blocked

Lou is sitting on the bottom step, forearms resting on his knees, hands slack, head bowed, in the posture of a man waiting for an axe to fall. His wife Belle is so frantic, when we come in through the open door a more terrifying version of her seems to tear itself from her body and come running up to us. But she stays where she is, gently combing the sweated hairs of his head with trembling fingers.
‘Hang on, Lou. Hang on.’
Frank turns me straight back out to prep the vehicle and fetch a chair. Outside the chill night air is heavy and damp; the red terracotta tiles are mined with snails.

We help Lou onto the chair. His face looks like a waxworks mask left outside for a year, deeply lined, grey and deathly. He groans through the oxygen mask.

Attached to the ECG machine and the tracings reel off what we expected to see.
‘Oh God. Is it bad?’ says Belle, frantically pulling a mobile phone out of her bag, then putting it straight back in again. ‘Please God don’t let it be bad.’
‘Lou? I’m afraid it does look as if you’re having problems with your heart,’ says Frank, handing me the strip. Belle is so abstracted with anxiety she almost stuffs herself into the bag after the phone. I manage her as positively as I can whilst helping Frank go through the protocols for MI. In a matter of moments I’m driving off to the Cath Lab, our blue lights turning and dancing in the fog.

***

The Cath Lab is a brisk, bright environment. Despite the late hour a PCI team is already assembling, shuffling into the pre op room in their rubber sandals, looking as crumpled and comfortable as their loose red scrubs, cheerful, rough about the edges, like a hockey team meeting for a pre-match rumble in the changing rooms. Lou sits up on the trolley, dizzy with the pain and pace of events. Twenty minutes ago he was sitting on the bottom step of his house, asking his wife to call the doctor; now he finds himself magically transported in the same passive posture, to a strange white place bristling with clinicians, reeking of cleanliness, stripped and gowned, as a seemingly teenage registrar smiles through a list of death and disability. His wife sobs, her arm around Lou’s shoulder. Eventually a nurse lets her kiss him goodbye, then leads her away to the relative’s room.

We take Lou through into theatre and help load him on the trolley. The team divides into those who will do the procedure and those who will monitor from behind the big glass control screen with its banks of computers. From behind the screen we watch as they cover Lou with sheets of blue paper, and swing a large white metal gantry elegantly into position around him.
‘Keep your hands to your sides now, Lou,’ says the Registrar, efficiently prepping the catheter and introducing equipment. ‘This area is sterile.’
The Radiographer begins hauling on her heavy green protective apron, waistcoat and neck guard, like a clinical marine going into combat. ‘Lead up boys. Unless you’ve had the snip, I don’t know. Maybe you don’t care about this stuff.’
‘I’m allergic to babies.’
‘They’re bad for your wealth.’
‘Put some music on. Pronto.’
One of the ODPs pulls a box of loose CDs out of a cupboard and after shuffling through them like a pack of cards tosses the others back and sticks his choice into the system. Seconds later ABBA fills the room, Dancing Queen.
‘Are you gay?’
‘Bi-curious.’
‘Bi-polar.’
‘God – where d’you get this junk from?’
‘It comes free with the pizza.’
‘Hey! Pizza. Call out for pizza. Pronto.’
‘I’ve got pepperoni-itis.’
‘Stop the clock, people.’
‘We haven’t started yet.’

The theatre doors swing open again and the consultant hurries in, breathing hard.
‘Sorry. The route the taxi took was blocked for some reason. How far have you got?’
‘Just in now. You should be getting it.’
‘Well it would help to have the pictures up. Can we get the pictures up, please?’
‘Oops.’
As the consultant unbuttons her gilet and unwinds the flowery silk scarf from her neck, the screen fills with the lucent picture of Lou’s beating heart. The harder, synthetic line of the catheter stands out as it gradually works in from the top. Every so often a puff of marker fluid picks out the delicate blood vessels, the major and minor vessels, tributaries and bifurcations, elegantly branching arterioles like the whorls of a pea plant.
‘Right coronary. I’ll scrub up and we’ll get going,’ she says, then turns to me and Frank. ‘Sorry,’ she says. ‘Hello. I’m Emma, the consultant. Thanks for bringing us the patient. Nice to have you in to watch.’
She hurries out – and before we’ve had a chance to point to a couple of things on the screen and ask the significance, she bustles back in scrubbed up and ready to go, so quickly she must have stripped and changed in the corridor.
‘Good God,’ she says as she takes her place at the table and picks up her instruments ready to begin. ‘Who the hell chose this music?’

interesting prescription

Maude is sitting hunched and watchful in her seat like some kind of geriatric astronaut. The armchair, an ancient piece of furniture perfectly moulded to her shape, has all the necessaries to hand – cup and saucer, Tupperware of biscuits, box of tissues, emollients, blister packs, inhalers and eye drops, remote control and TV guide – heaped around her on a put-you-up table and breakfast stand, her puffy legs propped up on a battered old brown leather pouffe.
‘Wait a minute,’ she pants. ‘Just a minute.’
‘You’re breathing’s bad today, Maude.’
‘I’m not going to hospital.’
‘And the carer says you’re not really yourself.’
‘I’m what?’
‘Not really yourself?’
‘Well who am I then?’
‘A bit confused.’
‘I’m not going to hospital.’
I stand up again.
‘She’s pretty clear about it.’
The carer, a vigorously empathetic woman in red ski pants and a fried mass of crimped, crow-black hair, squats down in my place. She rubs Maude on the arm.
‘Come on chuck,’ she says. ‘We’re worried about you.’ But she sneaks a look back up at me. ‘Everyone but the son. What a piece of work.’
‘I’m not going to hospital,’ says Maude, levitating with outrage. ‘You can’t make me.’
‘No. We’d be arrested for kidnap,’ I tell her. ‘I’ll get the doctor over instead. Maybe she can persuade you.’
‘No.’
‘I’ve just got to do the paperwork.’
Maude settles back into the chair again, and after a moment begins rooting through the piles of stuff around her.
‘What are you looking for, Maude?’
‘I want my bisexuals.’
‘Your what?’
‘I’m not signing till I’ve read it through properly, and I can’t read a thing without my bisexuals.’
The carer looks at me and smiles.
‘She’s not herself,’ she says.

whatever

The housing estate feels so desolate it may as well be swept by searchlights. What light there is – from the hundreds of tiny halogen dots marking out the landings and aerial walkways; the rows upon rows of dimly lit windows or darker, curtainless rooms flickering grey and blue by the TV; the emergency lighting globes guarding the stairwells, and the hard spikes of orange light thrown down from the street lamps – all these things join together, point through point, like a pattern of lines on a star chart: sink estate, in the Constellation of Despair.
‘Over there.’
Frank pulls the ambulance to the side. Over on a patch of grass between two buildings, a figure sprawled, another standing over him, on the phone. We hurry up the steep bank towards them.
‘What’s happened?’
‘What d’you think? He’s had the shit kicked out of him. I didn’t see nothing.’
The man on the floor is unconscious, breathing with the stertorous rattle of the deeply unconscious. The side of his face is grossly misshapen, both eyes swollen shut; his right arm is bent mid-humerus, and his legs splayed. Despite the freezing night, he is only wearing a t-shirt and jeans, his trainers torn off and thrown against the wall. His body is profoundly cold to the touch.
‘We’ll need back-up, Frank. Can you get that running, and bring up the spinal board and stuff?’
‘Right.’
Frank strides back down the bank, talking into his radio.
‘What’s your friend’s name?’
‘He ain’t no friend.’
‘Do you know what his name is?’
‘Stu.’
‘And what’s your name?’
The man smiles.
‘Er – let’s say Bill. Yeah. Bill.’
‘Bill – Thanks for calling us. We’re going to need your help.’
‘Sure. Whatever. I don’t care what I do. Not like those cunts up there,’ he says, thumbing the air behind him. ‘They couldn’t give a shit. Leave him, they said.’
‘Bill – You did the right thing. I don’t care what you have or haven’t done tonight. How you help us now is all that matters.’
‘Whatever.’
He points the phone at the figure on the ground. It looks as if he’s about to take a picture.
‘Bill – you can put your phone away now. Frank’s coming up with the stuff and we’re going to need you to help us get Stu packaged up double quick. Is that okay?’
‘Yeah, man. Hey - this is good.’
Frank drops the gear next to us.
‘They haven’t got anyone to back us up. We’re on our own.’
‘Great.’
‘Police should be here any minute.’
‘Excellent.’
Bill straightens up.
‘Whoa! What d’you mean, the police?’
‘It’s an assault, Bill. They have to come.’
He hesitates, looks back up to one of the flats, then out along the road. For a second I think he’s winding himself up to run, but he relaxes again and squats down beside Stu.
‘Whatever,’ he says.

jasper

I glance over the notes that Control send through, but I hardly need to. We’re both very well aware who Jasper is.
The radio buzzes.
‘Sorry guys. We tried to deal with this one our end, but he started speaking in riddles, so we had to pass it to you.’
‘Yep. No worries. We like a good riddle.’
‘Control out.’

The last time I saw Jasper he was roaring like an outraged banker, face down in the A&E car park, Geoff the security guard sitting on his legs. Geoff had waved pleasantly as we parked, comfortable enough. Apparently Jasper had attacked one of the nurses with his stick – an ineffectual attempt, but unpleasant nonetheless - and then run off. Geoff had rugby tackled him just before the ramp.
‘So much for the Parkinsons or whatever it is he claims to have.’
‘Munchausens’
‘Bless you.’
Frank pulls up outside the address.
‘Here we are then. This should finish us off nicely.’

There is a finely needled drift of rain in the air; a Christmas tree lies next to a shining black paladin, one red bauble and a few scraps of tinsel hanging from its branches, as if the thing hadn’t been dumped so much as jumped out of the tub and run away. The whole street has a post-event feel; the half-drawn blinds of the house make it look hung-over.
Jasper lives in the basement, down a dark and precipitous drop of stairs.
‘Just right for a patient with mobility problems,’ says Frank, clicking on his torch.
‘Let’s get this over with.’
I knock on the door – a scarred and battered affair with the number painted on in black with a decorator’s brush. I ring the bell, too. After a long pause, I knock again.
‘He’s working on his laptop,’ says Frank. ‘I can see him through the curtains.’
I bang on the window.
‘Yes? Who is it?’
‘It’s the ambulance, Jasper. Can you open the door please?’
‘But I called to cancel. Look this is simply ridiculous. Are you sure you need to see me?’
‘Well you rang to say you had chest pain. Is that right?’
‘Yes, I do have chest pain, but look – this is outrageous.’
‘Are you saying you don’t want to see us? Because that’s fine, Jasper. We just need you to sign our paperwork.’
‘Oh for goodness sake.’
He carries on talking, a bitter and bothered kind of mumble, but the shadow behind the curtain finally draws back and we can’t hear anything else. Eventually we hear a shuffling coming towards us along the hallway, and the door opens.
‘What do you want?’
‘Hello, Jasper.’
‘Hello.’
He stands swaying in the gloomy light from the hallway, immaculately dressed in a formal white shirt and dark trousers, and a pair of slip on shoes with fancy silver buckles. In his right hand he clutches an ornate black walking stick and a plastic yellow grabber. His face is doughy and unremarkable, with an affronted hang to his eyes and mouth, like a sulky child called in too early.
‘How are you feeling?’
‘How am I feeling? How do you think I’m feeling? I’ve got excruciating pains in my chest. I can’t breathe. My doctor couldn’t care less. I’ve got business to attend to and now this. What did you want?’
‘If you’ve got pains in your chest, Jasper, you should let us check you out.’
‘Check me out? Whatever do you mean?’
‘You should come up to the ambulance and let us do an ECG. And really you should come up to the hospital to see a doctor.’
‘This is ridiculous.’
‘But you don’t have to do any of that if you don’t want to. It’s a free country. Sign the paperwork and we’ll leave you alone.’
‘Oh – come in, then. If you must.’
‘You only need to get your keys, wallet and a jacket, Jasper. Then we’ll go straight back out to the vehicle.’
‘But can’t you do all your checks here?’
‘We can form an impression of what’s wrong, but the only definitive way to rule out any heart problems is to come to hospital for a blood test. I’m sure you wouldn’t want to risk anything happening tonight.’
‘No. Of course not. But they all hate me up at the hospital.’
‘I’m sure they don’t.’
‘They’re all tenants. They’ve all got their little axes to grind.’
He shuffles back along the corridor and I follow reluctantly.
‘Just get the essentials,’ I say.
‘Don’t rush me,’ he snaps over his shoulder. ‘I’m not so sure this is a good idea. I don’t know what you think you’ve got to achieve by making me do all of this.’
Frank loiters in the hallway. Above him, a tangle of electrical wires and heating ducts run exposed along the top of the wall; the flat feels half-finished, an abandoned project. Inside, Jasper is living in one room, an unmade double bed in the centre, a pine kitchen table over by the window covered with letters and magazines, a laptop whirring in the middle of it all.
‘It’s not my flat,’ he says, rootling around in the paperwork. ‘Excuse the mess.’
‘Just your keys, phone and some money for a cab home,’ I say, checking my watch.
‘Just a minute, just a minute,’ he says. ‘Now. Where are my cuff links?’
As he dresses he huffs and sniffs; now and again he seems to stagger – an unconvincing detail, like a poor actor forgetting his limp.
‘How’s that chest pain?’
‘Like I keep telling you, it’s absolutely crushing. I can’t breathe, I feel sick.’
‘All the more reason to come to hospital.’
‘Yes. Yes. Look. Could you hold these, please?’
He dumps into my hands a Blackberry, a glasses case, a packet of chewing gum, five pounds in loose change and a letter from his doctor. Frank smiles at me and delicately extracts the letter.
‘It says here you refused an ambulance yesterday, and ignored the doctor’s advice to go to hospital for investigations.’
Jasper tips his head back and with his eyes half closed seems to sniff the air, like a snake exploring the size of a mouse by the heat it gives off.
‘Well that’s my useless doctor for you,’ he says finally. ‘What does she know?’
‘You don’t have to come with us,’ Frank says, placing the letter carefully back on my precarious pile. ‘You’re perfectly at liberty to refuse treatment.’
But Jasper has found his cuff links. He snaps them on expertly, then swings his jacket over his shoulders.
‘Let’s go,’ he says. ‘You first.’

pauli

‘There’s no reply from number sixteen, but there is a key safe just round the corner. We wondered if you had the number for it.’
‘Stand by.’

I tap the radio aerial in the centre of my forehead waiting for the call back, idly watching my feet as they shuffle a hundred miles or so beneath me on the pavement. Frank yawns noisily, slapping his arms to warm up, like a restless yellow bird, dreaming of migration. It’s not that cold – all the snow has melted and gone - but at three o’clock in the morning your fire burns dangerously low and anything can put it out – the dismal fall of light from a streetlamp, the shadowy recess of a door.
‘834?’
‘Go ahead.’
‘Ring seventeen, eighteen or nineteen and ask for Pauli.’
‘Seriously? It’s three o’clock in the morning. You want us to ring every bell in the block?’
‘Seventeen, eighteen or nineteen. Ask for Pauli.’
‘Thanks for that.’
‘Control out.’

I re-holster my radio like a dumb-ass gunslinger, then reach out and press seventeen. Pause. Then eighteen. Pause. Then nineteen. I’m just pressing seventeen again when the door suddenly buzzes open. I drift through the magical opening, and Frank floats along in my wake.

The lobby is a chlorinated blue lino vacuum of institutional living. We ride up the stairs on the steely clean stink of it all.

Number sixteen is locked, of course. Shawn is on the floor, so how would he open it? I bend down, open the flap of the letter box and peer through.
‘Hello? Ambulance?’
A voice from somewhere inside.
‘I’m on the floor.’
‘Where can we get a key?’
‘I’ll let you in.’
‘How?’
‘I’ll shuffle along the floor. Just a minute.’
Then I hear him carrying on a conversation.
‘Shawn? Are you on the phone?’
‘Yeah. The ambulance.’
‘Well tell them we’re in. We made it inside. You can put the phone down now. Just concentrate on getting yourself to the door.’
‘They’re telling me to hang up.’
‘Just hang up.’
‘Right. Right. Okay.’
‘Shawn?’
‘What?’
‘Just hang up.’
But he carries on talking on the phone. I straighten up and let the flap of the letter box spring shut again.
‘I’m not getting this at all,’ I say to Frank, who’s standing with his arms folded and his eyes shut, leaning over at an unnatural angle.
‘Mm?’
There is the sound of shuffling and puffing from behind the door, like a huge seal making its way across an ice flow. I sigh, bob down and lift the flap again. In the dim interior of the hallway I can make out Shawn’s bulky shape dragging itself towards me.
‘I’m coming,’ says Shawn. ‘Won’t be long.’
‘Are you hurt, Shawn?’
‘Me? No.’
‘But you can’t get up?’
‘What do you want me to do now?’
‘Shawn? Hang up the phone, mate. We’re here now. It’s only complicating things.’
‘I’m dragging myself across the floor.’
I stand up again. The door to number eighteen suddenly opens and a huge black man is there, staring at us with bulging eyes veined red with sleeplessness. He doesn’t say anything, but slowly scratches his chest and stares, his plump mouth hanging open, his hair so dishevelled it would take an industrial team a week to bring it under control.
‘What the fuck you doing?’ he says at last, the recoil from that fuck tipping his head back a foot.
‘Pauli?’
‘Yeah, Pauli.’
‘Shawn’s fallen over and we need to get in.’
Pauli doesn’t blink for a full year. The hallway is silent, save for the dragging sounds behind the door, and Shawn’s endless prattling on the phone.
Eventually it comes back to me – our mission – what I needed, what I wanted. I came here to do something.
‘I don’t suppose you have a key?’
Pauli grunts, and suddenly what looks like a joke key appears in his hand. His huge feet slap on the lino as he comes across to open the door.
‘Thanks.’
But he’s gone before Shawn has even acknowledged that the door stands open.
‘Oh. Hi guys,’ he says, beaming up at us and breathing hard. ‘I was watching Air Wolf and I fell out the chair.’

guttering

Mrs Ellery slowly descends on the stair lift, an enamelled Chinoiserie walking stick propped between her legs, her hands resting on the handle, her face as set as her hair, her gray eyes counting down the pastoral scenes on the opposite wall. Her husband William, a loose affiliation of braces and whiskers, stands to attention at the bottom of the run with a coat and hat, carrier bag of prescription medicines, toiletries and a crook to his back from the weight of it all.
‘Have you got everything?’
‘It’s all here. I think.’
‘What about the doctor’s letter?’
‘Oh.’
He shuffles off into the kitchen as the chair judders to a halt. We help her dismount.
‘Is it cold?’
‘The snow’s gone.’
‘Well.’
Mr Ellery hurries back in.
‘The letter!’
‘Let’s go.’
‘Just a minute.’
She swaps the stick from one hand to another, then raises her chin as magnificently as a prisoner being led to the firing squad.
‘Onwards.’

**

I wave goodbye to Mr Ellery and slam the ambulance door shut.
Mrs Ellery winces.
‘Sorry. I have to slam it otherwise the alarm sounds.’
She says nothing, but smoothes the blanket down in front of her as we lurch off the pavement and set off.

**

With the paperwork all done I settle in to the chair and smile at Mrs Ellery.
‘So. How long have you and William been married?’
‘Five years.’
‘Oh.’ I had expected her to say fifty. But the response is primed and goes off anyway: ‘That’s wonderful.’
The pause is a tragic acknowledgement of conversations the world over. Eventually – graciously – she picks it up again.
‘Of course, he’s not my first husband.’
‘Oh.’
‘I lived on my own for thirty years.’
‘Thirty years? So your first husband died young, then?’
She frowns.
‘He was eighty five. He died last week.’
‘Oh.’
‘We divorced after ten years.’
‘I see. Children?’
‘Three boys.’
My attempt at working out the maths is almost audible. I give up.
‘So – did you learn about your ex-husband’s death through your sons?’
‘Through the youngest. I hadn’t seen the eldest in thirty years. He’s in his fifties.’
‘So..?’
‘So when we divorced my eldest son went off with my ex and the other two stayed with me. I heard nothing more from them – until last week, when he turned up at the funeral.’
She looks at me. ‘The eldest – not the ex. You have got the doctor’s letter, haven’t you?’
‘Yep.’ I wave it in the air, Lame Chamberlain-style.
The ambulance yaws and staggers.
‘Oops,’ I say. ‘I think the bad weather’s broken up the roads.’
‘Really?’ She sniffs, and grips her stick more tightly. I seek shelter in the paperwork. Eventually I peek out again: ‘That must have been awkward, seeing your eldest son again like that.’
‘Like what again?’
‘At your ex’s funeral.’
‘Not at all.’
She takes the stick in her hand and pokes at her feet through the blanket like an arctic explorer sensing a crevasse.
‘What did you talk about?’
‘Guttering, mostly. That’s what he does apparently – fascias, soffits, guttering.’
‘Ah ha. And were the other two there?’
‘The youngest. Not the middle one. Who knows where he is.’
‘Why? What happened?’
‘I gave him some cheques to pay in. Which he did, of course. His own account. Then cleared off.’
‘But you’ve kept things up with the youngest?’
‘Charles? Oh Charles is fine. He lives round the corner. Didn’t approve when I married William, though.’
‘How did you two meet?’
‘An old friend of mine. She was coming round for dinner. She’d got problems with her hip, so a friend of a friend offered to drive. She told him to wait in the car. But I said: ‘Audrey. The man can’t just sit there whilst we eat. You’ll have to fetch him in. So she did – and he’s been there ever since.’

the baby or the girl

Street names, synonyms for illness, difficulty, death. Shorthand scrawls for a pratfall in a swimming pool, an entrapment, a G5 in the lobby. Have I been here before? I’m sure I’ve been here before. If not here, then somewhere.

Tour guides on the Big Black Seaside Tour of Misfortune.

‘People don’t like to see us, Frank.’
‘Maybe we should change our uniform.’
‘Did you ever see pictures of the stuff they wore during the Black Death? A big black cape and a leather beak stuffed with herbs.’
‘I’d wear it.’
It’s late afternoon, my birthday, and I think the fog in the streets has invaded my heart.
‘If I don’t get a coffee in the next ten minutes I’m a dead man.’

I have been here before. Except the geometrically dour council block is surrounded by scaffolding. It coalesces out of the mist like a grotesque puzzle toy, a musical box. I imagine giant hands ripping it from its foundations, turning it over and over, eventually finding the pressure points and the whole thing springing apart to reveal – what? A dancing angel? Or a woman spinning round and round with a bottle of vodka?

There are tyres tracks on the triangular grass verge out front; probably from the last ambulance that parked here, probably yesterday. Getting out in slow motion. One small step for man, one giant waste of time. Reaching for the bell. And the long pause. I’ve definitely been here before.

Sandra is waiting for us on the sofa. She is a stop-motion, grey clay animation of a lonely drunk. Her cigarette burns in a different time zone. The flat is cold and poorly lit, a scattering of ripped bills, energy drinks, a plasma TV with teeth marks, the wretched galley kitchen a stub corridor to hell.

We spend time.

A pain in her side she’s had for a week. Hasn’t called the doctor because he’s shut, hasn’t any credit on her phone, can’t get there, doesn’t have the number, other reasons. She just wants reassurance she’s all right. She doesn’t want to come to hospital.

Ticks in boxes. Scrawled assessments.

‘We’ll log this call with your doctor so he knows what’s happened. What’s your number?’
She hands me the phone. After a while going through various menus I hand it back.
‘I can’t find it, Sandra.’
She shrugs.

The walls of the flat are darkening damp and bare, except for a small cluster of family photos, framed. The oldest one, a baby in a frilly white jump suit lying happily in front of a two year old who has one hand on the baby’s head, as if she’s taking its temperature, or like a stall holder proudly describing her most valuable offering.
‘Which one’s you, Sandra? The baby or the girl?
She shrugs.

***

Outside the fog is thickening. It runs noiselessly around us, shifting and cooling and flowing through, magically on and down to the barest atomic matrix of existence, where everything is everything, and anything is possible, where a man can stand still and be a lamppost, and a lamppost can go into a petrol station for a coffee.

brenda

A woman in a pastel pink terry towelling bath robe waves enthusiastically from the side of the road, a strange, bare-legged, marshmallow figure amongst the early morning commuters in their heavy coats and scarves, the piles of snow spread all around like spilled suds from a bath. Her legs are lobster red, and her hair has been roughly towelled dry, sticking out in tangled clumps. She smiles and jumps up and down in her slippers.
‘He’s down at the bottom of the basement stairs. I thought I heard someone calling.’ She turns and dog-slippers her way back across an icy yard, adding over her shoulder: ‘I was in the bath.’
She leads us to the top of a steep flight of worn stone stairs. A tall, elderly man is standing looking up at us from the bottom. His face is bloody, and the front of his old blue windcheater glistening.
‘Down here,’ he says, raising his arm.
‘Is he all right?’ says the woman, dropping the phone into the baggy pocket of her bath robe and then gathering the fluffy collar of it tightly around her neck. ‘I thought I’d better ring before I did anything else.’
‘Well let’s see. I think you should get inside, though. Thanks ever so much for your help’
‘That’s all right,’ she says, pushing her hair back.’ Then she waves down at the man. ‘Hope it goes well, Mr Chapman.’
‘Thank you, Brenda.’
Then she turns and hurries up the icy steps back into the house.

We pick our way down to Mr Chapman.
‘What’s happened to you, then?’
‘I was just bringing my car battery down for a charge and I slipped on the last step. I’m okay though. I wasn’t knocked out or anything.’
‘Any pain anywhere? Funny feelings in your arms or legs?’
‘Not a thing. My head stings where I scraped it on the wall, but that’s it. I don’t want to waste your time. I’m fine.’
‘Let’s just get you on to the vehicle, give you the once over and see what’s what,’ I tell him. ‘Are you sure you can make it up the steps?’
‘Yes, yes. Just move my battery into that alcove though, would you?’
Frank puts it out of the way and we head slowly back up the stairs.
‘How old are you, Mr Chapman?’
‘Eighty four.’
‘And how’s your health?’
‘Fine. Nothing wrong with me.’
He smiles, and his teeth have the usual bloodied definition of head injuries, each individual tooth highlighted with a dark line. ‘No pills or potions.’
‘And still driving, obviously.’
‘It’s my life,’ he says. We reach the ambulance. ‘I used to drive one of these, just after the war.’
‘Really? Well it’s an honour to have you aboard. Shame it’s not happier circumstances, but never mind. There you go. Make yourself comfortable on the trolley.’
‘Look, are you sure this is necessary? I could just go indoors and tidy myself up. You’ve got better things to be doing with your time.’
‘Right now, this is the most important thing for us, Mr Chapman. Let’s just get that jacket off. And – have – a – look at you.’
I start exploring his matted hair. It’s quickly apparent he has a significant wound – a palm sized skin flap exposing his skull.
‘This is quite serious, Mr Chapman,’ I tell him, soaking the area with saline and doing my best to bring it all together and tidy it up. ‘It’s pretty deep.’
‘Really? I don’t think so. I think I just need to go home.’
‘No, no. You’ll have to go to hospital with this one.’
‘Hospital?’ He swings his legs off the trolley. ‘I don’t think I need hospital. Can’t you just put a plaster on it? I’ve had worse.’
‘Absolutely not. This goes right down to the bone.’
‘Really?’
‘Really. You’ll need stitches. Some proper looking after.’
He mutters something, then settles himself back on the trolley again. I carry on cleaning him up. After a moment he says: ‘I only wanted to put the battery on charge.’
‘You can do that later.’
‘I don’t want my car running down.’
‘It’ll be fine.’
‘I’ve always taken good care of my cars.’
‘Excellent.’
I toss the bloody gauzes into a bag and Frank helps me bandage the wound up.
‘Are you sure this is absolutely necessary?’ Mr Chapman says, folding his arms.
‘We wouldn’t do it otherwise,’ I tell him.
There’s a pause. Eventually he says: ‘Can’t I just go back down and put the battery on charge?’
‘We need to get you to hospital, Mr Chapman.’
‘Brenda seems nice,’ says Frank, tidying up around us. ‘Jumping out of the bath like that. Running down the street.’
Mr Chapman looks up, tentatively patting the dressing on his head.
‘That’s one way of looking at it,’ he says.

tigers and lillies

The entrance to the sauna is via a discrete L-shaped screen; a man could quite easily be walking along the pavement on his way into town, not thinking about anything in particular, perhaps in his innocence a little too close to the shop fronts there – the gallery, the tatty sports shop, the cheap hotel - and suddenly find himself turning sharply to the left into a small reception area, a red and black themed room, with black rubber tiles on the floor, prints of naked male torsos around the walls, and a Plexiglas kiosk with a slot to slip your money through.
‘He’s in the locker room,’ says the man behind the screen, a young guy, bare-chested, his earlobes stretched by large black washers, his nipples pierced, his shoulders tattooed left and right with a tiger and a bouquet of lilies.
He buzzes a security door and we struggle through with our bags to a staircase, the kind of sharp edged affair you might find leading down to the kitchens of a restaurant. At the bottom is a changing area, wooden benches and lockers, and beyond it, a low-ceilinged corridor. There is a sign on the wall, a rack of arrows pointing in different directions: sun deck, cafe, hot and cold showers, plunge pool, solarium, play room, glory holes. The air is moist, vaguely sweet, vaporous with detergent, cologne and other, earthier flavours. Silent figures in the same institutional towel pad to and fro along the corridor. I’m conscious only of feet, legs and lower abdomen; I don’t want to embarrass anyone by making eye contact. But it seems to me that quite a few of the men find a reason to scratch their face, cough, or look in the other direction as they pass.
‘In here.’
The receptionist stands in front of a middle aged man almost completely dressed now, leaning forwards to slip on his shoes.
‘Would you go outside to talk to him in the ambulance? It’ll be a bit more discrete.’
The man doesn’t look at us, but stands up and hurriedly slips his rucksack over his shoulder.
‘I understand you had a fainting episode just now?’
He looks down to the side and shakes his head.
‘No,’ he says.
‘What do you mean? We’d like to make sure you’re okay.’
‘No. No thank you.’
He starts to leave.
The receptionist smiles at us and shrugs his tiger and lilies.
‘Sorry to have called you out for nothing, guys.’
By the time he has finished talking, the man is up the stairs and away.

changeable

The street is in the older part of town, a one way stub of workers’ cottages so tightly packed the occupants must sleep standing up. But Frank manages to find room to park the ambulance without blocking the street. Incredibly, this apartment block has been shoe-horned into the housing continuum, with parking spaces at street level between the struts and legs of the upper storeys. The sheer concrete lines and halogen spots of its balcony walkways is in contrast to the mullion windowed chintz of the rest of the street; it stands in the middle of it all like some grand, alien ship, ready for take-off.

All the notes tell us: a fifty-nine year old woman called Barbara, unwell at number fifteen.

Frank pushes the at scene button, grabs a bag from the side, we find number fifteen, and knock. After a minute or two, the door opens, and a slack faced woman with coral pink lips and a pan scourer hairdo sniffs cautiously round the edge.
After a moment Barbara says: ‘Yes, it’s the ambulance,’ into the phone she has pressed to her ear, then turns round and retreats back into the house without acknowledging us; we follow her inside anyway.
‘Should I hang up now?’ she says, we’re not sure to whom.
‘Yes. Just hang up.’
‘I’m hanging up now,’ she says into the phone, then presses it off without saying anything further.
‘Okay,’ says Frank. ‘Hello. My name’s Frank, this is Spence. What can we do for you tonight?’
She stands on the other side of the room, a dimly-lit space that could be a showroom at Past Times; there are framed prints of Aubrey Beardsley drawings, art deco mirrors and figurines, tapestry cushions, candle holders, faerie prints, and scattered strategically about the place, a hundred soft toys – from Jemima Puddle-Duck, Bagpuss and Peter Rabbit, to an audience of variously graded teddy bears, some in overcoats, some in cowboy outfits or homemade doily wraps, or simply naked, tagged in the ear like prize cattle, looking on from the margins.
‘What seems to be the problem?’
Barbara flutters a hand just below her chin.
‘I’ve never felt so unwell,’ she squeaks. ‘I feel dreadful.’
‘In what way?’
‘What?’
‘In what way do you feel unwell?’
The question seems to disorientate her; she pauses whilst it disperses through the air, then she continues.
‘I’ve been on these pills from the doctor for a week. He gave them to me because I was so ill.’
‘These here?’
She stares at him.
‘Well what do you think? Yes – those there.’
‘Okay. Antibiotics, I see. Was this for some kind of chest infection?’
She pauses again, then sits down on the sofa and rolls up her sleeve.
‘I’m so worried,’ she says. ‘I’ve come out in this rash. What do you think this rash is?’
‘Let’s have a look.’
Her arm appears to have no more than a light bruise by the elbow and a couple of spots of eczema. The light in the room is poor, so I click on my pocket torch to give Frank something better to work by.
Barbara glares – and when she speaks, her voice has dropped an octave.
‘I do pay my electricity bills you know. You can put another light on.’
‘Yes. Yes, I know. It’s just so Frank can get a better look.’
‘Mm. Well – I can’t really see anything here,’ says Frank. ‘Do you have any pain anywhere?’
Her voice rises again, a quivering, reedy tone, and her hand flutters up into the air.
‘I’ve never felt so ill. I’m sorry to waste your time. I just didn’t know what else to do. I called my daughter, and she said if I was as bad as that I should call the ambulance. But I know you’ve got better things to be doing with your time.’
‘Don’t worry. Do you have any health problems?’
The strange drop of tone again.
‘Of course I’ve got health problems. What do you think?’
‘Okay. Any medication for anything?’
‘Over there.’
Barbara is extraordinarily volatile, switching suddenly from one character to another like some grotesque, topsy-turvy doll - anguished child’s face on one side, angry, middle-aged woman’s face on the other.
Both Frank and I tiptoe around her with our questions, but it’s difficult to get much sense from her.
‘I don’t know what the problem is, Barbara. But you’re obviously very concerned. So perhaps the best thing would be for you to come with us to hospital.’
Angry woman.
‘I’m not going there. People go there to die.’
‘It’s not as bad as that, Barbara.’
‘It is. My daughter’s a doctor and she’s told me all about it. Left in the corridor for hours. Left to die.’
‘No, no. They really do their best.’
Anguished child.
‘I think it’s terrible what’s happening today.’
‘In what way?’
‘People falling ill. Having to wait hours and hours to see anyone.’
‘But we came out right away. We came to help.’
‘What can you do? You’re not doctors. I’ve never felt so unwell.’
‘Which is why you should come with us to the hospital.’
‘No. I’m not going there. What’s going to happen to me?’
Frank sits next to her on the sofa.
‘Barbara? What do you think your daughter would want you to do? She suggested you called the ambulance because you didn’t feel well. And that’s what you did. Now that we’re here, we think you we should take you to the hospital. So don’t you think your daughter would tell you to go with us?’
Barbara sniffs, draws out a handkerchief from the sleeve of her jersey.
‘I’ll just get my things.’
‘Good. Good! We’ll just stand over there by the door to give you a little space. A couple of minutes and we’ll be off. Okay?’
‘Yes.’
We go over to the door, and whilst Barbara mutters to herself, gathering things together and stuffing them into a floral bag, we pass the time, talking quietly.
‘So where were you the other week?’
‘I took a couple of days off with my back. We did a dodgy lift and it made my old problem flare up again. Just here,’ I say, pressing him between his shoulders. ‘I scored some decent painkillers off the doctor, though, so it’s not all bad.’
‘My back’s been pretty bad recently.’
‘Yeah?’
‘I went to see this Osteopath, and she said....’
‘What are you talking about?’
Barbara has stopped getting her things together and walked right up to us.
‘Oh, we were just swapping horror stories about our backs.’
‘Your what?’
‘Our backs. We’ve both had back problems.’
‘Oh. Have you. Did you know I’ve had back problems?’
‘No. Have you?’
‘Yes. I had an MRI. I’m under Mr Coltishall.’
‘Right.’ An awkward pause. ‘Sometimes I think I could do with an MRI. Might not like what I find, though.’
I smile at Barbara, but it crashes up against the sheer wall of her face.
‘What’s your name?’ she says.
‘Spence.’
‘No. Your last name.’
‘I’m afraid it’s not really policy to give out last names.’
‘Actually it doesn’t matter. Because I have a daughter who works for the Met police in London. And she can find out your name like that. And she will find it out. Because I’m going to put in an official complaint about you. And d’you know what? I’m going to make your night. I am not going to the hospital. And I want you out of my house, right now.’
‘Barbara..?’
‘Right now!’
We turn and leave.

We climb back into the cab. Frank phones control to put them in the picture. Whilst he’s explaining the situation they interrupt to tell him that Barbara has called again.
‘Where are you at the minute?’
‘Still outside the property.’
‘I don’t suppose...’

Merry Christmas and a very happy New Year!

(c) Innis McAllister

Thanks to everyone for reading Siren Voices over the past year. It’s been fantastic to have such warm and encouraging feedback.

I hope you all have a great Christmas break, and that 2011 is filled with love, luck and happiness.

SK <:0) x

the frequent flyer's* advent calendar

*frequent flyer – noun phrase: regular caller without good cause

The picture: A snowy street scene. An ambulance skidding along between iced cars, its headlamps wic-wacking, its emergency lights rippling blue and red, front and back. A generous scattering of glitter.

Hidden around the picture: twenty four numbered panels. Each one has a tiny scene behind it, with a little clip of dialogue as the panel is opened.

1 The lobby of a run-down hotel. Pete, the cowardly lion, sitting in a ruined tub chair with a couple of crutches propped against it. He is wearing a spivvy black leather jacket, dirty jeans, smoking a roll-up the size of a matchstick.
‘I can’t walk.’
‘How did you get down to the lobby?’
‘I can’t walk very far.’

2 A cold, curtainless room lit by a bare light bulb. A ginger tom delicately licking its paw over on the window ledge. Below him, such a scattering of rubbish it could be a sorting room at the recycling depot. Clara, staggering around with a half empty bottle of Perry cider.
‘The door! Don’t let Garfield out! Is he out? Don’t let him out!’

3 The landing of a concrete housing block. Mr Sylvester, rattling around in a dilapidated blue blazer and slacks, propped up against the railings, shaking a brown inhaler.
‘Hello chaps. I need another one of these. But Kathleen should be home soon.’
‘When?’
‘Oh I don’t know. I don’t like to pry.’

4 A long and narrow lift, sheet steel and graffiti tags, a fold-down chair in the corner. Mary, shuffling out in a leopard-pattern fur coat and red slippers, fag smoke billowing around her.
‘Oh hallo boys. Is it cold out? Will I need a hat?’

5 Dolly, Queen of the Wallop, swearing and cursing in her chair, as easy as an elephant that accidentally sat back in a laundry basket.
‘How are you, Dolly?’
‘Fantabulosa, darling. What do you think?’

6 Zachary, walking out of a seafront bar, escorted by a doorman. He casts sharp looks left and right along the street, a strip of fluorescent orange hair draped across the centre of his bald head, his combat jacket zipped right up, collar up, a Chad Valley chess box tucked under his arm.
‘I will speak with you in the language you know. If I revert, I apologise. But there are certain secrets I cannot reveal to you, many of them connected with this ancient box. You’ve heard of the Knights Templar? Then you’ll understand. Dark times, my friend. Strange, dark times.’

7 Ella Mae – careening forwards on her mobility scooter, her cowboy hat slipped back on her head and her eye patch folded up, a fag trembling in her lips. She tugs it out with yellowing fingers and smiles, revealing a dental graveyard of blackened stumps.
‘The bastards have banned me from Waitrose.’

8 Stanley, standing with one hand on the door, his tousled head turned back into the flat where a beautiful springer spaniel leaps from sofa to armchair.
‘Dookie! Decorum!’

9 Miranda, swaying in the hallway of a Glade-drenched bungalow, her eyes swimming in and out of focus behind the dirty lenses of her glasses. Josh Groban emoting on the DVD
‘We understand you’ve taken an overdose.’
‘Yeah?’
‘Will you be coming to hospital?’
‘No. Fuck off.’

10 Mrs Jessom, standing in the middle of a plush lounge, seemingly aghast to find herself in a quilted, leaf-patterned housecoat. In the corner of the room, beneath a display shelf of porcelain fairies, the life-sized mannequin of a small child in a red raincoat, her face to the wall.
‘I look a fright.’
‘No, no.’
‘I do. I look a fright.’

11 Janice, simpering in a WWF bed beneath a wall of WWF posters and WWF DVDSs. The quilt - Bret Hart, golden belt over his shoulder - has been artfully arranged to reveal teasing flashes of naked shank and brisket.
‘I was just getting ready to take a flannel bath when the cat head butted me and I fell backwards onto the bed.’

12 Jose, sitting on the steps of the entrance way, devouring a cigarette. In the half-light of the courtyard he could be a Spanish movie star, but close inspection reveals such a slack and dissolute face it’s all you can do not to bite your knuckle.
‘I see espiders. Everywhere. Espiders.’

13 Ralph, enthroned on a ruined chair amongst the detritus of his basement flat, his friend Bobby bustling about like a large, solicitous woodlouse.
‘He was knocked clean out.’
‘Clean out.’
‘And that’s some of his hair in the ashtray.’

14 Joy, a frail woman of indeterminate age in teddy bear PJs, mouthing instructions from round the corner of her curtains.
‘Whatever you do, don’t say you’ll look at her chinchillas.’

15 Michael, a falling down, fag butt Father Christmas in a foetid raincoat, slumped on a bench outside the Co-op, a festive carrier bag hanging on his zimmer with a packet of sandwiches and a litre of vodka.
‘Fuck off.’

16 Jenny, perched on the edge of her sofa like an Egyptian mummy unexpectedly reanimated, reaching down to where an equally ancient and over-stuffed black Labrador Maisy lies sleeping on her side.
‘ Maisy, Maisy, Maisy. Just look at you now. You dear and lovely little thing.’

17 Sonia, lying on the pavement beneath the bright department store display, shaking her arms and legs in a psychogenic fit, a small crowd watching from the taxi rank alongside.

18 Susan, a young, tidily dressed girl sitting patiently on the platform bench with a flowery bag by her side and a couple of fluorescent jacketed staff standing with radios right and left.
‘Hello Susan.’
She smiles pleasantly - ‘How are you?’ - and then slips the strap of her bag over her shoulder ready to go.

19 Kevin, sitting with his head in his hands at the kitchen table, a Tupperware box of medication in front of him.
‘I simply need you to write me out a prescription for the drugs I need.’
‘We’re not doctors, Kevin. That’s not what we do.’
‘Then I have no further use for you. Good day.’

20 Connor, bare-chested and exultant in the bedroom of a devastated squat, swigging from a carton, a white moustache of milk beading his upper lip.
‘I swallowed a razor blade.’

21 Jeannie, sitting cross legged on the double bed that takes up most of the floor space of the bedsit. Behind her, almost covering that wall, a spread of A4 photos printed off the computer - hazy, pixelated family shots of babies in prams and on laps, a sister and brother, school photos, a beach holiday.
‘And see that one there? Isn’t he gorgeous? My brother’s baby, such a cutie.’

22 Michaela, immaculately tragic in chiffon, taffeta and Maybelline gloss, one great hairy foot up on a Moroccan pouffe beside the Ottoman.
‘I’ve been such a fool.’

23 Cynthia, crying as she opens the door, waving us quickly inside, her Jack Russell skittering at insane speed around the room like an over-wound toy. Cynthia’s image is reflected a dozen times in the seventies-style hang of little round mirrors on the far wall.
‘I may have had a little bit to drink. It’s not a crime.’

24 Burt, a generously proportioned character balloon from the derelict collection, occupying three quarters of a four person settee, his t-shirt ridden up beyond the dreadful horizon of his abdomen. Above him, a wall of clocks begins chiming the midnight hour.
‘The pain? I don’t know. It’s there all the time. Sometimes I hardly notice it. Sometimes it’s completely gone. I don’t know. It’s just a pain-type pain.’
‘Have you seen your doctor?’
‘Him? Well, he’s not interested.’


All the panels stand open now.
I faxed my annual leave request through at midnight on September 1st last year.
This year, I get to be home for Christmas.

mr petersen

Mr Petersen’s short red hair stands up in spikes; with his soft round nose, widow’s peak, raisin eyes and tiny mouth, he looks like an illustration from a tougher Beatrix Potter: Mr Tiggy Winkle on the Social, his paws stuffed in the zipper pockets of a black puffa-jacket, trembling in the hallway of a sheltered housing project in the early hours.
‘Hello,’ he says. ‘I’m having a stroke.’
‘Let’s go inside and have a chat.’
He turns and shuffles ahead of us into the shared living space, a spare, functionally lit cube with a synthetic Christmas tree subsiding under a pile of tinsel in the window. Mr Petersen settles himself neatly on the edge of a battered armchair and waits for us to begin.
‘So. What’s happened tonight?’
‘I was just going to bed when I had this funny feeling. A numbness, spreading down from the right side of my face, round my mouth, and then on into my arms. I’d been reading about strokes and how to spot them. F – Face. A – Arms. S – Something. And T – erm - Trembling. So I thought I’d better call for an ambulance.’
‘Okay. Any pain anywhere? Nausea? Shortness of breath?’
‘No. Just this funny feeling.’
‘Let’s have a look.’
We run through the protocol.
‘Everything seems fine, Mr Petersen. But the fact remains you’ve got this funny feeling, so we need to check it out. Why don’t we go out to the vehicle and carry on there?’
‘Yes. I think that’s probably best.’
‘Any other health problems?’
‘Asperger’s Syndrome, Generalised Anxiety Disorder.’
‘Right. Have you got your keys, then? Phone – the usual stuff?’
‘I need to get them from my room. Will you come with me?’
‘Sure.’
We follow him back across the hallway to a scuffed white door. He smiles as he pushes it open.
‘Please excuse the mess,’ he says. ‘It’s not normally like this.’
The room is quite bare, except for isolated heaps of clothes piled up on the floor; the bed itself is a bare divan, with a lumpy, yellowing pillow at the far end.
‘Won’t be a moment,’ he says.
He scuffles across the room to sweep a bunch of keys from off a pine sideboard.
‘Do you watch The Bill?’ he says.
‘I thought it wasn’t on any more.’
‘Well – technically no. But are you familiar with one of the main characters, PC Amber Johannsen?’
‘I’m afraid not.’
Well – she’s been visiting me, helping me out.’
‘What – do you mean the actress?’
‘No, no. PC Amber Johannsen, not her spirit, but her character, from the spirit side. She comes and helps me in various ways.’ He gives me a shy smile. ‘Satisfies me in others. She said to tell you sorry she couldn’t take me up the hospital herself, but now she’s just a spirit she’s no longer able to drive the patrol car.’
‘Right.’
He nods, then busies himself looking for his mobile phone, picking speculatively through the mounds of clothes like a bird through piles of raked leaves.
‘Mr Petersen? Have you been up to A&E before?’
He pauses momentarily and looks across at me.
‘Yes. About two months ago.’
‘Was it for something similar?’
‘No. It was – for something else.’
He carries on hunting for his phone.
I pause for him to tell me, but he seems reluctant.
‘What was wrong that time?’ I say.
‘I tied a boot lace round my organ, rather too tightly,’ he says, suddenly straightening up. ‘Ah! Here it is!’ He holds up the mobile phone, and gives it a triumphant little wiggle in the air.

a thousand years

Thelma is lying on her side on the carpeted floor, her legs in the dining room, her top half in the hall.
‘I’m all right,’ she says, the rich orange threads of the carpet muffling her words. ‘I’m all right.’
‘I couldn’t get her up on my own,’ says Harold, her husband, hobbling on behind us after he let us in. ‘It’s my back, you see. I just don’t have the strength.’
Harold is as decrepit as his wife; their skin has the colour and texture of parchment, their hair as finely silvered as fibre optic strands.
‘Usually Carol from the cafe across the road comes over to help, but she’s in Tenerife.’
‘Lucky Carol.’
‘I just need a hand,’ says Thelma, more loudly. ‘That’s all.’
I give her the once over and everything seems fine.
‘Why do you think you fell, Thelma? Did you trip, or did you have a funny turn?’
‘It depends what you mean by funny.’
‘Did you go dizzy, or pass out?’
‘No. I remember everything with absolute clarity. Rather too well, actually.’
‘Okay. Let’s get you up, then. Shout if anything hurts.’
We help her sit, then after a moment, up into a chair.
‘I need to go up,’ she says. ‘I’m tired and I need to go to bed.’
‘We can help you with that,’ I say. ‘We just have to make sure everything’s okay with your blood pressure and this and that.’
‘I know.’
We settle into the routine. Whilst Frank does the obs, I start the paperwork.
‘So just talk me through what happened again, Thelma.’
‘I was on the phone. To my daughter. I finished the call, turned round and caught my heel. I went down quite slowly and I didn’t hurt myself in any way. But I just couldn’t get up on my own.’
She seems tearful.
‘It must be upsetting.’
‘Yes. Well. Yes. When your only daughter says she wishes you were dead, it is upsetting.’
‘What an awful thing to say.’
Harold totters over and drapes an arm around Thelma’s shoulder.
‘Don’t take it to heart,’ he says.
‘Well how can I not? What other way is there? “I wish you were dead”. She makes herself pretty clear.’
Harold looks at me and Frank, expecting some kind of judgement.
‘Families, eh?’ says Frank, curling up the steth and carefully storing it away in the bag.
‘Has this been going on a while?’ I say to Harold.
‘About a thousand years,’ he sighs, pulling a handkerchief out of his pocket and handing it to Thelma. ‘Ever since she married that Steven and had a child.’
Thelma looks up, suddenly animated.
‘What do you expect? When you marry a mental deficient, you’re quite likely to give birth to a mental deficient.’
The force of her enmity almost lifts her off the chair cushion, but the power of it passes as rapidly as it came, and she shrinks away to almost nothing.
‘I’m so tired,’ she says. ‘If you could just help me onto the stair lift.’
Leaning on my arm she hobbles across the hallway to the foot of the stairs. I drop the plastic seat and handrail into position, and Thelma shuffles on.
‘If you could walk behind. Just in case,’ she says.
‘Yep.’
She presses a button and the seat begins its slow ascent. After a few minutes she reaches the dark landing at the top.
‘I’ll be fine now,’ she says, without looking back. ‘Thank you.’
I turn to go back down.
Harold is at the bottom, tightly gripping the banister, looking up.

just the point

The police car rushes past, lights but no siren. Frank groans and sits upright again, puts the ambulance into drive and we pull away from the bus stop in the high street where we’ve been sitting waiting for back-up. The police car ducks off to the left down a narrow tributary; I watch its lambent blue lights splashing around the smaller shops there, the newsagents, fast food counters, antique shops and other, more obscure businesses, and against the dark windows of the maisonettes above. We park behind the police car, blocking the street. Apart from the diesel thrum of our engines, the street is utterly silent; it’s like we’ve been miniaturised and tossed into a dimly lit fridge.
‘Geezer with a knife?’ says one of the police officers, spanking his gloves together and working his chin deeper down beneath his muffler.
‘After you,’ says Frank.
‘Too kind.’
His colleague, bigger, more restrained, nods to us unenthusiastically as he rocks from side to side with his hands in his pockets, like an old robot trying to free up its joints.
‘Blimey O’Reilly,’ he says. ‘It doesn’t get any warmer.’
‘Yeah, but look at you with your vests and your whatnots.’
‘Jealous.’
‘Only in the winter, mind.’
The enthusiastic officer hops up the steps to the front door.
‘What number?’
‘Top flat.’
He runs his torch over the little stack of buttons, then confidently stabs the last. We hear it ringing from far off inside the building. He stands on the step waiting, his colleague wandering up behind. I fetch a dressings bag from the truck; by the time I’ve rejoined them, a young girl is standing by the open door, waving us in.
‘Right at the top I’m afraid.’
‘How is he?’
‘Oh. Calm, I suppose. I don’t think he’ll be any trouble.’
‘Has he still got the knife on him?’
‘No. I took it off him and put it back in the kitchen.’
‘Great. Look – we’d better go first.’
‘Okay. But please go gently. I don’t want to scare him.’
‘We’ll be discrete.’
But I’m not sure how discrete it’s possible to be for two police officers and two paramedics on a narrow and creaking staircase at two o’clock in the morning.
‘This door?’
‘No. There’s another staircase tucked just round the corner.’
‘Blimey.’
‘It’ll get your blood flowing again,’ I say, then immediately picture a guy standing waiting upstairs with a knife. ‘Or something.’

There is a small landing at the very top of the stairs and a battered door standing ajar immediately in front of it. The police officer knocks gently, nudges it fully open and stands for a second looking intently into the bright interior. Over his shoulder I can see a young man standing against the far wall. He has on a loose fitting jungle green t-shirt with a monkey face design, and a pair of pale blue jeans. The t-shirt has a palm-sized blood stain spread just below the monkey’s chin on the left.
‘Terry?’
‘Yeah?’
‘Terry – it’s the police and ambulance, mate. First things first – do you have any weapons on you right now?’
‘No. Gill took the knife.’
‘Terry we need to make sure that everything’s safe in here for you and us. Just put your hands up above your head and we’ll quickly check it all out. Is that okay? Will you do that for us right away, mate?’
‘Fine. Of course I will, officer.’
He raises his arms up, puts his hands flat on the top of his head, and shuts his eyes.
‘Good lad.’
The police officers walk briskly in; the older one controls Terry’s arms whilst the other pats him down.
‘Sorry to do this, Terry, but we have to take these things seriously.’
‘I completely understand, officer. But you needn’t worry. I’m not a danger to anyone.’
‘Okay. Good.’
We come into the room, followed by Gill, who goes to stand in the doorway of the adjoining kitchenette. We watch as the police officers finish their search. There is something unconvincing about Terry, an unsettling chill to his acquiescence that puts us more on edge than if he had been wilder and more emotional.
‘Okay, Terry. You can put your hands down now.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Have a seat.’
‘Thank you very much, officer.’
He sits down on a low sofa, his long legs drawn up and his hands resting inertly on his knees. With his floppy black fringe obscuring his face and his chin dropped down onto his chest, he looks like a sulky child dragged in off the street.
‘I understand you may have stabbed yourself tonight, Terry.’
‘That’s right, officer. I stabbed myself with a kitchen knife.’
‘Why did you do that, then, Terry?’
He shrugs, then inspects his bloodied hand, and begins gnawing at the quick of his thumb.
Gill folds her arms and leans against the doorway. ‘We had a quarrel and Terry got upset.’
‘Is that right, Terry? Did you have an argument?’
He nods.
‘Okay, mate. Will you let the paramedics take a look at you? See what the damage is? Would that be okay?’
‘If you think it’s necessary. But I really don’t think it’s that serious.’
The police officer nods to us, and we both step over to the sofa.
Frank hitches up the t-shirt and I shine a light on the puncture wound he reveals in his abdomen – a puckered little incision an inch below the lower line of his ribs. I gently probe around the wound trying to gauge the depth.
‘How far in do you think you went?’ I ask him.
‘Not far at all, officer. Just the point.’
We dress the wound, and then whilst Frank takes his blood pressure I go over to Gill in the kitchenette.
‘Can you show me the knife?’
She reaches up on top of the fridge-freezer and takes down a short handled vegetable knife, the very tip of the blade stained red.
‘He was in such a rage. I thought he was going to kill himself in front of me,’ she says, hugging herself.
‘Has he done anything like this before?’
‘I don’t know. We haven’t been together long.’
I go back into the lounge.
‘Terry? You need to get some treatment up at the hospital.’
‘Sure. No problem,’ he says, immediately standing up. ‘I’ve had some alcohol this evening, but I’m sure that won’t be a problem.’

***

Down on the ambulance Frank helps settle Terry and Gill in their chairs, then prepares to jump out again. ‘All right? Need anything? Throw another log on the fire, Spence, and let’s get going,’ he says. ‘See you the other end.’
He slams the door.
‘Okay. So. Can I take your last name, Terry?’
He looks up, staring straight at me for the first time, his gray eyes preternaturally clear in the flat white light of the ambulance.
‘Plunger,’ he says.
And before I make any kind of response – before I’ve made anything of it at all - he carries on excitedly, talking loudly and quickly: ‘Plunger, that’s right. Ha, ha. I can see you appreciate the correspondence. Little boy Plunger, plunging a knife in his stomach. Great. How appropriate. How deliciously ironic.’
Gill looks down.
‘Leaving scene two forty three,’ shouts Frank back through the hatch.
The ambulance rolls forward, and after a moment, the heater cuts noisily into life.

the list

The snow has retreated from the close, the only sign it was ever here, a slightly muddier grass verge, and isolated patches of ice caught like blown suds beneath the immaculate stands of privet, pyracantha, cotoneaster.
We rumble to a stop outside a bright little bungalow half-way down the road. The arrival of the ambulance causes a discrete riot of attention, with elderly faces appearing at various bay fronts and bedroom windows, curtains tentatively drawn aside, front doors opening. As I climb out, a woman in a cleaner’s apron stands absently by her front door folding a cloth over and over in her hands. She smiles sadly as I say hello, and nods in the direction of the number we want.
The door is open; I knock and we step inside onto a spread of crumpled polythene sheeting.
‘The snow,’ says David, a middle aged man appearing from along the corridor. ‘She hated all the mud.’
‘Where is she?’
He nods to a room behind him. His wife Alison appears in the doorway of the kitchen at the end of the corridor. ‘It’s no good,’ she says. ‘She’s gone.’
Deidre is sitting in a neat little upright armchair, slumped over on to her right side, her legs drawn inwards, her right arm crooked up with her hand pressed against the side of her face, like someone who fell asleep trying to solve a problem. She has on a tightly bound hairnet, a fluffy blue dressing-gown over flowery yellow pyjamas and hand-knitted woolly bootees. Caught napping. You would think our inconsiderate barging-in would wake her up. But she is as rigid to the touch as a waxworks model; she has been dead these twelve hours or more.
‘When was the last time anyone spoke to Deidre?’
‘Last night, just before she went to bed. Everything was absolutely fine. Nothing untoward. I couldn’t get hold of her all morning, but she’s got this emergency button so we weren’t that concerned. But when I still couldn’t get her at lunchtime and her best friend Rene hadn’t heard anything, we came round.’

We go into the dining room to write out the paperwork and contact the police. David and Alison sit with us, but she quickly excuses herself to make some calls.
‘I must cancel the cleaner and the gardener,’ she says. ‘I don’t want them to learn from a police car outside or a note on the door.’
‘Here’s the address book,’ David says, opening a tattered black object as worn at the corners and closely covered with writing as the Rosetta stone. ‘Good luck.’
As I fill in the ROLE sheet and patient report form, Frank chats to him.
‘There’s very little sign of distress, David,’ he says. ‘I mean, you never know exactly what happened, but my feeling is she got up in the night feeling unwell, made her way to the front room, just had time to sit herself down in the chair and then – boom – had a heart attack and was gone. I really don’t think she would’ve suffered at all.’
‘Really? Do you think it was that quick?’
‘I’m absolutely convinced.’
‘Thanks. I’d hate to think of her suffering.’
‘She looks so peaceful. Just like she fell asleep.’
‘I hope so.’
Around us on the dining room table are heaps of unwrapped presents, newly constructed decorative cardboard boxes, stacks of half finished Christmas cards – and in front of all this, two long lists: presents and cards.
‘Your mum’s a very organised woman,’ says Frank. ‘I’m impressed.’
‘If you think she’s organised you should see Alison,’ says David. ‘Incredible. I just fall in behind.’
‘Got it,’ says Alison from down in the kitchen.
‘See what I mean?’
Frank looks over the list and then puts it back on the table.
‘I haven’t even started thinking about my Christmas shopping, let alone wrapping it.’
‘She’s got family all over the place,’ says David.
I pass over one of the sheets for Frank to countersign, and glance over the Christmas list: bubble bath, gloves, gardening book, scented candles, jumper, cushion covers – each item with a name alongside it, and a tick.
The doorbell rings.
‘That’ll be the police,’ says Frank, getting up to show them in.
‘What am I going to do with all this stuff?’ says David.
I don’t know whether he should send it or not, but at that moment Alison comes into the dining room again with the address book in one hand the phone in the other. We both turn to her. She’ll know.

a helicopter

The ambulance car is waiting for us at the start of the track.
‘I’ve tried making it along there, but I grounded out almost immediately. I’m not even sure you’ll make it in the ambulance, but have a go. Let me just jump in the back.’
The stables are about a mile distant, along a rough bridleway only a few inches wider than the ambulance. Its surface is deeply pitted with waterlogged holes and awkward banks of compacted earth; it leads off ahead of us, winding out into open country, the easy cut of the valley and surrounding hills greying to distance.
‘Do we know any more?’
‘Just what you have. Thirty year old, kicked in the head by a horse. She’s been fitting but stopped last time I heard. Sounds bad.’
As soon as Cal jumps aboard and slams the door behind him, Frank sets off down the track. The ambulance pitches violently from side to side; scraping against the elder trees, hawthorn and blackberry thickets either side.
‘We’ll never get her back along here in one piece if she has a head injury,’ shouts Cal from the back, through the hatch. ‘It’s going to have to be a helicopter job.’
‘Or maybe a horse,’ says Frank, slowing to take a cruel sequence of pits and banks that threaten to topple the ambulance off to the right and down a steep embankment. ‘Jesus – they don’t make it easy, do they?’
More by luck than judgement we make it to the muddy courtyard of the riding stables. A red-faced woman in a quilted green jacket stuffs her mobile away and waves us in the direction of the stables behind her.
‘In there,’ she shouts. ‘Mary’s with her.’

The ground leads steeply down into the stables, its old stone flags slippery with mud and muck. Inside, a woman lies on the ground moving her arms and legs spasmodically, like a person wrestling snakes in a nightmare; above her, a tall black horse looms over her from the stable gate, its massive head sleek and impassive.
‘Don’t let it kick me again,’ the woman says as we crouch down beside her. ‘Get it away.’
But she keeps her eyes closed, and seems unable to answer any of the questions we put to her. Mary strokes her forehead clear of the long wet strands that are plastered there, soothing her with platitudes.
‘It’s okay, Susan. Help’s here now. You’ll be all right.’ Then she addresses herself to us.
‘Susan was here on her own putting the horse back in its stall. She was kicked in the head and fell to the floor unconscious. When I came in about five minutes later she was having a fit. That passed, and then she seemed to keep moving in and out of consciousness. Apparently she had a head injury a while ago, had a CT scan, but I don’t know what came of that. Her husband’s on his way. He shouldn’t be long.’
I take hold of Susan’s head and try to stop her moving it, but she fights whatever I try to do. Frank plays a torch over her, but despite the mud and water neither of us can see any trace of a wound.
‘Kicked in the head, did you say? By this fella behind us?’
‘So she said. Why? Don’t you think so?’
‘It’s difficult to tell. But you’d expect to see something. They’re pretty mean.’
The horse stares down at me.
Suddenly Susan starts thrashing and moaning again.
‘She’s fitting again,’ says Mary.
‘I don’t think this is a fit,’ I say.
‘What is it then?’
‘I don’t know.’
I ask Susan to open her eyes; she holds them closed. Frank gently pries them open, and when he shines his light across them the pupils react normally to light. In any other situation you could be certain this was a put-on. But the dramatic scene makes us uncertain.
Cal and Frank bring the scoop stretcher, spinal board and collar, and we set to work immobilising Susan. Mary stands back and makes another call. The horse stands looking over the stable door, eyeing the comings and goings with formidable glassiness.
A man appears in the stable.
‘Susan,’ he says. ‘What’s going on?’
But he hangs back on the periphery, showing as much animation or concern as the horse.
‘Can you tell us about Susan’s previous medical history?’
‘Her what?’
‘What does she suffer with? Any heart problems, asthma, that kind of thing?’
‘She was kicked in the head by a horse a couple of months ago.’
‘And what happened then?’
‘She had a series of scans and whatnot, but they didn’t find nothing.’
‘Is she on any medication?’
‘No. But she’s been having fits since.’
‘And what have the doctors said about that?’
‘Not a lot. I don’t think they know.’
‘They didn’t put her on medication?’
‘No.’
The horse sees the latest entrants before me; two more ambulance people slipping down the slope into the stable: a paramedic practitioner and a CCP.
‘What’s the story?’
I hand over to the CCP and he begins his examination. On the pretext of going to the truck for equipment I take Mary aside. She seems nervous; the more I nod and smile, the more guarded she becomes.
‘How long have you known Susan?’
‘Not long. I only started work here a couple of weeks ago. Why?’
‘Is there anyone else around who knows a bit more about her?’
‘The regular stablehand should be back soon. She’ll be able to fill you in. Did I do wrong? What are you thinking?’
‘No. You absolutely did the right thing.’
‘But you think she’s putting it on?’
‘I don’t know. She may be.’
‘Why would she put it on? Why would she do a thing like that?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘That’s crazy.’
‘I may be wrong. We have to play safe.’
An anaesthetist arrives.
‘Where’s the patient?’
I show her to the stable. She gets the low-down from the CCP. The PP nods to me.
‘The helicopter ETA is five minutes. We need to direct it into that field over there, and get her away as soon as.’
‘How is she doing?’
‘Not sure. She’s certainly combative. Could be cerebral irritation. Difficult to tell in there.’
‘Absolutely.’
‘Give us a hand with this.’

A minute before the helicopter arrives, the other, regular stable girl catches my attention, smoking nervously on the fringes of the scene. She flicks some ash on the floor and nods for me to come over.
‘Is she really going away in a helicopter?’
‘Yeah. If she’s got a head injury, the drive back along that path would kill her.’
‘How much is that going to cost?’
‘A fair bit.’
‘And all this? All these – people? It’ll be thousands.’
‘It is what it is.’
She takes a drag of her cigarette and watches the comings and goings in the stable for a moment. Then she drops it on the earth and grinds it out with her boot.
‘She’s faking it,’ she says.
‘How do you know?’
‘She waited until we’d all gone home, and the only person who’d be here to find her was that new girl.’
‘Has she done it before?’
‘Not like this. But other stuff. I can’t believe she’s taking it this far. A helicopter!’
‘What can we do? We have to treat for the worst case scenario.’
‘But a helicopter?’
Just then a low, cutting drone becomes apparent, and we see the lights of it, three bright spots coming towards us from out of the low grey banks of cloud to the east.
‘Here it comes.’

***

Six of us carry Susan out to the helicopter, our boots sucking in the mud, our free arms rising out to counterbalance the weight. The force of the rotors spinning above us as we approach the craft thumps in my chest; we load Susan in head first, then hurry away again. A moment later, we stand on the edge of the field and watch as the helicopter powers up and rises gracefully into the air; with its navigation lights and the lights showing from inside, and set against the coming dusk, it is a beautiful thing, a UFO hurriedly leaving earth and heading away into the darkening reaches of space.

We follow its progress across the sky, then start collecting the remains of our kit together. We throw the whole muddy ensemble into the back of the ambulance and set off back down the lane. In the hour it’s taken us to complete this job, the character of the place has changed. The pools of water in the potholes hold the last of the day’s light; they lead away before us, isolated craters of liquid blue glass.

I call Control. I tell them we’ll be a while.

home

The storm began lightly enough, but its flakes soon fattened as the night came down, falling thicker and faster, until the air was an endlessly shifting fabric of black and white, and every edge and surface rounded with snow. It was a soundless coup. Within the hour, cars were struggling to find traction on the town’s steep roads; within two, buses were abandoned by the side of the road, and lines of traffic fumed in spinning, herring-bone jams through the city centre, drivers out and arguing the angle, as animated by the storm as the ragged bands of pedestrians shrieking and picking their way home.
As the night went on the storm increased its grip. The cars at the side of the road were gradually subsumed, every motionless object merging with its neighbour beneath the steady white mantle. The smallest detail was transformed – the spokes of a bicycle wheel, railing points, a spider’s web, the upper edge of a handle – the leading edge of every line delicately picked out in white; whilst above us, reaching up like monstrous filter feeders, the branches of the trees, heavy and ragged with snow.

An exhausting night. Even the simplest job almost impossible. At one point the ambulance slid to a halt on a road with a difficult camber; it took half an hour to get moving again, and that was only because the people from the houses either side came out with brooms and shovels to help.
‘I got these clip-on spikes for my boots,’ said one of the men, snugly wrapped in a quilted jacket and bearskin hat. The ambulance spun forward and I fell over. He helped me up. ‘I expect they’ve sold out now, though,’ he added as I brushed the snow off my trousers.
Seven jobs in twelve hours – falls in the street, falls at home, a user smacked out on heroin collapsed at a bus stop, a man hit by a sliding car – each one perilously close to our last. We approached the end of the shift cold and wet and dispirited.
We were both wondering how we would make it home.

‘Good luck, Spence,’ said Frank as he threw his bags into his car. I was still pushing the snow off the roof of my battered old Peugeot 205. His house was just the other side of town; mine was fifteen miles away, up country.
‘Thanks mate. I’m going to need it.’
But earlier in the year I’d made it through. I was confident I’d be okay.

Just a mile from the station, the temperature warning and stop light came on.

I pushed my hat further up on my head and glared at the dashboard. No, come on, not now. I decided to drive on and see if the lights would go out. They stayed on. I drove further. I could pull over at this service station and let it cool down. But then it might not start again. I passed the station. This was a clear stretch of road; the further I went, the further I had to walk back to any of my friends who lived in town, and the nearer I got to the next service station along the route. I gripped the steering wheel tighter and peered through the windscreen. I tried to fool the dashboard into thinking I wasn’t bothered. I glanced down without moving my head. The lights were still on. Stop. But I had to get home. I had to sleep. I decided to press on as far as I could. There was a truck in front and behind; I was in a slow moving convoy of vehicles struggling north along the main route; if I stopped now it would be a long, cold wait in the drifts at the side of the road, or a dangerous walk back to safety. I drove on, shouting encouragement at the car. The lights stayed on. Stop. I was almost at the next service station now. But I was so desperate with lack of sleep, as whacked out as the man we’d dragged out of the snow at the bus stop earlier. Something like madness came over me. I didn’t care if the car exploded. I didn’t care if the whole thing went up in flames. I pictured myself, lit up like a sparkler, spitting and hissing through the snow storm. I drove on. The lights stayed on. Stop. But I was in open country. If I pulled over now I really would be in danger. I gripped the wheel and drove on, sliding from side to side through the rutted ice pathways of the road. I needed to make up some time. I needed to take a shortcut. I came to a lane that I knew would be difficult but insanity had dropped before my eyes like the blades of a plough; by force of will I would make it up this lane, make it home. I turned left into an ice tunnel, the ceiling a frozen wave, surfing through the tube, swearing and slapping the wheel, skipping across the runnels of ice and skittering through the lying snow like a rapid fox in the wilderness. I made it to the end of the lane. The car was filling with smoke, a smell of burning rubber and oil; it was probably coming from me, the vapours of my madness. I didn’t care if the car exploded around me, so long as it left me with four wheels and something to steer them by - I had to get home. I skidded out onto a clearer road and carried on. There were no other cars. No one was that crazy. If I piled into the side or swerved into a ditch that would be it for me. But I had to get home and I had to sleep. I had to. This shift had to end in whatever way was left to me. A mile to go. The car was poisonous and I opened a window. I tore off my hat and threw it behind me. Half a mile. The engine was stalling. I skipped down the high street like a meteor coming to earth. Five hundred yards. A hundred. The house. The house. The engine burbled like a neglected kettle and suddenly cut out; I had just enough momentum to coast the last fifty yards and stuff the smoking bonnet into a heap of snow. I grabbed my bags and rolled out in a cloud of blue grey smoke, taking down great lungfuls of the beautiful, beautiful, crystalline air.
A Viking burial for the poor little pug.
And me?
I was home.

1985

Midnight, and the moon rides low above us, trawling the world for heat. We smack and rub our hands, scan the cottage with a flashlight. Frank raps the knocker, and the sound echoes along the black lane.
A moment, and the door opens.
‘Thank you so much for coming,’ says Edward, stepping aside and ushering us forward. ‘Come in. Come in. You’ll catch your death out there.’
He turns and we follow him into a cosily lit kitchen diner. The ancient brick fireplace in the far wall arches over a wood burning stove, where a bright heap of logs blazes and snaps. Around it, pinned across the exposed brickwork, lithocuts of dogs leaping through winter scenes; watercolours of elm trees, wheat fields and crows; and family photos, children and adults, separate, together, their forms and colours merging, ghosting beyond the glass.
‘It certainly is bitter tonight,’ he says, settling back into his chair. There is a cup of cocoa on the oak side table, a pair of bifocals, and a book of poetry by Seamus Heaney face down beside it.
‘Brass monkey sends his apologies,’ says Frank.
‘So what’s been happening tonight, Edward?’ I say, squatting down beside his chair.
‘Well I started feeling this pain in my chest,’ he says, describing a little circle with his index finger in the middle of his jersey. ‘I got a bit worried and phoned the out of hours doctor, and he said he was going to pass it on to the ambulance, because he thought it was just possible I might be having a heart attack. I don’t think I am, though. Do you?’
‘I don’t know. Have you got the pain now?’
‘No. Sod’s law, of course. Almost as soon as I hung up, it seemed to go.’
‘There you are. We don’t even need to turn up and we make people better,’ says Frank, going over to the stove, standing in front of it and raising the tail of his jacket. ‘Ahhhh! That’s more like it.’
‘I don’t want to be a nuisance, chaps. I’m so terribly sorry for calling you out on a night like this.’
‘Don’t worry yourself about that, Edward. The most important thing is to make sure you’re okay.’
We go through the usual questions for chest pain, take a few readings.
‘We need to get you out to the vehicle and do a proper ECG. Is that okay?’
‘Yes. Of course. Whatever you think. Would it be okay if I just called my daughter Stephanie and told her what’s happening?’
‘Sure. Go ahead.’
‘Will I be going to hospital, do you think?’
‘I’m afraid so. You can’t be too careful with chest pain.’
‘Righto.’
He dials the number.
Frank puts our equipment back in the bag and I write down a few details.
Edward gets through.
‘Hello, Steph? It’s daddy. Look the paramedics are here and they think it’s probably best if I go with them to hospital. I’m so sorry to be a nuisance, dear. But I’m perfectly all right. The pain’s gone and I’m feeling okay. Please don’t worry yourself… No, no. I’m absolutely fine. I’ll be there for a few hours. I’ll let you know when I know more….. No, darling. It’s late and you’ve got work tomorrow….. Honestly darling, it’s very sweet of you but…. well, if you’re sure. I’m so sorry. I’ll see you up there, then? Love you.’
He rings off, gently puts the phone back in its cradle. His hand lingers there for a second.
‘She’s a sweetie,’ he says. ‘And she’s got work tomorrow.’
‘Duvet day,’ says Frank. ‘I’ll write her a note.’
‘Would you? That’s kind,’ says Edward.
He stands up and Frank hands him his jacket.
‘Jane would say I was making a fuss over nothing. And she’d be absolutely right, of course.’
‘Is your wife…?’
‘She died a few years ago, now. Quite a few years, actually. Nineteen eighty five.’
He pauses, his jacket half on, inclining his head, as if someone was calling to him and he couldn’t quite hear. I go to help him finish dressing, a log cracks on the fire, the moment passes.
‘Shall we?’ he says, then reaches up to a hook by the door, takes down a hat, and pulls it on firmly. ‘Lay on, Macduff.’

battle of the slingbacks

The house at the end of the street is strangely elevated, sitting on a steep rise like a grim urban decoration on a grassy cake. A tuck of steep concrete steps zigzags down from the front door, a black iron handrail running along the right side.
Rozka is sitting on the last step, holding a bloody handkerchief to the side of her face. Pavel, her partner, is speaking excitedly into a mobile; he steps out into the street and waves his free arm in the air. As I pull over, he grabs the handle and hauls the door open.
‘Whoa! Just slow things down a bit,’ I say, pulling the keys out of the ignition. ‘My colleague just needs to get a bag out of the back.’
‘Please. My wife,’ he says, stepping back onto the pavement, glancing up and down the street, into the sky, as if he were expecting a fleet of other vehicles and a helicopter. ‘She fell.’
‘Let’s have a look.’

You would think the two of them had been heading out to a fancy dress party if it wasn’t nine o’clock on a weekday morning; Pavel as Tony Montana, Rozka as – who, exactly? An ankle length black fur coat with a feathery black trim, ruched white blouse with pearls and earrings, a bone-clasped stack of crow black hair, blood red lipstick, and a pair of slingbacks so precipitous she could by-pass the stairs all together and step out of the house straight on to the street like a circus performer leaving for work.
‘I tripped,’ she says, looking up with her one good eye.
Frank checks her over. It looks as if she stumbled on the last step, pitched forwards onto the pavement, and gave herself a glancing blow on the side of her face which broke her sixties style glasses, giving her a small but stitchable cut just below the right eye. Luckily, everything else is fine.
We clean and dress the wound, help her up.
‘Love your shoes,’ says Frank. ‘I’d need a ladder to get into them, though.’
She smiles.
‘I know they’re a bit over the top, but I can’t help what I like.’
Pavel bowls across. As he talks, he waves his arms in the air to illustrate the magnitude of the accident. His shirt is unbuttoned to the belly, and the ropes of gold chain he wears around his neck tug and tangle in the thick grey curls of his chest hair.
‘You will kill yourself one day. One day you will fall from the very top of the stairs straight onto your head and your brains will be splashed across the road. How will that be, hey? How do you think that will be? What am I supposed to do then? I love you. You’re my baby and I love you for always. But I’ve told you and you do not listen.’
‘Pavel?’ says Frank, lowering his head. ‘If you wouldn’t mind just easing off a bit. Let’s try not to get too fired up.’
‘Sure, boss. Of course. You know best.’
But just as he steps away to make another call, Rozka starts talking at him rapidly and bitterly in Slovakian, and he is pulled back into the fray. We help her into the ambulance, and on the pretext of taking some observations in private, we gently close the door on him.
As soon as they are separated, Rozka resumes her placid demeanour.
‘Thank you for coming,’ she says. ‘It’s all so stupid.’
‘Pavel is obviously upset.’
‘He gets very excited about things and he hates my shoes. He’s always saying they’re too tall. But I like them. I’ve never had an accident before.’ She shrugs. ‘It’s just an unlucky day.’

Five minutes later we let Pavel on to the truck. He bounds on.
‘Thanks for everything, guys,’ he says. ‘Thanks.’
The two of them stare at each other, then Pavel reaches out both hands, clasps her face, studies her intently for a second or two at arm’s length, then kisses her gently on the forehead. It’s a touching moment. But just as Frank gives me the nod and I open the door to get out, Pavel hurls himself into another tirade.
‘Steps… shoes… brains…’
I close the door behind me, and put the radio on in the cab.

the man in the cupboard

A policewoman intercepts us as we pull up outside the house.

‘It looks like Chelsea might be suffering alcohol withdrawal,’ she says. ‘We got a call from her to say there was an intruder in the house. When we got here, she was outside in a bit of a state saying he was hiding in the cupboard. Mate – it’s a tiny little box for the electric meter. A cat wouldn’t fit in it. Anyway, we had a good look round the rest of the house and reassured her. Didn’t find a thing. It’s all quiet now. She’s upstairs on the sofa with my colleague. What else can I tell you? We’ve been here before, nothing serious, all alcohol related. She was meant to go the substance misuse people this morning to start on a programme. We gave them a call and the woman there said to call you guys, because if she’s having serious hallucinations and hearing voices, she should probably go to hospital. Anyway. See what you think.’
The policewoman moves off to make a few calls. I knock on the door, shout up ‘Ambulance!’ and we trudge up a flight of worn blue stairs to the living room.

‘Oh my good god, look who’s coming up now,’ says Chelsea. ‘That’s all I need. I’m not sick you know. You’re not carting me off to hospital.’
She is sitting on the edge of the sofa, a straight line from her hips to her eyes. She is a curious mixture, a cut-up collage of a woman; dance instructor, northern comic, clairvoyant. Her eyes are lightly underscored with sleeplessness, and she holds herself perfectly still as she talks, but despite the strange context of our visit and a living room crowded with uniforms, she seems remarkably sanguine.
I pull up a chair and lay the clipboard across my lap.
‘Chelsea? We heard a little bit from the police about what happened, but I’m still not exactly clear. Can you tell me what’s been going on?’
‘Right. What it was – this man broke in to the house and wouldn’t go. He was chasing me round, saying stupid things, you know, whispering, singing and carrying on and stuff. I kept trying to get him out but he just wouldn’t go and I got really scared. Then he jumped in the cupboard and I could hear him whispering behind the door. So I ran out and called police. When they got here he’d gone, thank god. All I need is to change the locks and I’ll be fine. Honest. There’s nothing else going on. I’m not mad.’
‘The thing is Chelsea, there are some aspects to the story that don’t quite add up. You know this cupboard the man hid in? The police say it’s really, really small. Too small for anyone to hide in. So from our point of view, you can’t blame us for thinking maybe what you were having was some kind of hallucination.’
‘Once he was out I was fine. I just need the locks changing.’
‘The police said you’re due to start an alcohol detox programme soon.’
‘Yeah. I was supposed to go this morning, but all this business stuffed it up.’
‘When was the last time you had a drink, Chelsea?’
‘Four days. Maybe five.’
‘I think it’s a brilliant thing to do. It’s definitely worth it, but it’s going to be tough. You know more about this stuff than me, though. All the side effects.’
‘Yeah. I’ve done it before. I know what happens.’
‘So you know you can suffer with hallucinations – incredibly vivid, you can’t tell them from the real thing – but hallucinations nonetheless.’
‘Yeah.’
‘So do you think it’s possible this man in the cupboard could’ve been a hallucination? Horrible and scary, but not what you might call real?’
‘Yeah.’
She stares at me.
‘But now he’s gone, you can all bugger off.’
‘Let’s just check your blood pressure and what have you. There are other things that can upset your balance, and we ought to rule them out before we decide what to do next.’
‘Fair enough. Only hurry up ‘cos I need to go out and get some fags.’
Frank runs through the procedure whilst I fill out the paperwork.
The flat is geometrically tidy, everything laid out on an invisible grid. It’s like sitting in an Etch-O-Sketch drawing of a room, angular and flat, with a spikiness to the air that even the bright morning sunlight spilling in through the window does little to warm.
‘Everything checks out,’ I say.
‘Good. I could’ve told you that and saved you the bother.’
‘The only thing that’s unusual is this story about the intruder, though.’
‘I’ve told you. He was behaving very odd, all the things he was saying, the way he said them. I was scared. Anybody would be. You would be. And then when he shut himself away in that cupboard, I didn’t know what else to do but get the police. Now he’s gone, I’ll be fine. Honest.’
She smiles at us pleasantly.
‘All I need do is change those bloody locks,’ she says.

I know what you're thinking

We pick our way up to the battered front door through a tangle of rusted bike frames, boxes, nests of frayed rope, cans, bottles, food cartons, broken kitchen units - surely the high-water mark of some catastrophic flood. Frank presses the bell, and the loud clatter of it activates a monstrous dog, raging in a room deep within the house. It’s followed immediately after by the shouts of two men, so incoherently excitable they could be two cavemen trying to coral a bear. The barking is eventually muffled, there’s a couple of victory shouts, and then the front door is pulled open with a judder that almost puts the frame in.
A cadaverous man in parka and jogging bottoms looks us up and down.
‘Ambulance,’ says Frank, pleasantly. After a pause, he adds: ‘Are you the patient?’
‘Me? No. I’m Scott. You want Tony.’
The man stands aside, and Tony staggers towards us from the interior gloom.
‘Thanks. Thanks for coming. Thanks. I wondered when you’d get here. Do you want me outside, or shall I just sit down here. Woah! Almost went! Don’t want to make things worse, do I? Where shall I sit? On the floor? I’d never get up! Hey! I’d never get up! Do you ever feel like that? I bet you do. Who are you anyway?’
‘Just slow things down a bit, Tony. Have a seat – here.’
Frank sweeps a pile of newspapers from off the third stair up, and helps Tony to sit there.
Tony sits blinking in the hard light from the garden, flicking his head about like a chicken looking for grain. His right eye is grossly swollen and purple, but he doesn’t seem aware of it.
‘What happened to you?’ says Frank.
‘Me? Why? What happened to you? I’m okay. I’ve had a bit to drink – I admit. Why beat about the bush? It’s what I do. It’s who I am. I like to drink – have to, actually. Don’t I, Scottie? Scottie?’
He reaches out, grabs Scott by a pocket, and almost pulls himself off the step and onto the floor.
‘Scottie here’s my best friend. I don’t know where I’d be if it weren’t for Scottie. Don’t worry about the dog, by the way. He wouldn’t hurt a fly. He’d bite off its head and rip it to pieces – hah! We locked him up for you. They told us you were scared of dogs.’
‘We’re not scared of dogs, Tony, but we’d rather they didn’t get in our way.’
‘Fair enough, squire. I know what you mean. I used to be scared of dogs, but Scottie showed me how to treat them. Didn’t you Scottie? You showed me? You stand there – grrr! Show them who’s boss. Fuck – what’s the matter with my eye?’
‘I don’t know. Have you had a fall at some point?’
Tony starts jabbing at his eye whilst Scott props himself up against the balustrade.
‘He fell over yesterday. Wasn’t knocked out, everything seemed fine, but this morning when he got up his eye was out here so I called you lot.’
‘Have you had anything else other than alcohol, Tony?’
‘Me? Yes. I have. I had some cornflakes.’
Scott sighs. ‘If you mean drugs, no he hasn’t had any drugs. We don’t do drugs. He’s just – always like this.’
‘Okay. Well. Let’s get you out to the ambulance and have a good look at you, Tony.’
‘I don’t need an ambulance, friend. Honestly, there’s nothing wrong with me. Fuck – why can’t I open my eye? What’s wrong with my eye?’
‘You’ve had a fall and it’s become very swollen, Tony.’
‘Where’s the mirror? I’ve got to see this.’
He jumps up and staggers over to the hall mirror, a filthy smear of glass on the opposite wall. Next to the mirror are two large and blurrily pixellated photographs of a man staggering around in an alleyway.
‘Fuck! Fuck! I look terrible. Why are you showing me this? Why? What are you doing to me? Is this how I’m going to look the rest of my life? Christ – I’m a monster. Scottie! Look at this! Have you seen this? Jesus.’
‘Come on, Tony. Mind your step.’

***

Tony buzzes around the ambulance like a fly in a bottle.
‘Guess what my daughter’s name is? Go on – guess.’
‘I don’t know. Hayley?’
‘Evelina Stephanie Pattendale. Evelina Stephanie Pattendale. ESP. That’s why I called her that. ESP. Because that’s how we communicate.’ He taps his head and grins. ‘She’s not here though. She’s at college doing biochemistry. Gets it all from me. I know what you’re thinking. I’ve not always been such a fuck-up. I used to work in the industry. Yeah? But I can’t help having a drink. Where’s the harm in that? It’s a big enough world. Christ – my eye! What are you going to do about my eye?’
‘Just leave the dressing alone, Tony. The doctors will take care of it at the hospital.’
‘Hey. Do you want to hear a joke? This is fantastic. I love this joke. Evie told me this a while back. I love this joke.’
‘Go on then.’
‘You start.’
‘I thought you were going to tell me a joke?’
‘Okay then. Be like that. Knock, knock.’
‘Who’s there?’
‘Fireman.’
‘Fireman who?’
‘Sam! You know!’
He leans forward, creased at the waist with a strangely silent kind of laugh. Then he straightens back up again, suddenly serious, glancing about the ambulance with his one good eye. He starts asking questions like a hyperactive child: ‘Why is that yellow? What does that button do? How old are you?’ It’s impossible to talk to him; he is on to the next question before I can answer the last. At the hospital it’s the same, except when he’s in the chair and I’m wheeling him into the department, he seems unable to resist saying whatever comes to mind, utterly lacking that vital, social margin between a thought and its expression.
We pass a young man handcuffed to a prison officer, smoking.
‘Hello mate. What’ve you done? Hey? What’s your crime? He looks bad. A right handful.’ The prisoner cuts him with his eyes.
Just inside the automatic doors, a junior doctor stands at reception waiting for notes.
‘Hello, baby. You look great in green. Doesn’t she look absolutely fantastic! Yeah – and you know it.’
The doctor flushes and frowns as we pass.
I try to dampen down his behaviour, but nothing I do or say makes any difference. Everyone within range of that one good eye is a target, his tracer line of inappropriate free-association rattling off around the department.
‘Cubicle eight,’ says Frank, striding back towards us.
Tony looks up.