High Dive by Jonathan Lee

Author:Jonathan Lee
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, azw3
ISBN: 9781473507883
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2015-10-21T23:00:00+00:00

V

TWO HOURS BEFORE Marina was due to arrive, Moose awoke open-mouthed. He began to try to climb out of bed. An orderly came and helped him stand.

Shaky legs. When he’d checked into this place, his legs had been strong. The hospital was bad for his health. There was no other conclusion. Blisters on the heels of his feet, nappy rash on his arse. No man should ever have to utter to his daughter the words ‘buy me buttock cream, please’. Making his way to the bathrooms, stooped and slow, he passed people whose eyes made him think of clouds and whose bodies made him think of bed sheets. Faces shining, suffering. An old lady on crutches. Child in a wheelchair. The damaged life in these corridors made God a senseless brute. What a team he’d become a part of! A group bound together by mistakes of the mind and body, errors and accidents and sharp turns for the worse. A four-cheese pizza would be wonderful. The sad tiled floor was unyielding.

The bathroom mirror told him he belonged. His eyes were bloodshot and a mask of pallor still clung to his skin. There was no mistaking it: he was in the kind of condition where it’s advisable either to thoroughly pull yourself together or to thoroughly let yourself go. The latter held all the allure. No more play-acting! Become a one hundred per cent mess! And meanwhile the rest of the world’s men could carry on pretending, grinning, lifting their chins; putting space between themselves.

Great palmfuls of water were required to dampen his hair’s enthusiasm for adventure. A few licks sprung up the moment he put down the comb. He shaved with an inch of luke-warm water lurking sunless and shallow in the basin. Listened to a man behind a pockmarked door straining to squeeze out a turd. Splashed his face, zipped up his washbag, went back to his hospital bed.

This morning Freya had visited again. She’d brought him a plant. He was grateful for the plant. A plant was a perfect gift. Earlier in the week an old diving friend had turned up with a whistle that made different types of birdsong when you blew it. One of the drawbacks of having a surname like Finch was that a surprising number of people, at Christmas or on birthdays, thought it appropriate or amusing to give you bird-related gifts. Singing bird clock (green). Singing bird clock (brown). You Can Toucan can-opener.

Sometimes he felt that close friends liked to turn him into a bit of a caricature, the hapless hotel guy who used to be good at everything he set his mind to and was now thrillingly, perhaps even transcendentally, mediocre. When he played along to the idea they had of the arc of his life, everything was fine. They loved him to act flat and be one of humanity’s genial, self-deprecating disappointments. But when he said something unexpected, something that was too harsh or too true or which he hadn’t thought

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