فصل 05

5

The thing about being catapulted into a whole new life – or at least, shoved up so hard against someone else’s life that you might as well have your face pressed against their window – is that it forces you to rethink your idea of who you are. Or how you might seem to other people.

To my parents, I had in four short weeks become just a few degrees more interesting. I was now the conduit to a different world. My mother, in particular, asked me daily questions about Granta House and its domestic habits in the manner of a zoologist forensically examining some strange new creature and its habitat. ‘Does Mrs Traynor use linen napkins at every meal?’ she would ask, or ‘Do you think they vacuum every day, like we do?’ or, ‘What do they do with their potatoes?’

She sent me off in the mornings with strict instructions to find out what brand of loo roll they used, or whether the sheets were a polycotton mix. It was a source of great disappointment to her that most of the time I couldn’t actually remember. My mother was secretly convinced that posh people lived like pigs – ever since I had told her, aged six, of a well-spoken school friend whose mother wouldn’t let us play in their front room ‘because we’d disturb the dust’.

When I came home to report that, yes, the dog was definitely allowed to eat in the kitchen, or that, no, the Traynors didn’t scrub their front step every day as my mother did, she would purse her lips, glance sideways at my father and nod with quiet satisfaction, as if I had just confirmed everything she’d suspected about the slovenly ways of the upper classes.

Their dependence on my income, or perhaps the fact that they knew I didn’t really like my job, meant that I also received a little more respect within the house. This didn’t actually translate to much – in my Dad’s case, it meant that he had stopped calling me ‘lardarse’ and, in my mother’s, that there was usually a mug of tea waiting for me when I came home.

To Patrick, and to my sister, I was no different – still the butt of jokes, the recipient of hugs or kisses or sulks. I felt no different. I still looked the same, still dressed, according to Treen, like I had had a wrestling match in a charity shop.

I had no idea what most of the inhabitants of Granta House thought of me. Will was unreadable. To Nathan, I suspected I was just the latest in a long line of hired carers. He was friendly enough, but a bit semi-detached. I got the feeling he wasn’t convinced I was going to be there for long. Mr Traynor nodded at me politely when we passed in the hall, occasionally asking me how the traffic was, or whether I had settled in all right. I’m not sure he would have recognized me if he’d been introduced to me in another setting.

But to Mrs Traynor – oh Lord – to Mrs Traynor I was apparently the stupidest and most irresponsible person on the planet.

It had started with the photo frames. Nothing in that house escaped Mrs Traynor’s notice, and I should have known that the smashing of the frames would qualify as a seismic event. She quizzed me as to exactly how long I had left Will alone, what had prompted it, how swiftly I had cleared the mess up. She didn’t actually criticize me – she was too genteel even to raise her voice – but the way she blinked slowly at my responses, her little hmm-hmm, as I spoke, told me everything I needed to know. It came as no surprise when Nathan told me she was a magistrate.

She thought it might be a good idea if I didn’t leave Will for so long next time, no matter how awkward the situation, hmm? She thought perhaps the next time I dusted I could make sure things weren’t close enough to the edge so that they might accidentally get knocked to the floor, hmm? (She seemed to prefer to believe that it had been an accident.) She made me feel like a first-class eejit, and consequently I became a first-class eejit around her. She always arrived just when I had dropped something on the floor, or was struggling with the cooker dial, or she would be standing in the hallway looking mildly irritated as I stepped back in from collecting logs outside, as if I had been gone much longer than I actually had.

Weirdly, her attitude got to me more than Will’s rudeness. A couple of times I had even been tempted to ask her outright whether there was something wrong. You said that you were hiring me for my attitude rather than my professional skills, I wanted to say. Well, here I am, being cheery every ruddy day. Being robust, just as you wanted. So what’s your problem?

But Camilla Traynor was not the kind of woman you could have said that to. And besides, I got the feeling nobody in that house ever said anything direct to anyone else.

‘Lily, our last girl, had rather a clever habit of using that pan for two vegetables at once,’ meant You’re making too much mess.

‘Perhaps you’d like a cup of tea, Will,’ actually meant I have no idea what to say to you.

‘I think I’ve got some paperwork that needs sorting out,’ meant You’re being rude, and I’m going to leave the room.

All pronounced with that slightly pained expression, and the slender fingers running up and down the chain with the crucifix. She was so held in, so restrained. She made my own mother look like Amy Winehouse. I smiled politely, pretended I hadn’t noticed, and did the job I was paid to do.

Or at least, I tried.

‘Why the hell are you trying to sneak carrots on to my fork?’

I glanced down at the plate. I had been watching the female television presenter and wondering what my hair would look like dyed the same colour.

‘Uh? I didn’t.’

‘You did. You mashed them up and tried to hide them in the gravy. I saw you.’

I blushed. He was right. I was sitting feeding Will, while both of us vaguely watched the lunchtime news. The meal was roast beef with mashed potato. His mother had told me to put three sorts of vegetables on the plate, even though he had said quite clearly that he didn’t want vegetables that day. I don’t think there was a meal that I was instructed to prepare that wasn’t nutritionally balanced to within an inch of its life.

‘Why are you trying to sneak carrots into me?’

‘I’m not.’

‘So there are no carrots on that?’

I gazed at the tiny pieces of orange. ‘Well … okay … ’

He was waiting, eyebrows raised.

‘Um … I suppose I thought vegetables would be good for you?’

It was part deference to Mrs Traynor, part force of habit. I was so used to feeding Thomas, whose vegetables had to be mashed to a paste and hidden under mounds of potato, or secreted in bits of pasta. Every fragment we got past him felt like a little victory.

‘Let me get this straight. You think a teaspoon of carrot would improve my quality of life?’

It was pretty stupid when he put it like that. But I had learnt it was important not to look cowed by anything Will said or did.

‘I take your point,’ I said evenly. ‘I won’t do it again.’

And then, out of nowhere, Will Traynor laughed. It exploded out of him in a gasp, as if it were entirely unexpected.

‘For Christ’s sake,’ he shook his head.

I stared at him.

‘What the hell else have you been sneaking into my food? You’ll be telling me to open the tunnel so that Mr Train can deliver some mushy Brussel sprouts to the red bloody station next.’

I considered this for a minute. ‘No,’ I said, straight-faced. ‘I deal only with Mr Fork. Mr Fork does not look like a train.’

Thomas had told me so, very firmly, some months previously.

‘Did my mother put you up to this?’

‘No. Look, Will, I’m sorry. I just … wasn’t thinking.’

‘Like that’s unusual.’

‘All right, all right. I’ll take the bloody carrots off, if they really upset you so much.’

‘It’s not the bloody carrots that upset me. It’s having them sneaked into my food by a madwoman who addresses the cutlery as Mr and Mrs Fork.’

‘It was a joke. Look, let me take the carrots and –’

He turned away from me. ‘I don’t want anything else. Just do me a cup of tea.’ He called out after me as I left the room, ‘And don’t try and sneak a bloody courgette into it.’

Nathan walked in as I was finishing the dishes. ‘He’s in a good mood,’ he said, as I handed him a mug.

‘Is he?’ I was eating my sandwiches in the kitchen. It was bitterly cold outside, and somehow the house hadn’t felt quite as unfriendly lately.

‘He says you’re trying to poison him. But he said it – you know – in a good way.’

I felt weirdly pleased by this information.

‘Yes … well … ’ I said, trying to hide it. ‘Give me time.’

‘He’s talking a bit more too. We’ve had weeks where he would hardly say a thing, but he’s definitely up for a bit of a chat the last few days.’

I thought of Will telling me if I didn’t stop bloody whistling he’d be forced to run me over. ‘I think his definition of chatty and mine are a bit different.’

‘Well, we had a bit of a chat about the cricket. And I gotta tell you –’ Nathan dropped his voice ‘– Mrs T asked me a week or so back if I thought you were doing okay. I said I thought you were very professional, but I knew that wasn’t what she meant. Then yesterday she came in and told me she’d heard you guys laughing.’

I thought back to the previous evening. ‘He was laughing at me,’ I said. Will had found it hilarious that I didn’t know what pesto was. I had told him supper was ‘the pasta in the green gravy’.

‘Ah, she doesn’t care about that. It’s just been a long time since he laughed at anything.’

It was true. Will and I seemed to have found an easier way of being around each other. It revolved mainly around him being rude to me, and me occasionally being rude back. He told me I did something badly, and I told him if it really mattered to him then he could ask me nicely. He swore at me, or called me a pain in the backside, and I told him he should try being without this particular pain in the backside and see how far it got him. It was a bit forced but it seemed to work for both of us. Sometimes it even seemed like a relief to him that there was someone prepared to be rude to him, to contradict him or tell him he was being horrible. I got the feeling that everyone had tiptoed around him since his accident – apart from perhaps Nathan, who Will seemed to treat with an automatic respect, and who was probably impervious to any of his sharper comments anyway. Nathan was like an armoured vehicle in human form.

‘You just make sure you’re the butt of more of his jokes, okay?’

I put my mug in the sink. ‘I don’t think that’s going to be a problem.’

The other big change, apart from atmospheric conditions inside the house, was that Will didn’t ask me to leave him alone quite as often, and a couple of afternoons had even asked me if I wanted to stay and watch a film with him. I hadn’t minded too much when it was The Terminator – even though I have seen all the Terminator films – but when he showed me the French film with subtitles, I took a quick look at the cover and said I thought I’d probably give it a miss.

‘Why?’

I shrugged. ‘I don’t like films with subtitles.’

‘That’s like saying you don’t like films with actors in them. Don’t be ridiculous. What is it you don’t like? The fact that you’re required to read something as well as watch something?’

‘I just don’t really like foreign films.’

‘Everything after Local Bloody Hero has been a foreign film. D’you think Hollywood is a suburb of Birmingham?’

‘Funny.’

He couldn’t believe it when I admitted I’d never actually watched a film with subtitles. But my parents tended to stake ownership of the remote control in the evenings, and Patrick would be about as likely to watch a foreign film as he would be to suggest we take night classes in crochet. The multiplex in our nearest town only showed the latest shoot’em ups or romantic comedies and was so infested with catcalling kids in hoodies that most people around the town rarely bothered.

‘You have to watch this film, Louisa. In fact, I order you to watch this film.’ Will moved his chair back, and nodded towards the armchair. ‘There. You sit there. Don’t move until it’s over. Never watched a foreign film. For Christ’s sake,’ he muttered.

It was an old film, about a hunchback who inherits a house in the French countryside, and Will said it was based on a famous book, but I can’t say I’d ever heard of it. I spent the first twenty minutes feeling a bit fidgety, irritated by the subtitles and wondering if Will was going to get shirty if I told him I needed the loo.

And then something happened. I stopped thinking about how hard it was listening and reading at the same time, forgot Will’s pill timetable, and whether Mrs Traynor would think I was slacking, and I started to get anxious about the poor man and his family, who were being tricked by unscrupulous neighbours. By the time Hunchback Man died, I was sobbing silently, snot running into my sleeve.

‘So,’ Will said, appearing at my side. He glanced at me slyly. ‘You didn’t enjoy that at all.’

I looked up and found to my surprise that it was dark outside. ‘You’re going to gloat now, aren’t you?’ I muttered, reaching for the box of tissues.

‘A bit. I’m just amazed that you can have reached the ripe old age of – what was it?’

‘Twenty-six.’

‘Twenty-six, and never have watched a film with subtitles.’ He watched me mop my eyes.

I glanced down at the tissue and realized I had no mascara left. ‘I hadn’t realized it was compulsory,’ I grumbled.

‘Okay. So what do you do with yourself, Louisa Clark, if you don’t watch films?’

I balled my tissue in my fist. ‘You want to know what I do when I’m not here?’

‘You were the one who wanted us to get to know each other. So come on, tell me about yourself.’

He had this way of talking where you could never quite be sure that he wasn’t mocking you. I was waiting for the pay-off. ‘Why?’ I said. ‘Why do you want to know all of a sudden?’

‘Oh, for Christ’s sake. It’s hardly a state secret, your social life, is it?’ He had begun to look irritated.

‘I don’t know … ’ I said. ‘I go for a drink at the pub. I watch a bit of telly. I go and watch my boyfriend when he does his running. Nothing unusual.’

‘You watch your boyfriend running.’

‘Yes.’

‘But you don’t run yourself.’

‘No. I’m not really –’ I glanced down at my chest ‘– built for it.’

That made him smile.

‘And what else?’

‘What do you mean, what else?’

‘Hobbies? Travelling? Places you like to go?’

He was beginning to sound like my old careers teacher.

I tried to think. ‘I don’t really have any hobbies. I read a bit. I like clothes.’

‘Handy,’ he said, dryly.

‘You asked. I’m not really a hobby person.’ My voice had become strangely defensive. ‘I don’t do much, okay? I work and then I go home.’

‘Where do you live?’

‘On the other side of the castle. Renfrew Road.’

He looked blank. Of course he did. There was little human traffic between the two sides of the castle. ‘It’s off the dual carriageway. Near the McDonald’s.’

He nodded, although I’m not sure he really knew where I was talking about.

‘Holidays?’

‘I’ve been to Spain, with Patrick. My boyfriend,’ I added. ‘When I was a kid we only really went to Dorset. Or Tenby. My aunt lives in Tenby.’

‘And what do you want?’

‘What do I want what?’

‘From your life?’

I blinked. ‘That’s a bit deep, isn’t it?’

‘Only generally. I’m not asking you to psychoanalyse yourself. I’m just asking, what do you want? Get married? Pop out some ankle biters? Dream career? Travel the world?’

There was a long pause.

I think I knew my answer would disappoint him even before I said the words aloud. ‘I don’t know. I’ve never really thought about it.’

On Friday we went to the hospital. I’m glad I hadn’t known about Will’s appointment before I arrived that morning, as I would have lain awake all night fretting about having to drive him there. I can drive, yes. But I say I can drive in the same way that I say I can speak French. Yes, I took the relevant exam and passed. But I haven’t used that particular skill more than once a year since I did so. The thought of loading Will and his chair into the adapted minivan and carting him safely to and from the next town filled me with utter terror.

For weeks I had wished that my working day involved some escape from that house. Now I would have done anything just to stay indoors. I located his hospital card amongst the folders of stuff to do with his health – great fat binders divided into ‘transport’, ‘insurance’, ‘living with disability’ and ‘appointments’. I grabbed the card and checked that it had today’s date. A little bit of me was hoping that Will had been wrong.

‘Is your mother coming?’

‘No. She doesn’t come to my appointments.’

I couldn’t hide my surprise. I had thought she would want to oversee every aspect of his treatment.

‘She used to,’ Will said. ‘Now we have an agreement.’

‘Is Nathan coming?’

I was kneeling in front of him. I had been so nervous that I had dropped some of his lunch down his lap and was now trying in vain to mop it up, so that a good patch of his trousers was sopping wet. Will hadn’t said anything, except to tell me to please stop apologizing, but it hadn’t helped my general sense of jitteriness.

‘Why?’

‘No reason.’ I didn’t want him to know how fearful I felt. I had spent much of that morning – time I usually spent cleaning – reading and rereading the instruction manual for the chairlift but I was still dreading the moment when I was solely responsible for lifting him two feet into the air.

‘Come on, Clark. What’s the problem?’

‘Okay. I just … I just thought it would be easier first time if there was someone else there who knew the ropes.’

‘As opposed to me,’ he said.

‘That’s not what I meant.’

‘Because I can’t possibly be expected to know anything about my own care?’

‘Do you operate the chairlift?’ I said, baldly. ‘You can tell me exactly what to do, can you?’

He watched me, his gaze level. If he had been spoiling for a fight, he appeared to change his mind. ‘Fair point. Yes, he’s coming. He’s a useful extra pair of hands. Plus I thought you’d work yourself into less of a state if you had him there.’

‘I’m not in a state,’ I protested.

‘Evidently.’ He glanced down at his lap, which I was still mopping with a cloth. I had got the pasta sauce off, but he was soaked. ‘So, am I going as an incontinent?’

‘I’m not finished.’ I plugged in the hairdryer and directed the nozzle towards his crotch.

As the hot air blasted on to his trousers he raised his eyebrows.

‘Yes, well,’ I said. ‘It’s not exactly what I expected to be doing on a Friday afternoon either.’

‘You really are tense, aren’t you?’

I could feel him studying me.

‘Oh, lighten up, Clark. I’m the one having scalding hot air directed at my genitals.’

I didn’t respond. I heard his voice over the roar of the hairdryer.

‘Come on, what’s the worst that could happen – I end up in a wheelchair?’

It may sound stupid, but I couldn’t help but laugh. It was the closest Will had come to actually trying to make me feel better.

The car looked like a normal people carrier from outside, but when the rear passenger door was unlocked a ramp descended from the side and lowered to the ground. With Nathan looking on, I guided Will’s outside chair (he had a separate one for travelling) squarely on to the ramp, checked the electrical lock-down brake, and programmed it to slowly lift him up into the car. Nathan slid into the other passenger seat, belted him and secured the wheels. Trying to stop my hands from trembling, I released the handbrake and drove slowly down the drive towards the hospital.

Away from home, Will appeared to shrink a little. It was chilly outside, and Nathan and I had bundled him up into his scarf and thick coat, but still he grew quieter, his jaw set, somehow diminished by the greater space of his surroundings. Every time I looked into my rear-view mirror (which was often – I was terrified even with Nathan there that somehow the chair would break loose from its moorings) he was gazing out of the window, his expression impenetrable. Even when I stalled or braked too hard, which I did several times, he just winced a little and waited while I sorted myself out.

By the time we reached the hospital I had actually broken out into a fine sweat. I drove around the hospital car park three times, too afraid to reverse into any but the largest of spaces, until I could sense that the two men were beginning to lose patience. Then, finally, I lowered the ramp and Nathan helped Will’s chair out on to the tarmac.

‘Good job,’ Nathan said, clapping me on the back as he let himself out, but I found it hard to believe it had been.

There are things you don’t notice until you accompany someone with a wheelchair. One is how rubbish most pavements are, pockmarked with badly patched holes, or just plain uneven. Walking slowly next to Will as he wheeled himself along, I noticed how every uneven slab caused him to jolt painfully, or how often he had to steer carefully round some potential obstacle. Nathan pretended not to notice, but I saw him watching too. Will just looked grim-faced and resolute.

The other thing is how inconsiderate most drivers are. They park up against the cutouts on the pavement, or so close together that there is no way for a wheelchair to actually cross the road. I was shocked, a couple of times even tempted to leave some rude note tucked into a windscreen wiper, but Nathan and Will seemed used to it. Nathan pointed out a suitable crossing place and, each of us flanking Will, we finally crossed.

Will had not said a single word since leaving the house.

The hospital itself was a gleaming low-rise building, the immaculate reception area more like that of some modernistic hotel, perhaps testament to private insurance. I held back as Will told the receptionist his name, and then followed him and Nathan down a long corridor. Nathan was carrying a huge backpack that contained anything that Will might be likely to need during his short visit, from beakers to spare clothes. He had packed it in front of me that morning, detailing every possible eventuality. ‘I guess it’s a good thing we don’t have to do this too often,’ he had said, catching my appalled expression.

I didn’t follow him into the appointment. Nathan and I sat on the comfortable chairs outside the consultant’s room. There was no hospital smell, and there were fresh flowers in a vase on the windowsill. Not just any old flowers, either. Huge exotic things that I didn’t know the name of, artfully arranged in minimalist clumps.

‘What are they doing in there?’ I said after we had been there half an hour.

Nathan looked up from his book. ‘It’s just his six-month check-up.’

‘What, to see if he’s getting any better?’

Nathan put his book down. ‘He’s not getting any better. It’s a spinal cord injury.’

‘But you do physio and stuff with him.’

‘That’s to try and keep his physical condition up – to stop him atrophying and his bones demineralizing, his legs pooling, that kind of thing.’

When he spoke again, his voice was gentle, as if he thought he might disappoint me. ‘He’s not going to walk again, Louisa. That only happens in Hollywood movies. All we’re doing is trying to keep him out of pain, and keep up whatever range of movement he has.’

‘Does he do this stuff for you? The physio stuff? He doesn’t seem to want to do anything that I suggest.’

Nathan wrinkled his nose. ‘He does it, but I don’t think his heart’s in it. When I first came, he was pretty determined. He’d come pretty far in rehab, but after a year with no improvement I think he found it pretty tough to keep believing it was worth it.’

‘Do you think he should keep trying?’

Nathan stared at the floor. ‘Honestly? He’s a C5/6 quadriplegic. That means nothing works below about here …’ He placed a hand on the upper part of his chest. ‘They haven’t worked out how to fix a spinal cord yet.’

I stared at the door, thinking about Will’s face as we drove along in the winter sunshine, the beaming face of the man on the skiing holiday. ‘There are all sorts of medical advances taking place, though, right? I mean … somewhere like this … they must be working on stuff all the time.’

‘It’s a pretty good hospital,’ he said evenly.

‘Where there’s life, and all that?’

Nathan looked at me, then back at his book. ‘Sure,’ he said.

I went to get a coffee at a quarter to three, on Nathan’s say so. He said these appointments could go on for some time, and that he would hold the fort until I got back. I dawdled a little in the reception area, flicking through the magazines in the newsagent’s, lingering over chocolate bars.

Perhaps predictably, I got lost trying to find my way back to the corridor and had to ask several nurses where I should go, two of whom didn’t even know. When I got there, the coffee cooling in my hand, the corridor was empty. As I drew closer, I could see the consultant’s door was ajar. I hesitated outside, but I could hear Mrs Traynor’s voice in my ears all the time now, criticizing me for leaving him. I had done it again.

‘So we’ll see you in three months’ time, Mr Traynor,’ a voice was saying. ‘I’ve adjusted those anti-spasm meds and I’ll make sure someone calls you with the results of the tests. Probably Monday.’

I heard Will’s voice. ‘Can I get these from the pharmacy downstairs?’

‘Yes. Here. They should be able to give you some more of those too.’

A woman’s voice. ‘Shall I take that folder?’

I realized they must be about to leave. I knocked, and someone called for me to come in. Two sets of eyes swivelled towards me.

‘I’m sorry,’ said the consultant, rising from his chair. ‘I thought you were the physio.’

‘I’m Will’s … helper,’ I said, hanging on to the door. Will was braced forward in his chair as Nathan pulled down his shirt. ‘Sorry – I thought you were done.’

‘Just give us a minute, will you, Louisa?’ Will’s voice cut into the room.

Muttering my apologies I backed out, my face burning.

It wasn’t the sight of Will’s uncovered body that had shocked me, slim and scarred as it was. It wasn’t the vaguely irritated look of the consultant, the same sort of look as Mrs Traynor gave me day after day – a look that made me realize I was still the same blundering eejit, even if I did earn a higher hourly rate.

No, it was the livid red lines scoring Will’s wrists, the long, jagged scars that couldn’t be disguised, no matter how swiftly Nathan pulled down Will’s sleeves.