ask the Medical Officer to give you something thatâll get you to sleep . . . Simon?â she asks. âShall I ring the doctor?â He opens his eyes again, nods, then watches her press out the numbers, push back her hair, pick up a pen, check him out periodically while she waits for a reply.
âHe looks like he could pass out. Very anxious,â she says.
âLetâs get you straight there,â she tells him when she hangs up. She hooks the sheepskin coat over her shoulders, making coins rattle in the pockets, and comes over to him. âHe is a bit of a stickler but Iâm sure heâll say yes when heâs seen the state of you. Just a dayâs worth at a time, you know.â She opens the door and lets in a rush of cold, damp air. âNow, youâll be OK, wonât you? Wednesday, first thing. Hang in there . . .â She chatters a bit about the weather as she walks him back to where Jackson is smoking in a patch of thin wintery sun, a little pile of butts on the ground beside him.
âOK?â she asks, beaming at him. Then sheâs gone and he is following Jackson towards a smell of antiseptic and the prospect of oblivion.
16
A two-hour wait. Then a three-minute examination: pulse, tongue, chest, torch in the eyes, piss test thrown in. Result: two red and white capsules to be taken with water after food. Lunch missed. Three hours, supper, pills, then thirty-nine more hours, the first eighteen lost, like falling into some kind of black hole; the rest spent climbing out of it. But now Simon is fully alert, showered, shaved, dressed in cleanish clothes. He wants to know what Bernadette is going to say and also he wants to know if he remembers her right. He walks out into the chill of the yard, past the well-raked, empty flower beds to the mud-coloured Portakabins. The sky is bright, cold blue with a curved slash of fresh jet stream running right across.
The room is completely different. Her desk has been pushed back and the two grey chairs are in the rest of the space, not quite facing each other, not quite next to each other either.
Wearing a brown knitted dress and leather boots, sheâs there, sitting in the chair furthest away from the door.
She has Tasminâs letter on her lap, a briefcase to her side, his file on the floor by her feet. Her voice as she greets him is at any rate the same: low, strong, blurred here and there, elsewhere oddly precise.
He stands there, looking: from her neck hangs a heavy silver pendant in a shape like a smoothly melted O; the rings are still on her fingers. She doesnât bother with how he is and so on but he can see her checking him out. âTake a seat,â she says. âIâve tried to make it a bit less formal in here.â He sits in the chair, making sure not to sprawl. All of this, just getting into the room seems to take a long time, as if it was happening underwater.
âIt was painful to read. Very different from the statement you made at the time ââ she gestures at the file ââ but it feels true,â she says.
âIt is,â he says. âMy brief went for the jealousy angle. From the start, he said it would be easier for people to understand that I flipped and went for her because she was messing me about . . . Then forensics turned up that sheâd had it with the gym instructor â it was a gift, my brief said. And maybe I was jealous. But it wasnât why . . . It was how youâve just read.
Because she wouldnât take out the contact lenses . . . Same result, of course.â He looks straight at her. What heâs talking about, what he wrote about, seems almost to belong to another life.
âWhat was it like to write this?â she asks.
âIt was OK once I started,â he tells her, jauntily, âbut hard afterwards. I wouldnât say it has improved my quality of life.â
âAre you going to write more?â she asks, her head
âHe looks like he could pass out. Very anxious,â she says.
âLetâs get you straight there,â she tells him when she hangs up. She hooks the sheepskin coat over her shoulders, making coins rattle in the pockets, and comes over to him. âHe is a bit of a stickler but Iâm sure heâll say yes when heâs seen the state of you. Just a dayâs worth at a time, you know.â She opens the door and lets in a rush of cold, damp air. âNow, youâll be OK, wonât you? Wednesday, first thing. Hang in there . . .â She chatters a bit about the weather as she walks him back to where Jackson is smoking in a patch of thin wintery sun, a little pile of butts on the ground beside him.
âOK?â she asks, beaming at him. Then sheâs gone and he is following Jackson towards a smell of antiseptic and the prospect of oblivion.
16
A two-hour wait. Then a three-minute examination: pulse, tongue, chest, torch in the eyes, piss test thrown in. Result: two red and white capsules to be taken with water after food. Lunch missed. Three hours, supper, pills, then thirty-nine more hours, the first eighteen lost, like falling into some kind of black hole; the rest spent climbing out of it. But now Simon is fully alert, showered, shaved, dressed in cleanish clothes. He wants to know what Bernadette is going to say and also he wants to know if he remembers her right. He walks out into the chill of the yard, past the well-raked, empty flower beds to the mud-coloured Portakabins. The sky is bright, cold blue with a curved slash of fresh jet stream running right across.
The room is completely different. Her desk has been pushed back and the two grey chairs are in the rest of the space, not quite facing each other, not quite next to each other either.
Wearing a brown knitted dress and leather boots, sheâs there, sitting in the chair furthest away from the door.
She has Tasminâs letter on her lap, a briefcase to her side, his file on the floor by her feet. Her voice as she greets him is at any rate the same: low, strong, blurred here and there, elsewhere oddly precise.
He stands there, looking: from her neck hangs a heavy silver pendant in a shape like a smoothly melted O; the rings are still on her fingers. She doesnât bother with how he is and so on but he can see her checking him out. âTake a seat,â she says. âIâve tried to make it a bit less formal in here.â He sits in the chair, making sure not to sprawl. All of this, just getting into the room seems to take a long time, as if it was happening underwater.
âIt was painful to read. Very different from the statement you made at the time ââ she gestures at the file ââ but it feels true,â she says.
âIt is,â he says. âMy brief went for the jealousy angle. From the start, he said it would be easier for people to understand that I flipped and went for her because she was messing me about . . . Then forensics turned up that sheâd had it with the gym instructor â it was a gift, my brief said. And maybe I was jealous. But it wasnât why . . . It was how youâve just read.
Because she wouldnât take out the contact lenses . . . Same result, of course.â He looks straight at her. What heâs talking about, what he wrote about, seems almost to belong to another life.
âWhat was it like to write this?â she asks.
âIt was OK once I started,â he tells her, jauntily, âbut hard afterwards. I wouldnât say it has improved my quality of life.â
âAre you going to write more?â she asks, her head
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