that?’ asks Julianne.

‘Someone I met the other day,’ I reply.

She cups her hands around the coffee, sipping at the edge. Out of the corner of my eye I see Becca leaving. She doesn’t make eye contact. Elsewhere in the café, a young mother navigates an over-sized pram between tables and parks it close to ours. The baby girl is sitting up, chewing on a rusk, her huge brown eyes framed by llama lashes. I glance at Julianne, expecting her to be smiling. Instead I see a single tear wobble free and roll down her cheek. She wipes it away with the side of her hand.

‘What’s wrong?’ I ask.

She shakes her head, not knowing where to begin. ‘They’re going to take out my uterus.’

‘They’re cutting out the cancer.’

‘A part of me is going to be missing – something that makes me a woman.’

‘You don’t want any more children.’

‘That’s not the point.’

She pulls a tissue from her sleeve and blows her nose, balling the soggy paper in her fist. I tell her that being a woman is about more than having babies – she’s done that bit. Now she’s a parent, which is more important. ‘Nothing is going to change. You’ll still be the same woman, your mind, your personality, your soul.’

‘You don’t believe we have a soul.’

‘You’re the exception.’

It rains that night. Water soughs and gurgles down the drainpipes and tumbles over gutters that need cleaning – one of many odd jobs that need doing around the cottage. Hinges need oiling and taps need washers and the vegetable garden is overgrown. I should make a list.

Julianne has gone out this evening. She’s telling her closest friends about the surgery, no doubt spinning the news to make herself sound undaunted and upbeat. I know that’s not true, but I can understand her motives. Fear is mostly a transient thing – it flashes out of the dark like a car swerving on to the wrong side of the road – and then re-corrects before passing.

Emma is avoiding bedtime. She wants to show me something ‘really, really, important’. Dragged into her room, I am made to sit on her bed while she pulls various dresses from her wardrobe as well as her school project – a poster about cloud formations.

‘I know why it rains,’ she says.

‘Good.’

‘And I know how babies are made. We had a lesson at school, but I knew already because Samantha Padenstowe told me that boys put their willies inside girls and it makes babies.’

‘What did they teach you in class?’

‘The lot.’

‘So now you know everything?’

‘Yep.’ She flops on to her bed and stares at the ceiling. ‘They told us about puberty and how we get hair down there.’ She motions with her head. ‘And when you have a baby it’s attached by a sort of hose that goes from the belly button and they have to cut it off and tie a knot otherwise the baby’s insides will fall out.’

She looks up at me to make sure she’s being believed. ‘And I know about periods, which are sort of like the cycles of the moon. You once told me the moon was made of cheese and an old man lived there. I guess you lied about that … and Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. I never believed in the Tooth Fairy, so that didn’t matter so much.’