I think that was when it first really hit me. Stupid, I know, after what I’d been experiencing over the past couple of weeks. But blood is such a . . . thing.
I mean it’s a bit of you that should be inside you, and there it is, outside you. Slopping about. In a syringe. On its way to a lab where they test it to see if you’ve got cancer of the brain.
Blood.
A symbol for love and friendship.
A symbol for family.
A symbol for life.
A symbol for death.
It was seeing my blood in the syringe that did it. I can’t remember if the tears came first or the shaking. Let’s be neat and say that they came together, although if we get down to hundredths or even tenths of a second, that becomes unlikely. And I felt my face sort of collapsing in on itself, and then the nurse, I mean Winifred, was holding me, saying, “There there, there there,” like I was a toddler with a bashed knee, and she was pressing me into that enormous bosom of hers, but I can honestly say that, despite the whole uniform thing I touched on earlier, this was not what you would call an erotic moment, and nor was Winifred the kind of person you’d be having erotic thoughts about. And I could feel my shaking going into her, I mean sort of absorbing into her flesh, the trembles lessening as they penetrated her soft tissue, until they were finally lost there, somewhere in the middle of her, and I kind of imagined that there was a place there where hurt and pain got dealt with, like spent nuclear-fuel rods getting reprocessed.
After a while, and it could have been one minute or twenty, because time stood still with me clamped to that healing chest, I stopped the crying and the shaking, although I thought there might still be some little echoes and aftershocks traveling through Winifred, and maybe they’re still traveling now, the way the songs of whales are supposed to carry on traveling around the world underwater for months.
But there was something I wanted to say to Winifred.
“It wasn’t the needle.”
I didn’t want her to think I was crying just because of the syringe.
“I know it wasn’t,” she said in that voice of hers, half fierce, half melting. “I come with you down to radiography, if you like. They find that fellow in there,” she said, tapping my head with a fat finger. “They find him, then they sort him out.”
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.
The Giant
DOnUT
The room had nothing much in it apart from the CAT scanner, but that was enough, really. Quite an impressive piece of equipment, all things told. It looked a bit like a giant white donut, except its inner surface was sort of funnelly, you know, bigger at one end than the other.
Which makes me wonder: why is a funnel, like on a ship, called a funnel when it isn’t funnel-shaped, but just a normal tube? Which is pretty well the opposite of a funnel.
Yes, and a donut doesn’t usually have a table going through the middle of it.
Winifred had said I could ride down in my chair, but I walked, still wearing my pajamas and dressing gown, and carrying my clothes in a carrier bag. It was a bit embarrassing, after the hugging and crying business. The old people on the ward either looked at me with sympathy or tactfully scrutinized their bedsheets. I guess that old guys dying in hospitals don’t usually take the piss.
There was a man in the room with the CAT-scan machine. He had on a white coat with about twenty pens crammed into the breast pocket. He was shy and nerdy and didn’t look me in the eye, and his hair was tufty and orange and he had red blotches on his face, as if he’d just been slapped or had tried to shave himself with a bread knife.
“I’ll be in there,” he said, pointing at a big window with another room behind it and some equipment in there, monitors and stuff. Not quite starship standard, unless it was one of those films where they try to make the vessel look all beat-up and old-fashioned, kept running by improvisations with string. And when something goes wrong, the stardrive or whatever, they just hit it with a wrench.
Which reminds me. Submarine films. The submarine is being depth-charged. The first thing that happens, after a few explosions, is that they lose the lights, and then they come on again, but red.
Why?
I know it’s supposed to be backup lighting, but why put in special red bulbs? But then the next thing is that, after a really close explosion, a pipe bursts and water sprays out, and then an engineer comes along with a big wrench and he hits the pipe with the wrench until it’s fixed. Can that really be a good way to fix a burst pipe? Doesn’t seem very likely to me.
“You put this gown on,” said Winifred, handing me what looked suspiciously like a nightie.
“Over my pajamas?” I asked hopefully.
“No, darlin’, you have to be taking all your pajamas off. In the corner. I not looking. You tink I haven’t seen it all before? I got two boys o’ my own. One he work with computers now, the other one useless except at making babies. So I seen everything.”
While she was talking I put on the white gown, first taking off my top, and then putting the gown on and only then taking my pajama trousers off, so even if Winifred had seen everything, she wasn’t going to be seeing any more of me than she had to.
But still, it wasn’t the most macho of garments, and something about the fact that it did up at the back made it seem more like a dress, because there aren’t really any clothes for boys that you have to tie at the back, and I suppose there’s a reason for it, maybe something to do with the olden days and ladies having servants to get them dressed, or something like that.
Then the nerdy technician got me to lie on the table thing, and he positioned me just so, and my head went into a kind of rack, which I guessed was to keep me still so the pictures didn’t come out all blurry.
As he was bending over me I saw he had a name badge on his white lab coat. Barry Cunliffe. Cunliffe. It sounded like an Anglo-Saxon name for a lady’s you-know-what.
“Thanks, Barry,” I said.
He looked at me, blinking.
“Oh, the coat. No. It’s not mine,” he said.
But he didn’t tell me what his name was, so in my head I still called him Barry.
I felt very helpless lying there in my white cotton nightie. It was cold, and I began to shiver, and then a beeper went off in Winifred’s pocket and she looked at it and said, “Sorry, darlin’, but I got to go,” and I said that of course she could go and I was fine, but I didn’t feel fine.
Then Barry the scanman said: “Just going next door. You’ll hear me through the speaker, and there’s a mic so I can hear you. Just shout if . . . Well, once we start, you have to stay still, very still, so don’t, er, shout. I mean because I can hear you even if you talk quietly. But don’t talk too quietly in case I, er, can’t hear you. Just talk normally.”
“Like this?”
“Er?”
“Or more normally?”
“That’s about the right level of, er, normalcy.”
And then he was gone, instantly happier to be among machines and consoles and monitors than facing a real person.
THAT COULD BE YOU, YOU KNOW, said Jack sulkily. He really didn’t like hospitals.
THAT’S WHAT HAPPENS TO YOU WHEN YOU HANG OUT WITH NERDS. YOU BECOME ONE.
Maybe I’m one to begin with.
IF YOU ARE, THEN I AM, BUT I’M NOT, SO YOU AREN’T. NOT DEEP DOWN. WE’LL GET YOU LOOSE, DON’T WORRY. OH HELL, WHAT’S HAPPENING?
There was a humming noise and I started to move, or rather the table I was lying on started to move, or rather the giant donut started to move, which made it seem as if I was moving, all motion being relative, according to Einstein.
“Ah, oh, sorry. Meant to say we’ve begun.” So said the voice in the speaker. “That is, we’ve begun.”
THAT’S IT, I’M HIDING, said Jack T.
And he did, or at least he shut up.
For the next forty minutes I lay there as the donut inched its way across my head and down as far as my shoulders. After the first ten m
inutes Barry remembered that he was supposed to play music to keep me calm, and because I’d kept Puff the Magic Dragon very much to myself he put on a tape of Kylie Minogue, which made me want to stand up and hurl the two tons of CAT scanner through the window at him, even if she is, well, gorgeous.
And then it was all over. Barry opened the door and said, “That’s it, fine.”
I felt a surge of elation.
Fine.
He said I was fine.
There was nothing in my head. No cancer, no brain tumor. Just a voice. I was mad, not dying, yippee!
And then—maybe because he realized what I was thinking— Barry said, “Nice clear scan. We’ll send these up to Dr. Jones. He’ll, ah, let you know. About what . . . I mean, he’ll be in touch.”
It took a couple of seconds for that to sink in, and then I understood. No, of course this computer geek couldn’t just tell me I was in the clear. All he meant was that the scans were okay, not that my brain was.
“Can I go then?”
“Oh, ah, yes. Put your clothes on, though.”
I think he was trying to be helpful.
The HoXtOn FiN
I was out of there by midday. No one came to see me off, no one came to meet me. All a bit anticlimactic, really. Jack commented, of course.
LIKE I ALWAYS SAID, IT’S JUST YOU AND ME, BUDDY.
You never said that.
I’M SAYING IT NOW.
I thought about going to see Mum at the charity shop, but I wasn’t sure if I could take the smell—you know, the tang of old clothes and lost hope and stale piss, and somehow the way they try to cover it up with air freshener just makes it worse. So that left roaming the streets, or school, or home. I still didn’t feel quite myself after the collapse of the day before, so I got the bus home and went to bed with my clothes on. Even Jack seemed tired, and we both fell asleep in the time it takes to think about the bits of Uma Upshaw between her hair and her chin, which is as far as I got, missing out on the good stuff. I think Mum came in later, and I remember the feel of her lips on my cheek, and when I woke up the next morning I was in my T-shirt and underpants, which must have been her doing, and I was very glad she stopped there, rather than trying to go full pajamas.
She brought me breakfast in bed. Toast and proper tea, meaning not ginseng-and-buttercup flavor.
“No school for you today,” she said.
I could feel the effort she was making to be normal. It was like watching a drunk person try to walk in a straight line.
“What day is it?”
“Friday.”
I was going to object. I like Fridays. Double math. But I felt Jack’s presence, felt that he wanted me to keep quiet. To stay put.
We had a little chat about the scan—me and Mum, not me and Jack. I reassured her that I didn’t feel too bad, and when she offered to come back to give me lunch I told her not to be silly. Yes, she was acting pretty normal, but it was still a relief when she left for work. Jack felt it too.
I THOUGHT THAT WAS NEVER GOING TO END. AND NOW IT’S TIME TO GO SHOPPING.
But, but . . .
BUT ME NO BUTS. WE’RE GOING TO GET YOU PROPERLY ATTIRED IN GOOD GREEN BUCKRAM.
In what?
A FIGURE OF SPEECH.
You know, Jack, I don’t understand you.
HEY, I’M A COMPLEX GUY.
But I should. I mean, if you only know what I know, even if I’ve forgotten what I know and you can remember it, then it should be familiar when you say it. But some of the time you could be speaking Greek.
I AM ALPHA AND OMEGA.
Yeah, funny, even I know that much Greek. First and last letter of the Greek alphabet. And also God, which is a bit big-headed of you, when you think about it.
OH, I DIDN’T MEAN TO PLAY LUCIFER AND UNSEAT JEHOVAH. ALPHA AND OMEGA, BEGINNING AND END. DID I MEAN THAT I WAS HERE BEFORE YOU? I THINK THAT I MAY. DID I MEAN THAT I WOULD BE HERE AFTER YOU? WE ALL KNOW THE PAST, BUT THE FUTURE IS A PLACE OF SHADOW. WE GO THROUGH LIFE FACING BACKWARDS, OUR EYES ON OUR MEMORIES, OUR NOW AN INSTANT. HOW FINE MUST YOU SLICE TIME TO FIND THE PRESENT MOMENT? ALPHA AND OMEGA. STRANGE THAT THEY SHOULD CHOOSE TO TRANSLATE THE HEBREW THUS. EMETH. TRUTH. MADE FROM THREE LETTERS: ALEPH, MEM, AND THAW. ALEPH AND THAW ARE THE FIRST AND LAST LETTERS IN THE HEBREW ALPHABET. SO TRUTH IS THE FIRST AND LAST. A PLEASING COINCIDENCE, OR A MYSTICAL SIGN? WHO CAN SAY?
That’s exactly what I mean! I don’t know that. I don’t know Hebrew.
I’M SORRY, I WAS SHOWING OFF. C’MON, LET’S SHOP.
I still don’t feel great. In fact your Hebrew’s made me feel worse.
OKAY, LET’S HAVE A LITTLE LOOK FROM IN HERE.
Weird feeling of rummaging again.
DA-DA-DUM-DEE-DAA-DAA-DUM.
Please don’t hum while you’re in my brain. It’s very irritating.
YOU’RE THE BOSS.
He didn’t sound like he meant it. For some reason that unnerved me, as if he’d stopped caring much what I thought, but still felt he had to go through the motions.
ANYWAY, NO, LOOKS FINE BACK HERE TO ME. JUST NEED SOME FRESH AIR. AND TIME FLIES. THERE’S A LOT TO DO.
I didn’t have the strength to argue. We got the bus into town. Jack was in a good mood, obviously happy to be out and about.
SO, WE’VE GOT TO PLAN THIS LIKE A MILITARY CAMPAIGN.
What, shopping?
NOT JUST THE SHOPPING. STYLING YOU UP IS JUST THE OPENING MOVE. THEN WE MAKE OUR PLAY FOR UMA UPSHAW. WE GOT TO GET OURSELVES SOME OF THEM JEANS.
Levi’s?
YOU ARE TRYING TO BE FUNNY, AREN’T YOU? NO, G-E-N-E-S.
Oh. And what am I going to do with her genes? And what about Smurf? I’ve only got three friends in the world, and he’s one of them, and he’s really into her, and he’d never forgive me if . . .
But then I felt myself trail off, the way you do when you know your words are empty. Jack was doing things to me. Some of the things were dramatic, and some were subtle, and one of these subtle things was happening now, and it took the form of not really caring about what other people thought or felt if it got in the way of what I wanted, or what Jack wanted. I knew that this was a bad thing and I tried to fight it, but it was strong as well as subtle.
WE’VE BEEN THERE, said Jack, AND YOU KNOW THE TRUTH OF THIS, AND WHAT MUST BE DONE, and then he looked at me. Of course, Jack didn’t really have what it takes to look—you know, eyes, etc.—but I still got the feeling he was giving me one. A look, I mean. A hard one.
After a while of the looking thing, he said, HOW MUCH WE GOT?
I took out my wallet. Well, it was a bit more like a purse than a wallet, so I tended to hide it at school. It had beads on it. In a pattern like this:
which to me looked like a really depressed bloke but which, to Mum, used to be about the most important thing in the world, because it’s the sign for CND, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.
Five pounds.
AND A BANK CARD.
Yes, I replied uncertainly.
LOOK, CHILL OUT. I’VE HAD AN IDEA FOR THE HAIR. AT VIDAL SASSOON YOU CAN HAVE A TRAINEE DO YOUR HAIR FOR FREE.
A trainee—you mean let someone who doesn’t know how to cut hair cut my hair? Great idea.
I SAID IT WAS FREE.
Mmmmm . . .
AND THEY’RE GOOD. WELL, BETTER THAN THE ALBANIAN BUTCHER.
So we went to the Vidal Sassoon’s on Cross Street.
I’d never been into a proper hairdresser’s before, and I felt self-conscious and stupid standing there by the counter, with posh ladies everywhere. There was an atmosphere of restless activity, with people darting around and carrying things and doing stuff to people’s hair. It was a bit like the bridge on the Enterprise, but with less of an alien presence and more ladies with towels on their heads.
Finally a man looked at me and said, “Can I help you?”
He was young—I find it a bit hard to tell how old grownups are, but I’d guess he was in his early twenties. He had on a black T-s
hirt made from some kind of stretchy stuff, and a pair of black jeans with a chain going from the back pocket to the zip at the front, a bit like the good old days of punk, except he was no more a punk than he was a pelican. But it was his hair that I noticed. He had a sort of band of it going diagonally across the top of his head, standing up about five centimeters from the rest of his hair.
THAT’S THE ONE. THE HOXTON FIN. GET ONE OF THOSE.
“Can you cut my hair?” I said in a small voice, adding, “For free?”
The young man smiled at me.
“You want to be a guinea pig? We usually do that in the evening. And shouldn’t you be in school?”
TELL HIM YOU’RE A STUDENT.
“I’m a student.”
SHOW HIM YOUR BUS PASS, TELL HIM IT’S A STUDENT ID CARD.
I waved my bus pass vaguely at the man. Let’s call him Hoxton. Well, Hoxton didn’t seem very interested in my card, but his face went all twinkly as if he was finding something irresistibly amusing in my being there.
“We’re not busy. I’ll see if one of the girls can do you.” He paused before he said “do you,” which made it seem mucky. “If anyone asks,” he went on, “remember to tell them that you’re a . . . student .”
“But I am a—”
I had to wait around for twenty minutes. I spent the time reading magazines. They had loads of them. Mostly for ladies, but some for men too. The ones for men had mainly pictures of women about to burst out of their bras, and then articles about how to get a six-pack, and how it was now okay to use stuff to make your face soft, and what clothes you should wear, and I read those, but I only enjoyed the sections about gadgets, like iPods and plasma-screen TVs and satellite navigation systems.
Jack was taking it all in, getting excited about the ladies coming out of their bras, but he was not very interested in the satellite navigation systems, which is probably because he already knew where he was and where he was going.