‘Copying the photographs. Domestic reminiscence. But with each one some preoccupation seems to gain in strength. She’s … well, strikingly intent.’
‘Ah yes. Characteristic. Give a bit of leeway. However I don’t think we want to run the risk of over-stimulation. Don’t want her drinking the stuff. Silver, what is it … iodide? Or am I hopelessly out of date? You never know, if the press gets hold of it. Ask a nurse to pop up every now and then.’ Moving on, their voices attenuated.
I caught: ’The cocktail as usual, then?’
‘For the time being, I think so. Don’t you? Just increase the … ’ They turned a corner and disappeared from view, severing the name of the drug.
I rammed my mop into its strainer and twisted savagely. Then I applied myself to the smudges and footprints even though I could see through the doors, approaching fast, a posse of chattering nurses likely to ruin everything. But I knew who the doctors were talking about.
Saphir came from the girls’ wing to complete the damage.
‘That’s not my bucket is it, Jacob?’
‘No.’
‘It’d better not be, that’s all. Wait till I catch the bastard who’s got it. Seco. Where’s he bloody gone?’
She swung off with panache. She covered her legs with a black shalvar, and managed to make even her cleaner’s overalls look expensive. She was a medical student doing a Summer job. Her pretty black braids, seen from behind, touched my recollection somehow. But my memory was shot to pieces – I’d learned that, at least, from my sessions with Brendan.
Later, after lunch, and when I’d finished my share of the washing-up, Seco the Italian grounded my bucket and forced me to be composed. He sat me down in the little scullery, insisting I take one of his Marlboros. Technically he had seniority. He said I should learn to relax – like him; and not to work so hard – like him.
‘You gonna bust youself. Take it easy for Chrissake.’
But if I stopped my scrubbing I felt threatened, today more than ever. The cigarette tasted like its own ash. When it was finished I moved towards my mop.
‘Sit down. You want another? Why you’re so keen? This place is a dump. A dirty dump. Iss gonna stay that way no matter how much you do.’
I waved away the second cigarette. ‘No thanks, Seco.’ But I sat down again with him; and felt … panicky. My breath shortened and the scullery, its stainless-steel certainty slipping on the instant into doubt, receded with a sick faintness that reminded me of Brendan and the morning.
Before I could make a fool of myself I grabbed on to the remnants of the conversation. That woman the doctors were talking about -‘Ms Jay’. I’d seen her. She connected something, somehow, but not from now. From before … whatever that meant. She reminded me …
‘Where’s the Art Room, Seco?’
I donno. You interested in Art? In Italy we know what is Art. These folk here just make … what you call it … splashes. Like mud. They too far gone, mate.’ He wound his finger significantly at his temple. ‘Waste of time. They don’t know one end of a pintbrush from another.’ He looked out of the window and gestured towards the main buildings. ‘Iss over there somewhere, anyway. I donno.’
‘How could I get over there?’
He looked at me as if to wind the finger again.
‘No. I mean this afternoon. Now. This shift. I need an excuse.’
‘Just go. Go over to get chemical. For you bloody toilets. Say we run out.’
‘Yes, but Mr Prime’ll check. He’ll come over with me.’
‘So tip what we got away. Down the pan.’ ‘Ah. Yes. Good idea, Seco. Thanks.’ Doing violence to the drains. ‘No problem. You have another cigarette. Then maybe we start.’
Sun slanted in through the reinforced windows. Heaven splashed over the taps, bright steel. We finished the washing-up, Seco and I. The torrid July day made us sweat in our overalls. Our rubber gloves stuck to our hands as we put away the cutlery, made all the work-surfaces acceptable, and trundled the heated trolley wagons back to their parking stations. Seco called another time-out. I was on edge. We’d exhausted the tales of his taxi-driving in Rome a week ago. We had not much left. Seco – whose name, because of what he claimed was my impure pronunciation, reminded me of the sharp taste of wine – let his smoke drift out into the sunshaft. Sitting on his stool, he kept watch through the windows for any of the managers venturing nosily to visit us, across the heat-drenched lawns.
‘Eccolo!’
‘What?’
‘Mr Prime. He’s come out.’ His cigarette was suddenly at the ‘ready’ position, angled back, palmed with the quickness of an old hand.
‘Where?’ I peered across the grass to the office door. A small grey-haired man in a coat of authority was poised, clipboard in hand, on the brink of paying us a call. But he turned further than our direction, and marched off towards C block, which was a kind of vast terrapin hut, to inspect the geriatrics.
‘OK. No worry,’ said Seco.
In the dining-room beyond the serving hatch, the male nurses were finishing the last of the difficult ones, poor children in their bruised crash helmets, or gleaming, rigorous callipers. At last Seco threw his cigarette down. Its remnant melted fine geography into a floor tile.
‘It’s arright. We mop here first. You control that bucket. I this one.’
‘Seco …?’
‘Si?’
‘I’m not feeling … I don’t think I can …’
‘What?’
I stopped. I held on to the mop handle. ‘Never mind. It doesn’t matter.’
‘OK. Whose turn the toilets, yours or mine?’
‘Mine. I think I …’
‘It’s OK. I take the machine. I scrub the dining floor. We finish here, OK?’
‘OK.’
The toilets over here were unlike the crazing art-porcelain originals of the old building. There everything was excessive and mad, in a fantastic Pre-Raphaelite way. Here they were kickproof steel. When I first started the job I was confident that I could take them all on, block by block, and restore their shine; in, say, a couple of months. Now I knew by a sort of intuitive calculus that their rate of moral decay would forever just outstrip my labour; the backsliding fungus and slime had its old ammoniac eye on my workrate. I could never win. Yet I hung on to the delusion that if I worked still that little extra bit more furiously, a spurt might at last put me right with them.
Following Seco’s advice, I checked the store cupboard and found only one and a half industrial standard containers left, which I put by the door of the toilets to compose themselves for their journey downwards. Then, armed with my other chemicals, I entered, prepared to begin.
Appalling! An opera of neglect. I hadn’t seen them for a couple of weeks, having been assigned elsewhere by Mr Prime; and yesterday Seco had volunteered to do them. But I’d left them gleaming last time. My colleagues could have held the fort at least.
They were disgusting.
‘Seco!’ I accosted him.
‘Si.’
‘Have