Louise Welsh - Death is a Welcome Guest

Eddie tipped back his drink again. The electricity had died a few minutes ago and his hair gleamed nicotine yellow against the light of the candles Jeb had lit.

‘Sorry to disappoint you.’

Jeb leaned forward in his chair. He had opened a bottle of San Pellegrino and the bubbles fizzed, straight and pure, in his glass. ‘You stayed in London?’

‘I didn’t want to. It probably sounds lame, but as soon as that flight took off, I felt a sense of foreboding. I wanted to ask the stewardess to get the captain to turn the plane around and let me off. I didn’t of course.’ Eddie gave a sad smile. ‘Just ordered a martini extra dry and found an in-flight movie I could tolerate. Soon as I got to London I phoned home. Jaime said that her mom was a lot better. I wished my girls goodnight and went to bed.

‘The next day the TV news mentioned this new virus, V596, the sweats, but I didn’t pay it any mind. I had tickets for Richard III at the Globe. I didn’t know it, but it was one of their final performances. Richard overplayed his disability, but it was a good production.’ Eddie shook his head. ‘Sorry, old habits die hard. Like Jimmy Durante said, everyone’s a critic.

‘I wasn’t worried when I phoned Miriam at home and on her cell the next day and got no response. I’d forgotten the premonition I had on the plane in my excitement of being back in London. As far as I was concerned, my wife was better. Miriam would be joining me in a day or two and in the meantime she was making the most of a visit from our daughter. Sure, there was mention of the virus on TV, but where I was, in the centre of London, everything looked good. There was nothing to be concerned about. I didn’t even bother to phone later, because of the time difference.’

Somewhere in the hotel a door slammed and footsteps rang out against a tiled floor. Jeb and Magnus turned to look across the dim lobby for the source of the sound, but there was no one there. Eddie said, ‘We’re not the only ones hiding out here. So far most people have kept to themselves, but I’ve seen them at a distance. You’re the first folks I’ve talked to.’

Magnus glanced towards the dark part of the lobby, where elevators waited like upright coffins, ready to ferry guests up or down, to heaven or hell, but there was no one there. ‘Why us?’

Eddie shrugged. ‘Who knows? Maybe I’m just the right level of drunk. I always got sociable after a couple of martinis. It used to irritate Miriam. She thought I spent too much time talking to strangers and not enough talking to her.’ He sighed. ‘Nice as you fellows are, I’d give a lot to be talking to her instead of you right now.’

Jeb asked, ‘When did you realise how bad things were?’

‘That used to irritate Miriam too, the way I drift on to tangents. She’d say, “Get back on track, old man.” She loved me enough to stay married to me for thirty-five years, but sometimes I drove her crazy.’ Eddie gave a sad smile. His teeth were white and regular enough to be dentures. ‘I’m not exactly sure when I realised things were serious. The hotel staff dwindled over the next couple of days. I was staying somewhere cheaper. Not here.’ He affected an English accent. ‘Even a professor’s salary only stretches so far in jolly old London.’ Eddie sighed and resumed his own voice, dry and slightly slurred at the edges. ‘I noticed there were less people around. The bar was closed, the maid service didn’t freshen my room and there were no cooked breakfasts available, just stale croissants and little packs of cereal. I was irritated, but not worried. Brits have a fun-loving reputation. I thought maybe the hotel staff had had some party, gotten drunk and were sleeping it off. What concerned me was that I still couldn’t get hold of Miriam or Jaime. I tried to get in touch with a colleague at the college, in the hope that she would drive round and check on them, but there was no response from her either. So eventually I called the cops. They told me they had no report of any problems, but said they would drop by the house and check on them. I don’t know whether they did or not, they never phoned me back.’ Eddie took a sip from his almost empty martini. ‘The Internet was still operating. The sweats had gone viral, if you’ll excuse the pun, but my own social media was more or less static. Usually I’m swamped by emails, even during vacation, but my inbox barely rattled.’

‘Didn’t you try to book a flight home?’ Magnus asked.

‘Sure I did. I packed my bags and headed for the airport determined to get myself on the first cancelled seat out of town, no dicking around. I started to cough in the taxi. The driver said he was sorry, but he wasn’t taking any chances, and threw me out. I was beginning to feel bad, but I managed to hail another one and get myself to Heathrow. By the time I got to the check-in desk I must have looked bad too. They rounded me up and delivered me to a quarantine centre.’ Eddie shook his head. ‘They called it a quarantine centre, but it was a games hall with blankets on the floor. It was a place where they sent people to die in the hope that they wouldn’t infect anyone else. I was there for four days. Like Charles Dickens said, “It was the best of times; it was the worst of times.” I was too ill to worry about my family, but the sweats is no joke. There were some good Christian souls who tried to look after us, but I guess they mostly came down with it too. We were laid out in rows, as if we were already in a graveyard. There weren’t enough people to clean us sick folks up, and we weren’t capable of doing it ourselves, so we were left to lie in our own shit and vomit.’ Eddie ran a hand across his forehead. ‘I’m sorry. You boys both have people of your own to mourn. I guess it’s a while since I talked with anyone.’

Magnus said, ‘It’s okay.’ Eddie’s words had conjured the gym hall in his primary school in Kirkwall. How it had looked the night high winds had disrupted their Boys’ Brigade camping trip and the captain had arranged for them to bunk in sleeping bags in the hall instead. He tried not to imagine his mother and Rhona laid out on the hall’s wooden floor, beside their neighbours.

Eddie said, ‘I had weird dreams. Kept thinking I was slammed in the wagon of some overcrowded goods train headed for Auschwitz. Just shows how strongly those images are rooted in popular consciousness.’ Magnus caught a glimpse of the professor the old man had so recently been, and then Eddie looked up and showed a face haggard by illness and grief. ‘I thought God might come back to me. I was religious as a boy. Miriam used to joke that I’d relapse back to the Church on my deathbed, but He paid me the same no-mind He has for the last fifty-plus years.’

Jeb sipped his mineral water. His face was impassive. ‘You didn’t die.’

‘No.’ Eddie tipped the last of the martini from the shaker into his glass. His voice was weary. ‘I didn’t die.’

Magnus heard ice rattling inside the cocktail shaker and wondered that the man could take time to chill his drink when everything was falling apart.

Eddie said, ‘I was in a crash on the interstate once, a long time ago. I had a blow-out in the fast lane. My car spun full circle, three hundred and sixty degrees, and crossed the barrier on to the other side of the carriageway. One moment I’m travelling north, the next I’m facing southbound traffic. I felt like I was moving fast as light, but I still had time to think about how much I loved Miriam. Jaime was just a little girl, she must have been around seven years old and I remember thinking what a shame it was that I would never see her grow up.’ Eddie wiped away a tear. ‘Well, at least I got to see her turn into a fine young woman.’ He looked out towards the middle distance at the bar, still decorated with an elaborate flower arrangement as dead as the people in the darkened rooms above them. Magnus thought the old man was about to rise and refill the cocktail shaker, but he sat where he was, his eyes trained on the past. ‘The sweats were in the newspapers and on television, but for a while everything seemed to function as normal. There were deaths in the news, sure, but there were always deaths in the news. I guess it had gotten to seem like death was no big news, just something the media were obliged to report.