Chapter 104: Grade 4 I

Priyanka had the boxes in his lift again and this time there were 3.

"They came at 5, Mr Flynn. Same place as Saturday." She had somebody’s dry cleaning over her arm and a resident waiting. "I’ve not signed for them, they don’t ask you to."

"They don’t ask you to?"

"No." She said it the way you say a thing you have decided not to think about. "That’s the second time. Most places make you sign."

Upstairs he put them on the marble and got the first one open.

The suit was darker than Saturday’s and had nothing in the weave you could see from any distance at all. Navy so deep it read as black under the downlights and came back navy when he turned it. A white shirt with no pattern and no cufflinks in the box.

No watch.

He went back through the tissue paper twice looking for the watch, because Saturday had come with one, and there was no watch.

Then he opened the shoes.

Same size, same last, same everything as the pair sat in his wardrobe from Saturday with the wooden things pushed back inside them.

Except the soles.

Saturday’s had leather on the bottom of them and had gone tack, tack, tack on the stone floor of that hall in Ryder Court, and he had heard himself walking and had liked it.

These had rubber on. Thin, dark, matt, not a mark on them.

Danny stood in his own kitchen with a shoe in each hand.

Somebody has thought about the noise I make.

Saturday I was meant to be heard. That’s what a hard sole is. That’s a man arriving.

And tonight I’m not.

He put them down on the marble very carefully, and got the phone out, and typed with the shoe still in his other hand.

why no watch

Eleven seconds.

[ Nothing on your wrists tonight, host. ]

why

[ You will be asked to wash your hands. ]

He read that about 4 times, and then he went and got in the shower, and did not enjoy it.

The cab dropped him at 25 past on a street of white houses with black railings, 5 minutes off a main road and quiet enough to hear his own footsteps not making any noise.

You would walk past it. Four storeys, portico, a brass plate the size of a paperback by the door with a name on it like a person’s name, 2 bay trees in pots. If you had asked him at 20 past 7 what was inside it he’d have said flats.

The only tell was the ramp. Proper one, wide, with a handrail, running up the left hand side of the steps.

That’s a ramp for a trolley.

Inside was a hall with a desk in it and a woman of about 50 behind the desk, and it smelled of lilies and, underneath the lilies, of the other thing. Very faint. The smell that gets into the back of your throat in any building where people are ill, however much they spend on the flowers.

Two people sat in the chairs by the window. A man in a coat with his hands between his knees, not reading the magazine he had picked up. A woman of about 30 on her phone, scrolling and not looking at it.

Visiting had finished at 7. There was a card on the desk that said so.

"Good evening. Can I help you?"

"I’m, "

"Fourth floor." She had turned a screen a couple of degrees and was looking at it rather than at him. "They’re expecting you."

Danny stood with the rest of the sentence still in his mouth.

I’ve not said anything.

She’s not asked me a name and I’ve not given her one and she’s not written one down, and there’s nothing on that screen with me on it, because I watched her face and she didn’t read anything, she just looked at a thing that was already open.

They.

"Lift’s on the left. It’s the one on the right for 4, the other one only does 1 to 3."

"Thanks."

"Mr Flynn." She had a small bottle in her hand and she was holding it out. "Hands, please. Everyone going up."

He did his hands with the gel and it was cold and it went off in about 4 seconds and left them tacky.

You will be asked to wash your hands.

It knew. It knew what building this was and what they’d ask me at the desk, and it told me at half 6 in my own kitchen.

The lift on the right had 4 buttons and he did not press any of them.

It went up on its own with the doors shut and him stood in it looking at his own shoes.

The phone went once in his inside pocket, one short buzz, and he did not get it out because the doors were already going.

The fourth floor was carpeted.

That was the first thing and it was the wrong thing. Hospitals are not carpeted. Hospitals are that vinyl that goes up the wall so they can hose it, and this was carpet, thick, the colour of oatmeal, going the length of a corridor with 6 doors off it and lamps rather than strip lights.

At the far end there was a nurses’ station with one woman at it, and she looked up and looked back down.

And 20 feet from the lift there was a man stood against the wall.

Big. Fifties. Suit, no tie, hands crossed in front of him, and the earpiece was on the other side so you could see the cord going down into his collar only if you were looking.

Danny was looking, because that is what he does.

Not a nurse and not a doctor and not a relative.

He’s been stood there a while. Weight’s on his left. He’ll swap in about 4 minutes.

The man did not ask his name and did not move.

He looked at Danny for about a second and a half, went from the shoes to the face, and then tipped his head about half an inch towards the third door down.

The room was big and warm and had a lamp on rather than the overhead.

There was a bed in it with a man in it.

Old. Very old. Eighties at least, and asleep or something near it, with his head turned on the pillow and his mouth slightly open and one hand on top of the covers with a cannula taped to the back of it. A monitor by the bed with the sound off, doing its line.

And 5 people stood round the room not looking at him.

A woman of about 60 in a good coat she had not taken off. Two men in their 40s, one of them with a folder. A younger woman with a laptop bag on her shoulder, still on her shoulder, which meant she had not been asked to sit down and did not expect to be. And a man of about 70 in the chair by the window who had the look of somebody who had been in that chair a long time.

Nobody said anything when Danny came in.

The woman in the coat glanced at him and away, the way you glance at somebody in a waiting room.

She thinks I’m with one of them.

They all think I’m with one of the others. That’s how this works. There’s 5 of them and none of them has asked anybody who anybody is, because it’s a hospital room at half 7 at night and you don’t.

He stood at the back near the door with his hands where he could see them and did what he was there to do, which he still did not know, and which by 7:40 he had stopped expecting to be told.

So he read the room instead.

It took him about 6 minutes and it was the easiest room he had ever read in his life.

The one with the folder is a solicitor. He’s got the folder and he’s not opened it once, and he’s holding it against his chest with both arms, which is a man who does not want to be the one who opens it.

The other one’s the son. He’s got the old boy’s jaw. And he has looked at that bed 4 times and every time it’s cost him something and he’s turned it into looking out the window.

The woman in the coat is not family. She’s stood 3 feet further back than everybody and she’s kept her coat on, and she got here before I did and she’ll go after.

The girl with the laptop bag works for one of them. She’s here to remember it.

And the old boy in the chair is the only one of them who’s actually looked at the man in the bed since I came in.