Is This the Way You Said? Read online

  Alan felt exhausted during the morning session. The Full Scottish Breakfast (over which his closer colleagues had been very upbeat about incubators) had somehow got held up in traffic in his diaphragm and his nerves were strung taut. Everyone knew that he had been made an exception of; his Domestic Tie was a huge great pink bow in his hair, that’s how it felt. Like a Playboy bunny in drag, he was. And then Unwin’s or a colleague’s drone would surface among the flotsam of his thoughts and he’d realise he’d not been listening to a single word. Perhaps he was past it, at thirty-nine. A lot of the blokes (not the three women present, he hoped) were balding; one or two had shaved it all off to the skull to hide the fact. He was not balding, being a strawberry blond. That was lucky.

  ‘Any comments, Alan?’

  Whoops.

  He would give a little start, as if just woken up, and his chest would burn. Then his improvising skill, his ability to talk sense in bollocks-sized chunks, came into its own. He was also blessed, despite appearances, with a deep and reassuring voice which Jill had once called (in the good old days) ‘velvety’.

  ‘Yeah, I’m completely in agreement, Roger. When you fly high you need a pressure-suit. So that determining your own development and sense of responsibility requires a heightened sense of co-ordination. It’s like Brian’s vicar joke, last night. If the traffic warden and the vicar had agreed on the basic synthesis, to use Roger’s term, then there’d have been no joke and Brian would’ve resorted to those vampires in the pub.’

  Everyone laughed, even the green-gilled juniors who didn’t know Brian’s outrageously disgusting vampire joke. These were cosy internal references and it worked every time (although Roger’s term had been ‘synergy’, not ‘synthesis’). In truth, though, sliding a dip-stick into Alan’s cerebral tank for a record of what had just been discussed would have drawn a gleaming clean blank. He was not sure Roger Unwin was altogether fooled, of course, up there at the head of the table. And the brilliant early-thirties finance director with the billiard-table haircut, Geoff Soames, was looking at him as if he’d just sneezed messily over the laptops; while Jon S. Volkman wore his cleanest hallelujah smile, sending the usual shivers up the spine.

  Alan thanked God yet again that he and Geoff Soames were members of the same Rotary Club (against all the rules). Manning the stall together on Mental Health Day was worth a thousand brown-nose reports.

  Having established from a nurse in the maternity unit that neither mother nor baby were in any immediate danger, Alan had relaxed on that front for about ten seconds. Basically, an incubator was an artificial womb. Even safer than a real womb, because it wasn’t being lugged about Hull through mad old ladies with sharpened elbows or between psychopaths in white vans. Then worries started seeping through. A power-cut would render the incubator helpless, if the emergency generator failed to kick in. Or some git could kick the plug out of its power point. The nurse would’ve been trained in customer relations, these days: you couldn’t believe a word she said. Of course you couldn’t believe her. It was service with a smile. Don’t ever talk on the phone without physically smiling. Rule number one in customer relations. Rule number two: Don’t ever give anything away.

  It didn’t help when Steve Norris from Marketing kept talking about ‘incubating’ this list and ‘incubating’ that diagram during the 11.30 session after the Nescaff pause; Alan wasn’t even sure what ‘incubating’ meant, in this context. Amazingly, no one else noticed, but just kept staring at the on-screen flip-chart. He fiddled with his tartan shortbread wrapper from the break and thought: That’s how much they care.

  He couldn’t face speaking to Sophie, and the nurse had said she’d pass on his message to Jill when she was awake. The doctor would be in on Monday, and now it was Saturday. There were no doctors he could speak to over the weekend. He didn’t realise people stopped being ill from Friday evening to Monday morning. On top of everything else, the nurse’d had a strong foreign accent, probably Serb; she was obviously hired from an agency, with one day’s training in catheter management, full stop. The more he gave it thought, the worse it got.

  He shouldn’t be here, but there. Right now.

  He should be holding his daughter’s tiny hand, not this tiny phone. Would he be allowed to hold her hand, if she was lying in an incubator? Maybe not. Maybe Jill, even, hadn’t held her hand. There was the risk of infection. He’d got beyond the shrivelled grape in his imagination; now he saw a doll with tubes everywhere and an assisted-breathing mask the size of her face.

  The Tibetan villagers in the moody black-and-white photographs stared at him, as if they felt sorry for him. They didn’t need incubators. They just died, left out on the mountain or in the clouds or whatever for the snow leopards and the snow eagles. Buddhists. The Dalai Lama.

  ‘Alan? You might come in at this point, please, with the human angle.’

  Whoops.

  He phoned the hospital at lunchtime, standing in the porch of the ice-cream museum. Apparently, this was the best spot for reception. The rain spat at his shoes, the wind sneaking in through his coat and getting very fresh with the unbuttonable bit over his stomach. The museum was open, but empty of visitors. He could make out a vintage ice-cream van with Rossi’s painted on it in the main hall, which reminded him of long summer days in Aylesbury and rushing out with his five pence when the Mr Whippy jingle sounded.

  He didn’t feel at all tip-top.

  Jill’s mobile was still off. She’d never liked mobiles; in some ways she was a bit old-fashioned. She went to patchwork classes. Waiting to be put through to the cordless in the maternity unit, he pictured his daughter in a few years’ time, rushing out with her one pound when the jingle sounded. She wouldn’t have a pretty skirt, he corrected himself, she’d have jeans and trainers. She’d have an authentic Hull accent, too, picked up at school: trendier than nasal Bucks. Unless he won the lottery and they moved in next to Cliff Richard on the Bahamas. He supposed the museum did better when it was hot, which it probably never was in Stirling.

  A nurse came on.

  ‘Wait a second, darlin’. I’ve got to transfer you to the cordless, see. OK, darlin’? Just hang on there, don’t go away . . .’

  Liverpudlian, he could tell it a mile off. A Liver bird. A Scouse. An angel. There was silence, a buzz, then some knocking noises and distant baby-wails and the sound of someone taking the receiver.

  ‘Hello,’ Jill said, very faintly.

  ‘Hiya, sweetheart.’

  ‘Hello, Alan.’

  ‘Hiya! How are you, my love? How are things? Still feeling a bit wobbly?’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘Look, nice one! Eh? You did it all without me. How’s our little—?’

  ‘Where are you? Are you phoning from the train?’

  ‘Stirling. Wilds of bloody Scotland.’

  ‘Still up there? I thought you were on your way back, Alan. I thought you were phoning from the train.’

  She sounded absolutely knackered.

  ‘Sophie didn’t tell you? I can’t get away until tomorrow lunchtime, obviously. I moved heaven and earth and Roger bloody Unwin to get—’

  Jill started talking away from the receiver to someone about her tray and lunch. She came back on.

  ‘You can’t even eat it. Beef curry with mushy peas. I want you here,’ she said.

  ‘Mushy peas, yum yum! You are so lucky!’ She didn’t laugh. ‘Listen, sweetheart. I’m gonna be there. Just as fast as I can. Soon as it’s all sorted, OK? I’m really happy things are OK. I was a little bit worried. Is she beautiful?’

  ‘You should be here,’ she said.

  ‘I know, I hate not being there, not being with you. It’s horrible, sweetheart. Look, why don’t you switch on your mobile? Then it’s easier to be with you.’

  ‘It’s broken. It doesn’t work.’

  He tried to find out what was wrong with it technically, step by step, but she wasn’t interested. Anyway, she wasn’t allowed it in the ward, she said. He was gazing fr
om the porch through the sharp, blowy rain at the toy roads, the gravel paths, the thin new lawns between the stone and steel cladding of the prestige buildings. The guttering was making totally exaggerated drip sounds, as if trying to torture him. There was no one, not anywhere. The mobile would screw up all those shiny medical machines that gave him the heebie-jeebies, he supposed.

  ‘I hate not being there,’ he repeated. ‘But listen, miracles happen: I’ve got out of the last two sessions tomorrow.’

  ‘Tomorrow?’

  ‘You know how this is Roger Unwin’s big moment of the year, and the Yanks are watching closely? Jon S. Volkman breathing over my shoulder like bloody Goebbels? Well, I’ve got out of the last two sessions. A miracle. After some nifty footwork on my part. I’ll be right next to you, sweetheart, and holding your hand this time tomorrow,’ he lied, looking at his watch. If he hired a Jaguar jet. ‘Is Kristen next to you? Can you see her? Tell me—’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Kristen. Kirsten. Kristen.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Our little daughter.’

  There was a short silence. Alan felt his neck seize up again.

  ‘Samantha,’ she said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘She’s called Samantha.’

  ‘Samantha? You’re joking.’

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘It’s a bit – I thought we’d finally decided on Kristen, Jill. Not Kirsten.’

  ‘I prayed to God that if she came out alive, I’d name her after the paramedic who saved us both in front of Foot Locker. Samantha Williams.’

  ‘God? But you don’t believe in God.’

  ‘Alan, do you have to get at me? Not when I’m in this state.’

  ‘Samantha’s fine. It’s really great.’

  What a truly terrible name, he thought. Samanfa. He pictured a flat-faced secretary with huge artificial eyelashes, not a strapping paramedic.

  ‘You weren’t there to discuss it with, anyway.’

  ‘No, Jill. We didn’t exactly know it was going to happen. The whole thing was a bit of a surprise, obviously.’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Not really, Alan.’

  ‘What d’you mean?’

  ‘Not really that surprising, was it? If you cast your mind back a bit, Alan.’

  Her tone was very loaded.

  He wanted to talk about heavy shopping, but couldn’t bring himself to.

  ‘Did you feel something beforehand, then?’ It came out all feeble and uncertain.

  There was a sigh in his ear, like the sea. Jill had snorted. He was forcing himself to breathe slowly, nodding like one of those stupid toy dogs people used to have in the backs of their cars. He must not get narked. He must keep smiling.

  ‘Anyway, I want to give you and – Samantha a big wet kiss. Eh? Distance is no object. Here it comes.’

  He regretted saying that. He felt like a perv, suddenly.

  ‘You haven’t asked what she weighed.’

  His lips were pursed, ready to transmit the kiss.

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘What she weighed. That’s what everyone else has asked. Your mother phoned and it was the first thing she asked. Even your brother.’

  ‘OK, what does she weigh?’ he asked, not believing her for an instant: his brother was a boffin, didn’t know a baby from an enzyme catalyst.

  ‘You’re not interested, are you?’

  ‘I’m basically interested in whether she’s fit and well and is going to make it, sweetheart,’ he said, too forcefully. He turned his back on the prestige development, having spotted some cheery colleagues mounting one of the gravel paths by the Cascade Club, their raincoats flapping. The Rossi’s ice-cream van – probably a Morris from the look of the radiator – sat like a giant wasp beyond the plate glass at his nose. Then it slowly vanished, his breath fogging up the glass between. ‘You mean I’m not interested in her weight? Or in the whole thing?’

  There was a silence. He thought he could hear her breathing. Distant crashes and beep-beeps in time with the drips from the guttering.

  ‘Jill?’

  ‘You’re such a shit,’ she said, but very wearily.

  I know what’s happened, he thought. Sophie’s spilt the beans. Raked up the past. Women do stupid things like that. They run on emotion. It empowers them.

  ‘Jill, if I leave right away, right now, I’d be out on my ear. OK? Lose my job, get the sack, the big R. OK? I’d be laying myself wide open. They’re firing people left and centre. It’s the slump. Antron are wobbly at the moment, which means Northcott Jackson are extremely wobbly, especially after losing the Saudi air force contract. Everyone has to behave, Jill, keep their noses clean and their hair greased. I’m thinking of the future. The three of us.’

  ‘I understand.’

  ‘I know you do, really.’

  He heard voices in the background.

  ‘Is that the doctors?’

  ‘The proper doctors haven’t seen me yet. It’s the weekend. It’s just the young duty one.’

  ‘But you’re both right on track.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘On track. Obviously. Is she beautiful?’

  ‘The doctor?’

  Alan laughed. She must be on morphine, he thought.

  ‘She has a bare midriff,’ Jill said. ‘She doesn’t wear a white coat.’

  ‘Jesus. Is she English?’

  ‘I think so. There’ll be the proper one on Monday.’

  ‘Is she alright? I mean, our little girl? What does the doc say?’

  He couldn’t say ‘Samantha’.

  ‘She demands a lot of attention,’ Jill said. ‘That’s how the nurse put it.’

  ‘I see.’

  He knew, then. She was in danger. His own little girl. In the incubator.

  ‘Sweetheart, I think you’d better have a rest. Could you put me onto the sister?’

  ‘I don’t know which one she is, they keep changing.’

  ‘The Liverpudlian. She’ll do. Is Sophie there?’

  ‘No. She had to go home and sleep. She hadn’t slept.’

  ‘Obviously, yeah.’ He felt a pang of remorse that irritated him. ‘I’ll call you this evening, lovey.’

  ‘They’re moving me, for a bit. They’re replacing a radiator. It’s leaking. There’s a sort of flood.’

  For a horrible moment, he thought she was saying she had to have an operation. His brow was wet with self-imposed sweat.

  ‘Jesus. I don’t believe it. When? I hope it’s not far. I hope it’s on the same floor.’

  ‘This afternoon, I think. They’ve got big lifts.’ She sounded very weak, now. ‘God, I dunno.’

  A sigh filled Alan’s ear again. There were knocking noises and the jolly Scouser came on, reassuring Alan that mother and baby were doing ‘fine’. He wasn’t convinced; he imagined that she’d say the same about someone in the last stages of Ebola and go on saying it in the same jolly, call-centre way until the sheet was pulled over the face. They weren’t sure where Jill was being moved to, it was a bit full this week, but they’d give him the number at reception. He didn’t like the sound of any of it. Not any of it and not at all.

  He shut the clamshell top on the Treo with an angry flick of his hand but it came open again, like a car boot. He wanted to yell, really scream his nut off.

  The museum receptionist was watching him; he’d not noticed her before. She was next to the Morris van. He nodded, embarrassed, and she came up to the door and opened it.

  ‘We’re not closed,’ she said, in a thick Scottish accent that surprised him because he’d forgotten. ‘We stay open over lunch on Saturdays.’

  ‘Is there anything in there?’ he asked, still embarrassed.

  ‘Oh aye. All sorts. It’s pretty interesting, in fact.’

  She stood there like a flirtatious schoolgirl, leaning against the door to keep it open. Lord, let my daughter live.

  He had to visit the ice-cream museum, it was me
ant. It was part of the deal. Life had no multiple-undo facilities: you reaped what you sowed. But sometimes you got given this little open door in which to do something unexpected, change rails, take your fate by surprise. He had twenty minutes before the next meeting. Now he believed in God. Or someone very powerful and wise, maybe even a kind of huge, supremely intelligent CCTV operator.

  So he went in. It was a deal. A blown-up photograph of a bowler-hatted man selling ice creams from a barrow took up one whole wall; young men in flat caps and baggy trousers were eating cornets in front of it. Pure Vanilla Ice Cream Guaranteed was painted in fancy lettering on the cart.

  ‘Life was simpler in those days,’ he remarked.

  It was very hot in here: overheated. Micro-climate.

  The girl shrugged. Her desk was shaped to look like a wafer ice.

  ‘That’s four pounds fifty, please.’

  ‘I get a complimentary Sky Ray for that, do I?’

  ‘Eh, sorry?’

  ‘A free Sky Ray?’

  She had no idea what he was talking about. Not a single one.

  They were supposed to relax in the hotel bar, after the meal. The unwritten rule was that, however much they drank, they must be on sparkling form for the 8 a.m. session. There were two bars, in fact, with Italian names; one was cosy and the other cool. Brian, Simon Milner, Phil McAllister and Alan went for the cosy. Alan had wanted to keep a phone vigil in his room, in front of the idiot box, but Brian reckoned that sounded like penance and insisted he join them.