Her Living Image (4 page)

“Yes.”

“It’s for a fractured middle third of maxilla, so they tell me.”

“But what does it do?”

“Sort of external splint, I suppose. Screws into the bone – keeps it in place.”

Carolyn looked at Clare with real horror. She had thought the cage rested on her face – although clearly that was silly. It had such nice neat white little bandages on its ends. But it
went through her flesh – through two holes in her forehead.

“It’s all right,” said Clare. “It looks worse than it is, I think. But I’ve got an awful craving for real food.” She had to drink mush through a straw
because her teeth were fixed together with metal. Carolyn was suddenly conscious of her own good fortune.

Often she had trouble sleeping, and at night she was more frightened and lonely than ever. Once she woke suddenly in the small hours of the morning, sick with fear. She lay, as
she had woken, flat on her back and looked at the ceiling. It was dim and shadowy, but it was slowly lowering itself towards her. Breaking out in sweat she turned her head to the left, to the
mustard painted wall which gleamed dully in the shine of the safety lights. It took a step towards her. Turning her head back she saw that the ceiling was lower again, already her body could sense
the pressure it would inflict on her, the way it would close and crush –

Panting with fear she tried to roll over in the bed, but the tight blankets held her pinned in position. She could not move. She could only lie and watch, in the shadowy artificial light, the
ceiling and wall creeping noiselessly closer and closer. Into the horror of her helpless solitude came a voice.

“Sssh. What’s the matter?”

She couldn’t take her eyes off the ceiling which moved more quickly when she looked away. “The ceiling.”

“What’s wrong with it?” said the muffled voice.

“It’s coming down – oh – it’s coming –”

“Hush, hush it’s all right.”

“No –” sobbing now, “no – no –” The room was closing the walls coming in, she couldn’t breathe, already she was choking, gasping, there was no
air no light no space – “No!”

“All right. It’s all right.” Clare leaned helplessly over her for a moment, then moved to the head of Carolyn’s bed and wound the handle, as she had seen nurses doing.
Gradually the wheels came down, lifting the bed silently off its feet. She moved to the other end and pulled the bed out into the centre of the ward, then manoeuvred it down towards the window at
the opposite end. “Look,” she whispered. “Look out the window, it’s all right. See the streetlights. See the stars.” Carolyn looked. “Can you see the line of the
hills against the sky?”

Carolyn, whose heart and breath were racing and body shaking with helpless fear, gazed out of the window and saw street, house, star, lamppost, hill, and tried to attach her spinning fear to
these stationary things. The quiet night, the shapes of houses, the world and sky asleep. Staring at them, she began to calm, and her breathing to quieten.

After a while, when Carolyn’s breathing was regular, Clare wheeled the bed about.

“No – no –” Carolyn’s voice was panic-edged already, at turning in to face those dark gleaming walls. “No!”

Clare turned her again so that she could anchor her fleeting sight safely out there in the still night streets. Clare stood by her stiffly, watching, until dawn began to make pale the sky, and a
nurse walking quietly down the early ward spotted them and hurried them crossly back to their places. Carolyn laid hold of the grey gleam of dawning light on the ceiling as a drowning person grasps
a lifebelt. Testing the dark, she closed her eyes –opened them to see that safe morning light – closed, tried again, opened. At last she was able to trust it to stay, and so sleep.

She remembered her terror vividly in the morning, it was still too real for her to feel embarrassed about it. After the nurse had set up Clare’s reading frame for her, Clare said,
“Sleep well?” in her dry voice.

“Thank you,” said Carolyn awkwardly. “I don’t know what I would have done – I was –”

“It’s OK,” said Clare. “All part of the fun. What day is it today?”

“Thursday.”

“Thursday? Oh Lord, it’s God’s gift today.”

“What?”

“The consultant. Young and handsome. Thinks he’s God’s gift. You watch him with the nurses. Acts as if it’s as big as the Eiffel Tower.”

Carolyn was embarrassed. Later in the morning the consultant appeared at the end of the ward, accompanied by a flutter of nurses, and strode along bestowing a word or smile on the more
likely-looking of his patients.

“How’re we doing today?” he said blandly to Clare’s bed.

“Don’t know about you, but I’m great, never felt better,” came the dry voice from behind the scaffolding.

Carolyn wriggled down under her sheet, blushing for Clare’s daring and trying not to laugh. He blinked at Clare’s bed then smiled.

“I see. Nurse –” He turned with some technical request about changing Clare’s dressings, and Carolyn saw that he did stare shamelessly at the nurse, so that a faint pink
flush came up on her cheekbones.

He walked on and Clare said softly, “Bet it’s wearing a hole in his pants.”

The nursing staff, who had been no more than a faceless army who irritated, interrupted, hurt, or occasionally brought relief, were sharply defined by Clare’s distant voice. There was Come
Hither, Martinet, the Hairdresser and Vile Chops. “Vile Chops” was an unfair name, and reduced both of them to mild hysteria. She had a way of pressing her lips together and grimacing,
which made a slight sucking noise, when agreeing with someone. They both lay rigid, straining their ears, as Martinet gave her instructions for the morning, and tried to stifle their delighted
squeaks as she nodded gravely and lisp-sucked her lips.

Clare was taken away frequently to be X-rayed, and to have her screws tightened and loosened, like a faulty robot. One day she returned and told Carolyn that they were going to take the cage off
next week.

“What then?”

“Christ knows. Buy a mask, I should think.”

“Oh, it’ll be all right. It’ll be funny so see your face.”

“I’m sure it will. I’ll probably die laughing.”

It had not occurred to Carolyn that she might be serious.

When Clare was brought back from having her cage removed, Carolyn lay with her eyes ostentatiously closed. She heard the nurses fussing, then going away, and finally
Clare’s two-edged voice, “Well, all is revealed.”

Carolyn opened her eyes. The woman in the next bed looked odd. Her face was white with several fine scratchy scars across it, as if fragments of her face had been sewn together. Two little
pieces of gauze were attached to her forehead, as if she were just sprouting antlers.

“Neat, eh?” said the woman with Clare’s voice, and tears began to run down her face.

“Don’t Clare – don’t cry –” Carolyn moved ineffectually. She couldn’t get out of bed on her own yet. “Don’t. It’s silly, you’ll
be fine, in a bit. You’ll look fine.”

Despite the tears the voice remained brittle and distant. “Sure. I’ll be fine. A new thatch and you won’t know the difference.”

Carolyn realized then that the hairstyle was adding to the bizarre effect. She had never noticed it, while the cage was over Clare’s face. Two big patches of Clare’s thick black hair
had been shaved around cuts. One was just above her forehead. There was a fuzz of new hair growing there now, but the effect was to make her look as if she had a receding hairline.

Clare suffered Carolyn’s scrutiny. “I’ll get a mask to go home in,” she said. “Something more attractive – Dracula, or a werewolf, perhaps.”

“Your hair won’t take long to grow,” said Carolyn gently. “It’s like being a baby again, isn’t it?”

“Goo goo,” said Clare.

Visiting Carolyn was hard work for Meg. She had to rush back from the shop, grab a bite to eat and put something out for Arthur’s tea, pack her bag with whatever she was
taking to the hospital, and get down to the High Street to catch the 344 at six-fifteen. On the bus she had time to remember what Carolyn had said and how she had looked yesterday, and to be filled
with miserable apprehension about how she would be today. She didn’t seem to be interested in anything. It was awful, as if the accident had knocked all the life out of her. It’s early
days yet, she told herself bravely, but it made the visiting hour into something she looked forward to and dreaded all day long, a twisted choked-up feeling, of loving someone and wanting to
please, and them acting as if they don’t want to know you. She tried to explain it to Arthur. “You should ask that doctor,” he said. “Stands to sense, all those drugs and
what-have-you they’re pumping into her, she’s bound to be a bit dopey-like.” Meg said she would ask the doctor. She hoped that was it, but she didn’t think it was. When she
got home at eight-forty-five she’d have a cup of tea and a sandwich and watch telly for a bit then put herself to bed, and lie awake half the night staring at Carolyn’s sullen shut
face, looming out of the darkness. She wanted to hug her and love her and tell her it was all right, and make her laugh. And Carolyn had that horrible distant look on her face, as if she
couldn’t be bothered with you, and then sometimes she’d cry and not want you to comfort her – as if you couldn’t comfort her, as if she was beyond it.

“I said it when she was little and I’ll say it again now,” Meg told Jean. “I remember when she was so poorly with the measles, I said to Arthur, I wish to God I could
have it for her – and I feel the same now, I do. I wish that bloody idiot in his van had hit me instead – twice over, instead of her.”

She asked the sister if she could talk to the doctor, and Martinet said, “Well, what do you want to know? Can’t I help you?” standing there by the end of the bed where Carolyn
could hear every word.

“I’ll leave it for tonight, there’s no hurry,” said Meg, and the woman looked at her as if she was odd and went off to boss someone else about. They treat you like dirt,
the snooty bitches. They’re no better than they ought to be, most of them; half of them can’t even bloody well speak English.

“It’s a bit much, isn’t it?” she said to Carolyn’s averted face. “They’ve not got many manners. And how d’you get on with all these Coloureds? It
doesn’t make you feel any better, does it, when you’re poorly, to have someone who can’t even speak English mucking you about.”

Carolyn didn’t say anything. Meg told herself she should be more cheerful.

“Well, Carolyn, and what are you going to do with yourself when you come home, eh? Time we started making plans, isn’t it, love? I saw your Miss Lomas from school, you know, in the
post office, and she said you could go back and do your exams again next summer. Would you like that? I said, well, she’ll be nineteen you know. Carolyn? are you listening?”

Carolyn nodded.

I’m going on too much, Meg thought. “Carolyn love – please –”

“I’m all right,” snapped Carolyn. “Go on.”

Meg swallowed and went on. “Or you could always go to those evening classes, you know, at the technical college and do . . .”

The bossy sister was in her little office by the door as visiting hour ended. Meg summoned her courage and went in.

“I just wanted to ask – to know if it’s normal – you know –for her to be so – depressed. I mean, she’s so miserable, she’s like a different
girl.”

The nurse pulled a face and fidgeted with some papers as if she was busy. “It’s a shock to the system, Mrs –”

“Tanner.”

“Mrs Tanner. Isn’t it, an accident like that. It can affect people in all sorts of ways. Upset them. I expect she gets a bit fed up lying there all day, but she’s just got to
put up with it, I’m afraid. She’ll be all right.”

“But those – the medicine, the drugs she’s having, could they make her – you know, sort of lose interest in life?”

“She needs a lot of rest, Mrs Tanner. Nurse!” – as a nurse walked past the door. “Excuse me, Mrs Tanner.” And she rushed after the nurse.

Meg set off on the walk to the bus stop. They treat you like dirt.

She slept very badly at nights, imagining Carolyn lying in the hospital. The thought of Carolyn being hurt made her cry. And she was powerless to help. Arthur woke up and comforted her.
“Come on lass. She’ll be all right. She’ll be home soon.” Meg turned her thoughts to Carolyn coming home. She’d make her room really nice, with that new carpet and a
new bedspread; and take some holiday off work and bake some nice food to fatten her up again. It would be all right when she came home. It was being in that awful hospital made her like that. Not
that Meg wasn’t grateful for what they’d done for her, it was a matter of life and death when she’d gone in – but now, she was like a different girl. A different girl.

When her mother left at the end of visiting hour, Carolyn would lie still staring at the ceiling, listening to her heavy tread moving away down the ward and round the corner.
Straining her ears she listened for the yielding swish of the swing door, followed by three gentle thuds as it swung back past its closed position, back again, and finally blessedly shut. Her
mother was always the last to leave, after they’d rung the bell. Carolyn knew that everyone must stare at her as she left. She wished she would leave on time. Or early, for that matter.

“Your mother comes every single day,” marvelled Clare.

“Yes.”

“Do you like it?”

“It’s wonderful,” said Carolyn, copying Clare’s dry tone. After Clare’s expected laugh, Carolyn was lost for words. “I – she comes because she wants
to. She’s my mother.”

“So?”

“So – what? Wouldn’t your mother visit, if she lived near?”

“Not every day she wouldn’t. We’d both go up the wall.”

“Well she doesn’t drive me up the wall.”

“No – obviously. With those riveting tales of life in the carpet shop –”

“Woolshop,” corrected Carolyn.

“– and what colour Nellie’s woolly combinations are going to be, I’m not surprised. I can hardly wait for the next instalment.”

Carolyn was almost offended. “That’s just the way she talks. It doesn’t matter. You let it wash over you.”