Rose Leopard Read Online Free PDF Page B

things to do.’
    â€˜Enough of your early-morning argey-bargey,’ I tell her sternly. ‘We’ll take as long as we need.’
    â€˜It’ll be an injection,’ Milo says wisely. I notice that he has brought a comic; his small hands are busy tracing the ‘p’ in Simpsons. ‘That’s what they always do in hospitals. Fuss around for ages then give an injection.’
    â€˜I hate injections.’ Otis leans against the car door, one rubicund cheek squashed against the window. ‘They hurt. The needles are too big.’
    â€˜Bigger than straws,’ her brother agrees gloomily.
    â€˜Or spaghetti,’ says Otis.
    They are silent for a moment. Milo rolls the comic, puts it in his jacket pocket, turns his head around.
    Eventually he asks, ‘Why is Mum a funny colour?’
    I sneak a look in the rear-vision mirror. What I see shocks me — Kaz is very pale, almost grey, like a seagull’s feather. Her lips are colourless; she is sweating profusely, breathing heavily. Everything of her face — her jowls, cheeks, beneath her eyes, their lids — sags despondently.
    We are nearly into the darkness of the valley. I give the accelerator a more urgent push. Around us the rushing light becomes dappled then, as we descend further, it is a night-sky fused with emeralds and onyx.
    â€˜ All in the valley of Death, rode the six hundred ,’ I hear.
    â€˜What?’
    It must have come out of my mouth.
    â€˜It’s a poem,’ I explain. ‘By a man called Tennyson. Soldiers and horses and war and stuff. Cannon to the right of them, cannon to the left of them, cannon in front of them, volley’d and thunder’d!’
    Pause for reflection. The road flattens then rises beneath us.
    â€˜ When can their glory fade ?’ I whisper, wondering why there are small sharp tears stinging behind my eyes.
    â€˜You’d better hurry,’ Milo advises me. ‘Before you go completely crazy.’
    â€˜Are we there yet?’ Otis whines.
    I have never liked hospitals. Maybe it’s because I wasn’t born in one. Missing out on such a seminal experience has obviously influenced the ebb and flow of my life. In some ways it has been advantageous: I have a better story to tell than most people, who can bleat only of maternity wards, brusque midwives and menacing forceps.
    â€˜Somehow,’ Kaz told me during our early days together, ‘this is unsurprising. To find out that you were not born in a hospital is not at all surprising.’
    â€˜How do you mean?’
    â€˜I mean, there are some people in this strange world who should never list a white wall and the smell of super-strength disinfectant as their first sensory experience. And you’re one of them.’
    â€˜I am?’
    â€˜Definitely. You’re so … unconfined. Beginning life in a hospital prepares most of us for seventy-eight point something years of hopping from one institution to another. Hospital, home, crèche, school, university, work building, pension office, retirement home then morgue — in hospital again.’
    â€˜Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans everything.’
    â€˜Exactly. You’re not like that. You flit between spaces, not institutions.’
    â€˜Are you always this philosophical?’
    â€˜Only when freshly in love. So, where were you born?’
    I grin wickedly, run a finger down the camber of her spine.
    â€˜Guess.’
    â€˜Typical. Okay, let’s begin with the conventional. Back seat of your Dad’s EH?’
    â€˜We owned a beige Morris Minor.’
    â€˜Ouch! Um … in a meadow, besmirched by wildflowers and butterflies?’
    â€˜Giving birth, I am led to believe, is about blood, gunk and screaming. It’s Macbeth played inside the womb. It is not romantic.’
    â€˜Agreed. On a beach, the crashing of waves carefully synchronised to each contraction?’
    â€˜How very New Age. Kaz, my mother