The Back of His Head (32 page)

The early twilight of a controversial career, perhaps: his, I mean.
I've done my dash
, he told me one early evening back then, when I came upon him down in the garden room: he had a rug across his knees and suddenly seemed a touch elderly, a little more studied than I was used to in him. He'd been writing in the usual way on his
bureau
, but when I came in I found him caught stock-still above it with the tips of his fingers to his lips as he gazed through the double doorway, at the fall of the lawn and the curve of the larger trees: and, through their leaves, at the smudge of smoke and mist that lay across the city.

It's all changing
, he said to me, so quietly I could hardly hear him.
Buggered my pen, too, look
. And somehow he had, he'd done something to splay the nib.
I think it's all starting to go
, he said.
The writing. It's starting to leave me. Feels like someone else is doing it now—some weak bastard. Dunno what's happened, I seem to have gone walkabout
. And, on another occasion,
I'm starting to be ignored, I'm being forgotten, I've become an adjective. Must be in line for something big if
that's
happening
.

Well—of course he was right. All this less than a year before the moment in which, suddenly and overnight, he became truly the Master, and stood at last before the world redeemed, confirmed, triumphant. I remember what it did to him, too, this wonder, how it seemed to fill him with new blood, new energy, new life, how it restored the sparkle to his eyes. He seemed six foot tall as I watched him in the crowded rooms where people pressed around him, seeking to touch him, trying to grasp the magic of his moment. His head was up, his shoulders back, his face almost incandescent with the wonder of what he had brought upon himself and upon us all. Once more his eyes flickered with their former, unearthly light.

I've done it
, he muttered to me on one of these occasions.
I've made it. Now watch what I do. I'm going to fuck it all up
—

All right. Okay. Now—not enough detail last time, you reckon, you want to know a bit more about what went on in the shower? Jeez, you're a hard man, Patrick, it's not easy to talk about, that's why I didn't tell you that much! Anyway, I'll give it another try. I'm doing all this for you like you said, out it all comes and it sort of starts to make sense after a while, it's like one weird step after another, on the way to where we ended up, the two of us. Anyway. You know I'd always give the old boy a shower every morning?—pain in the arse. I'd get my wet weather gear on and I'd get right in the shower with him, you ought to see me—like this giant frenchie rustling across the room and into the shower box! Bailey's Care, they tell you straight in the manual:
Showering the patient is an area of interaction requiring the utmost tact. Ensure that you always wear your waterproofs over your clothing and that all aspects of the showering procedure are unambiguous
. So in I go every morning dressed up like I'm checking out that reactor that went up in China a few years ago, d'you remember? No, Japan. Anyway. I take his clothes off, he's usually lying on the bed for that, and then I put my plastic on, and I carry him in under the armpits. He shuffles and he drags his feet and I take his weight for him at the same time, I hold him from behind like I've said, and I lift him and in he goes. Then the water hits him and he starts cursing, it's too hot or it's too cold, that'll be the day it's just right.

Anyway, turned out it took longer for me to get into the wet weather gear each morning than it took to strip him off, so I thought, bugger it, two for the price of one, no one else round and he's out to it, pretty much, there's times when it was like I was holding up nothing under the shower anyway—you know, he's that little and limp? And I thought back to those two guys in the shower in the gym I told you about last time, two guys soaping each other and everyone was looking? And I thought,
end of story
—because all I had to do was forget the plastic gear, slip my duds off and get myself cleaned up while I'm showering him! No problems! And it wouldn't matter if he
did
notice what was going on, because the way he is, a minute later it's all gone again. And talk about cutting down the time I'd been spending, it came down to less than half when I tried it out. Fifteen minutes from go to whoa, that's about what it came down to.

So that's what I did,
all in together this fine weather
, you know the story. Only, when I did it—I mean, when I got the both of us stripped off and picked him up the usual way and we were under the shower together, it didn't feel quite right. I began to wish I'd never thought of it. I'm not saying he wasn't happy, he was just the opposite, some days I was buggered if I knew what he was thinking or whether he was even thinking at all, he was just grinning off into space as far as I could see and his head rolling round. The other thing was, it was harder to hold him with both of us in the nick, he was like a bloody fish he was that slippery and so was I—I nearly lost him a couple of times but we got it done and out of the shower in the end. Then I toweled him down and put a gown on him and sat him on a chair, and I dried myself off and slipped back into my shorts and back to normal. Except it wasn't, because I was all shook up, know what I mean?—Jeez, it's strange talking into this thing with no one else round, Patrick, it really is? Anyway, it was his bare skin up against me, I thought it wouldn't matter but it turned out it did, I thought what with no one watching it'd be all right, but the thing is—
I
was watching, and I didn't like it. This man in the shower with another man, soaping him up and then slipping the soap over himself for a second and the lather sliding down and onto the floor of the showerbox and out the hole. It wasn't right, it didn't feel right, and of course the people at Bailey's would've wrung my bloody
neck
if they'd known.

What d'you know, though—this is the bit I don't get, this is the bit I need to tell you about, but it's so bloody hard—next morning I'm stripped off and into the shower with him again? There. Explain
that
to me. Tell me next time you see me why I did that—and then again the next morning, and then again after that? On and on? It wasn't about sex, I know what you'll be thinking but it wasn't like that—like, I never got a boner, not once. I'd have got out quick smart if
that
'd started happening, I can tell you! What I mean is, showering with him wasn't doing anything for me, how could it, but there was something else going on and I don't know what it was. It was something else that got me going back and doing this thing again and then again, I knew it wasn't right but there I was, holding this bare-arsed whacked-out old man up against bare-arsed me, and soaping the two of us up, the both of us stark bollocky and holding on to each other—

Christ, it doesn't sound right, saying it out loud like that. No way. Like, Raewyn and me, we were in the shower all the time, you know, the way you do, and it felt right with her? But it didn't feel right with him. It doesn't even feel right telling you now! Christ, Raewyn, she'd've
shat
if she'd known what I was up to with the old boy, she'd be thinking that was why we split up, you know, she'd be thinking what she said was right? I kept on doing it, you see, that's the point. I could have thought,
bugger it, that didn't work, get yourself back under the plastic and put the whole bloody business out of your mind
. But I didn't. Instead I'd be stripping myself off again each morning and then stripping him off again, and then—you know, under the shower together, him up against me, the feel of his skin and all that? It
was
quicker, I'll say that, but it was something else as well and whatever it was I didn't like it. I knew it was there but I didn't know what it was even though it was in me, and the thing I didn't like was that, not knowing what it was. I didn't like the idea of having this part of me that's starting to feel like it wasn't part of me anymore. Like it was part of someone else. That ever happened to you?

But then this really weird thing happened, and I don't know what to make of it. I still don't know. We're in the shower, Mr Lawrence and me, and I'm hanging on to him with one arm, and I've got the spray off the clip and in my spare hand, see—and then, all of a sudden, he reaches round and grabs my tackle and he starts giving me an appreciation session down there!
Hold on hold on!
I'm yelling at him, and we're slithering round in the wet—you see, the point is, I could do all this when he was out to it, I could do it easy enough when he was that far gone he wasn't there. But the minute he wakes up on me like that I'm thinking,
shit, he's been awake all the time, he knows what's going on
, and then I just lost it, it was all different all of a sudden. I just lost it—inside my head, I mean. Like, I'm still holding him up, I'm still scrubbing away, and all the time he's feeling me up! And I'm trying to get it all over and done with and the both of us out of there and dried and dressed as quick as I could, and his
hands off me
, that was the thing, I wanted to him to
get his hands off me
. I mean, I was
that
surprised, I was
that
shocked—

And then, guess what happens next?—he's got his bloody fist round my, you know, the old ferret! And he says to me,
you're not much
!—he's giving it a quick stretch, like,
how long is this thing
, and he's saying to me,
you haven't got much
! And I'm like, well, okay, they don't crowd round in the showers down at the gym to take a look, I'm not a cockstar but then no one really is, half of them've stuck that much juice into themselves they look like Donald Duck. I'm not a cockstar but then I'm not on juice either, I felt like telling him that, I felt like saying to him, what about you and your horrible little bathplug penis, what about that, then? But I didn't, you know—
appropriate professional practice
and all that. I just hurried him out and sat him down and started to dry him, and truly, if you'd seen him when I was doing that you'd've thought I'd been imagining it all—I started to wonder about it, like,
was
it me, was
I
imagining it all—same as that turning-blue business I told you about? With Dot Round?

Well, that was the end of the naked showers as far as I was concerned. Couple of days I didn't shower him at all, and he started to smell that bad I couldn't go near him. But then it got so I couldn't go near myself, either. So I had a quick shower on my own and got dressed and back under the plastic again and I started crackling round the bathroom like the brown paper cowboy—know that joke, Patrick? About the brown paper cowboy? He's made out of brown paper and his name's Russell. There you go. Guess you had to be there. Anyway, I couldn't put enough plastic between me and the old boy at that stage, I even put rubber gloves on for a while when I was handling him! After that it'd be into-the-shower-and-out, into-the-shower-and-out, and after a week or two it got to the stage I could kid myself it hadn't really happened, it got so I didn't really need to think about it anymore.

But then it comes back again. Because of
me
. See why I told you it wasn't easy for me to tell you about this stuff? I still don't know what was going on. I spend a lot of time looking back at it and I still don't know. It's like I was a different person then, it was like I was becoming two different people. That's how I felt when I did it again, anyway. There was one morning when I just went in and pulled back his sheets, he was lying there staring at the ceiling and I pulled back his sheets and I stripped him off, and I had the shower going, you could hear it hissing away in there, and then I stripped myself off like that was what I'd always been going to do, and I picked him up and I took him in and under the water. It's pretty hot, and he's yelling
fuck fuck fuck
the way he always did and then I'm soaping him all over and he's right up against me all soft and bony and wet and warm—and I'm thinking,
what the hell am I doing?
And now it's
me
thinking
my mind's not right
—

I got it done and out and I was drying him, and my heart was going like a hammer but I didn't know why. That time, and then again next morning—you're turning on the shower on the way through the
en suite
to him and you're saying to yourself, no, no, you're not going to do it, you're not going to do it, are you?—and you do. It's like when you first start clawing the maggot. Each morning it was just one more time in the shower for me, except it wasn't me coming through the
en suite
to get him, I know that, now I'm looking back from here, it was someone else. I've never had that before, being split off from myself like that, the way I was getting to be back then, and I look back and I think to myself,
that's the point it all started, that's the point when he started to do it to me, you know, playing with my mind
. But then, you know,
excuse me
?
He
started to do it to
me
? This little old guy who's knocked out most of the time I'm with him, he's the one to blame? What's going on here?