Last Chance Saloon - Marian Keyes [101]
‘We’re very sunny today,’ the nurse sang cheerfully.
‘Speak for yourself!’
‘Is your hip giving you grief?’
‘No. But the diagnosis of the sample that they took out of it is,’ Fintan replied.
Tara leant over and squeezed his hand. No wonder he was waspish.
His humours throughout the day were unpredictable and fast-changing. Less than an hour after his surly, ungracious greeting, his mood had noticeably lightened, and so, by association, had everyone else’s. To the point where the atmosphere around his bed became unexpectedly party-like. At one stage their chat and laughter was so loud that the nurse had to ask them to keep the noise down, that they were cheering the other patients up.
Regularly and separately the visitors realized how inappropriate their merriment was. Then they were seized with guilt for not being sorrowful. Until, bizarrely, in no time, the jollity started up again. But while individuals got momentary relief, the dread never left them as a unit. Katherine watched as horror circulated like a Mexican wave. All the while the animated talk was going on, one person would be sitting stock-still, with an expression that was almost perplexed. What am I doing here? Because Fintan is sick? Because Fintan might die? But that’s ridiculous!
Then they were washed with the balm of hope – everything will be fine – and the terror moved smoothly on to the next person.
At eleven o’clock Fintan turned to the little television beside his bed. ‘It’s nearly time for the reruns of Supermarket Sweep. Does anyone mind?’
‘Of course not,’ they murmured, prepared to humour him. But within moments, with the weird way that reality kept mutating, it was just like sitting around in someone’s front room, watching telly.
JaneAnn, in particular, managed to lose herself. ‘’Tis there, ‘tis there,’ she shouted, in clenched-fist frustration, as the lucky contestant ran past the Lenor for the third time. ‘Are you blind? Look, it’s there!’ She was on her feet, prodding at the television before she suddenly remembered where she was and sheepishly sat down again. ‘We don’t get Sweepermarket Supe where I come from,’ she muttered to the nurse, who was looking at her askance.
By lunchtime everyone had drifted off to work, Milo and Timothy went out for a smoke and JaneAnn was alone with the sleeping Fintan. She sat gazing at him, her youngest child, her baby, tears leaking down her tissue-paper cheeks. She ran her rosary beads through her hands and silently mouthed prayers and wondered what God’s reason was for striking down a young man in his prime.
When Milo and Timothy returned, they tried to eat a ham sandwich from the stockpile JaneAnn had got up at six that morning to make, but no one had an appetite. ‘Let’s go out into the air for a while,’ Milo suggested. ‘Maybe there’s some grass somewhere.’ But it was cold and they couldn’t find a park, so they traipsed up and down the Fulham Road and appalled the keepers of the chichi little shops they called into.
‘Look,’ JaneAnn exclaimed, holding up a tiny, intricately patterned enamel box. ‘Fifteen pounds for a small yoke like this.’
‘I think you’ll find that’s fifteen hundred pounds,’ the saleswoman said contemptuously, smoothly retrieving the box from JaneAnn’s hand.
But her disdain didn’t have the required effect: Milo, Timothy and JaneAnn snorted with laughter. ‘Fifteen hundred! For that little thing. You could nearly buy an acre of land for that!’
‘This was a good idea,’ JaneAnn said, when they were back out on the street. ‘My heart isn’t so heavy now.’
But the next bijou antique emporium they visited had its door locked, and even when they rang the bell and smiled ingratiatingly through the glass, it remained shut.
‘Maybe the shop’s closed,’ Timothy suggested.
‘No, there’s someone in there,’ JaneAnn said, then knocked on the glass and waved at the chic woman sitting behind a gold rococo desk within. ‘Hello,