Hospital Corners by Gill Blow
Published 8 December 2011 as part of the Writing East Midlands and Lincolnshire Echo Short Story Competition
I am pinned down under white sheets so tight I can’t wriggle my toes. This is how Gulliver must have felt, his whole body pinioned to the earth. Those little people even dragged his hair back and hammered hunks of it into the ground with tent pegs. It makes me wince to think of it, not that they could do that to me, when my mum first saw my shaved head she said I looked like a hardened criminal. I hear footsteps creeping up the stairs, the creak on the landing, then silence. I know it’s Jocelyn. Aunty Marge shouts out her laugh from downstairs, I can picture her silver fillings glistening in her mouth. My dad clears his throat again and again sounding like an engine revving up. Glasses clink, voices murmur. There’s a tap on the door.
‘Are you all right, Marty?’ Jocelyn has been asking me this all day. First in that limbo of waiting for the hearse, then during the service, hissing right into my ear so it made my shoulder hunch up, and again when we all trooped out into the biting wind, leaving mum behind the blue curtains listening to Don McLean singing ‘Miss American Pie’.
‘Sure you’re all right, dad?’ She stood at his side as people lined up to make sure their flowers displayed outside the crem were better than everyone else’s. Jocelyn had on her tragic face that she’d worn all day and she was rubbing dad’s back with the palm of her hand. She made me want to puke.
She knocks again. ‘I know today is hard for you. It’s hard for all of us. But,’ and a bit of a bossy tone creeps in, ‘I think you should come downstairs now.’ Jocelyn is a social worker and I’ve stopped being her brother and become one of her clients. In fact we’ve all become her clients, my dad, her wimp of a husband Trevor, everyone. We all need support.
‘Dad really needs your support, Marty, today of all days.’ I can picture her bent against the door, her mind working overtime. I look at the twin hills of my feet, mummified under the white sheets and I suddenly remember, hospital corners, mums’ trademark.
‘Can you hear me, Marty?’‘Right. In a minute.’
I hear the creak as she goes downstairs.This doesn’t feel like my old bedroom, I thought it might if I lay down on the bed and looked at the spaceship made by the cracks in the ceiling. But it’s been smoothed away with new plaster and white emulsion like the rest of the room and there’s a whiff of disinfectant. My wardrobe is the same except for a big cardboard box on the top. I carved my initials inside one of the doors once with my penknife. I carved them everywhere, trees in the park, lavatory doors, school windowsills. Like a dog peeing up lampposts. The Windsor chair doesn’t belong up here. They bought two. Mum carried one and dad carried the other all the way from the auction rooms years ago, before me and Jocelyn were born. Dad stripped and re-polished them and mum made the green cushions.
She would tell us the story about the chairs over and over as if it was a real expedition. ‘It was hard work carrying those chairs all that way. We kept stopping to have a breather. And then we thought we might as well have a sit down on our chairs. Your dad lit a fag, and we sat there on the path, large as life in Market Street, saying hello to folk going past. Your dad said it was a shame I hadn’t brought a flask of tea, we could’ve had a picnic.’ She’d look at dad, and he’d give her a wink. I couldn’t imagine them doing something daft like that. The chairs belonged in the kitchen, one each side of the table, mum in one, dad in the other. All my books used to be lined up on shelves above the bed, Robinson Crusoe, Lord of the Rings, Terry Pratchett. I think about the Lilliputians pattering all over Gulliver’s body like ants, it must have been a real big undertaking tying down a giant. I bet there was a manager sitting on his backside giving orders from Lilliput Town Hall. There’d be a foreman on the shop floor, or in this case, the body, yelling his head off, and there’d be hundreds of silly buggers actually doing the work. If I was Gulliver, I’d try and make it easy for the foot soldiers. I know what it’s like from the biscuit factory. It’s soul dead work if you let it get to you. Every day I watch thousands of wafers jostling past on the conveyor belt. My job is to spot the deformed ones and chuck them in the bin before they get coated in chocolate. Somebody has to do it. Although, for a change, I sometimes mix up the chocolate sauce in massive steel vats until it looks like molten lava.‘You can do better than that, Martin,’ mum said when I told her about the job. ‘You know you can.’ She was ironing a white shirt of dad’s, the steam hissed as she pressed. Mum had a procedure for shirts. She’d iron the collar first, then arrange the shirt sideways and iron the right side, the back and then the left side. Finally she’d do the cuffs and the sleeves and button it up. When I used to get home from school, she’d be flapping out a pillow-case or a pair of trousers, positioning them ready. ‘Let’s get these rotten jobs over with,’ she’d say. ‘You do your homework, I’ll do the ironing.’
I bet my Gulliver book is in the wardrobe. I sit up and tug at the sheets, my right foot feels a bit tingly. I drag my legs out and swing them over the side of the bed and stand up, my foot feels like a lump of concrete, and I fall straight over the bedside table and the lamp comes crashing down. Feet pound up the stairs and the door bangs open.
‘Martin! What the hell are you doing? Put your trousers on for God’s sake!’ And I’m late for school and mum is yelling at me, pulling back the covers and giving me a clout.
*‘Bad circulation, mine goes numb as well. It’s my bunion.’ Aunt Marge sits on the bed with a glass of sherry in her hand. She has one leg crossed over the other and sways a bit. ‘Have you got a bunion, Martin?’
‘No.’They look down at me as if I’m in a hospital bed, Dad with his glass of whisky, and Uncle Frank who’s holding the bottle, Jocelyn, her mouth like a thin red line, and Trevor peeping from behind her huge shoulder.
‘Look, this is mine.’ Aunt Marge waves her black stocking foot in front of my face.
‘Put your shoe on, Marge and leave the lad alone. He’s had a shock.’ Uncle Frank pulls her off the bed.
‘He’s got Reynaud’s disease,’ says Jocelyn.
‘I bet it’s gout,’ says my dad.
‘It could be the onset of diabetes,’ Trevor chips in.
‘Here, get this down you,’ Uncle Frank holds out a glass of whisky. I taste the smell before it gets to my lips.
‘He doesn’t need any more of that stuff.’ Jocelyn has got her arms folded and the nervous tic in her left nostril is going like the clappers. She looks like a prison officer standing there. The buttons on her jacket strain across her belly, her legs are firmly planted apart like tree trunks at dusk. She takes after dad, he’s a big bloke with broad shoulders and thick white hair. I used to watch him wet his comb under the tap and rake his hair so it met at the back like tufted wings.
‘And that’s not a good idea.’ Jocelyn says.
‘What’s up with you?’ Dad takes his eyes off his glass which Uncle Frank is in the process of topping up and looks across at her.‘I think you’ve had enough for one day.’ And there’s a pause in the room as if everybody’s stopped breathing. Then dad takes the bottle from Uncle Frank, pours a measure and drinks. He fills his glass again and sits in the Windsor chair. He raises his glass to Jocelyn, ‘Cheers.’ She stamps to the window and immediately blocks out the light and what with that and all the people crammed in the room and me stuck in bed in my boxers, I start to get a bit claustrophobic.
‘You’ve broken that bedside lamp, Martin.’ This is her usual tactic, always has a go at me when she’s in the wrong.
‘I didn’t do it on purpose.’ I sound like a whining kid. Like the time she blamed me for breaking mum’s favourite blue Wedgewood vase when she deliberately pushed into me and I knocked it off with my elbow.
‘I don’t know what you’re doing in that bed anyway, it’s not normal behaviour.’ Nobody looks at anybody.
Jocelyn stares out the window. She’s breathing heavily. There’s not much to see out there, only the street and the houses opposite. I noticed that all their curtains were closed as we slowly followed the hearse, they were all open again when we came back. It’s the first time I’ve ever ridden in a Mercedes.
‘Shall I make some more sandwiches? There’s loads of ham left.’ Aunt Marge totters out the bedroom and clatters downstairs.
‘Just a minute, I’ll give you a hand.’ Uncle Frank follows her.
I sip the whisky and wait for it to burn down my windpipe. I wish they’d all clear off. Trevor leans against the door frame looking at his black lace-up shoes. Mum used to say he was a thin poor thing, like some deprived teenager from off the estate.
She came to see me last year to look at my new flat. She said she’d catch the train and then get the bus, but I decided to surprise her and meet her at the station. It was a Saturday and there were football crowds on the platform. I was worried I might miss her. I stood up on tiptoe to see over the fans in their yellow and blue and I saw this woman in a red coat walking arm in arm with a man in a navy jacket. They were laughing and couldn’t take their eyes off each other, as if they were the only ones there. They stopped, and he bent and gently tapped his finger on the end of her nose, she smiled up at him, and I saw it was mum. I backed off quick and waited outside the station. She came out on her own in the red coat. I waved and shouted, and she saw me, and waved back. I finish the whisky. Jocelyn stands at the window with her back to us. Dad is nursing his glass looking at nothing.I take a deep breath but Jocelyn beats me to it. ‘Go and get our holdall out the car Trevor.’ He looks at dad as if seeking permission to move. ‘Go on,’ Jocelyn says. Trevor stands up properly.
‘What do you want that for?’ Dad says.
‘Because we’re staying the night, you can’t be on your own. Go on, Trevor.’
‘There’s no need for that.’
‘Now, dad.’ She’s got her ‘I know what’s best for you’ voice on. ‘I think you need to know that there’s someone here for you tonight.’
‘To do what, exactly?’ His voice has gone very quiet. He’s about to blow his top. You’d think she’d know by now.
I dive in. ‘I was thinking about my Gulliver’s Travels book. I think it might be in the wardrobe.’
‘I – do – not –want – you – to – stay.’ Dad has fixed her with his eyes, he’s almost whispering. I look at Jocelyn, she’s bound to crack on now. But she stands there with her arms folded determined to do her duty, whatever the cost to herself. She was the same when mum got ill. She took compassionate leave and was fussing around mum all the time until mum told her to get back to work and stop milking it.
‘Go on, Trevor.’ She nods her head at the door.
‘Stay where you are, Trevor. ’Dad says, still looking at Jocelyn. Trevor stands there dithering. I know I should do something but I’m a useless sod at times like these.
Jocelyn unfolds her arms and pulls her jacket sleeves down as if she’s squaring up for a fight. ‘I think you shouldn’t be on your own tonight.’
‘Oh? Is that what you think?’ Dad pours himself another slug of whisky. ‘And you shouldn’t be drinking like that,’ Jocelyn says, ‘you should think of mum.’
That did it. Dad struggles up and sticks his face right up against hers. ‘I don’t give a toss about what you think! Not a flaming toss!’
Jocelyn does a backward shuffle. ‘There’s no need to shout!’
He’s waving the bottle about. ‘I’m going to tell you what I think. I think you should go home and see to poor old Trevor. You know what I mean – see to him. Make him think it’s Christmas! Take him to bed!’Jocelyn’s face is scarlet. ‘You’re drunk!’ She makes a grab for the bottle and dad staggers into the wardrobe, the cardboard box falls off the top and crashes on the carpet tipping out all my old books.
‘She wanted to be a granny,’ dad says as he quietly slithers down the wardrobe door. ‘That was all she ever said, “I wish I was a granny”.’
Jocelyn kicks a path through the books and bangs down the stairs. Trevor backs out the room and follows her. Gulliver, captured and tied up by the rampaging Lilliputians, gives me a look from the pile on the floor. I knew that book would be here somewhere.
