Dying to Know You

  “It only came to me what you meant,” Fiorella went on, “at the party. You meant the bits of wire had something to do with Karl making something, and Karl was testing me to find out if I understood and what I thought of it.”

  I nodded.

  “And then it was too late.”

  I nodded again. “You’d missed the moment,” I said.

  “What d’you mean?”

  “Sometimes the course of our lives depends on what we do or don’t do in a few seconds, a heartbeat, when we either seize the opportunity, or just miss it. Miss the moment and you never get the chance again.”

  “That’s sad.”

  “And we never forget and always regret a missed moment.”

  “Are you talking from experience?”

  “I try never to talk from anything else.”

  She heaved a sigh.

  “That isn’t all,” she said.

  “There’s something else?”

  “Becky.”

  “Becky?”

  “The girl who was with me at the party?”

  “I know who you mean. But what about her?”

  “I brought her with me for, you know … ?”

  “Moral support?”

  “I was nervous about meeting you and seeing Karl again. And with a lot of other people. I didn’t know what to say to him or how he’d treat me.”

  “And?”

  “Well, you must have seen. I’m sure everybody did. How he and Becky got on. I never expected that. I didn’t think she was his type at all. She’s quiet and studious. A bit of a nerd really. Mad keen on art. To be honest, one reason I asked her was because I thought … you know … she was … safe. But you must have noticed?”

  “I did have an inkling.”

  “Well, she went a bundle on him.”

  “And Karl?”

  “He talked more to her than he’s ever talked to me.”

  “So you decided to cut your losses?”

  “I wouldn’t put it quite like that!”

  “No, sorry. A bit commercial. Blame it on my concussed brain. I’m still not thinking straight.”

  Another lie. It seemed pretty obvious to me.

  “There’s just one more thing?”

  “Which is?”

  “Would you tell Karl for me?”

  “Tell him what?”

  “That I won’t see him again.”

  I couldn’t help laughing.

  “Certainly not! You must tell him yourself.”

  “You wrote those emails for him.”

  “That was different.”

  “I don’t see how.”

  “Different or not, I won’t make that mistake again. You told me off for doing it, remember?”

  “But it’s just that I don’t want to see him again. I’d say it all wrong. And get upset. And now there’s Becky. Who is a friend and I don’t want to lose her. And I might if she thinks I’m trying to take Karl from her. I mean, she really is gone on him. She talks about nothing else, which isn’t like her at all. I’ve never heard her talk about a boy for more than about two minutes before. I thought she didn’t like boys, to be honest. So you do see, don’t you?”

  “I see, but sorry, Fiorella. This is something you have to do yourself.”

  She looked miserable and sat in silence.

  For the first time, I felt sorry for her. A performer who hadn’t yet found the role she was meant to play. And at the moment, she was failing at every role she tried on. But eventually, she would get it right. She was a trier. My guess is she is one of those people who are so self-confident, and are so well supported at home, and so admired wherever they go, that they can play around, trying roles out, getting them wrong, and bounce back without too much hurt or damage to their egos. The kind of people who always fall on their feet, whatever catastrophes beset them, many of which they cause themselves.

  And Karl? He was the opposite of that. Which is why Fiorella found him so fascinating. Fiorella knew without even thinking about it that, give or take the occasional failure, she’d always succeed. What she didn’t know was that Karl thought he was nothing else but a failure. (I knew this because it takes one to know one.) This was the secret Fiorella sensed was locked up inside him. And what she didn’t know she wanted to know was what it is like to believe you are a failure and that you always will be. And what neither of them knew, and Karl needed to know, and I’d learned the hard way, was how to turn his belief in himself as a failure into success. Which is what I’d hoped he was about to discover, and which I worried might now be impeded by the calamity after the party.

  Fiorella stood up. “Oh well, I’ll just have to write to him and tell him.”

  “Maybe that’s best,” I said.

  She nodded. “Well, then. I’ll say good-bye.”

  “Good-bye, Fiorella. Best of luck to you.”

  “I’ll still read your books.”

  “Thanks. I need all the readers I can get.”

  “Get well soon.”

  As she walked away, I felt better about her. Beneath all the outward show, her tryout performances, there was a good and sensitive person. She’d had a pretty easy life. Then Karl came along, awkward, wary, passionate and withdrawn at the same time, a combination of physical strength and emotional weakness, of certainty and doubt. She wanted to be loved by him but, for the first time in her life, she couldn’t quite capture someone with her charm. Whatever gambit she played, Karl answered with an unexpected move, one of which shocked her and almost caused her to give up the game. But she returned because she couldn’t bear the thought of failing and hoped to checkmate him by one final desperate move. Now she had retired hurt. And though she couldn’t acknowledge it yet, she would be all the better for it.

  That evening I was told I could get up next day.

  And go home?

  The doctor was concerned because there was no one to look after me. So perhaps I should stay another day just to make sure all was well?

  I said I felt fine, no dizziness, no headache—both were true.

  But I hadn’t been on my feet since the “accident.” So “let’s see how things are tomorrow.”

  I didn’t say it, but I had no intention of staying another day in hospital.

  Then Becky arrived.

  She was—I keep using the past tense; I ought to say she is—one of those people who, at first sight, look plain, are quiet, unassertive, unmemorable even. But who, when they start to talk and you get to know them, become more and more attractive and impressive, and you see that in fact they are beautiful. Not conventionally beautiful, not celebrity beautiful, but beautiful all through.

  “Hi,” she said. “I’m Becky. I don’t know if you remember me? I was at your party.”

  “Yes, I remember.”

  “How are you?”

  “Fine, thanks. I’ll probably be let out tomorrow.”

  She smiled.

  “Good.” And then serious, blushing, “It was awful, what happened.”

  There as an awkwardness about her that was somehow attractive. I’d noticed as she walked towards me that she had feet of the kind that looked as though they’d trip over themselves and make you smile at the sight.

  I said, “You’ve been to see Karl?”

  “I’ve been with him all day. His mother’s with him now.”

  “How is he?”

  “All right, I suppose, given he’s had a major operation.”

  “I wanted to go and see him, but they wouldn’t let me up. I will tomorrow.”

  “I wondered about that. He’d like to see you. He’s a bit down. Not because of his leg so much but because of his sculpture. He can’t bear what they did to it. It’s like they destroyed some of himself … He doesn’t put it like that. He doesn’t say it … But I can tell that’s what he feels. We’ve tried to reason with him, his mother and me, but it’s like he can’t hear.”

  “Or doesn’t want to.”

  “Yes. I haven’t known him long. Well, only si
nce the party. But we got on from the first minute. It was like we’d always known each other. We just fitted … If you know what I mean?”

  “I know exactly.”

  “We talked about his sculpture. Which I think is terrific, don’t you? … Very like William Tucker’s. Karl said you knew Tucker’s work.”

  “Only what I’ve seen in photos, apart from the one we saw together.”

  “Well, we talked about that and what he wants to do, and we were going to London to see some other sculptures that I think might interest him … But … I’m sorry …”

  “Don’t apologise. I’m interested.”

  “Well, the thing is … You see, I don’t know what to say that will make him believe again. I mean, believe he should go on.”

  “Is that what he’s saying? That he won’t do any more?”

  “Yes.”

  “No, no, no! That won’t do. He must do more.”

  “He must. I agree.” The slightly awkward, slightly shy manner had gone. She was suddenly very passionate. “When we talked at the party, I could tell. It’s him. Sculpture is him. It’s what he is. What he’s meant to do. Don’t you agree? Don’t you?”

  So, I thought, behind that quiet exterior there lives a determined mind.

  “Yes,” I said, “I agree.”

  “I knew you would. I just felt you would.”

  “Let me think about what to say. And I’ll go to him as soon as they’ll allow me tomorrow morning.”

  “Thanks. Thanks so much.”

  “No need to thank me. You’re the one to be thanked.”

  “Me. Why?”

  “For believing in him.”

  “I do. But you see, I love him. I haven’t known him long. A few hours. But I know. I think sometimes important things happened to you in a flash. And sometimes it takes ages. And I know people will say I can’t know so soon. But I do.”

  She said this with such matter-of-fact directness, it was utterly convincing.

  “And,” she said in the same quiet tone, “if you don’t mind me saying so, I think you do too. Love him, I mean.”

  I was so taken aback I couldn’t reply.

  Luckily, she went straight on. “There’s something else.”

  I waited, still unable to speak.

  “If I tell you this, will you promise you won’t tell anyone else? No one at all.”

  “Is it about Karl?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is it bad news?”

  “Yes.”

  “All right. I promise.”

  “I know one of the nurses on Karl’s ward. We went to school together and have stayed friends. She shouldn’t have told me but thought I ought to know. She was at a meeting with the ward staff and the surgeon who operated on Karl. The surgeon said Karl would never play rugby again. It would be too risky because of his leg. But they agreed not to tell Karl or anyone else until he’s fit again and strong enough to cope with it.”

  We stared at each other, too upset for words.

  All of a sudden, I couldn’t bear lying down. My heart was pounding. I had to sit up. I struggled with the bedclothes, pulling them off, and pushed myself up so that I could sit on the edge of the bed.

  Becky sat beside me, an arm round my shoulders.

  Neither of us said anything.

  When I’d caught my breath and my heart had calmed down, I said, “That’s not good news.”

  “The reason I wanted you to know is so you’ll see why it’s more important than ever we get Karl’s mind back on his sculpture.”

  “Yes, yes, I understand.”

  “He has to start sculpting again before they tell him.”

  “You’re right. And you did right to tell me. Thanks.”

  “Between us, and with his mother’s help, it’ll be OK. Won’t it? Don’t you think?”

  “Yes, yes. He’ll still be able to fish. And once he’s sculpting and working again, it’ll be OK.”

  “Are you OK?”

  “Yes, yes. I’m all right. It was just a shock.”

  “What about I come to you tomorrow morning and take you to Karl and then leave you together?”

  “Good idea. They are being a bit sticky about letting me out tomorrow. No one to keep an eye on me at home, and my age. All that sort of nonsense.”

  “I see. Well, if they won’t let you walk, I’ll take you there in a wheelchair!”

  I laughed.

  “Oh God! Not a wheelchair!”

  “I’m only joking.”

  “Unfortunately, Becky, all too often a joke tells the truth.”

  She stood up.

  “I’d better go. It’s nearly chucking-out time and I want to say good night to Karl.”

  “Go, go. And good night to you.”

  “I hope you sleep well.”

  “Till tomorrow.”

  “Till tomorrow.”

  She walked away down the ward and out of sight. And all I could think was how lucky she and Karl were to find each other.

  CUSSED. PERVERSE. OBSTINATE. SELF-WILLED. Bloody-minded. Stubborn. Obdurate. Pigheaded. Intransigent. Contumacious …

  I muttered to myself all the words I could think of that named my reaction to being woken in my hospital bed at six thirty.

  I’m always awake at home by that time and usually up by seven. So why resent it in hospital? Because it was required by “them.” Because I didn’t decide for myself; “they” imposed it on me.

  Was I always so bolshy, so obstreperous, so unaccommodating?

  I smiled as I remembered how at school I wouldn’t read the set books but only other books by the same author or on the same subject instead. And then have to force my grumbling self to mug up the set book at the last minute.

  How far back in my life could I trace this intransigence? I remember as a very small boy refusing to eat what my mother put in front of me, and guzzling whatever she didn’t want me to eat.

  “You’ve always gone against the grain,” my mother once said in exasperation.

  I was up, abluted, dressed, and sitting impatiently in the chair beside my bed, plotting how I’d escape if “they” wouldn’t let me go by midday, when a nurse hove into view with Mrs. Williamson and Becky, both grinning widely. With a wheelchair!

  “Your friends have come to take you home,” the nurse said in that cheery way they have. “They’ve promised to look after you. And we need your bed for a more deserving case.”

  Mrs. Williamson winked. Becky, behind the nurse’s back, put a finger across her lips.

  I perspired with gratitude.

  And we were out of there in five minutes flat, me reluctantly in the wheelchair—but I’d have put up with anything no matter how humiliating in order to escape.

  “How did you do it?” I asked, when we were safely on our way down one of those cubular, vinyl-tiled, antiseptic hospital corridors that seem designed to make you feel ill whether you are or not.

  “With a little help from Becky’s friend,” Mrs. Williamson said, “and as the nurse said, by promising to look after you till you’re fully recovered.”

  “And how do you plan to do that, when you live three miles from my house?”

  “We’ll talk about that later,” Mrs. W. said. “The first thing we have to do is see Karl.”

  “But it isn’t visiting hours yet,” I said.

  “Mothers have their ways,” Mrs. W. said.

  “I’ve met your ways before,” I said. “You are a finagling woman.”

  “You watch your language,” Mrs. W. said. “We’re taking you to Karl, and leaving you with him for half an hour. That’s all you are allowed. Becky and I will have coffee in the café, if you can call it coffee, and we’ll fetch you when the time’s up and take you home in Becky’s father’s car. Then Becky will come back to be with Karl while I settle you at home. Understood?”

  “Grief!” I said. “You are managerial today.”

  “Stop complaining,” Becky said.

  “It’s the effect hospitals h
ave on me,” I said.

  “It’s the disinfectant,” Becky said. “Makes you feel they are about to do something surgical to you. Or it does me, anyway.”

  “Have they said when Karl can go home?” I asked.

  “Not yet,” Mrs. W. said.

  Becky gave me a look that meant “Don’t say any more.”

  Hospitals are places where we suffer private pain in public. No wonder operations are performed in rooms called theatres. At the same time, they are a kind of prison, which is why the rooms where patients are herded together are called wards. And the nurses, if the one who had just chucked me out was anything to go by, might as well be called warders. (Unless, of course, you have lavish amounts of money and then, as always, everything is different.)

  Karl, who hated being on show at the best of times, did indeed look like a prisoner, shackled to his bed by a contraption that suspended his encased leg upstretched in the air as if he’d tried to kick a ball while lying on his back and had got stuck.

  His face was a picture of brooding dejection. I remember thinking as I approached his bed: It’s not his leg that’s making him ill, it’s being in hospital.

  Mrs. W. and Becky left me by his bedside. We said nothing to each other. But from the moment he saw me he never took his eyes from mine, and that was enough communication between us, knowing each other as we did now.

  His eyes said, “Get me out of here.”

  “They kept me in bed till this morning,” I said when it was time to speak.

  “Your mother and Becky are taking me home,” I said. “They’ll come straight back when they’ve settled me in.”

  “You’re OK?” Karl asked.

  “I’m fine,” I said. “Concussed. They wanted to be sure it wasn’t dangerous. My age and all that guff.”

  “We’ll get you out of here as soon as we can,” I said. “You’re going to be all right.”

  “How do you know?” Karl said.

  “Medically, you mean? I don’t. But you’re fit and young and they say they’ve fixed your leg up good and proper.”

  “So who does know?” Karl said.

  “The doctors. What do they say?”

  “That I’ll be OK.”

  “There you are then.”

  “But I don’t trust them.”

  “Why not?”