The Long Forgotten Page 9

  A woman’s head appeared at the top of the crevice, scattering a nest of lizards across the cool face of the rock. He wondered how long it had taken her to get there from heaven. She repeated, in a mesmeric broken English he heard in his veins, that he would be OK, that he would be all right, that he should not give in to sleep. An angel? Sent by Susan? And her face, as it came closer to his, was a work of fragile intricacy, like the centre of a flower, simple and perfect. He loved her then, as quickly as that. He knew because his heart unfurled, the way he’d heard they do.

  That’s all he could remember of his rescue. Powerful drugs flooded his system, but weakness kept him under. Most of his vital organs had malfunctioned. Dehydration had come for him, but he had not been taken. The angel had seen to that.

  The medical care was good and thorough, though the hospital was basic. Mould grew in the corners by the floor, and the bedrails were sticky with a nameless gunk, the residue of another’s suffering. For those first two weeks, whenever Peter drifted into the open water of consciousness, all he wanted to do was clean. Other patients paced the ward during the night, screaming or scraping bedpans along the bars in the windows. Short of any real, sustained feeling, he still managed to be grateful that they mostly left him alone.

  As soon as he was well enough to be moved, Hens, who’d apparently left Chile after visiting the hospital a few times, had the university pay to fly him home, where he woke with a sudden and stunning clarity he had not experienced in over seven weeks, in a hospital ward in Manhattan with Susan holding his hand.

  ‘Where is she?’ he said, the words stuck in his dry mouth.

  ‘The nurse?’ Susan reached for the emergency call button.

  ‘No, not the nurse. The woman.’

  ‘What woman?’

  He grabbed her hand and squeezed it white. ‘The woman that rescued me.’

  ‘How the hell should I know?’

  He wanted to yank the drip from his arm and run to the exit, but pulling back the sheets to see the pale ropes of legs he didn’t recognize, he knew he’d never make it.

  Susan tipped a glass of ice water to his lips. ‘I’ve been worried sick, Petey, worried completely sick. I can’t sleep. I can’t eat. I can barely sit down.’

  ‘Susan . . .’

  ‘And to think you told me none of this was dangerous. I should have handcuffed you to your goddamn radiator.’

  ‘Susan!’ She stopped, swallowed, looked up and down the ward as though expecting security to come and escort her from the building. ‘I need to know what happened to me.’

  ‘All I know is they searched for you for over a week. Thought you’d fallen or something, maybe broken a leg. But they were pretty sure you’d be dead when they got there. They said that even the guys who lived there thought no one could survive. Normally, anyway. Then some lady found you.’

  ‘Some lady?’

  ‘Yeah. And get this. She’s a flower hunter too! What are the chances, huh? That a woman, an actual woman, has got the same stupid pastime you do. When they told me that I didn’t stop laughing for the rest of the day. She was looking for the same thing you were, apparently. I don’t think she thought she’d find a man trapped in it, though. My God, you’re an idiot.’ She chewed the tips of her hair, her attention waning fast.

  ‘How do you know all this?’

  ‘Your friend Hens told me. He said the lady stayed with you at the hospital until they could track him down and he could get there. Something a little odd about him, isn’t there?’

  ‘So he met her?’

  ‘Yeah, I guess. And you’re aware you’ve left your business in the hands of a moody teenager, right? I’ve been passing by the lockup to check on her, and either I’m getting on her nerves or everything gets on her nerves.’

  ‘Probably the former. Look, Susan,’ he said, ‘I need you to get Hens for me.’

  ‘I can’t do that,’ she said. He turned to face her but was beaten back by a sharp pain in his lower abdomen.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘He’s not here.’

  ‘Not in the hospital?’

  ‘In America.’

  ‘Not in America!? Then where is he?’

  ‘Who cares?’

  ‘Where is he?’

  ‘Calm down, Petey, you’ll do yourself even more lasting damage. Do you know how much candy I’ve brought you over the last few weeks? How much of it I had to eat?’ He took a deep breath, then repeated himself as sternly as he could.

  ‘Mexico, or some place like that. Said there were reports of some rare flower. Apparently they found a whole load of them. Like a fieldful. They reckon they’re all gonna go at the same time. At least I think that’s what he was talking about. I’ll be honest, I wasn’t listening. That guy gives me the creeps.’

  ‘A flower.’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘Do you know what it was called?’

  ‘Something stupid. Something like the Queen of the Night. How come you lot wouldn’t know romance if it took you out for dinner but you can name a flower like you’re Shakespeare?’ Peter clung to the bed frame. He thought of the Kadupul, and was suddenly full of foreboding.

  Almost anything desired can be owned. But no one, no emperor, president or king, could ever own the Kadupul flower. No one could lay claim to the Queen of the Night.

  Not only was it rare, the Kadupul couldn’t be picked without causing devastating damage to its form. Plucked, it perished within hours. To hold it was to kill it, a conundrum of heartbreak, a newborn baby that burns at its mother’s touch. So it belonged to no one.

  Better still, it only bloomed at night, for one night only, emanating a unique fragrance, a heavenly death rattle of the senses, before it died at dawn. The Kadupul – technically a delicate white cactus – could be seen by anyone patient enough to wait. It flowered once a year. So it wasn’t rarity that earned it its place on the love letter he found in the library. It was pricelessness. What else was truly priceless? Only love.

  He knew that Hens did not feel the same. Hens Berg lacked many things, but chief among them was the patience that the Kadupul demands. He’d sooner pull it from the earth, reasoning that to hold it as it died was better than not to hold it at all. And to make the trip alone seemed completely out of character. Hens was too fond of an audience. The only reason he’d invited Peter to Chile with him was because he needed a drinking partner long enough for the whisky to kick in, so that he might find someone with whom to share his bed. No, he had another motive.

  Against the doctor’s advice, Peter checked himself out of hospital an hour later. Susan reluctantly helped him dress, then pushed him towards the exit in a wheelchair.

  ‘I can’t believe you are forcing me to do this.’

  ‘I’m not forcing you to do anything,’ he said, ‘you’re doing it because you’re my sister and you know it’s important.’

  They took a cab to Peter’s apartment and Peter was relieved to find Angelica was out at work; he didn’t want to have to explain the teenager living there rent-free to his sister, and luckily there was little sign she’d ever been there other than the fact the whole place was spotlessly clean, unless you knew where to look. The kitchen countertops beamed back a gaunt reflection he didn’t dare examine. The windows were so spotless he had to touch the glass to believe it hadn’t been blown out onto the street.

  ‘Well, this is depressing,’ Susan said.

  ‘You don’t have to stay,’ he said, ambling to the fridge, which was empty because Angelica seemed to subsist on air alone.

  ‘Of course I’m staying.’ He kissed her, just once, on the forehead.

  Peter slept for three hours. When he woke he ate a few mouthfuls of the lunch she’d been to the supermarket and bought for him. Honey-glazed ham draped lazily over thick white bread, mayonnaise oozing from the ends.

  In the shower he ran a razor over his face, shearing off the growth that seemed to concentrate on the right cheek, lopsiding him. He brushed his teeth and it felt
like discovering them anew. For a while he sat on the rim of the bathtub, letting the steam swirl around his wet skin. He listened through the door to Susan singing as she moved through the lounge, her voice joyfully lilting from one note to the next.

  She found him standing by the wardrobe, its contents spread at his feet. On the bed he’d put a moth-eaten pea-green tent, a head torch with a cracked plastic case and a limply stuffed pillow.

  ‘What are you doing with all that?’

  ‘Nothing,’ he said.

  ‘Come on, Petey . . .’

  ‘Peter.’

  ‘Stop changing the subject and tell me what you’re doing.’ She removed a small brain of gum from her mouth and flattened it between her fingers.

  ‘I’m going to Mexico.’

  ‘You’re not serious.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I am.’

  ‘You’re not going to Mexico. It’s the stupidest thing I ever heard.’ She took the mirror from the wall and held it up in front of him, a sight he’d been desperate to avoid.

  ‘Look at you,’ she said. ‘You wouldn’t even make it to the airport.’ It was abhorrently true. He’d been confronted with the reflection of a man cut down from a noose. He sat on the corner of the bed, caressing his narrow wrists. Outside, a break in the traffic gave the rare illusion of absolute peace.

  ‘You’re not well enough. Who do you think you are? Superman?’

  ‘I’m fine, Susan.’

  ‘You look like an actor playing a ghost.’

  ‘I promise you, I’m fine.’

  ‘You know it’s because I love you, right?’

  ‘I know,’ he said, ‘I know.’

  ‘Then don’t put me through this shit any more.’

  He placated her by ordering takeaway pizza, but again only managed a few mouthfuls before his appetite faded. They watched movies while he summoned up the courage to tell his sister she wasn’t going to be able to change his mind. She winced, squeezing her eyes together as though trying to magic him into a cell he wouldn’t be able to escape.

  ‘For a flower?’ she said.

  ‘No.’

  ‘To catch up with your stupid friend?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then why? Give me one good reason why I should ever let you out of my sight again.’

  ‘For a woman,’ he said, and where he expected her to shout, a smile slowly edged across her mouth, her entire face rising with joy.

  ‘You can’t go there alone,’ Susan said, ‘you’re not well enough.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ he said, ‘honestly. Wait. What do you mean, “alone”?’ She stood, bracing herself as though she had no idea what effect her next words might have on her body – that she might explode, or collapse, or even take off.

  ‘I’ll go with you.’

  ‘Susan,’ he said, waggling his finger in a way he knew would annoy her if she looked at him, ‘that’s very kind of you, but . . .’

  ‘This isn’t an offer,’ she said, ‘it’s a promise.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’ll go with you.’

  ‘Come on, Susan.’

  ‘You need me,’ she said, and it brought him to his knees once more.

  NINE

  Dove wakes at home before sunrise with little recollection of how he got there. Not of Cliff helping him out of the office, travelling with him in a taxi, coming into his house, taking off his shoes. This is the series of events he pieces together when he sees the note beside the glass of water on his bedside table.

  You’ve taken two paracetamol. Stay in bed. I wish you’d let me take you to hospital. Call me when you wake up, no matter how early or late it is. I am really worried about you, regardless of whether or not you want me to be. Your friend, Cliff.

  He checks his phone. Two missed calls already. He switches it off and flings it to the other side of the room, where it lands behind the rusted metal rear of his refrigerator with a clang that brings to an end the quiet hum of next door’s baby snoring.

  The headache is beginning to dissipate. He can feel it, moving slowly downwards through his body, a warm fuzz, melting. Only when it’s passed over his collarbone can he drag himself out of bed. He inches across the floor on all fours like a dog expecting punishment, finds the open pack of painkillers in the drawer beside the oven and washes two more down with a sweet, sticky orange juice that chills a column from his throat to his gut. Only then can he leave the house, weak, but closing his eyes and remembering Susan’s hand in Peter’s, imagining it in his. Guiding him forward. Isn’t this exactly what he wants? Feeling what Peter once felt is in some way sharpening his own experience. Where before the world has seemed dull, it is clearer now. He doesn’t want to shy away from it, but to seize it in both hands.

  He takes two buses busy with the early commuters. Cleaners. Security guards. Carers. People only seen by those who are looking. Living beneath the surface of the city they keep running. His train heads overland from Highbury, south through East London, to cross the Thames near Canary Wharf. Standing at the front, eyes against the glass, Dove is giddy with a childish excitement. Below, the wonky seams of old London twist into buzzing carriageways, down towards the centre of the city. The houses become towers rising on either side, each with a hundred glass eyes brightening in the sunrise. Ramps dip to carry cars through the underpass, rising again in tight brick canyons. Behind him now, a view from the south, the city’s overgrown steel canopy. Commuters scurrying around in the mulch. When he alights, it’s into the wide, serene expanse of a leafy Blackheath readied for the day ahead. Only there, where the air fills him completely, can he breathe properly once more.

  Blackatree Crescent Nursing Home is a sprawling one-storey building emerging from florid grounds where neat beds patchwork the lawns. A brook trickles gently around the periphery, the water clean and the damp rocks blinking as the clouds block the light above. Beyond the walls on the other side is a magnificent garden, where bees bump into one another like corks strung from a hat. It feels removed from the city, which is perhaps its aim. To let people forget it or its inhabitants exist. It’s easier that way.

  He unlatches the gate. Approaching the door and ringing the bell, he clenches his fist tight until his hand stops trembling, pressed against the wood.

  A woman appears with a sponge of tightly curled hair, held in position by a net and strip of worn elastic.

  ‘Yes?’ she says through the glass. Dove recognizes her voice from Jed’s call, a musical timbre barely wrestled under control. The woman he spoke with. ‘Can I help you?’ His lips fall open with the weight of sudden realization – he doesn’t know what he’s going to say.

  ‘I’m here to visit somebody.’

  ‘What, anybody?’ She chuckles to herself, hands on hips.

  ‘Not just anybody, no.’

  ‘Then who?’ He looks at the flashing red light on the numerical keypad, the security cameras positioned just above her head. Had he assumed he might walk straight in?

  ‘Well, it’s a funny question.’

  ‘A funny question?’ She frowns. He can smell the sulphuric tang of overdone scrambled eggs escaping a kitchen somewhere behind her.

  ‘I’m here to see Zachariah Temple.’

  She twists to look over her shoulder, down a long empty corridor with doors on either side, and he reads the name badge pinned to her chest. Rita. She has long, almost bovine lashes and large brown eyes, which narrow as doubt sets in.

  ‘Can I ask you again why you’re here?’

  ‘I just told you. To visit Zachariah Temple.’

  ‘And who are you to him?’ Dove sighs, suddenly feeling like a con man.

  ‘Nobody.’

  ‘Nobody? Zachariah doesn’t get visitors, ever, and you just turn up saying you’re nobody?’

  ‘I work in ambulance dispatch. You called us.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘About his headache.’

  ‘You’re offering follow-up house calls now?’

&nb
sp; ‘Not really, it’s just that, well, I . . .’ He adjusts his posture – straighter back, aligned shoulders – something, anything, that will give him the air of someone she should take seriously, prevent her slamming the door in his face at any second.

  ‘Please, Rita. I have ID.’ Dove squeezes his wallet to a yawn and shows her an out-of-date driving licence he’s never actually used. She reads it aloud, the higher register of her voice finally unshackled.

  ‘Dove,’ she says. ‘Dove.’ Repeating his name. Rolling it around her tongue. Checking it for leaks. ‘Dove. Dove. Dove. Strange name, isn’t it?’ The golden plait of her necklace jiggles, weighty and mayoral.

  ‘About the headaches . . .’

  ‘Forget about any headaches for a second. There is nothing here to steal, you know, unless your thing is shortbread.’

  ‘I’m not a thief.’

  ‘Then what should I tell the police?’ She smoothes down the pockets of her pinafore, searching for a phone that isn’t there. ‘Because that’s who I am going to have to call unless you leave the premises immediately.’

  ‘Please,’ he says, still holding his driving licence against the pane, knuckles paling.

  ‘You expect me to believe you’re just a good Samaritan concerned about the migraines of an old man he’s never met?’

  ‘No,’ Dove says, withdrawing into the shade of the porch. ‘I’m just a visitor to an old man I heard about who doesn’t normally have any.’

  He is nearing the gate when the door’s electric lock clunks behind him. Turning, he finds it open, with Rita impatiently tapping her foot.

  ‘You catch me on a charitable day. It’s not always this way. So hurry up. And don’t leave my sight.’

  Rita ushers Dove into a large hallway, the air damp with steam. Somewhere, a television is turned up too loudly, its levels distorted, voices indecipherable. The walls are lined with photographs of faraway beaches and meadows, calming seascapes and clearings in forests filled with warm golden light, little different to the ones in the Pit, except here, potentially, of use.

  A bedroom door opens as they pass to reveal a morose-looking priest, no older than Dove, who shakes Rita’s hand. Young priests make Dove uneasy; not a symptom of any aversion to organized religion, more a distrust rooted in something deeper: the surety with which they’ve committed to their calling. Isn’t it the malaise of his generation, to have no clue what they’re meant to be doing? Infantilized by the digital age, freed from the preset destinies of their parents and grandparents and every generation before them, yet unable to choose in a world of infinite choice; a swathe of young adults drifting, flotsam and jetsam from which the priest has escaped with an unerring display of devotion. It must be good to put on a collar every day that tells you exactly who you are.