The Sleepwalker's Introduction to Flight Read online

  Eventually Aggie trundles into my room, all sixteen stone of her, and she’s not happy. ‘I told you, Mikey, it’s Nurse Koroma.’

  A while ago, as I winced in agony, Aggie removed the catheter tube from my urethra, so I feel I have every right to be on first-name terms here. I’m still as weak as a kitten and, although I’m slowly getting feeling and movement back in my limbs, I’m not yet capable of hauling myself out of bed. I must pee, and since Aggie’s already seen my willy on more than one occasion, she draws the short straw, so to speak.

  Aggie brings a bedpan, pulls back the sheet and I scream in terror. Forget about the voice, they’ve amputated my modest little castaway and given me, in return, a great clumsy truncheon of a thing wearing a fright-wig; a terrible, Godforsaken donkey’s knob of a transplant.

  ‘What is this place? What have you people done to me, Aggie?’ I sob as I writhe around the bed.

  Aggie gives up on the bedpan and holds her head in her hands. ‘Oh boy,’ she sighs, ‘they don’t pay me enough for this.’

  I’m dead.

  In Hell.

  Forget the lake of fire. Hell is trudging on jelly-legs, going nowhere for all eternity. Satan’s minions wear lime-green nylon and whoop at me. Motivational phrases, mostly. My thoughts are jumbled but I try to shut them up by dropping one trembling foot in front of the other. It only makes them worse.

  Occasionally they let me lie down. This is when Aggie appears and makes it all go away.

  Aggie always wears white. I think she might be an angel.

  ‘Your father has promised to come tomorrow. I spoke with him on the phone this afternoon and he’s delighted to hear that you’re recovering your strength. He’s given me permission to chat with you now,’ Dr Darrow explains in a gentle, mellifluous middle-class voice.

  I like Dr Darrow very much, but then I’m fond of everyone right now: Dr Darrow has given me some kind of tranquillizer which enables me to take on information without getting hysterical and deliberately missing the bedpan.

  ‘The thing is, Mikey, you’ve been lucky. Other than shattering your cheekbones and nose, the accident has done no major . . . uh . . . physical damage. I’m afraid we’ve been keeping you in a semi-comatose state since you came round a fortnight ago; our physios have been working you on the treadmill and it’s given us time to do a few tests. Naturally you are somewhat weak through muscle wastage, which is quite normal. Although I would advise against entering a marathon at this time, physically you are as fit and healthy as can be expected, but . . .’

  Darrow produces a hand-mirror from behind his back.

  It’s lucky that I’m pretty well out of my head on the happy pills because I’m able to laugh and cry at the same time. The damage was bad enough after I dived into the bath, but now my face is something else. My hair is Rip Van Winkle long, and luxuriant as ever, but my cheekbones have no contours whatsoever and my nose has been almost completely recessed into my face. No wonder I was feeling bunged up. I look like Tom the cat after he’s been spanged in the face with a frying pan. I’m doubly mortified to discover that I’ve got one of those wispy little Fu Man Chu moustaches and pathetic bum-fluff beards.

  Darrow presses on. ‘The thing is, you see, the thing is, you’ve been in a coma for quite some time. You’re eighteen now, Michael.’

  Fucking great. I’ve missed acne and all that adolescent angst. Nothing can prick my happy-bubble right now. ‘I see. Well . . . can I have a shave then?’

  ‘I see no reason why not.’

  ‘And a large whisky?’ I grin at Aggie. For some reason she’s not smiling back.

  ‘Uh . . . there is one other thing,’ says Darrow.

  Even through the blissed-out haze this doesn’t bode well.

  ‘CAT scans have revealed some damage to the brain, although of a very limited and localized nature.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘It seems that the trauma to your face may have impacted on the hypothalamus, more specifically a tiny, tiny area known as the suprachiasmatic nucleus.’

  ‘What exactly does that mean?’

  ‘It might mean a great deal or it might mean nothing. The human brain is very resilient. You’re not going to be a moron, Mikey, we can see that already.’

  ‘But what might it mean, potentially?’

  ‘Well . . . uh . . . let’s discuss that once you’re up and about. We’ve decreased the sedative-hypnotic dosage now, so you should be feeling more yourself. In the meantime, get some rest.’

  Six

  ‘In the meantime get some rest.’ I mean, really, what kind of advice is that? I’ve been flat out on this bed for the past two years. My mind is clear and I don’t feel remotely like sleeping. I want to run and leap about. I want to make up for the past two years and devour life like Edmund eats lunch. I want to stuff myself with ice cream and Twiglets; feel the wind in my hair, climb trees and drink Stella Artois. Christ, I wouldn’t even object to a quick set of tennis with Coombs.

  The curtains are drawn and I can tell by the relative silence that it’s night. I don’t need the sunglasses now, but they’re lurid pink and studded with diamanté and I feel more optimistic with them on. Besides, Aggie has fixed them to the flat bridge of my nose with a flesh-wrenching strip of medical sticking plaster.

  There’s a stack of dog-eared Reader’s Digests on my locker. I open one at random: ‘Laughter, the best medicine.’ That’s nonsense for a start, the stuff Darrow’s been giving me is the best medicine and I’m already planning a hissy-fit tomorrow so I can score another massive dose before my father arrives.

  I flick through the curling pages and skim a biographical piece by someone called Chip Burroughs. ‘Clubhouse in the Elm’ turns out to be a Proustian tale of American childhood and lost love centred around the rickety tree-house at the bottom of Chip’s garden. Chip and his saccharine buddies enjoy cook-outs, sleepovers and play interesting games of ‘truth or dare’ up there in the old elm. At no point do any of them take a running header off the platform into the lawn below – more’s the pity.

  I don’t think I can bear to read about ‘Old Smudger – The Dog Who Wouldn’t Die’, so I roll myself off the bed and go looking for company. Actually, the first thing that happens is that my pipe-cleaner legs collapse beneath me. I don’t give up easily though, and crawl away, inching towards the door.

  Like Old Smudger.

  In the corridor a glinting tubular-steel structure looms over me, an abandoned Zimmer frame. From down here, at ground-zero, it resembles the scaffolding for a Wendy house. I briefly consider the fate of its previous owner and, although I do feel a bit mean about this, I’m going to have to hijack – or more precisely, lojack – the thing. Through a combination of grim determination, locked elbows and some quite astonishing limbo moves I manage to haul myself, hand-over-hand, up the structure. I wait for a brief spell of dizziness to pass before taking my first step. Through the sullen hum of neon lighting, the ubiquitous backbeat of cardiograph, and the squeal of Zimmer wheels on lino, I detect hushed human voices and the occasional stifled laugh.

  I shuffle towards the sound and find myself at the threshold of a four-man ward. While the occupants of the two furthest beds sleep soundly, dead to the world, or perhaps just dead, the other two are very much alive and kicking, and playing cards with Nurse Aggie.

  ‘Oh my God, it’s Dame Edna’s illegitimate son,’ chuckles an elderly man with a bruised and puffy face.

  Aggie glances up at me before continuing to deal. ‘You better watch your mouth there, Roger. Those be my glasses the boy got taped to his head.’

  The three of them inspect their cards. I take this as a tacit approval of my presence and shuffle in. Aggie looks grimly up again in my direction. ‘What you doing here, boy, looking like Liberace’s ghost?’ It seems that only Aggie is allowed to take the piss out of the diamanté glasses.

  ‘I can’t sleep.’

  ‘You get yourself back to bed. It’s late and there’s no decent people awake at this
time of night.’

  ‘You’re all awake.’

  ‘These ain’t decent people. These be two desperate hustlers trying to cheat Aggie out of her rightful fruit.’ There’s a huge mound of plums, tangerines and black grapes on the table between them.

  You’re gambling for grapes?’

  ‘What the hell else would we be playing poker for in a hospital – colostomy bags, used needles, enemas? What do you think, boy?’

  ‘Raise you, Aggie,’ says the man with the swollen face.

  ‘Shit,’ replies Aggie. Even though I’ve only read about poker on the internet, her reaction tells us all that she’s been bluffing for sure.

  ‘I’m raisin too,’ announces the man on Aggie’s right, rolling out a pile of purple globes with tightly bandaged fingers. It must be an old joke, no one smiles.

  Aggie abruptly folds, leaving the two men to psych each other out. ‘You should be in bed.’

  ‘I’ve been in bed for two years now.’

  ‘Then another night ain’t gonna hurt you.’

  ‘Oh, come on, Aggie. And anyway, why aren’t you in bed?’

  Aggie’s doing double shifts,’ explains the man with the bandaged fingers as he hauls in the pot. ‘She needs the money.’

  I’m glad he’s won, he looks like he needs the fruit or indeed, any form of nutrition; he’s got that malnourished, pallid skin, stretched tight over angular cheekbones like a storm-rigged tent. He must be fifty or so; red-grey hair sticks upright from his head in a way that suggests a fiery energy, but the stick-thin wrists and ankles protruding from orange cotton pyjamas give the lie to that. I notice that, like his fingers, his toes are also tightly bandaged.

  Aggie is still cross about losing but remembers her manners: ‘Mr Truffles, this be Mikey. Mikey, this card-sharp be Mr Truffles. Don’t never trust his ass where grapes are concerned.’

  I shake the mummified hand, thinking: haemorrhoids.

  ‘And this other hustler cheat is Roger.’

  ‘Ah yes, nice to meet you there, Mikey.’

  I cop Roger’s hand; a strong handshake for an elderly man. Roger has to be eighty, if he’s a day, but if there’s such a thing as a life-force, he has it in spades. Roger has a battered, bruised black grape for a head and I wonder if he’s allowed to slap it down on to the table and break the bank.

  ‘Now, go back to bed, boy,’ says Aggie.

  ‘Really, Aggie, I’m just not sleepy.’

  ‘Go to bed, Mikey.’

  ‘Oh come on, Nurse Karoma, does the young man have fruit?’ Roger has pitifully few tangerines left to bet with. I suspect his intervention might not be entirely philanthropic.

  ‘That boy got nothing. His folks give him Jack-shit in two years here.’

  Nice. Thanks for breaking the news gently, Aggie. But since I’ve got nothing to bet with, I shrug and prepare to about-Zimmer.

  ‘What about the glasses? I’ll have those glasses. I’ll trade you a couple of tangerines for them.’

  ‘Them glasses be mine,’ Aggie objects but is shouted down by Mr Truffles, who correctly points out that possession is nine-tenths of the law.

  By five thirty a.m. I know almost everything about my opponents: I know that Mr Truffles’s real name is Richard Babcock. A celebrity chef back in the eighties, with a string of London restaurants based on the signs of the Zodiac. Ironically, a venture that turned out to have no future – first to founder were Scorpio in Notting Hill and Virgo in South Kensington, bringing the entire celestial empire crashing down with them. Pretty soon Mr Truffles was using the cognac to flambé his own despair. Personal decline followed swiftly and for the past five years he’s been living hand-to-mouth, using his old press cuttings to line the walls of the cardboard structure he now calls home. It’s been an unseasonably severe spring and massive quantities of brandy have failed to prevent the onset of frostbite in his toes and fingers. I can certainly vouch for his cackhandedness, as I’ve been able to see all his cards for the last sixteen deals.

  Aggie says she comes from a fly-speck town in Louisiana, called Poverty, and claims to have been blown here by Hurricane Juan back in 1985. A gigantic Dorothy in pink diamanté glasses. To be fair, a hurricane is about the only force that could uproot someone like Aggie.

  I also know that Roger, more precisely retired Squadron Leader Roger Williams, is a genuine World War Two Hurricane pilot. In aerial combat he shot down six aircraft. Now he’s stuck here in this ward with a plum for a head. Roger’s home was broken into last week; there wasn’t much of value other than a Distinguished Flying Cross medal, which the burglars swiped before beating him senseless.

  ‘Right, that’s two hundred, give or take, from you, Mr Truffles; three hundred odd from you, Roger; and Aggie . . . I’ve given up counting.’ Not only have I won the diamanté glasses back, but I’m owed well over a thousand grapes, twenty-seven tangerines, thirty-five kiwi fruit and a bunch of bananas. I’m a gracious victor though, happy to accept signed and witnessed IOUs. It’s been a great night and I feel like doing back flips. I prance about the ward – so far as that’s possible on a Zimmer frame – celebrating my success.

  The game of poker hinges on maintaining a deadpan expression at all times; having a face like a skillet is a distinct advantage.

  Seven

  ‘You got a licence for that thing, then?’

  I’m in the middle of a slow pirouette on the Zimmer but manage to squeak to a halt.

  Two men stand in the doorway. ‘My name is Detective Sergeant Davis and this is DC Wenner. We’re looking for a Roger Anthony Williams. Ward seven is it?’

  ‘That’s me. Good morning to you, officers,’ says Roger.

  The plainclothes coppers step into the ward. The taller and paler of the two inspects his notebook with pink-rimmed gecko eyes, unconsciously finger-combing the tufts of his ginger moustache. ‘DC Wenner and myself have come to speak to you about the burglary of last Friday, July fifteen.’

  ‘I was advised that someone might be along to interview me. I was beginning to give up on you.’

  An almost imperceptible swallowtail of irritation appears on Davis’s brow. ‘The law moves in mysterious ways, Mr Williams. It may surprise you to know that there is a considerable amount of serious crime in the Thames Valley region.’

  ‘I’m quite well aware of that, believe me,’ replies Roger.

  ‘You’re on our list, Mr Williams, same as everyone else. It’s long list and we get to you when we get to you. Now, I realize that it is quite early in the morning but I’d just like to point out that DC Wenner and I have been on since midnight and we were hoping to get this done before we go off shift. Of course if this is a bad time, or . . .’ Davis pauses, glancing meaningfully at the fruit and card-laden table ‘. . . in any way inconvenient for you, we can always come back another day.’

  ‘No, no. Forgive me, but it has been eight days since the burglary and so far nobody’s—’

  ‘If you have any complaints about the handling of this case, you’re quite welcome to write to the Chief Constable.’ Davis delivers this information with the kind of indulgent smile usually reserved for small children or lunatics. His companion, a lumpish individual with a head like a badly crafted slab of plasticine, nods in agreement.

  ‘I hardly think that will be necessary. But, can I ask, do you have any promising leads; any hunches as yet?’

  ‘Hunches might be all very well for Nostradamus,’ pronounces Davis, ‘but they’re no use to us.’

  Roger looks blank.

  ‘The Hunchback of Nostradamus . . . the bells, and all that,’ explains Davis. Wenner helpfully mimes Quasimodo hauling on a rope and, fair play to him, it is a remarkably accurate impression. I’m not sure who, but either Truffles or Aggie stifles a guffaw while Roger maintains an impressively dignified expression.

  ‘Hunches have no place in the contemporary crime-fighting armoury. We look for information, sir – hard facts. They may not seem like much to the man in the street but when all of th
ese tiny facts are collected and reassembled by the right kind of deductive mind, that’s when you get the full picture. That’s modern police work for you.’

  Wenner nods gravely.

  ‘I see,’ says Roger, although he plainly doesn’t. ‘And how many of these facts do you possess . . . ah, at this time?’

  Davis makes a show of consulting his notebook. ‘So far, we have your name, and let’s see . . . your address: 3B, The Cascades, Caversham Bridge.’

  Somehow I don’t think we’ll be seeing Roger’s precious DFC any day soon now.

  Davis smirks expansively and surveys the ward. Aggie’s gone uncharacteristically quiet and fusses with a drip feed on the far side of the room. I notice that Mr Truffles has shrunk back into his chair and is feigning sleep. Davis’s roaming, reptilian gaze now settles on me. ‘Oy, whatcha wearing them silly glasses for? The sun’s not even properly up yet.’

  ‘I’m blind.’

  I have no idea why I said that. Some weird compulsion to give authority the finger, probably.

  ‘I see,’ Davis replies, unconscious of the irony. ‘Well, I think someone’s been having a laugh at your expense.’

  Wenner smirks, like a clumsy toddler just took the dull blade of a modelling knife to his blob of a head.

  I can’t believe that these two are prepared to take the piss out of a poor crippled blind boy in drag-queen sunglasses – they’ll be kicking the Zimmer frame out from under me next. For a couple of coppers, they’re not exactly what I’d call PC, so I decide to give Davis a bit of pay-back. ‘Sergeant Davis, can I ask you a question?’ I roll my head and direct my enquiry at the ceiling in the accepted Stevie Wonder manner.

  ‘Course you can.’

  ‘Do you think I could have a career in the force . . . you know, as a detective sergeant or something?’

  Bull’s-eye. It’s plain that Davis is some kind of Poirot wannabe and he’s torn between irritation at my presumption and downright hysteria. He sucks his teeth, inhaling a few coconut-fibre moustache hairs. ‘Sorry, young man, but I’m afraid the answer is no. As far as I’m aware it’s not possible for the visually challenged to join the force. Not my decision of course.’