The Artificial Anatomy of Parks Read online

  I looked at the photo on the top of the stack Starr had given me. It looked like a birthday shot; there was cake on a table in the front and, standing slightly behind it, Aunt Vivienne and my mother, wearing party hats. My mother had an arm around Vivienne’s waist. There was another face in the frame as well, all blurry. It looked like a man with dark hair, no one I’d ever seen before. Both my mother and Aunt Vivienne were looking at him, and Aunt Vivienne was reaching out a hand like she was trying to catch hold of his arm.

  “Who’s that?”

  “Where?”

  “Here.”

  We heard someone go into the bathroom next door and water running.

  “Give them to me,” Starr said, grabbing the stack and piling it back in the drawer. We scuttled out of Aunt Vivienne’s bedroom and into Starr’s. My mother put her head around the door as soon as we’d sat down. Her eyes looked red around the rims, like she had a cold.

  “It’s time to go, Tallie,” she said.

  Starr gave me a look and put her finger on her lips. We giggled again.

  I get off at Harley Street and make my way through Marylebone, past women with expensive hair drinking coffee, down wide, sunlit streets with ‘doctor’ written in front of the parking spaces, and quiet pockets of residential mews and small, peaceful parks. After the grey and brown of my road, it feels like the whole area has been splashed in colour – red brick, green trees and silver Mercedes. I wonder if I’ll run into Toby; he used to live nearby, although I think he was closer to Edgware Road.

  A young mother comes into view with a toddler in tow. She’s carrying too many bags and feeding bottles and a ball under one arm. The toddler is red-faced, and one tug away from a screaming fit. The woman looks tearful. I look away.

  My mother – Evelyn – was wonderful with children, everyone said so. She used to stop and coo at babies whenever we went for walks together and they always smiled at her. She used to bake proper cakes for my birthdays, elaborate ones in the shapes of cartoon characters, with butter-cream icing, and she would stay up all night sewing costumes for me when I was invited to fancy-dress parties. She could do lots of different voices when she was reading stories aloud at bed-time. She smelled like vanilla, and sang low and sweetly.

  I have all these memories at least. She’s there in my head. It’s in the real world that I’ve lost her – I haven’t smelt her perfume since I was ten, or seen the strands of hair that used to build up in her hairbrush. I can’t remember how it felt to touch her when she was still warm and soft from a bath. And what was she like when she wasn’t with me? What was she like as a person? I think about my mother all the time.

  Two

  My father isn’t in Coronary Care. When I ask at Reception I’m told he’s been moved to Floor One. My father’s worked here at the heart hospital all my life and I know what’s on Floor One: Intensive Care.

  “I’m afraid the heart attack, and the heart rhythm he went into, were very severe,” a pretty nurse is telling me. “He had to be anaesthetised to let it recover.”

  Nurse Slattery, her badge says. She’s very gentle with me, but she doesn’t smile. I used to want to be a nurse. I wonder how I’d break the news if it was me in her place, if I could be as calm.

  “Thanks.”

  “He’s still under. You can sit with him if you want.”

  I make it to the doorway of his ward before I feel my chest begin to tighten. I pull up short and flex and unflex my fingers; they feel cold, like all the blood has rushed elsewhere. I tuck them into my armpits. It’s okay, I tell myself. No one even knows you’re here. You can go home without explaining yourself to anyone. My feet start to move instinctively, I’m halfway down the corridor in the other direction when I hear someone calling my name. I lift my face up to see Gillian, my father’s older sister, coming out of the lift.

  I stop. She hurries up to me and puts her bags on the floor – she’s been to Harvey Nichols – and kisses me on both cheeks. She smells of lavender, she’s wearing navy linen trousers and a stripy top and her hair in a tight, blonde bun, just as I remember it.

  Her eyes are shiny, like she’s holding back tears. “How are you, darling?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “I went to call you earlier,” she says. “But then I realised I don’t have a number for you. I didn’t even know if you were in the country – I was so worried no one would be able to reach you. How long has it been? Five years?”

  She’s skirting the issue, letting me know my disappearance has been noticed, but not asking for a reason.

  “The hospital called me,” I say.

  Now that I think about it, I realise Starr must have given them my number. My father certainly doesn’t have it.

  She hasn’t taken her eyes off my face yet. “Have you seen him?”

  “No.”

  “Come on then.”

  We walk to my father’s room and Aunt Gillian goes straight in. I hover, half-in, half-out.

  “Edward,” I hear her say. She sounds choked.

  My father looks terrible. His whole face is grey. I didn’t know people could be this colour and still be alive. I look away, at the floor; there are scuff marks by the bed, as if it’s been moved rapidly at some point.

  “He’s unconscious,” I say.

  Aunt Gillian is stroking his hair.

  “They had to anaesthetise him to let his heart recover,” I say. “They’ll probably keep him under for a while.”

  “Yes,” she says. “They said on the phone they’d done a PCI.” She looks at me, then back down to my father. “We sound like pretty cold fish, don’t we?”

  “We sound like him,” I say. My father is a heart surgeon, and when I was a little girl this terminology was as familiar to me as my nursery rhymes. Perhaps even more so – I can’t remember anything beyond the second line of ‘Oranges and Lemons’.

  It’s when Aunt Gillian turns to face me that I realise I’m humming the tune. “Sorry,” I say. I come and stand beside my aunt.

  “Don’t be,” she says. “You’re under a lot of stress.” She guides me into a bedside chair. It’s almost too close to my father to bear. I can smell his aftershave, dark and woody, mingling with antiseptic and rubber. He must have already finished his morning routine when he had the heart attack; he always got up early. I find myself looking at his ear, checking for the tell-tale crease, Frank’s sign, named after Dr Sanders T. Frank. Frank’s sign is a diagonal earlobe crease, extending from the hard pointy bit at the front, covering the ear-hole, across the lobe to the rear edge of the visible part of the ear. Growing up, I was fascinated by the idea that this little rumple of skin could anticipate heart disease. You find it especially on elderly people. My father doesn’t have it.

  “He’s still so young,” Aunt Gillian says, like she’s reading my mind.

  She’s kind of right. He’s fifty-four, but he looks much older than I remember – maybe it’s the illness. He’s the same, but he’s changed. His hair seems finer, and I can see a dusting of grey in the blond, like the time my mother’s camera had metal shavings on the lens and everything came out speckled with silver. There are a few hairs that have started to creep out of his ears and nose. His moustache and eyebrows are bushier, too, and there’s a deeper ‘V’ at the cleft between neck and collarbone, where he must have lost weight. His hands are lying palm-down on either side of his body, but even at rest they’re wrinkled. He’s not wearing an oxygen mask – part of me wishes his face was covered up more.

  I’m here now, Dad. I didn’t want to see you again, but I came anyway. So now what?

  Someone taps at the door and comes in. It’s the pretty nurse from before. I watch as she takes my father’s pulse and examines his respiratory pattern. She opens his eyelids one after the other, and looks at his pupils. Then she turns his head from side to side, keeping the eyelids open.

  “What does that show?” I ask.

  “We call it the doll’s eye test,” she says, laying his head gently bac
k down on the pillow. “If the eyes move in the opposite direction to the rotation of the head, it means his brainstem is intact.”

  “Like a doll,” Aunt Gillian says, vaguely. I can tell the presence of someone official is making her feel better; she’s stopped fidgeting and she’s watching the nurse like she’s going to perform some kind of miracle.

  “Exactly,” the nurse says, smiling encouragingly. “He’s doing really well. He should be out of here in no time at all.”

  By which point I’ll be long gone.

  “The doctor’s already seen him today, but he’s around if you have any questions?”

  “We’re fine,” I say. There’s nothing quite like a man in a position of care and responsibility to set my teeth on edge, actually, Nurse.

  She straightens his pillow, writes a few sentences on her clipboard and leaves, her shoes squeaking on the floor.

  “They’re very good here,” Aunt Gillian says.

  “Yeah,” I say.

  When I was six I was in a ballet performance, dancing the part of a flower girl in something our ballet teacher had written herself. My mother had stitched pink and gold flowers onto my wraparound skirt, but I was in a bad mood because I wanted to wear a tutu, like the older girls, or carry a basket, like Jennifer Allen. I was already jealous of Jennifer Allen because this was 1987, and my favourite TV character, even more than Batgirl, was Penny, Inspector Gadget’s niece, who also had blonde hair that her mother tied up in pigtails.

  “Look at that pout,” my mother said, helping me into my tights.

  “You have what is called a ‘readable face’, Tallie,” my father said. He tapped my nose and I tried to hide a smile. “Shall we go?”

  My mother straightened up. “Let me just get my camera.”

  The phone rang while we were waiting for her; I could hear my father put on his doctor’s voice, and got a heavy feeling in my tummy.

  My mother came downstairs. “Where’s Daddy?”

  He came back into the kitchen with his doctor’s bag. He always said that he could run a hospital from his bag, and usually I loved it, loved the instruments he took out to show me. “I’m afraid I’ve got to go see a patient around the corner, Tallulah, so I might not be back in time for the show. I’m sorry – I did want to see you.”

  “Mummies and Daddies are supposed to come,” I told him, sticking my lower lip out.

  My father shook his head. “I have to go. It’s very sad, she’s the same age as you but she’s been extremely ill. Maybe I can bring you a treat home instead.”

  I could feel my face get hot, like it did whenever my father talked to me about other little children who needed him.

  “Never mind,” my mother said. “You can come to the next show.”

  “There isn’t going to be another show,” I said. “Belinda said so.”

  “Who’s Belinda?”

  “The ballet teacher,” my mother said. “Come on, we’re going to be late if we don’t hurry.”

  My father was asleep in front of the TV when we got home. We tiptoed past the open door and into the kitchen. My mother made me baked beans and potato smiley faces, and I ate in my ballet costume. I never wanted to take it off.

  “You’ll have to get undressed to have a bath,” my mother said, picking bits of fluff out of my hair.

  “I don’t want a bath.”

  “Ever again?”

  “Never ever.”

  “What if you start to smell?”

  I chewed a smiley face. “I won’t.”

  “Well in that case, there’s nothing to worry about,” my mother said. She pointed to my plate. “I’m hungry.”

  “So?”

  “Will you let me eat something of yours?”

  “Like what?” I asked, giggling; I knew what was coming.

  “Like… this finger.” She opened her mouth and grabbed my hand, lifting it up towards her face.

  “No,” I squealed. “You can’t eat that.”

  “No? What about your elbow?” She cupped her hand underneath my elbow and put her teeth very lightly on it, pretending to chew. It tickled and I laughed, trying to wriggle away.

  “Hello girls.” My father appeared in the doorway. “How was it?”

  “She was a star,” my mother said. “How was your patient?”

  “Absolutely fine.”

  “Good.”

  He yawned. He must have forgotten my treat, I thought, and I looked at the table rather than at him. He’d forgotten to get me a treat when he missed my birthday party at the swimming pool as well, when I’d had chickenpox, when I’d been singing at the school summer fair, and when I’d been left at school for two hours because my mother was at the dentist and he was meant to be picking me up. The teacher in charge of the afterschool playgroup was very nice and let me eat toast and jam with her in the office, while all the other children took turns on the scooters outside. But even she was worried when it was five-thirty and he still wasn’t there. She’d locked up and stood outside with me, checking her watch, and I couldn’t stop the hot tears from spilling out.

  “Would you like a cup of tea?” my mother asked.

  “Yes, that would be nice.”

  My mother closed the door of the living-room after taking my father his cup, so we wouldn’t disturb him, and we read together in the kitchen.

  “Are all Daddies always tired?”

  “Only if they work too hard,” she said

  “Does Daddy work too hard?”

  My mother stroked my hair. “He works very hard,” she said. “But he’s very important. And he’s trying to look after me and you.”

  “I can look after you,” I told her, because she looked sad. “When Daddy’s working.”

  “I think it’s meant to be the other way around,” she said, and kissed my forehead.

  “Goodness,” Aunt Gillian sighs, bringing me back to the present.

  This tightness of chest, this hotness behind my eyes, is exactly the way I remember it from another hospital vigil. I can’t tell if the aching feeling inside is for now, or for that memory. “Do you think we can open a window?” I ask Aunt Gillian.

  It’s a perfect day outside. Late summer, brilliant blue sky. We’re far enough away from Marylebone High Street that the traffic is muffled, but we know that life is going on out there. There’s a jug of water – presumably for relatives – on a table at the end of the bed, and ripples sparkle in it whenever we stir. I feel like this moment is made of glass.

  “Perhaps we should wait and ask someone,” Aunt Gillian says. She pulls another chair up alongside the bed and starts stroking my father’s hair again.

  We sit in silence.

  Silence never bothered me. There are people in the café who have to talk all the time, but I was an only child with a busy parent. My mother and I developed our own sign-language for those mornings when he was trying to rest. The days got longer, and I spent more time outside: climbing, building, jumping. My mother would open the door that led to the garden and sit down in the kitchen, I would wrap my legs around the tree branch, one finger drawing a circle in the air – “I’m going to roll over and hang upside down.”

  I could bear being upside down for two minutes. I liked the feel of the rough bark digging into my legs as I gripped the branch, liked stretching my fingers out towards the ground, liked feeling the strain of my stomach muscles as I pulled myself back upright. My mother would press her hand to her cheek and open her mouth in a perfect “O” – “I’m impressed,” – then press her hand to her heart – “I love you”.

  Aunt Gillian is talking – she seems to be trying a different tack. “You must come round to the new house,” she’s saying. “We’re still in Knightsbridge, but a smaller place now. We moved after Georgia got married. Of course, you didn’t come to the wedding… ” She fixes me with another wet-eyed stare. “She would have loved it if you were there – we all would have.”

  “I’m sorry,” I say, feeling like someone’s punched me in the
gut. I didn’t know cousin Georgia had got married, she’s only twenty-two as well. Starr can’t possibly have forgotten to tell me. Maybe she thought I’d be jealous since I couldn’t even manage a secondary-school crush on Toby without screwing it up. I try to push all thoughts of him away.

  Apparently the groom is much older than Georgia, but very rich and very nice. I nod fuzzily. The dizziness has returned and I’m starting to get hungry.

  “Are you alright, love?” Gillian puts her hand on my arm. “You look faint.”

  “I haven’t eaten today,” I say.

  She beams. “I was just about to meet Paul at the steakhouse.” Paul is her third husband. “Why don’t you come and join us? It’ll take your mind off things.” She glances away from my father, who’s so still he could be made of wax. Aunt Gillian is a great believer in minds being elsewhere.

  Lunch with Gillian and Paul will probably be a disaster, I think, but I really want a steak now. I allow myself to be hustled to the restaurant, where Paul greets me without mentioning that we’ve never met. He might not be able to tell one cousin from another – Paul is Gillian’s oldest husband yet. He looks and smells like leather. “I see the stock market’s taken another nose-dive,” he says.

  We don’t mention my father. We talk about Paul’s indigestion and their upcoming holiday in Majorca. Paul shows me a wad of Euros, fanning them out so I can admire them properly. I remember the fuss everyone made last year about introducing a single European currency; the notes don’t seem particularly complicated to me. “You wouldn’t believe the difference it’s made,” Paul says. “Bloody pesetas, and francs and lira – that was the bloody worst.”

  “Paul travels a lot,” Aunt Gillian says.

  I eat my steak quickly. Gillian is drinking red wine and she’s a little flushed by the time we finish. Paul makes his excuses after the main course, although I think I see him eyeing the cheese selection wistfully. Aunt Gillian always puts her husbands on a strict no-dairy regime.