kerb at King Street, my head darting like a chook’s so that I can see what I need to see with my left eye. I check twice that the light is green before I cross.Two small catherine wheels are whirling at the left-hand fringe of my vision. As I turn into Pug’s street they are raining fire into my left cheek. My other eye is blank, dead. By the time Pug opens the door I can only recognise him by his voice. There is a short nightmare of huge stairs and runaway limbs. Then there is a bed—it could be on a wall or the ceiling for all I can tell—and Pug sounding soothing somewhere and his hand keeping me from toppling into a swamp of nausea. I can’t speak or see out of my body.
We wait it out. Things steady slightly; the nausea fades. Sight begins where it first disappeared, a pinpoint in my right eye, gradually clearing.
‘This is a migraine,’ I’m finally able to say. ‘My mum gets them. They hit your eyes first, and then they wallop you on the head.’
How did I get here?
Pug’s head is radiant, four-dimensional with beauty, a great leaning statue-with-feeling, a memorial for every young soldier ever slaughtered. ‘You be okay while I go get some Panadol?’
‘I’m fine now.’
He lets go, and I lounge about two centimetres above the bed like a slightly drunken flying carpet. Immense well-being furs my body from hair-ends to toe-tips.
Perhaps this will get rid of the baby
.
Then I hear the distant hunting-horns of the headache, almost pleasant, negligible. Pug comes back with a glass of fizzing medicine-water. I sit up and drink it under the first hoofbeats.
‘I told Mum, about Dad. I left a note. I had to get away from there,’ I explain. Any minute now I’ll go on and explain the rest.
‘A note? Christ.’
‘What?’
‘That’s hard. Terrible way to find out. Hard to write, too.’
‘I just put the bald truth.’
Truths, Mel. Two of them, remember?
‘Jesus, your poor mum.’
‘I couldn’t go on covering up for him—’ But I’m beginning to wish I were blind again. The light gallops in, over the hedges and ridges of my brain. This will definitely do the baby in; if itfeels half this pain it will not want to be borne, to be born. I curl up like a foetus myself, or like a slater, or a snail’s eye retreating into its stalk. Where did that drug go, sopped up into the blood-thunder? I need more. Knock me out. I curl up smaller.
I lose track of time. If you lie still with your hands over your eyes, sooner or later you’ll fall asleep, and when I finally achieve sleep it’s the coma type, a complete disappearance.
When I wake up I’m flat on my back like a corpse, the headache pooled in the back of my skull like a teaspoonful of ink. Eventually I open my eyes. Pug’s gone. Afternoon, quite late. He must be at training. I don’t miss him. I don’t miss anyone. I’m grateful for this empty room. This morning’s events filter through to me, seriously horrifying.
Maybe Dad picked up the letter, realised what it must be, hid it from Mum. Maybe everything is still as it was. No, Mum always gets up first. Dad’s nearest the door, though. Surely he’d sense me behind it, hear that rub of paper on the carpet, leap awake to rescue himself? Or would he lie there, like me now, while Mum tied her dressing-gown and bent—‘What’s this?’—and laid hold of the envelope, while she tore it open, and stood and read? What would be worse, waking up with Mum screaming blue murder, knowing the game was up, or watching while everything fell apart? But maybe it didn’t. No, I’m sure it did.
What I’ve done. Disaster all around. Like, people’s lives ruined. Pug’s face wincing: ‘Your poor mum.’ My poor mum. My poor, pathetic father. Poor, pathetic Ricky. Why the hell did they do that? Did they care about us others so little? That’s what’s sickening, their ignoring us and going off together, leaving five individuals without a parent or partner, but without even knowing we’d lost
We wait it out. Things steady slightly; the nausea fades. Sight begins where it first disappeared, a pinpoint in my right eye, gradually clearing.
‘This is a migraine,’ I’m finally able to say. ‘My mum gets them. They hit your eyes first, and then they wallop you on the head.’
How did I get here?
Pug’s head is radiant, four-dimensional with beauty, a great leaning statue-with-feeling, a memorial for every young soldier ever slaughtered. ‘You be okay while I go get some Panadol?’
‘I’m fine now.’
He lets go, and I lounge about two centimetres above the bed like a slightly drunken flying carpet. Immense well-being furs my body from hair-ends to toe-tips.
Perhaps this will get rid of the baby
.
Then I hear the distant hunting-horns of the headache, almost pleasant, negligible. Pug comes back with a glass of fizzing medicine-water. I sit up and drink it under the first hoofbeats.
‘I told Mum, about Dad. I left a note. I had to get away from there,’ I explain. Any minute now I’ll go on and explain the rest.
‘A note? Christ.’
‘What?’
‘That’s hard. Terrible way to find out. Hard to write, too.’
‘I just put the bald truth.’
Truths, Mel. Two of them, remember?
‘Jesus, your poor mum.’
‘I couldn’t go on covering up for him—’ But I’m beginning to wish I were blind again. The light gallops in, over the hedges and ridges of my brain. This will definitely do the baby in; if itfeels half this pain it will not want to be borne, to be born. I curl up like a foetus myself, or like a slater, or a snail’s eye retreating into its stalk. Where did that drug go, sopped up into the blood-thunder? I need more. Knock me out. I curl up smaller.
I lose track of time. If you lie still with your hands over your eyes, sooner or later you’ll fall asleep, and when I finally achieve sleep it’s the coma type, a complete disappearance.
When I wake up I’m flat on my back like a corpse, the headache pooled in the back of my skull like a teaspoonful of ink. Eventually I open my eyes. Pug’s gone. Afternoon, quite late. He must be at training. I don’t miss him. I don’t miss anyone. I’m grateful for this empty room. This morning’s events filter through to me, seriously horrifying.
Maybe Dad picked up the letter, realised what it must be, hid it from Mum. Maybe everything is still as it was. No, Mum always gets up first. Dad’s nearest the door, though. Surely he’d sense me behind it, hear that rub of paper on the carpet, leap awake to rescue himself? Or would he lie there, like me now, while Mum tied her dressing-gown and bent—‘What’s this?’—and laid hold of the envelope, while she tore it open, and stood and read? What would be worse, waking up with Mum screaming blue murder, knowing the game was up, or watching while everything fell apart? But maybe it didn’t. No, I’m sure it did.
What I’ve done. Disaster all around. Like, people’s lives ruined. Pug’s face wincing: ‘Your poor mum.’ My poor mum. My poor, pathetic father. Poor, pathetic Ricky. Why the hell did they do that? Did they care about us others so little? That’s what’s sickening, their ignoring us and going off together, leaving five individuals without a parent or partner, but without even knowing we’d lost
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