John Harvey - Cold Light

Lynn had not really been hungry before she left, but neither did she want to break her journey. Unwilling to be more imaginative, she drove out to the McDonald’s near the new Sainsbury’s, not so new any longer, and sat in the window, looking out into the lights of the passing traffic and trying not to think too hard about the fillet offish she was eating. Twenty-nine percent fresh fish, the advertisements boasted. What was the rest?

She had been aware of a new excitement in the Nancy Phelan business back at the station, out on the fringe of it though, not yet party to what was going on. They’d found a body, someone had said, in the canal by Beeston Lock. She hadn’t heard anything to corroborate that. Kevin Naylor had been tying up his paperwork in the CID room and she had asked him. “There’s been contact from the bloke who took her, some kind of ransom note, that’s all I know.” She had been at her desk when Dana Matthieson had left Resnick’s office, pasty-faced and close to crying; something about the way she had looked back at Resnick from the door, as if, Lynn had caught herself thinking, there might be something more between them. Well, biting down into the batter of her fillet offish, so what if there was? What business was it of hers? Five minutes later, she was on the road.

For a moment, as she turned off the road and her headlights swept across the pebble-dashed exterior, Lynn thought the house was in darkness. But there was a light burning in the kitchen and her mother threw open the back door and smothered Lynn in her arms.

“How is he?” Lynn asked as she released herself.

“Oh, Lynnie, it’s just awful.”

Her father was in the room at the front of the house, the one that was kept for occasional Sunday teas and special occasions; the last time Lynn could recall seeing her father in there was after her Auntie Cissie’s funeral, awkward in his red hands and black suit, anxious to be away from the polite grieving and the sausage rolls, back among his hens.

Now he was sitting, stiff and straight, on a hard mahogany chair, the seat of which he had padded with two cushions.

“Dad, why don’t you rest on the settee?”

His eyes looked at her from gray channels of pain. “You know,” he said, wincing a little as he turned towards her, “them buggers won’t let me have as much as a glass of milk.”

He had been on a semi-solid diet for two days, this last day allowed only clear fluids, nothing more. Lynn sat on the arm of the settee and reached for his hand. The purgative the doctor had given seemed to have sucked all the life out of him. When she bent to brush her lips against his cheek, it was sallow and cold.

“What’s going to happen to your mother?” he said.

“What d’you mean, happen to her? Nothing’s going to happen to her.”

“After I’m gone.”

“Oh, Dad, for heaven’s sake. It’s only an examination, a precaution. You’ll be fine, you see.”

The veins on the back of his hand were like maps.

“Dad.”

She took one of the hands and held it against her mouth and his fingers smelled of waste and decay.

“What’s going to happen,” he said, “to your mother?”

The hospital was close to the city center and from a distance seemed to have been made from sections of Lego by an unimaginative child. The interior was low-ceilinged and lit by strip-lighting from overhead. Staff walked briskly along corridors, while visitors stopped to peer at the neatly engraved directions, white and green. They shared the lift with an elderly woman sleeping on a trolley, tubes running from a pair of portable drips into her wrist. The porter whistled “Mr. Tambourine Man” and smiled at Lynn with his eyes.

The nurse would have made two of Lynn and left room to spare. She called Lynn’s father pet and told him she’d look after him, promised him a nice cup of tea when it was over. “If you’d like to have a word with Mr. Rodgers about the endoscopy,” she said to Lynn.

There were flowers on the desk and a wooden bowl, polished and stained to bring out the natural grain. The abdominal registrar wore a white coat and suit trousers and tennis shoes on his feet; he had octagonal rimless glasses and an accent that had never shaken seven years of public school. He greeted Lynn with a firm handshake and a glance at his watch. “Please,” he said, “sit down.”

Lynn opted to stand.

“What we’re about to do,” the registrar said, “is take a little look inside your father’s colon. We do this by means of a fibreoptic tube, an endoscope, which is passed along the bowel.” Lynn felt her stomach clenching at the thought. “As procedures go, it can be a trifle uncomfortable, but it need not necessarily be painful. So much depends upon your father’s attitude. And yours.”

“He’s terrified,” Lynn said.

“Ah.”

“He’s convinced he’s dying.”

“Then it’s up to you to convince him this is not so. Be strong for him.”

“If you do find something,” Lynn asked, “what happens next?”

Another glance towards the watch. “If we do come across what appears to be a growth, then we may decide to take a biopsy, have a closer look. After that we’ll know more.”

“And if it’s cancer?”

“Then we’ll treat it.”

He was wearing a white overall that tied at the back, sedated but awake.

“Don’t fret,” the nurse said, “I’ll hold his hand all the way through it.” She laughed. “There’s a TV screen in there, he can watch what’s happening if he wants.”

Lynn thought it was unlikely: her father wouldn’t even sit with her mum and watch Blockbusters . She went downstairs and sat in the WRVS canteen, chatting about the weather with a middle-aged volunteer who assured her that the jam tarts were homemade. Lynn bought two, cherry and apricot, and a cup of tea. The walls were decorated with paintings done by the children from the local First School, bright as hope and full of life. The pastry might have been home made, but the fillings were out of a tin. She was wondering, if anything did happen to her father, how they would ever manage. Accumulating all the reasons why, whatever happened, she shouldn’t apply for a transfer, return home.

“Your father’s fine,” the registrar said, back in his office. “Complaining a little of the discomfort, but otherwise, absolutely fine. A character.”

Lynn gulped down air: it was going to be all right.

“There is a blockage, however. A small growth.”

“But …”

“We’ve taken a biopsy while we had the chance.”

“You said …”

“One definite thing in his favor, if it does turn out to be cancerous, it is pretty high up in the bowel. Easier, once we’ve snipped out the offending part to join the rest together and leave things functioning pretty much as normal.” He looked at Lynn to see if she were following. “No call for a colostomy, you see.”

All the way home, her father stared through the window at the edges of buildings blending with the gathering darkness, memories of fields. Several times Lynn spoke but got no answer, secretly pleased, not wanting to discuss what sat heavy between them, waiting to be discussed. The car radio drifted through talk of the recession and ethnic cleansing and the rise of the German Right. Lynn switched it off and stared along the tracks her lights made in the lightly falling rain.

Her mother had made a meal, cold ham and salad, halves of boiled egg, each with a teaspoon of mayonnaise on top, thick slices of white bread and butter. Tea.

“Stay the night, love.”

“Sorry, Mum, I can’t. Early call.”

At the door she held her father close till she was sure of the beat of his heart.

Rain fell more heavily, bouncing back from the black shine of tarmac, swishing across her windscreen in a wave whenever another vehicle sailed past and suddenly she was crying. From nowhere, tears ransacked her face and she began to shake. Clutching the wheel, she leaned forward, peering out. A lorry swung out behind her and as it passed the slipstream dragged her wide. Her mirror blazed with the glare of headlights and a car horn screamed. Blinded, Lynn struggled to regain her lane as the wind gusted into her broadside. Mouth open, sobbing hard, she felt the car begin to skid and when her foot tried to find the brake it slid away. With a jarring thump, the nearside struck something solid and cannoned forward, Lynn’s seatbelt saving her from the windscreen but not the steering wheel, blood and tears now stinging her eyes.