school photos 67

Lying in bed, John was pickled with sleep and eyed the Christmas-tree brightness of the yellow light shade above his head and the heavy brocade of winter curtains hanging like tombstones from a curtain rail. A metallic taste coated his mouth, his skin was oily with sweat, and his heart played a banjo tune. He knew something was wrong.  He listened, not sure what for, and his thoughts drifted to Janine and he’d a quick wank.  His denims were sitting frozen in the chair by the window, waiting for a body. He wasn’t sure he’d left a hanky in the back pocket. Seed dripping from his fingers and palm of his hand made him act decisively. He darted to the toilet in his Y-fronts, cleaned himself up and had a quick pee. Yawning, unsure of the time he ambled back to bed, but found himself standing outside his mum’s room, his breath punched out in front of him.

    It seemed stupid, a stunt from some sketch show, but he put his ear to the door, then drawing away, rapped politely on the door with his knuckles. No one answered. He chapped again.  Through the wall of his sisters’ room he heard bedsprings groan, weight being shifted. A few moments later a click, a parabola of light and Auntie Caroline stood framed in the doorway. She tugged her nightgown   over any hint of breasts. Her presence gave him permission to press his hand against the door panel. He heard the ball-catch release and hinges squealed as he pushed the door.

‘Mum.’ He spoke into the darkness of the room, his voice unsure

There was no answer. He stood suspended, no longer sure if he was in the right house, or he was dreaming and would waken up in his hospital bed and wonder what all the fuss was about.  

‘Mum.’ He spoke a little louder, urgency in his voice. A musty smell making him tense up even more.  

The shuffle of slippers and a deep-rooted sigh. Auntie Caroline stood next to him, steadying him. She snaked her arm past his chest and time slowed. The light clicked on and he was running. His Auntie called out, but he couldn’t decipher words, make connections between sentences, as if she’d started speaking Urdu. He found himself outside, half-way down the street aware of the destination—the phone box. Slowly, becoming conscious his feet were speckled by jaggy stones and were sore, his nose was streaming and  skin shiny with rain. He pulled open the heavy door. Someone had kicked in the bottom glass panel.  He was careful with his footing and leaned across to dial 999, the numbers ratcheting round in a c-shape curve, being released and the whirring noise as it returned to the starting point, reminded him of being in this same pissy phone box. His pals, Cammy and Jim, had mucked about, phoning the emergency services when he was a kid and them running away in case they traced the call, but they never did. He was the one petrified they’d get caught, always waiting for them to catch up and that tap on the shoulder. Then he remembered what his Auntie had cried at him: ‘For God’s sake. Get an ambulance’.

Bubbling into the receiver, the calm pool of a woman's voice, asking questions he could answer, without thinking, reassured him.  He begged and prayed to her, to make them come quick, to make his mum better, to make things the way used to be. With a click the operator was gone.

Slogging up the hill and back at the house, he stood on the doorstep, the front door wide open at his back, scanning the streets for blue flashing lights, listening for sirens. ‘How long?’ ‘How long?’ ‘How long?’ he muttered. He shivered, his legs and feet turning cold as pillars of salt and his hair shrinking round his ears like a swimming cap.  Somehow he became more and more sure they wouldn’t come and less and less sure he wanted them to.

The keening siren cut through what remained of the night and he spotted the strobe of light on the turn at the corner of Well Street. The ambulance crew came charging up the hill and out of their vehicle like action heroes. The tarpaulin stretcher was a bridge between them they had the bustle of men that asked questions that whirled round in John’s head like helicopter blades, about who was he and where was she?  What had she taken? Where was the medical bathroom cabinet and was there anymore? He couldn’t answer, a ghost in his own life. He followed on behind them into the house. Auntie Caroline a more substantial presence guided them in an unfamiliar, faltering tone, answered their questions as best she could. One question, from the taller of the two ambulance men threw her, ‘how long has she been like this?’

‘Her whole life.’ John spoke with conviction and a rush of words trying to contain his growing sense of panic. ‘She’s been like that her whole life. She’s my mum. You can save her, can’t you?’

The bed sheets were hauled to the bottom of the bed, made redundant. His mum looked smaller, her nightie riding up her legs and her face a bluish colour. The stretcher was a companion placed beside her. She was eased across, rolled over the lip and with a nod of the head, ‘lift,’ was the signal for her disappearing, parcelled up and out of the door. The sirens and the flashing lights.