The Artificial Anatomy of Parks Page 19

Malkie shook his head. “Life gets in the way.”

  “But why?”

  “It happens. Make sure you do your practice.”

  When the front door closed my grandmother came out into the hallway. “How was it?” she asked.

  “Playing the piano hurts,” I said.

  “Hruh,” she said, and went back into the living-room.

  My grandmother liked soups, and since the cook had left to run a nearby pub kitchen just before I came to stay, I was drafted in to help. I peeled the vegetables, and she chopped them up, her hands moving fast, like water running out of a tap. We had pea soup, carrot soup, ham and lentil soup, chicken broth and Irish stew, although they all tasted mostly of salt, which my grandmother used liberally.

  The night after my first piano lesson, we were making carrot soup. I was peeling the carrots and my grandmother was drumming her fingers on the counter. I never peeled fast enough for her.

  “I heard you asking Malkie some questions,” she said.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I wanted to know stuff about my mum.” I scraped my finger with the peeler. “Shit.”

  “If you must swear,” my grandmother said, “say fuck. No one likes to think about excrement.”

  “Fuck,” I said. “That hurts.”

  “You want to know anything else?”

  “About Aunt Vivienne and Uncle Jack too, I guess.”

  “Ach, those two.” She coughed.

  “Why did you say it like that?”

  “How exactly did I say it?”

  “Like those two, like you were annoyed with them.”

  “Because they were troublesome when they were younger.”

  “Why?”

  “It was in their nature I suppose.” She put her hands on her hips. “Edward and Gillian were quiet, Vivienne and Jack were not. Much like someone else I could mention.”

  “But what did they do?”

  “All manner of things.”

  “Like what?”

  My grandmother looked at me out of the corner of her eye. “Albert used to say they were too close,” she said eventually.

  I pushed a pile of gleaming-bright carrots towards her; she brought the knife down hard on the first one, slicing off an end, and carried on until they were all done. She swept the carrot slices into the pan. “Garlic.”

  I brought over two cloves from the fridge and she crushed them with the side of her chopping knife. Her fingers picked the waxy yellow pieces out of their wrapping and threw them in the pan with the carrots.

  “They spent all their time together. Thick as thieves – that’s what their teachers used to call them. Just a euphemism for bullies, as far as I could make out.”

  “Who did they bully?”

  “Anyone who wasn’t in their little twosome. Edward, for one.” She drizzled some olive oil into the pan and started to heat it up. “You know,” she said, stirring the onions, “this soup might actually work.”

  “What about Dad then?” I asked.

  She pointed her wooden spoon at me. “Well go on – ask.”

  “What was he like when he was the same age as me?” Or, why does he have such a problem with me?

  “He was a very good boy.”

  “Is that it?”

  “What do you mean, is that it? That’s what he was,” she said. “He was a very devoted child. Never left my side.”

  “That’s not very interesting.”

  “Don’t be such a fool, Tallulah,” my grandmother said. “You don’t have to be bad to be interesting.” She turned the heat down. “We’ll let that simmer for a while.”

  We ate in the kitchen that evening as we did every night. It was the only warm room in the house.

  My grandmother poured herself a drink, laid the butter out and sliced a loaf of bread. I dipped a thick piece in my soup, weighing up a question in my mind. “Do you know where Uncle Jack is?” I asked eventually.

  “I most certainly do not.”

  “You said at Mum’s funeral that he was still in the country.”

  “Did I?”

  “Is he?”

  “I don’t know, Tallulah. I haven’t seen him in years.”

  “Because you don’t like him?”

  “Why on earth would you think that?”

  “You don’t sound like you do.”

  “What people say, and what they mean, are often two completely different things,” she said, taking a spoonful of soup. “Pass the salt, please.”

  I fetched the salt and pepper from their place next to the cooker. “Aunt Vivienne never comes to visit by herself, does she?” I asked.

  “No,” my grandmother said.

  “Don’t you miss her?”

  “She and I haven’t spoken properly since she was sixteen.” Her hand shook a little when she next lifted the spoon to her mouth.

  “What happened?”

  “She thinks I betrayed her,” she said after a while. “My children had a tough childhood, I suppose, and Vivienne’s never forgiven me for it. I would never have done it on purpose, though. It’s a terrible thing to have to do, to let your children walk away.”

  “Why does she think you betrayed her?”

  “You can’t always tell the true intentions behind a person’s actions. And you don’t always get on with the people who are most similar to yourself.”

  “Did you get on with Grandad?” I asked, wondering if that was what she meant by the children having a ‘tough childhood’.

  My grandmother pursed her lips. “He was crazy,” she said. “He used to ride past my mother’s farm at six in the morning on his horse and take me off with him.” She looked down at her wedding ring. “I had to cling on for dear life.”

  I couldn’t imagine my grandmother clinging on to anybody. “Do you miss him?” I asked.

  “It’s certainly different around here without him.” She touched her face, just below the eye, and I pictured the children watching as my grandfather hit her there until she was bleeding and half-blind. “He was so strong-willed, your grandfather, like a hurricane – blowing in and out and taking what he wanted. I’d never met anyone like him.”

  “Do my dad and the others miss him? They never talk about him.”

  “I really wouldn’t know how they feel,” she said, and her voice had gotten harder.

  I call my boss to swap shifts the next day. He grumbles, but I don’t give him time to say no. When I hang up, I sit in bed for a moment, trying to work up some energy. I’d rather risk looking like a stalker and go back to Gray’s Inn than the hospital. But if Toby does agree to see me, it’ll be better to wait until all this is over.

  I sit underneath the open window with my father’s old medical textbook propped up in my lap. I run my finger down the index page, and find it – Atelectasis: where alveoli may collapse or close, with the consequence of reduced or absent gas exchange. In other words, it becomes difficult to breathe. If left untreated, atelectasis can be fatal, I read. Smokers and the elderly are particularly vulnerable.

  I don’t know how my grandmother escaped that particular fate; she was already wheezing heavily a month after I went to live with her. Although after our talk over the soup she started spending more time with me, so maybe I just hadn’t noticed it before.

  She started to ask me more about my father, and my relationship with him, lecturing me about his responsibility, and how much he needed my support as well. I thought about trying to explain what my father had been like – how he was always away. And how he’d changed after Uncle Jack showed up. And then that day. But I could never tell her that I’d thought he killed my mother. And by that point, the effort of talking for too long made her face turn a weird shade of purple, and something warned me never to get her riled up.

  It was a relief sometimes to escape to a different room with my tutor, where she couldn’t interrupt, and even more of a relief when Malkie turned up one Saturday morning, car keys jangling in his hand.

  “I came to see if you wanted to run an errand
with me?” he said. “I need to go into London, pick up my car from Dennis, my mechanic.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “I’d enjoy the company. I could drive you back this evening.”

  “Yeah, cool.”

  “Don’t you need to ask Matilda?”

  My grandmother appeared behind me. “Ask me what?”

  “It’s really creepy when you do that,” I told her.

  “Thank you, Tallulah, I’ll bear that in mind. Ask me what?”

  “Can I go to London with Malkie to pick his car up?”

  “That depends,” my grandmother said. “When will you be back Malkie?”

  “Not too late – scout’s honour.”

  “As if I’d believe you were ever in the scouts,” she said, but she nodded.

  “Thanks, Grams,” I said, and kissed her cheek.

  We waited thirty minutes for the train. I hooked my fingers over the top of the station sign and swung from it, showing off in front of Malkie.

  “Don’t break your neck, doll,” he said.

  Malkie smoked a cigarette and had a staring contest with one of the cows from the field the other side of the second platform. “Moo,” he called to her.

  We sat in a carriage that was as empty as the station had been. I breathed onto the window and wrote my initials in the condensation. Little towns slid past in grey and green blurs until the rain came and dirtied the windows, obscuring the view.

  At Euston, Malkie strode purposefully ahead; I trotted to keep up with him, sidestepping families and backpackers sitting on the plastic green floor of the main hall and the concrete plaza outside. Dennis was in Shepherds Bush, a long tube-ride away. When we turned up he came out to meet us, wiping his fingers on a towel. Malkie showed me the car. “See that?” he said, running his hand over the bonnet. “Isn’t she a beauty?”

  It was pink and baby blue, with headlamps that looked like frogs’ eyes.

  “Isn’t it a bit… girly?” I asked.

  “Shows how much you know,” Malkie said, and pretended to take a swipe at me.

  Dennis said he’d be hours yet, so we found a bench in a nearby park to sit on. Malkie rolled another cigarette and lit it; it stuck to his lower lip as he spoke. “How’s it going at Matilda’s, doll?”

  “She’s pretty cool.”

  “She’s a swell lady,” he said.

  “Do you know anything about her and my grandfather?” I asked him.

  “What do you mean?”

  I wondered if he knew about my grandmother’s eye. I didn’t want to be the one to spill the beans if not. “I just… don’t,” I ended, lamely.

  “From what I heard, they had a complicated relationship,” he said, tapping ash onto the ground.

  “Who told you that?”

  “Jacky.”

  “What did he say?”

  “Just once, when we were roomin’ together after he got out of the joint, Jacky got a fever.” Malkie stubbed his cigarette out. “He was saying all kinds of crazy things, getting frantic about her being left alone with him. Course, it was gibberish. It was after your grandpa passed away.”

  “He said he didn’t want Grandma to be left alone with him?”

  “That’s what I thought at the time.”

  I thought about how angry my grandmother had been at finding me in the library. Maybe that was where he’d hurt her. Maybe he’d done more than just damage her cornea. None of the family ever spent time in that room, and maybe that was why. I felt sick.

  “Penny for them,” Malkie said.

  “Was Uncle Jack afraid of Grandad?”

  “Well it sounds like your grandpa had a nasty temper.”

  “How nasty?”

  “I’ll tell you a story Viv told me,” he said, lacing his fingers together. “When she was fourteen she had a fight with her old man. He knocked her out – broke her arm, two ribs and her jaw. They found three teeth in the fireplace.” He coughed. “So sounds ’bout as nasty as it gets.”

  “Oh.”

  “You okay, hon? You’re looking a little pale.”

  “I thought it was just Grandma he hit.” I tried to picture Vivienne as a fourteen-year-old, but I could only see Starr, and I felt something inside me go out to my adolescent aunt. “I’m glad I never met him.”

  “That’s ’cos you’re smart.”

  I made a face at him, but I didn’t feel sick anymore.

  “Your aunt was a little high when she told me that story,” Malkie said. “So she could have been confused, I guess. But I got the sense it was true. And my old man knocked us around too – maybe that’s why she felt she could talk about it with me.”

  “What happened to your dad?”

  Malkie chuckled. “One day I realised I was nearly twice his size, and I stopped being scared. Then he died. And I will say this – you remember people differently after they’re gone.”

  Dennis wasn’t finished until ten o’clock that night, and it was nearly eleven by the time we made it onto the motorway.

  “Matilda’s gonna skin me,” Malkie said, peering through the windshield.

  “I’ll stick up for you.”

  “Thanks, sugar.” He turned the heating up and fiddled with the knob on the glovebox, then slammed his fist against it and it sprang open. “Here, wanna mint?”

  “No thanks.”

  “You can go to sleep, if you want.”

  “I’m not sleepy,” I said, yawning again. “Tell me about yourself.”

  “What about me?”

  “Where do you live?”

  “I’ve got a few places I crash at,” he said. “Nothing fancy like Matilda’s.”

  “Where have you lived?”

  “Canada, obviously,” Malkie said. “Birmingham. Glasgow. I’ve lived in Spain – I was there for five years or so. I went there after Paris, and I went to Paris around the time that your mom and Vivienne were moving in together, just after their flat-warming party.” He grinned to himself. “I seem to remember waking up in the bath.”

  “Did my mum and Vivienne… suit each other?”

  “Sure. Evie was real good at cheering Viv up when she was in one of her moods.”

  “Oh.” I thought about teenage, mistreated Vivienne hardening into moody, adult Vivienne, and wondered how my mother had been able to ever cheer her up.

  “They were pretty tight. It’s a shame they fell out later.”

  “Why did they?”

  “Dunno, doll. I wasn’t around by that point.”

  I laid my head against the passenger window and watched colours appear and disappear in the rain drops on the side-door mirror. Malkie switched on the radio and started crooning along to some country classics; within five minutes, I was fast asleep.

  ‘They’re not all real, you know.’

  It’s no wonder Aunt Vivienne is temperamental, really.

  I flick through a few more pages in the book, reading a paragraph here and there, then shut it. I suppose by definition a medical textbook has to be about all the things that can go wrong with our bodies, but it’s bringing back bad memories. Why wouldn’t my grandmother trust me enough to tell me about my grandfather – was she ashamed she’d let it happen? Then again, I never told her how I felt about my father. If I’d been open with her, maybe she could have made it better. Or maybe not – she hadn’t managed to mend her relationship with Aunt Vivienne, after all.

  After a moment of hesitation, I put the textbook on my bedside table and go into the kitchen to turn the shower on.

  Eleven

  I make my way to the hospital early. It’s busier and brighter than yesterday. A young nurse is being shouted at by a doctor as I walk past the Intensive Care desk. I’m comfortable enough to sit alone in my father’s room now, reading the notices on the wall – fire safety instructions, a reminder to wash hands regularly and a newspaper clipping pinned directly above my father’s bed. I stand up to peer at it more closely and realise it’s a clipping about him, some grateful journa
list had a relative in my father’s hands, and has written about the calm, professional care received by both patient and visiting family. Why was he so strong for everyone else and so utterly useless with me?

  It’s a relief to go to the bathroom, away from the beeps and the whirring and all the hospital gear; I dawdle in there, rinsing my hands for ages. On the way back, I stop at the open door to another ward. A doctor is doing the rounds with two nurses. One of them must be in training. She looks young and nervous and when the doctor asks her to take blood from one of the patients, I think she’s going to faint.

  “You’ve done it before, haven’t you?” the doctor asks.

  “Yes,” she says.

  “Good.” He hands the chart to the older nurse, gives the room another quick scan and walks out, smiling cheerfully at me as he passes.

  “Sister?” the patient says. “One of you’s a sister, right?”

  The junior nurse is opening the bag with a fresh needle inside; her hands are shaking. The older nurse puts her hand on the younger one’s back and leaves it there. “Are you ready?” she asks.

  The younger one pulls herself up and sets her jaw. “Yes,” she says.

  “No,” the patient says, he looks terrified.

  “Now,” the older nurse says to him, “this isn’t going to hurt. Nurse Salter is very competent, I promise. Top of her year at uni.”

  “Christ,” he says.

  Nurse Salter sits next to him. “Hold your arm out, please,” she says. He looks away as she ties the tourniquet and sterilises the area with an alcohol wipe. “There’ll be a very little sting as the needle goes in,” she says. “But it’ll be over soon.”

  He whimpers softly when she inserts the needle, then she’s pushing a tube into the hub, filling it, and the needle’s out. She puts a cotton pad against the puncture, applying pressure to hold it to the arm, and tape to keep it in place, then discards the needle and labels the tube.

  “Very nice work,” the older nurse says. “Both of you.”

  “Thanks,” Nurse Salter says, shakily. She and the patient have both gone grey again.

  “We’ll get you some water,” the older nurse says.

  “What about a whisky?” he asks.

  They all laugh, and I’m strangely jealous. I do a lot of the same jobs as nurses already: listening to complaints, making small jokes, cleaning up puke. But nurses connect with people, they make a difference.