Little Bits of Baby Read Online Free PDF Page A

impulse so you must feel free to weave me all manner of lies about yourself.’
    â€˜Why ever should I want to do that?’ Peter had asked.
    â€˜To divert my thoughts from pain and death? I assume that’s why they’ve sent you. Are you married?’
    â€˜No,’ said Peter. ‘Yes.’
    â€˜Such a pity you forgot to take off the ring. That might have been a most rewarding falsehood.’ Marcus had paused to look down mischievously at his own ringless hands. ‘Or perhaps you slipped that on, just before coming here and this is a discerning double bluff and you a master deviant.’ He looked Peter straight in the eye. ‘Are you devious by nature?’ Peter said he wasn’t and smiled. ‘Are you afraid of blood, tears or vomit?’
    â€˜We run a kindergarten.’
    â€˜You and ..? No. Don’t tell me. Not yet. So. A kindergarten. Then we’ll get along like a house on fire. Curious phrase that is. Washington Irving used it first, of course, not that that explains anything. Just gives you a door to lay the blame at. Get along like a house on fire. It seems to imply that the brightest new relationship will be swift, dangerous and end in the destruction of all material security.’
    â€˜It suits ours rather well, then.’
    Their house had burned, but not so very swiftly. The volunteer co-ordinator had warned Peter that it might all be over in two months, but Marcus had carried on and on. He would grow worse, acquire rattles in his chest and an array of monitors at his bedside, lead his few spectators to the gates of Beyond, linger there teasingly to bid farewell, then come gliding back to Act One, Scene the First. On his more cynical days, Peter wondered whether it was not his visits that kept Marcus alive, so closely did his new friend’s resurrections resemble the generous round of farewell appearances of an adored performer.
    Peter stepped out of the lift into the carefully conditioned air of the ward. Months after his first visit, he still felt the clutch of death dread brought on by the smell of the place. No amount of lazar-house groaning could match that silent threnody of bedpan, antiseptic, hot-house bloom and sweated fear. During the last of Marcus’s recitals at the doors of Beyond, Peter had sat up drinking machine-brewed cocoa with the night nurse and had asked her how she coped. She had sighed, rubbed an aching foot and said that she didn’t, really, but that it helped keep her weight down.
    The duty nurse was away from the reception desk so he presumed on familiarity and went directly to Marcus’s room. He paused in the doorway. Marcus had plugged headphones into his new toy, a portable compact disc player, and so had not heard his approach. He lay staring away from the door to swaying treetops and a smoking chimney stack. Sweat shone in the exhausted folds of his cheeks and neck. The lavish score brought to life by the machine, seeped out from the edges of the headphones as a pattern of tinny whispers and clicks. The nurses were forever shutting windows with brisk explanations about air-conditioning balance, but Marcus had Peter well trained. He moved straight from shutting the door to sliding back two panes of the double-glazing. The breeze he let in filled out a hated net curtain that was stuffed firmly to one side and gently swung a few Get Well cards that dangled from a washing-line affair at the bed’s end.
    â€˜You’re late, darling,’ Marcus said, too loud for he was competing with his private orchestra.
    â€˜You’re soaked,’ said Peter. He ran the cold tap over a flannel for a few seconds, then wrang the cloth out and gently wiped it over Marcus’s face, across his neck and up behind his ears. His fingers trailed across a thick scab.
    â€˜Bliss,’ said Marcus and shut his eyes. Peter rinsed out the flannel once more and arranged it, folded, across Marcus’s burning forehead. Then he