Sarah Hall - The Beautiful Indifference - Stories

Aren’t there some interesting cases? she asked.

There’s a man who thinks he’s involved in a conspiracy. It’s all to do with a biscuit tin.

Is someone taking his biscuits?

He thinks people are communicating about him through the tin. Paranoid.

He lifted his fork and pressed his thumb against the tines, then looked at the three holes imprinted. He had a strong face. His shirts were never pristine. He seemed unmedical, too earthed. She could not imagine him at work, among the corridors and beds, the metal tables.

I’m going to become deskilled.

Deskilled?

Not performing procedures any more. You get rusty if you don’t practise. Lots of ulcers to deal with, though. One woman won’t get out of bed. She’s too exhausted to speak. Her legs are a mess.

He continued to talk about the patients on the ward. The dementia, the bipolar and dissociative disorders. Those who showed no signs of distress about their symptoms. Freud’s legacy. There was a woman who had been sectioned because her house was hazardous. She was hoarding all kinds of things: papers, cartons, tins, her own waste. The place was full to the ceiling and stinking. There were narrow routes through the piles, like a warren. There were rats.

I had an argument with another doctor about her. I’m not sure she should really be there. You can’t penalise someone for the way they live. And she’s not really a danger to herself, or anyone else. Unless her stuff collapses.

It does seem extreme. My father hoards. His attic is on the point of collapse. In fact it has collapsed. Do you think we all have a glitch? A condition, I mean?

Probably. To some degree.

He had ordered venison. It arrived on a white plate, a tidy maroon-centred shank in a shallow wash of pink. He usually ordered the most interesting meat on the menu — liver, foie gras, hare. She liked to watch him eat. He went very carefully through the dense tissue with his knife and worked across the plate until everything was gone. He would put the knife into his mouth if anything stuck to it. Three or four times during every meal he put the knife there, closing his lips over the blade, slipping it harmlessly along his tongue. The gesture reminded her of television footage of big cats picking up their cubs, lifting the slack bodies harmlessly between their teeth. She was not sure whether these erogenous qualities were noticeable to other people or whether they were simply her invention.

So. What’s yours?

My what?

Your condition.

He smiled at her.

I want you all the time. Even right afterwards. I want to break you. It’s a sickness.

She laughed.

Sadist.

Under the table, without having to lean too far, he found her leg. He let his hand rest there and with the other he continued to spear his food.

And what’s yours?

She had been walking backwards in the pen without looking where she was going. She had crushed the rabbit’s paw under her foot by accident. The thing had been pinned. It had twitched and tugged horribly under her shoe. When she’d dragged it from the back of the hutch to investigate the damage its claw had been splayed and bloody. In a remarkable piece of social ostracisation, the whole school had ignored her for a week, but she had not been able to accept the punishment. She kept trying to walk or sit with the other children, even as they spoke among themselves about how stupid she was.

Pathological loneliness.

Really? Interesting. I’ve never heard of that before.

No. It clearly doesn’t exist.

Because of what you do? The isolation?

She reached across the table and cut a piece off his meat, from the end of the steak where the exterior was charred and firm.

Oh. Probably because of where I’m from.

I’ll have you certified and make a case study.

Great. Call it a syndrome. Give it your name. Do you want to try some risotto?

Do you want me to finish it?

Yes.

You don’t eat much.

I get full up quickly.

After paying the bill they left the restaurant and walked a section of the walls. There was an application on his phone that could photograph the night sky and recognise constellations. They tried, but the light pollution was too great, the stars indistinct. They found a club and danced. The music was two decades old, difficult to move to though she knew the songs, and they gave up. They walked back to the hotel. The town had wound out. People were reeling through the streets. They passed a young man with blood running from a wound under his jaw. He was eating chips, impervious to the injury. A girl in a torn blouse was sitting on some church steps vomiting between her legs. Her hair was matted and dripping. A police car sped past almost silently, its rapid blue beam spiralling against the brickwork.

On the ward, she said. The ones who don’t care about their illness — why is that?

Hard to say. It’s either disease or conversion. It’s not well defined.

He pushed her against the wall, slowly, kissed her.

In their room they stripped the heavy coverlet off the bed. The wine had numbed her. There was no pain. Her orgasm was small, towards the base of her spine. He moved her onto all fours. She watched him in the mirror opposite, his head falling forward, and to the side, his brow pleated, his mouth open. He was beautiful to watch. He withdrew and came across her buttocks. The semen was less thick; she felt it trickle as he lifted her up. His chest rose and fell against her back. He kissed her shoulders. He slept first and in the morning she woke and turned on her back and gently pressed against her pubic bone. She reached for more painkillers and the glass of water on the bed stand. She watched light gather in the room. So what if she had fallen behind? So what if she was out of sync? It might end. It might.

In the morning properly they went to the Minster. Another high blue day. The heat was already mature, suggestive of a later season. Men were jumping off a white Bayliner into the river. There were no remaining casualties and the town looked swept of debris. They walked past the riverside swans and geese, ice-cream vendors, picnickers, a funambulist practising between two trees, soft-shoed like a foal.

I read one of your books, he said.

Oh, right. When did that happen?

Recently.

Right. Which one?

There was a discussion. He had thought carefully about what to say. The analysis was astute. She could not tell if anything had altered in his perception of her because of the experience; she thought perhaps it had. Previously, she had doubted whether the work would be to his taste. Now she was not sure whether that mattered. Though he was not being critical, she began to defend the work, to play up its controversy. As if she had meant all along for the book to be problematic. The discussion became a political debate, which was easier. He took hold of her hand.

I’m having a fantastic time. I really like being with you.

She waited for a moment and then returned the compliment. They walked on.

People were sitting and lying on the grass around the Minster. Inside, most of the building was cordoned off, with a ticket booth controlling entry. They decided not to pay. They could see the colossal stained glass. Veils of coloured light hung over the nave. An official approached them.

First time inside, he asked. Well, it’s good you’ve seen the windows now. They’re about to take them down to start cleaning them. Lottery money. It’s costing ten million pounds.

The official pointed out a few other noteworthy features inside the cathedral then courteously left them alone and greeted another group. They were both familiar with such places, had a secular interest. Still, the interior was impressive, the size and workmanship. Gold leaf and latticing. Stone tracts and arches, great masonic veins. It had been built without apathy, an estimation of God, Europe’s greatest Gothic enterprise. She envied that certainty.