Rose Leopard (13 page)

They are still, reflective.

‘See, the stars are like a huge ceiling.' I open a window, relish the calming gush of a cool dry breeze. ‘A huge ceiling on top of the world. Every time someone dies, a new star goes onto the ceiling, finds a place among friends, becomes part of a group.'

‘I can't remember … what do you call a group of stars?'

‘A consolation, dumbo.'

I grin then continue. ‘All of the stars — and there's many more than we can see, even with the most powerful telescope — watch over us, all of the time, to make sure we're doing okay'

Milo is nine years old, his sister a year younger. They are intelligent children; they know about evergreen and deciduous, about carnivores and plant-eaters, the poles and the equator. They know that water is a good electrical conductor, that Cook sailed in the
Endeavour,
that a rhombus has four sides and sultans marry sultanas. I think they probably know about galaxies, solar systems and planets. They may even have heard of cosmic dust, gas clouds, gravitational pressures, the shock waves of a supernova. Their world is a curious cocktail of imaginative froth and scientific data — the poetic swimming alongside nature.

Which begs the question: have I embarked upon a puerile fantasy — an astronomical lie — or does this, our adopted version of what might happen, constitute a truth in itself?

Let the children decide.

‘So,' Milo is peering upwards. ‘Which star is Mum?'

Otis points.

‘Maybe … the biggest? Look, over there. Is she that one?'

I take their hands in mine.

‘No — how about that one? Not the biggest but the brightest. Bright is more important than big in star language. And new stars shine brighter than any others.'

‘There's another bright one over there'

‘And another —'

‘Look — see how it's all shivery. Like candle-flame when the wind blows.'

So we stay by the window, count stars, identify patterns — Ursa Minor, Ursa Major — find those that are bright and flickering, give some names, create a family above us. And it is long past midnight when I escort the children to their bedroom, pull their doonas up
(Star Wars
for Milo,
Rocky Bullwinkle
for Otis), return their buffed kisses goodnight. It is later still when I drop onto my threadbare couch, leave my feet uncovered, enjoy a strange contentment and unusual sobriety. The renewal of morning is near before I realise the twin sources of my improved state of mind — that my children might love me again, and for the first time in living memory I've created a story which meant something worthwhile to those who heard it.

Six

I
don't like doctors. They're too specialist for me. Same with plumbers. Electricians. Pest control men with their funny masks and sombre stories about the procreative habits of red-backs. University lecturers. Paramedics. Conveyancing lawyers and investment advisers. Computer technicians — actually, they're the worst.

Once, my computer broke down. I swore and wept and pleaded and prayed for seven days and nights.

‘Will you please ring a technician,' said Kaz. ‘Either that or stop whinging.'

Eventually I did ring. When the specialist arrived, her van bore a bumper-sticker that included the phrase
Byte Me.
She had short orange hair and halitosis. Her name was ‘Allyson: Senior Technician.'

I took her to the computer. It was squatting smugly on my desk like a belligerent old toad. She turned it on, muttered a few times, tapped some buttons, clicked her tongue.

‘You've wiped the hard-drive,' she told me in a tone that suggested it would be less offensive to sodomise the Queen.

‘How?'

‘Must've turned it off before it was properly shut down. Geez, the number of people who do that!'

‘Sorry.'

‘Not my problem. Anyway, it's stuffed. My advice would be to buy a new machine. This is an old 486. Pre-Cambrian, no RAM to speak of, less than two gigabytes. Slow as a Catholic wedding. Useless.'

‘Thanks.'

‘Not a problem. See you.'

So, specialists irk me. And doctors are more specialist than most.

Two days a week, Garten tells me over the phone, he does private consultations away from the hospital. In order to do this he maintains an office in the centre of town — which is where he agrees to meet us.

In an oblique sense, it was Amelia's idea.

‘We all know it was this thing called STSS,' she said without warning. I was kidding myself that I could complete a cryptic crossword; she was curling her lips at the sexual polarities of a boy-band video-clip.

‘Bloody acronyms,' I said bitterly. ‘I hate them, particularly that one.'

She nodded but didn't seem to really hear me.

‘When Dad and I first heard,' she continued, ‘I asked Mum what happened to Aunty Kath and she just snapped, “Toxic shock, of course!” — like I should know what she was talking about. But I didn't … I've never heard of anything like that.'

‘Neither had I.'

She stopped, scratched at her cheek with her fingertips.

‘Sorry,' she said. ‘I mean, do you mind talking about this. I was just thinking and I —'

‘Talk away,' I told her, wondering whether I was still capable of believing myself. ‘Talk is good. Keeps us preoccupied.'

‘Are you sure? I don't want to —'

‘I'm sure. Talk.'

I must have looked reassuring because she offered me the glimmer of a smile then pressed the volume-down arrow on the TV remote.

‘Well,' she said, ‘it just bugs me that I still don't know anything about what happened or about ST — the disease, apart from reading some pretty crappy stuff I got off the Internet.'

Utterly dumbfounded by ‘Bed with Titania (6)', I folded the newspaper and slung it across the kitchen bench.

‘The Internet, sweet niece-in-the-night? Have you been soft-footing it about my study, you cat-burglaress?'

She blushed, spun a skull-and-zircon ring around her smallest finger.

‘Hope you don't mind,' she said. ‘I didn't … touch anything. Just sort of dusted things down and used my own access account and password on the computer. Is that okay?'

I didn't mind, not really. Actually, I'd been pondering a return to the study — if not to write, then at least to re-establish some order. Like digging a hole and filling it back in again, placing papers in different piles usually creates a pleasant illusion of industry — and industry, as all good Protestants know, is the veritable spine of existence. Besides, in terms of seeking preoccupation I could easily idle away several blank-minded days by creating new piles and shifting old ones. These days, I thought ruefully, time seemed to be comprised more of a church-like weight than of opportunity.

‘I'd like to know more,' said Amelia in a tone that suggested we-all-should.

‘Okay,' I told her eventually. ‘Okay.'

Garten's office lies within a fashionable block filled with radiographers, skin cancer specialists, proctologists and ophthalmologists. The exterior is a grid of oblongs: bricks painted in apricot, gleaming corrugated iron, reflective windows with black metallic frames. Very
nouveau,
very low-fat potato-salad, very pseudo-Noosa. Inside, the air-conditioning provides a welcome blast of cool. There are six exquisitely coiffed receptionists who move in perfect synchrony and wear gaudy patterned uniforms. There are also grape-coloured iMacs smiling from every desk, together with an a air of minimalist techno-efficiency.

Jorja, who has a tiny horseshoe-shaped scar on her upper lip, takes us through to Garten's office where we are summarily greeted and seated.

‘How's things?' asks Garten cautiously. Still has the long doggy ears, I think; if anything they are longer and doggier. Not exactly welcoming our interview either; he has the look of a man who is about to abseil a slippery crevasse wearing nothing but thongs and loose underwear.

‘Looking up,' I tell him, perhaps too blithely. Then: ‘This is Amelia, my niece. She's fifteen, nearly sixteen, good with a paint-brush, smart as a new suit, knows nothing about your ST-bloody-SS, wants a few questions answered. Okay?'

He leans back and rubs his fingers across the nape of his neck.

‘A few questions?' he repeats quizzically.

‘Absolutely. It's time for warts-and-all. We've been long enough in the dark.'

‘I've tried to be as open as —'

‘And I didn't let you. I know and I'm sorry … but we're ready now.'

Garten nods, shuffles some pink and yellow folders.

‘You want the children to hear this?' he asks, after a moment.

Milo and Otis are seated in a corner, intense, curled and coiled like springs.

‘Yes I do.' It's probably shambolic but I realise that I haven't sounded so confident, so controlled, in months.

‘We all need to understand this thing,' I tell him. ‘Better than what we do, anyway.'

He nods again, thinks for a moment. When he speaks, there is a tautness in his voice that makes me think of a fishing line cast into an ocean; red-knuckled hands on one end, a creature thrashing for its life on the other. Stretch, anxiety, futility — at that moment, Garten smells of all three.

‘It's been quite some time. If you don't mind me asking, why — now?'

‘I'm guessing that you think I hold you responsible,' I tell him quietly. ‘Am I right? You think that this is some sort of sick prelude to an embittered civil action?'

‘I didn't —'

‘You think we're assuming that a few hundred grand will erase the pain and fill the space in our lives?'

Garten says nothing.

‘Well, it's not true,' I tell him firmly. ‘I don't think you're responsible and I'm not interested in sucking the public coffers dry. We're here to be … educated, that's all. And I know it all happened a while ago but we're better late than never. Aren't we?'

He leaves his desk, patrols the office, eventually folds his angular frame into an armchair opposite.

‘You can't blame me for being concerned,' he says. ‘Society has become dreadfully litigious. We're all lambs to slaughter by courtroom, all prey to this dreadful no-win-no-fee mentality. Doctors in particular are really worried; it's as if we have this supra-natural, god-like control over everyone's lives — when we don't. Not at all.'

‘I don't hold you responsible,' I reiterate. ‘Really. Now please, tell us about … STSS'

So he does. He is hesitant initially, describing a bacteria-based infection that wasn't officially recognised until l987. He says that, whilst the more commonly known Toxic Shock Syndrome has been linked to menstruation, STSS occurs randomly in all areas of the world when the streptococcal bacteria invade areas of injured skin — cuts, abrasions, even popped blisters. In a sombre tone he reminds us of the rarity of the infection but qualifies this by saying that recent times have, from a statistical point of view, seen an increase in identifiable cases (which will, he reassures us, ultimately lead to an increase in understanding and treatment-viability). He is knowledgeable, clipped and scientific as he describes typical symptoms: shock, acute respiratory distress, renal impairment, major organ damage — a damning highway of road-signs that all point inexorably towards cardiac arrest.

He even blesses us with a carefully selected smorgasbord of medical jargon.

‘The infection can destroy fascia and fat,' he tells us. ‘The process is called
necrotising fasciitis.
It makes the soft tissue appear violaceous, bluish.'

‘The flesh-eating bacteria' Amelia's voice rings out of the harsh white light. Garten looks at her quizzically, a little astonished.

‘I looked it up on the Net,' she explains. ‘Didn't understand much, but the phrase
flesh-eating bacteria
seemed pretty clear' It is horribly clear to me too, and to the children, judging by the looks on their faces.

Garten stops, coughs vaguely, makes a show of checking his watch. We wait for more. His office, I note, is a statement of impersonality: blanched, geometrical, comfortably defined, a good place for checking blood-pressure and prescribing Bactrim Syrup.

Nobody moves until I stand and go to shake his hand, then Otis says in a voice as clean as a pealing church-bell: ‘Why did my Mum die?'

When Garten looks at her I am surprised to see a tenderness in the man, brought forth in a look of such barren helplessness that, for the briefest instant, I feel sorry for him.

‘Sara.' He holds out his hands, trying to shape an explanation from the artificial air. ‘Sara, I don't know. She was unlucky, I suppose. Just plain unlucky.'

‘Was it worth it?' Ten o'clock that night and the children are sleeping, I am slumped in a wicker chair on the veranda, glass of Chablis set portentously before me. There are no stars tonight and the air is fetid with an impending thunder-storm that blackens the distant skies. Amelia — restless, hands halfshoved into her jean pockets, hair long and decadently limp in the late-summer heat — leans against a post, licks sweat from beneath her pert nose.

‘It was good for Alex and Sara,' she tells me. ‘Well, I think it was. At least now they understand that sometimes things just happen, even if there's no reason or sense to them.'

A difficult and unnecessarily harsh lesson for a child, I think — to suddenly realise they're living in a world that can invert from goodness to cruelty, from a pleasant afternoon-nap to death. It makes their childhoods seem even more vital, as if we must let them be garnered and cherished for as long as possible.

‘What about you?'

‘It helped me,' she shrugs. ‘A bit'

‘How?'

She considers for a moment.

‘Like, I always wondered how someone could die from just a cut hand. A cut hand — you know, it happens every day. And even if it got infected … well, maybe some mercuro-chrome or antibiotics if it was bad — but to die? I just couldn't fathom that.'

‘Me neither,' I admit. ‘It was just a cut hand, for Christ's sake. This is the age of creeping immortality; cloning, whole body replacements, cyber-solutions. People aren't supposed to die of a cut hand.'

We are quiet then. I sip on my wine; Amelia sits cross-legged, backbone aligned to the straightness of the post. A disruption churns over us: when you live on a large area of land, when you live between plains and seas and mountains, up higher than the rest, then the world opens up. The space-scape presents a bolder, more daunting vista — people in suburban bungalows with boxy, high-fenced backyards can never appreciate the sheer scope and size of what lies outside and around. Here, when lightning splits the distant horizons and thunder echoes through the crouching clouds, I feel like I can see beyond the curvature of the world.

‘Can I ask you a question?' Her eyelids are closed; the scent of jasmine is cloying.

‘Yep. As long as it's not to do with boy-germs or anything … experimental'

She chuckles, rubs her back against the post like a preening cat.

‘Don't worry — my mother gave me a series of lectures the instant I turned twelve.'

‘I can imagine. Lesson One: Ovulation — A Woman's Gift.'

‘Exactly! Lesson Two: Never Sleep With Someone Whose Parents Earn Less Than Yours.'

‘That bad?'

‘Worse. You won't believe this, but once she even said to me — get this, this is soooo unreal! — sex is rarely pleasurable, Amelia, but you need to be aware that men have their needs. Can you believe that? Men have their needs!'

‘You're kidding! She said that?' I pretend to be aghast, although I know that it is exactly the sort of do-your-duty martyrdom that Francesca would encourage (and secretly I acknowledge the truth of it: in my humble eyes, men do have their needs).

‘Yeah.' Amelia opens her eyes, slots me a sly grin. ‘Can I have a glass of wine?'

Why not? After I get the Chablis and she has screwed her face at its bitterness, we sit together on the edge of the veranda, legs dangling above the agapanthus.

‘Your question?' I remind her.

‘It's morbid.' She dares another sip of wine. ‘Do you mind?'

‘Try me.'

‘Well, I heard what you said to Alex and Sara,' she explains. ‘About people dying and becoming stars. It's barmy but I … I sort of liked it.'

‘Me too, but I'm into barmy.' I am watching her profile now; it is tilted, sharp-edged, the crevices around her nostrils glossed with perspiration.