PART ONE
Tyrone Muth’s eyes followed his wife as she crossed the lounge. His face wore the guilty half-smile and tight skin of a child who had just broken his mother’s favourite vase; full of remorse and need. Genevieve (named after her father’s favourite film) failed to return his look. She found it difficult to hide her contempt anymore.
Tyrone (named after Tyrone Power, his mother’s favourite actor) returned to the antiques show that had become a staple of his daily routine and dropped in on the inane chatter between a man with a moustache and a woman who claimed to have given birth to a frog-child and released it into the Thames at Maidenhead (‘Go free, frog-child,’ cried the woman as she liberated her slimy offspring). The man with the moustache rolled his bespectacled eyes (red spectacles today, to match his jaunty bowtie) and laughed at the prospect of a spring invasion of frog-human hybrids racing along the sewers to bite the behinds of fat women sat on the toilet while reading Heat magazine.
It went something like that anyway.
He rarely listened to the words anymore. They seemed to glide dyslexically into each other on a layer of verbal helium and bump into his ears in a random gloop of tinnitus excess.
Genevieve returned with a carrier bag in her hand, her blue uniform trousers on the verge of escape, restrained only by the Tupperware that held the dry green salad she had made for tea.
‘I’m off,’ she said and leaned over him.
Tyrone leaned forward and kissed her. He lingered on her lips and tried to remember the last time they had more than brushed in cold passage.
‘Bye, Genny. Have a good shift. I love you.’
She withdrew. ‘I love you too.’
(‘Do you, Genny? Do you love me? Or are you just going through the motions, like eating or reading or taking a shit? Do I mean more to you, my love, than taking a shit?’)
Genny tied her scarf up and buttoned her coat around it. ‘Don’t forget that frozen stew. I’ve taken it out of the freezer, so you’ll have to eat it or it’s ruined.’
‘I will. Thanks, Genny.’
‘And don’t sit in front of the TV all day thinking up those silly poems.’ Tyrone’s eyes flicked to the small, black book on the arm of the chair. ‘The local paper’s on the table. Look at the jobs page. I’ll see you later.’
(‘You will, love. I’ll be the man with the smoking gun lying at the base of his chair, his brains sprayed across that vile orange lampshade. It’ll be my way of thanking your mother for leaving it to us.’)
Without a backward glance, Genny bolted for the front door. Tyrone heard her scrabbling like a fire-trapped dog at the lock in her haste to get out.
He looked at the empty space and released the breath he had been holding since he had opened his eyes that morning. ‘(I hate you) I miss you,’ he said and returned to the man with the jaunty bowtie.
*
Tyrone glanced in his rear-view mirror to see if the queue had diminished. It hadn’t. From the huddle of bodies at the door to the lone latecomer at the end of the queue, it must have been about forty yards. The thick grey cord of people huddled against the wall of the Job Centre as the frail sun shed its diluted heat upon the late-winter world.
He tried to fight the feeling of disgust that cloaked him at this time every Friday morning. He tried to convince himself that he was different, better, that he had more to offer than those who strained against the bracing wind which fought the sun for their attention.
That was why he stayed in the car until the doors opened and the fish were engulfed in the net of failure and despair cast by the good ship DotGov, that ghostly trawler that roved the seas of despondency and scooped up those that floated aimlessly in its wake in the hope of tender rescue or dredged for the carcasses of those who had drowned.
He looked at his watch. Exactly ten and the doors weren’t open. In the summer this was never the case. Those inside wanted the doors open to allow a breeze to pass through the stifling interior. In the winter or the rain, those behind the doors stood with keys in hand and took pleasure in playing Flashman, doling out the punishment to those too indolent to work.
At two minutes passed ten, Tyrone saw the front of the queue get sucked in as the doors opened. Those who were too lazy to queue and had been standing around at the periphery of the throng simply jumped in and were pulled along by the surge. No one objected. People in Marks and Spencer or in prison queued; people with a purpose queued. The reason people here queued wasn’t out of politeness or purpose or a desire for order, but out of habit, because there was nowhere else to go, because they were leaning against the wall, because they were chatting to a friend, because they might remain unseen and unshamed, hidden in the human graffiti. Perhaps it wasn’t even a queue, just a line.
No one wanted to be there, no one was forced to be there, but they came nonetheless, because confirmation existed within these walls, an acknowledgement of their continuation, though buried behind numbers and no more significant than scaleworms on a hydrothermal vent in the unlit depths of the ocean. This was the one place in the world where their names would be called and for a few moments they were significant in life, if only because they gave purpose to some insignificant other. In that call, for a fleeting second, there was hope, there was the knowledge that if you were on a system somewhere, then your binary existence cast a minute shadow and made you real.
There was also comfort in the despair of others. As long as at least one other felt the vacuum, then you were not so badly off. To have died alone on the Titanic, the sole trumpet player deserted by violin and oboe, would have felt like a betrayal, would have somehow tarnished the sacrifice, but to die in the presence of another, to share the fear and the despair and realise the absurdity of it all, made it almost worth it.
And they came here because they had to. If they wanted their seed, they had to stay in the cage.
Tyrone waited until they were all gone. Then he waited another minute to allow the queue inside to shorten. It was a well-practiced routine, one that gave him the least time in the local equivalent of the Pacific trash vortex, among all those washed-up souls who had been carried by the currents to be stranded upon this distant reef, in sight of land, yet still so far out to sea.
He got out of his car and felt the nausea rise within him. It was his problem, he knew that. The nausea was based on memory, a stress reaction that had taken years to refine, that now acted as his personal alarm, to warn him of when he was leaving his comfort zone.
He looked around the supermarket car park for security men. Confident that they weren’t patrolling, he took purposeful steps. The Job Centre was no more than two hundred yards away, over some immature bushes and a small wall. Nobody had ever said anything to him about his parking abuse (at the start, he had gone in to the shop to buy chewing gum so that he had a receipt to prove that he wasn’t just using the car park to go to the Job Centre) and he doubted anybody would, but he shouldn’t be there; it was for shoppers, not drop-outs and layabouts. It pricked at his conscience that his situation forced him to save money on parking and break the unspoken codes of the civilised world. Each time he returned to his car, he checked the wheels for clamps, then checked his wipers for a firmly rooted ticket, but they never appeared. One night he’d had a dream that he had returned to his car to find four security guards urinating on the vehicle, one at each wheel, the steam of their warm urine misting up the cold, clear day, their faces hard in condemnation of his abuse.
After leaving the car, he would always take the first few steps as if he was going towards the shop, just in case he was being watched then, as soon as he hit a crowd or came to the car park exit, he would veer off in the hope that he had either got lost in the mess of bodies desperate for that supermarket special or in the hope that security and their spies had simply lost interest in him.
He crossed the road without incident. Two weeks ago, as he slipped into his Job Centre Dreamstate and drifted into the road, he had nearly, unintentionally, caught the number Forty-seven. The driver had mouthed something he assumed to be very rude at him through the windscreen and Tyrone had apologised profusely.
This time he held off the Dreamstate until he had crossed over.
The doors of the Job Centre, stained with beer and excretions, daubed with ten layers of government issue green paint, warned him of the threshold he was about to cross. Once over, there was no turning back. He pulled open the door and felt his nausea rise, felt the palpitations kick at his chest like a trapped squirrel, felt his humiliation clothe him in the dirt of guilt and self-loathing.
The porcine security man was picking his nose again (‘Morning, sir. If you could just remove your balls and leave them on the silver tray. You can collect them on the way out, when they will have been drained of any residue of manhood’). He didn’t care who saw him picking his nose. He invariably examined his excavations then flicked them towards the floor.
His small eyes washed Tyrone as he walked past. I have a job, they said, and you don’t. I pick my nose freely, on other people’s time, and get paid for it. I am a pig in shit.
Tyrone wondered unwillingly if the pig ever copulated. What kind of woman would copulate with a pig? Still, there was always someone for someone. No matter how ugly or smelly or fat or thin or mad or perverted or happy or sad, his mother used to say, there was always someone for someone. She never added ‘even you’, but he always felt that she wanted to.
He ascended the stairs. The sound of his feet echoed against the bare steps and then climbed the walls like insects. It was as if he was accompanying himself. There was strange comfort in knowing that he was not alone, that he had an echo of himself for company.
Through two more sets of doors and he was into the great chamber, the carpeted hall where echoes died and footsteps were nothing more than the scrapings of ghosts. He gave his crumpled signing-in book to a long-haired man who stood at a podium as if he was about to lecture them about their distance from God. The man said, ‘Thank you, sir. Just have a seat at the far end.’
Tyrone nodded. The far end. The Far End. If he went beyond the Far End, would he disappear off the edge?
He sat upon one of the cheap sponge-filled chairs and felt the bones of the chair against his coccyx. He slipped a little further into Job Centre Dreamstate.
He closed his eyes and listened to the sounds that flitted about his head like flies. Phones rang, names were called, muffled conversations fell dead upon the carpet like mosquitoes in a cloud of DDT, doors hushed open and closed again, their victims trapped in the system’s web.
He pretended that he was at a railway station, upon a busy platform. The platform was one from his childhood, all wood and hanging baskets, sash windows and the scent of coal. All the voices were travellers, on their way to somewhere, whispering their excitement. The telephones became the precursors to announcements: ‘The next train is the 07.38 to Ascot, Didcot, Oxford and Heaven. All those wishing to carry on to Paradise, please use the last three carriages.’
He saw the benign yellow face of a train trundling into the station, heard the passengers’ feet shuffle towards the edge of the platform, suitcases, full of lives, being dragged along and dropped.
The train pulled in and the crowd surged, grasped and turned the warm brass carriage door knobs that fitted so snugly into the palm; up with cases and children, feet onto the running board and a quick-step into the musty, dusty compartment. Smell the train.
The guard blew his whistle and waved his green flag. The train left. Tyrone turned his head and saw the railway lines curve away into the distance, between the long grasses and nettles and cow parsley and the million unseen insects that flourished along the man-made trail. The bumblebee head of the train grew smaller with every second that passed.
He breathed deeply, inhaled the hot summer air that made the railway lines ripple. In Dreamstate, it could always be summer; the summer of childhood, of heat haze, butterflies and dragonflies, of ice cream that had to be chased down the cone before the sun snatched it away, of flowery dresses and short-sleeved shirts, the smell of sun cream...
‘Tyrone Muth.’
...of dilute orange and sandwiches wrapped in foil, tea in a flask, milk in a can, biscuits from a tin...
‘Tyrone Muth.’
...of the freedom to run through fields, fall back into the long grass and feel the hot sun upon your face and know that life will never, ever...
‘Tyrone Muth!’
...be this good again.
His eyes snapped open. The squirrel kicked out. He caught a small regurgitation of coffee. He swallowed the warm, frothy liquid and felt his nausea resurface.
(Why don’t you just f...) ‘Here,’ he said and walked to the desk, behind which a dull-eyed bucket of disappointment sat with her chin in her hands.
‘I called you three times,’ said the woman.
‘I only heard the once,’ said Tyrone. ‘Sorry.’
‘We’re busy. It doesn’t help to keep us waiting.’
‘My mother used to say that waiting was good for the soul.’
‘She didn’t work here then, did she.’
‘No, she didn’t.’
‘You’ve been out of work for some time now.’
‘Yes.’
‘You were a civil servant?’
‘Yes.’
‘Made redundant?’
‘Yes.’
(Are you just a lazy bastard?) ‘You’re signing for your stamp. You don’t get any benefits?’
‘No.’
‘Well, we’re changing your signing-in time.’
‘To what?’
‘To twelve-thirty.’
‘No.’
‘No?’
‘No. Twelve-thirty isn’t convenient for me.’
‘Do you have plans at that time?’
‘Always.’
‘What sort of thing?’
‘Well, I do rather like this antiques show on the BBC...’
‘I’m afraid that’s not good enough.’
‘It’s the best they have to offer at that time of day. I’ve become used to it.’
‘No, I mean, watching television is not a good excuse. You’re supposed to be looking for work.’
‘That’s my lunch break.’
‘Lunch break? From what?’
‘Looking for work.’
‘Well, I’m afraid we require you to sign on at that time from now on.’
‘What’s happening at ten?’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘What’s happening at ten? What’s changed that means that I can no longer sign on at ten?’
‘Nothing. We sometimes change the times.’
‘Why?’
‘Why?’
‘To what end? To what end do you feel the need to inconvenience me?’
‘We don’t see it as an inconvenience...’
‘But it is inconvenient. I’ve told you it is. I want to see the strange man with the colourful glasses and matching bowtie. While on my lunch break. From hunting for work.’
‘You have to turn up at the time we say. And we need you to go to JobbyBoys for training.’
‘Training?’
‘Yes. They have a two hour session for twelve weeks about computer literacy and to teach people how to look for jobs on the internet.’
‘How to look for jobs on the internet? I’ve been looking for jobs on the internet for three years. I built the computer upon which I search for jobs on the internet. I’m registered with so many job sites that my job could be registering with job sites. No. I won’t do it. I will not sit in a room with a bunch of do-gooders and dead-enders learning something that I already know. It’s a waste of my time. It’s a waste of their time. It’s a waste of all time.’
‘You are obliged under the terms...’
‘No. That’s one thing I’m not. I am no longer obliged. I refuse to be obliged any more. I have grovelled my way through work for too many years to ever be obliged again. I have done the courses that you have asked me to do. I have talked to the people to whom you have asked me to talk. I have written the letters, the e-mails and my name in the dust on the mantelpiece. Just give me the paper to sign and I’ll go.’
‘I’m afraid you have to agree to the new...’
‘No.’
‘I’ll get my manager.’
‘You can get Manchester United’s manager for all I care. Now, just give me the paper to sign so that I can get out of this ridiculous place.’
‘No.’
Tyrone stood. For the first time he noticed the security guard standing behind him. ‘What are you going to do? Stop my pension? I mean, you can’t fire me. Are you going to stop my state pension?’
‘You must...’
Tyrone leaned on the desk. ‘No, I mustn’t.’
The woman called to him as he left, but he was no longer prepared to listen. Every two weeks he had submitted to their supercilious bullshit without question, in the same way that he had submitted to his employers and their need for him to dance at their command time and again.
When they had let him go, he had felt relief. It had no longer been about the money, it had become about the constant cigarette burns applied to his soul by the number crunchers who saw him and those he worked with as little more than disposable assets.
He had been glad to get out, to feel the physical and mental relief, but over time the anger of unemployment, of uselessness, of being surfeit to the country’s needs, of each new rejection of employment, allowed the bitterness to bite deeper into him and led him to despise a world towards which he had previously felt lazily ambivalent.
He sat in his car and shook. He abhorred raw emotion, its physical manifestation, the fact that it revealed to others something that should stay deep inside, private, like a well-manicured lawn, edged by immaculate roses and disease-free dirt, gated off from the rest of the world.
He felt shame. Shame at his anger, at his loss of control, at his inability to fight back. He had been mugged; the keys to his garden had been snatched away and strangers had danced naked upon his regulation grass and dew-dusted flowers. They had found a way inside and for that alone he loathed himself, perhaps more than he loathed them.
He wished he still smoked. He had given up along with his wife when she had fallen pregnant (fallen? Had she slipped and risen with child in some holy linoleum conception?). He still missed those moments when he could simply walk away and have five or ten minutes to himself and feel the tension drain from him like fat from the Sunday pork. But he had given up and he found himself able to climb the stairs a little easier and walk to the post-box with breath to spare, wake up without the cough and taste food.
The child had died. It had never made it out of the womb alive. Genny had gone full-term and had to deliver a putrid, grey knot of wasted love.
What would he tell Genny of today? Should he tell her anything? What could she do? Take a few more steps away from him? Shout? Dip into silent anger? Swim in the silky, milky moisture of disgust and despair in which she had cocooned herself over recent times? Maybe she would understand. Maybe she would be proud of him, that he had stood up for himself. Maybe she would grab him and beat him and force him to crawl back to the Job Centre and beg their forgiveness, because it was bad enough to be on one income now, but to be poor when you are old...Oh, Lord, to be poor when you are old.
He undid his seatbelt, got out of the car and went to the supermarket, where he bought some Golden Virginia tobacco, rolling papers and a lighter.
*
Tyrone sat upon a bench in a local park and made another attempt to roll himself a cigarette. The first one had failed miserably and slipped through his fingers like a worm. He couldn’t stop shaking. He hoped it was from the cold, but he suspected that he was still reacting to what had happened at the Job Centre.
There was also the mildly disconcerting feeling that, somehow, he was rebelling. He wouldn’t allow the thought to run rampant through his mind, but he knew that it was in there somewhere, hidden behind his medulla, a hand quivering on his pons, ready to leap out at the slightest drop in his guard.
With the tip of his tongue showing pinkly between his lips, he concentrated on the final part of the rolling. Smooth the tobacco, make it even, no clumps to hinder the flow, not so thin as to be redundant, not so fat and tightly packed as to be little more than a dried turd between his fingers – nobody wanted to be seen with a dried turd between their fingers.
Satisfied, he brought the filled paper up to his mouth and stroked his tongue along the glued edge. He caught a whiff of the tobacco and opened his nostrils. It was sweet and full of pictures.
He put the completed cigarette between his lips, picked up the lighter (already in position on the bench), and lit it.
He inhaled deeply and waited to cough. He didn’t. He waited for nausea to drown him and cast him vomiting to the moist grass. It did not.
It felt wonderful. It was as if he found himself in the back of his father’s old Rover 90, as if he was on a railway carriage back in the 1960s, as if he was back at school, hiding from the teachers and the prefects, smoking in the trees at the end of the playing fields, as if he had just kissed Helen Tressill on the wall outside his house, as if he had just passed his driving test and the world had become his oyster, as if he was free. It was a taste of revolution.
There had never, ever been anything as good as a cigarette.
He looked across at the great house that so long ago had lost its charm, had been deserted and fallen into disuse, that had found new life in public service, a memory of Raj and a testament to the decline of empire, to the glory of wartime victory, a symbol of all that was once equally hated and adored.
Whatever its sins, it was now forgiven and admired for the service it performed; as a museum of local interest, for the freedom people had to walk through its grounds, for its Georgian walls and Victorian gardens that produced goods for its tiny shop, for the museum of regimental life and arts and crafts and furniture it housed between layers of patinaed, creaky, wooden stairs.
For all its sins, it lived again.
Tyrone took a last drag of the cigarette and threw it to the ground. It died in the damp grass.
He leaned back and ran his fingers across his tired, stubbly old face. It was like running them across a sheet of Braille, full of stories unseen, undecipherable unless you knew how to read the page; here, the remnants of a smile, there, the scar of a death, there, the tender trench of a lost fight. His life was ingrained in his skin, his whole life.
He took out the tobacco and papers and rolled himself another cigarette. His hands had stopped shaking.
There was something to be said for poverty and wealth. Each had its own freedoms and its own restrictions. To live in a house such as this, with ha-has and lakes and gardens that rose and fell like an emerald sea. To eat freely, knowing that the cost of a grape had no impact upon the next day’s wine. To regard the new TV as a frippery and discard the old oven as unsightly. To have no regard for action or consequence unless it encroached upon your sacred lands. To see your reflection in your children’s eyes and find comfort in what you saw.
Or to exist in a shabby castle and to eat without regard to the benefit, only the cost. To know that, as far as you were concerned, wine never left the vine and bread went up by thirty pence in a week. To regard the old TV with the same reverence as when it was new. To pull oven-ready chips from the belching, grinding fan-oven and know that this was just enough. To have deep regard for every action today for the impact it will have on tomorrow. To see your reflection in your children’s eyes and see the fear in your own eyes shine back.
Each had its own privilege and perspective, its own freedoms and restrictions, its own journey and its own destination, its own cliff-edge from which to fly or fall.
Tyrone could make claim to neither. He fell into the grey drizzle in between, where he eluded poverty and wealth, equal partners in his submission. He could no longer claim benefits because he had used up his entitlement. He was to all intents and purposes unemployable because he had had the audacity to survive beyond the age of fifty and the queue for jobs before him stretched to the edge of Hell. The job he thought he’d had for life had jettisoned him and he had had no control over it at all.
He could die, right now, on this damp park bench and leave no mark upon this world. Genny would be entitled to feel relieved. Their mortgage would be paid off and the life insurance and pension he had built up (for what it was worth) would pay out. It occurred to him that he was actually worth more dead than alive.
The thought cheered him. He was actually worth something. This leathery flesh and these thinning bones had value. A bit like a horse on the way to the knacker’s yard; glue, horsemeat, horsehair, stuffing for a sofa, maybe an ashtray or two from the hooves, the saddle and tack left behind and the rentability of the empty stable. Obviously, the horse didn’t have the comfort of knowing all this. How could it? It was a horse. But he, Tyrone Muth, knew it because, unlike the horse, he was a thinking animal and recognised the value of his death.
He lit the newly rolled cigarette and felt the smoke bite his lungs. ‘The fault, dear Brutus,’ he said as he watched some ducks bump and ski onto the river, ‘is not in our stars, but in ourselves.’
*
‘Did you sign on?’ Genny lowered Tyrone’s plate in front of him and went to fetch her own meal.
‘Yes,’ he said. He looked at the rather wilted broccoli and felt a certain empathy.
‘What did they say?’
‘Say?’
‘Did they say anything? About work?’
Tyrone picked up the gravy and poured some onto his plate. ‘It’s the Job Centre, Genny. They never say anything about work.’ He felt a butterfly cross his heart.
‘Don’t be ridiculous. They must do.’
‘Not to me.’
Genny came and sat down and drained the final dregs of gravy. ‘Did you tell them you’d applied for that job at the school?’
‘It was on the paperwork. They looked at the paperwork. They said nothing.’
Genny cut the fat off her pork, washed it in gravy and ate it.
Tyrone looked at her. He wondered where she had gone.
‘It would help if you shaved. Presented yourself a bit better,’ said Genny.
‘They don’t care how I look. Besides, I think I’m going to grow a beard.’
Genny put her knife and fork onto the edge of her plate and rested her hands upon her hips. ‘Why? What would you want to do that for? What good’s a beard to an unemployed man?’ She said it without condemnation, merely as if it was simple common sense. What good was a beard to an unemployed man?
‘I’m not sure of your point,’ he said as he stabbed a slightly grey, soft cerebrum of cauliflower.
‘Well, it’s not going to get you a job, is it? You’re nearly sixty. A beard never got anybody a job. Especially a grey one. A haircut...that’s different, but a beard...you just can’t trust men with beards.’ She narrowed her eyes. ‘They’ve got something to hide.’
‘What about Geoff Capes? Or Brian Blessed?’
‘One of them plays about with budgerigars and the other is known for little more than shouting. Apart from when he was in Z-Cars, but he didn’t have a beard then.’
‘I see,’ said Tyrone. ‘Sigmund Freud?’
‘Pervert.’
‘Karl Marx?’
‘Subversive.’
‘Sean Connery?’
‘Bald as a coot. Compensating.’
‘So no beard is a good beard?’
Genny shook her head. ‘No. And, on top of that, it wouldn’t suit you.’
‘Why not?’
‘It would make you look old.’
‘Does that matter?’
‘It does to me. I don’t want people to think I’m married to an old man.’
‘What about when you’re an old woman?’
‘Don’t be personal.’
‘Well, I’m growing one and that’s that.’ Tyrone thought at this point that he may as well go for broke. ‘And I’m going to start smoking again.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous. What’s got into you today? It can’t be a mid-life crisis, you’re way past that. What’s the matter with your pork?’
Tyrone pushed what was left of the pork aside. ‘Bit tough.’
Genny stared at him long and hard. It had come a little late, but it was reassuring for Tyrone to know that the stare was there.
‘You’ve met some tart down at the Job Centre, haven’t you? She’s turned your head. Given you ideas above your station. Is that it?’
Tyrone placed his knife and fork in orderly fashion upon his half-empty plate to signal that he had finished eating. ‘Look at me, Genny. Take a good look at me. What would any woman see in me? I look like one of those dogs with the wrinkled faces...’
‘What, pugs?’
‘No, not pugs. Those other ones. The expensive ones.’
‘Shar Pei?’
‘That’s the one. I look like one of those. I’m not exactly a clothes horse either, am I. I have no prospects. If you learn anything in the Job Centre, it’s that you shouldn’t have high hopes of anyone you meet there. You shouldn’t have high hopes of anything come to that. And I’m not getting any younger. The older I get, the more likely I am to die. That’s the simple fact. Now, who in their right mind would settle for a package like that? A half dead, badly dressed, wrinkly dog.’
At that point, as if to emphasise what he had just said, Tyrone flailed at his chest and collapsed to the floor.
*
If, thought Tyrone, the beeping should stop, would that mean that I was dead? Who is it for, this constant, beep...beep...beep? It’s not a reassuring sound, he thought, so it can’t be intended for me. It was like listening to a game of Pong played by two unwaveringly accurate players who were never destined to score, let alone win.
He sat up a little and looked around. Three other men were on cardiac monitors. Their lives were also Ponging inevitably away. They lay upon their trolleys with a mixture of wide-eyed relief and fear upon their pale, sweaty faces.
Perhaps we are the game, thought Tyrone. The one who stops ponging first is, naturally, the loser. Maybe the staff are partaking in some sort of sadistic sport, watching through a secret window or on cameras to see which one of us croaks first, while money passes through their hands like some seedy, sweaty Macau betting joint, as they wager upon the various shouted odds; the fat one to go first - evens; the red-head to go first – 6-1; the old guy with half a beard – odds on. No one with half a beard wins. Ever. What’s the point in half a beard? It’s not even a full beard and who wants one of those?
The ponging suddenly changed to a long, sonorous beep and for half a second Tyrone believed himself to be dead. A nurse appeared and checked the leads from the monitor to his chest.
‘I thought I was a goner then,’ he laughed uneasily.
‘So did I,’ said the nurse, who replaced the electrode patch and reattached the lead.
‘I don’t suppose there’s any chance of turning the volume off, is there?’
The nurse looked at him as if he had insulted her mother. ‘Oh, no,’ she said. ‘How would we know?’ she asked. ‘How would we know?’ And with that she disappeared.
Know what? wondered Tyrone.
He looked at the other men who had suddenly taken an interest in him. ‘Just a loose...thing,’ he said, pointing at his chest. ‘Scared the life out of me.’
‘Not quite,’ said the redhead.
Genny came into the resuscitation room with a bag in her hand and sat down on one of the grey plastic chairs next to Tyrone. ‘How are you feeling?’ she asked as she unbuttoned her coat.
‘Fine.’
She cast a wary eye towards the monitor. ‘What happened?’
‘They’re not sure yet. I’ve been having these palpitations for a while. They think it may be something to do with that.’
‘Palpitations? What palpitations? You haven’t told me about any palpitations. You should have told me. I am a nurse.’
‘You work in the urology outpatients’ department.’
‘What does that mean? Just because I don’t run around like a blue-arsed fly on a ward all day doesn’t mean I don’t know a thing or two. I mean, palpitations. That’s basic, that is.’
(Go away, you hag) ‘I’m sorry,’ said Tyrone. ‘I didn’t mean it to sound the way it did.’ He leaned over, careful not to detach the leads and looked at the bag at her feet. ‘What’s the bag for?’
‘You, of course. They’ll be keeping you in, I should think. Just in case.’
‘In case of what?’
‘Well, you know...’
Tyrone shook his head. ‘No, Genny, I don’t know. In case war breaks out in Iceland? In case there’s a run on the demand for jam and they don’t want me to run the risk of being jamless at home?’
‘You’re just being silly now. Facetious, that’s what you’re being.’
Tyrone banged the palm of his hand against the trolley. ‘I’m not. I’m not being facetious. I’m being trapped against my will. What happens if they turn the volume down on this machine, eh? Will the hospital veer off course and smash into an iceberg? Will the evil spirits which that constant ‘beep-beep-beep’ is supposed to ward off suddenly charge through the place like those things from Harry Potter, sucking the souls from all whom they pass?’ Tyrone felt himself becoming louder and more irritated. ‘What if I don’t want to stay? What if I didn’t want to lose my job? What if I don’t want to go cap in hand to the Job Centre every other week and face their condescending attitude and frozen mind-set? What if I am nearly sixty? It’s not my fault I don’t live in the world of Logan’s Run, is it? Although, I am beginning to see the advantages of termination at thirty.’
It was the Job Centre all over again; that feeling in his gut that simultaneously made him want to vomit and empty what felt like a car from his bowels. His body and mind were taking on lives of their own, out of his control, and yet, perversely, coming together in rebellion at the outside world. He could feel his pulse inside his chest, less of a squirrel and more of a bull, as it rammed its horns into the back of his ribs, its feet thundering against his sternum as it tried to break free into the field of the resuscitation room and raise havoc.
‘What if...’ he said and turned away from his wife.
The other two men stared at him. His monitor was displaying a complete disregard for his feelings by Ponging out an SOS which suggested that there was indeed an iceberg ahead.
‘Why don’t you just (piss off) go home and wait?’ said Tyrone. He felt tired. ‘I’ll phone if I need you.’ He reached out and touched Genny’s hand. She withdrew. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘It was never meant to be this...difficult.’
Genny smiled thinly. ‘You’ll be fine,’ she said. ‘They can work wonders with hearts nowadays.’
‘That’s not quite...’
Genny stood and buttoned her coat. ‘Phone me if you need me. Or get the hospital to phone. Keep me up to date.’
She leaned forward as if to kiss him, then changed her mind and left.
‘That was a bit rude’ said the redhead. ‘I’m sure she meant well.’
‘Oh, (fuckoff) mind your own business,’ said Tyrone.
*
The doctor, a young man with unkempt blond hair, a deranged tie and a rainbow of stains upon his white coat, sat on the chair vacated by Genny and went through the dossier that the department had built up on Tyrone since his arrival in A&E. The poor lad was clearly exhausted. When he blinked, it looked as if he was dragging his eyelids across grit.
‘Well,’ he said. ‘It would seem that you have AF.’
Tyrone nodded his head in the same way that somebody who didn’t understand would do. ‘A what?’
‘AF,’ repeated the doctor.
‘What’s an F?’
‘No,’ said the doctor patiently as he clung onto wakefulness, in much the same way that a man hangs from a cliff by clutching a daisy. ‘AF. Atrial Fibrillation. It’s when the heart starts to flutter irregularly. That’s what gave you those palpitations you told us about. It’s quite serious, but very treatable.’
‘That’s good.’
‘The worry is that it can lead to a stroke and further heart problems unless it’s treated. So we’d like to keep you in for a couple of days and run some tests...’
‘No.’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘I don’t want to stay in.’
‘Any particular reason?’
‘Yes,’ said Tyrone.
The doctor waited. ‘Can you be more specific?’
‘Yes.’
‘But you’re not going to be, are you?’
‘No.’
The doctor rubbed his gritty eyes. ‘You do understand that, if you delay treatment, it may have serious consequences? If you’re in hospital, it sort of pushes you to the front of the queue, whereas, if you wait for an outpatient appointment, this may take time. You can take medication to keep the blood thin in the meantime, but this merely reduces the risk; it doesn’t remove it.’
Tyrone nodded. ‘That’s fine. I’ll take an aspirin. They said on the news the other day that it cannot only prevent blood clots but may also reduce the risk of cancer. Two bullets in one gun, so to speak.’
‘Did they mention,’ asked the doctor, ‘that it can also increase the risk of a cerebral bleed and gastric bleeding? Did they mention that a 2011 Danish study showed aspirin to be of no use whatsoever in preventing stroke in AF?’ He closed the folder and gave Tyrone his full attention. ‘I’m not saying this to scare you. I’m saying it so that you know that, at best, the aspirin is a very temporary solution and that prescribed and monitored anti-coagulant medication is a better way forward.’
Tyrone shrugged. ‘There are pros and cons to everything, doctor.’ He looked at his watch. ‘It’s ten to six. I’ve been here all night and really would like to go home.’
The doctor smiled. ‘I can relate to that, Mr Muth. I will have to write in the notes that you’re unwilling to stay but will attend the outpatient department. In the meantime, we have agreed that you will take seventy-five milligrams of aspirin a day. I will also make an urgent referral to the cardiac consultant. Is this a fair compromise?’
‘I believe so,’ said Tyrone. ‘Thank you.’ The doctor failed to make the rapid escape that Tyrone had expected. ‘Anything else?’
The doctor pursed his lips thoughtfully. ‘What about lifestyle? Any stress? I heard that you told the red-headed gentleman over there to mind his own business.’
‘I did,’ said Tyrone. ‘I did tell him to (fuckoff) mind his own business.’
‘May I ask why?’
‘Because he was being nosey,’ said Tyrone.
‘Forgive the assumption,’ said the doctor as he crossed his legs, leaned his elbow against the back of the chair and rested his hand upon the pillow of his palm, ‘but you don’t strike me as the type to tell anyone to mind their own business. Granted, it’s not the most relaxing atmosphere in here, especially when you feel like you’re about to vomit your heart out through your throat, but I also saw your wife as she left and she was a bit tearful.’
‘Really?’ The doctor nodded. ‘I’m sorry about that. We haven’t exactly been seeing eye to eye recently. I haven’t been seeing eye to eye with anyone. You know how it is.’
The doctor shook his head. ‘No, I don’t. Would you like to talk to someone about it?’
‘I’m not big on friends...’
‘I meant a professional.’
‘Oh, you mean one of those head chaps. No. It’ll work out, one way or the other.’
The doctor looked at Tyrone for a long second then smiled. ‘If you change your mind, come and see me and I’ll help set something up.’ He lifted his head wearily from his hand. ‘You’re free to go, Mr Muth. Would you like me to get someone call you a taxi or ring your wife?’
Tyrone held up a hand. ‘Let’s not wake the sleeping dragon, eh. I’ll walk. It’s only a couple of miles and I need the fresh air. Perhaps my wife could come back for the bag later. She works in outpatients. Would that be alright?’
‘Of course. I’ll put it in the staff room. By the way, I think your watch has stopped. It’s ten to eight.’
The doctor picked up the bag and shuffled off to see the next victim.
Tyrone looked at the other two prisoners yet to be paroled. Red-head was asleep. Pity, he would like to have apologised to him.
The fat man looked yellow pale, dead, yet his monitor skipped along nicely in the life-affirming rise and fall of the electronic pulse.
He put his watch to his ear and gave it a little shake. It had stopped.
A nurse came in and detached Tyrone from his monitor.