the bus. He was six or seven years old and he was stuck halfway up a granite wall that separated the road from the river, his heels to the wall and his arms spread, and his head twisted sideways because he was too scared to look up or down. There was traffic hurtling below him, and above him a narrow parapet that could have been designed for older bully-boys who wanted to show off, and there were two of them up there now, jeering down at him, prancing and catcalling, daring him to come on up. But he can’t, because he’s even more terrified of heights than he is of traffic, and he knows that on the other side of the parapet, if he ever manages to reach it, there’s a sixty-foot drop waiting for him, to the towpath and the river, and he can’t do heights and he can’t swim, which is why I’m running for all I’m worth.
Yet when I arrive, panting, drenched in sweat, what do I see? No child, frozen or unfrozen. And the topography has undergone a transformation. No granite parapet. No giddying walk with hurtling traffic one side and fast-flowing Thames the other. And on the central reservation, one benign policewoman directing traffic.
‘You mustn’t talk to me, darling,’ she says as she semaphores.
‘Did you see three kids fooling here just now? They could have died.’
‘Not here, darling.’
‘I saw them, I swear I did! There was a small kid stuck against the wall.’
‘I’ll have to book you in a minute, darling. Now bugger off.’
So I did. I walked back across the bridge I’d had no business crossing in the first place, and all night long while I waited for Penelope to come home I thought about that frozen child in his make-believe hell. And in the morning when I tiptoed to the bathroom so as not to wake her, he was still bothering me, the child who wasn’t there. And throughout the day while I was interpreting for a Dutch diamond consortium, I kept him locked in my head where a lot was going on without my knowledge. And he was still in there the next evening, arms outstretched and knuckles jammed against the granite wall when, responding to an urgent request from the North London District Hospital, I presented myself at 7.45 p.m. at the tropical diseases ward, for the purpose of interpreting for a dying African man of unidentifiable age who is refusing to speak a word of any known language except his native-born Kinyarwanda.
Blue night-lights have pointed me down endless corridors. Fancy signposts have told me which way to turn. Certain beds are screened off, denoting the most critical cases. Ours is such a bed. On one side of it crouches Salvo, on the other side with only a pair of dying man’s knees between us, this
degree nurse
. And this degree nurse, whom I deduce to be of Central African origin, has knowledge and responsibilities that exceed most doctors’, although this is not how she comes over, being lissom and imposing in her gait, with the unlikely first name of HANNAH on her left bosom, and a gold cross displayed at her throat, not to mention a long, slender body buttoned sternly into a blue-white uniform, but when she gets up and moves around the ward, fluid as a dancer’s, plus neatly braided hair receding from her brow in furrows to the point where it is permitted to grow naturally, though cut short for practicality.
And all we’re doing, this degree nurse Hannah and myself, is we’re catching each other’s eye for exponentially long periods of time while she fires her questions at our patient with what I sense to be a protective severity and I duly render them into Kinyarwanda and we both wait—sometimes for minutes on end, it seems to me—for the poor man’s answers delivered in the mumbled accents of the African childhood which he is determined will be his last memory of life.
But this is not to take account of other acts of mercy that degree nurse Hannah is performing for him with the assistance of a second nurse, Grace, whom I know from her cadences to be Jamaican,
Yet when I arrive, panting, drenched in sweat, what do I see? No child, frozen or unfrozen. And the topography has undergone a transformation. No granite parapet. No giddying walk with hurtling traffic one side and fast-flowing Thames the other. And on the central reservation, one benign policewoman directing traffic.
‘You mustn’t talk to me, darling,’ she says as she semaphores.
‘Did you see three kids fooling here just now? They could have died.’
‘Not here, darling.’
‘I saw them, I swear I did! There was a small kid stuck against the wall.’
‘I’ll have to book you in a minute, darling. Now bugger off.’
So I did. I walked back across the bridge I’d had no business crossing in the first place, and all night long while I waited for Penelope to come home I thought about that frozen child in his make-believe hell. And in the morning when I tiptoed to the bathroom so as not to wake her, he was still bothering me, the child who wasn’t there. And throughout the day while I was interpreting for a Dutch diamond consortium, I kept him locked in my head where a lot was going on without my knowledge. And he was still in there the next evening, arms outstretched and knuckles jammed against the granite wall when, responding to an urgent request from the North London District Hospital, I presented myself at 7.45 p.m. at the tropical diseases ward, for the purpose of interpreting for a dying African man of unidentifiable age who is refusing to speak a word of any known language except his native-born Kinyarwanda.
Blue night-lights have pointed me down endless corridors. Fancy signposts have told me which way to turn. Certain beds are screened off, denoting the most critical cases. Ours is such a bed. On one side of it crouches Salvo, on the other side with only a pair of dying man’s knees between us, this
degree nurse
. And this degree nurse, whom I deduce to be of Central African origin, has knowledge and responsibilities that exceed most doctors’, although this is not how she comes over, being lissom and imposing in her gait, with the unlikely first name of HANNAH on her left bosom, and a gold cross displayed at her throat, not to mention a long, slender body buttoned sternly into a blue-white uniform, but when she gets up and moves around the ward, fluid as a dancer’s, plus neatly braided hair receding from her brow in furrows to the point where it is permitted to grow naturally, though cut short for practicality.
And all we’re doing, this degree nurse Hannah and myself, is we’re catching each other’s eye for exponentially long periods of time while she fires her questions at our patient with what I sense to be a protective severity and I duly render them into Kinyarwanda and we both wait—sometimes for minutes on end, it seems to me—for the poor man’s answers delivered in the mumbled accents of the African childhood which he is determined will be his last memory of life.
But this is not to take account of other acts of mercy that degree nurse Hannah is performing for him with the assistance of a second nurse, Grace, whom I know from her cadences to be Jamaican,
Similar Books
Unknown
Unknown
The Eden Series: The Complete Collection
Janelle Stalder
Kilting Me Softly: 1
Persephone Jones
Darkness Under the Sun
Dean Koontz
Sybil
Flora Rheta Schreiber
The Pyramid
William Golding
Nothing is Forever
Grace Thompson
Series of Unfortunate Events: The Grim Grotto
Lemony Snicket
The Tiger's Wife
Tea Obreht