Light Perpetual by Francis Spufford

Author:Francis Spufford [Francis Spufford]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780571336500
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Published: 2020-05-14T16:00:00+00:00

Val

Mike gets headaches. Bad enough ones that they lay him out for half a day at a time, unable to bear the light. The brewery is starting to complain about the shifts he’s missing. Today’s a Saturday, though, so he isn’t needed for work, and he lies in the bedroom at half past ten in a mess of sheets, with his eyes closed tight even against the tiny leaks of November daylight that make it through the slit in the curtains. It’s so dim in there by ordinary standards that it takes her eyes a minute to adjust when she takes him in a mug of tea. (White, three sugars.) There are violet shadows under his eyes, marks of weakness for once instead of the bruises and black eyes he brings home which are strength’s proud badges: or the monstrous swelling of half his head he brought back that one time that someone hit him with a hammer. He looked like a jack-o’-lantern then, and like one was grinning, still grinning. But now a pain has taken hold of him that he didn’t choose and no one inflicted, and it has subdued his face to gentleness. You can see, as well as the delicacy of the coloured skin under his eyes, the tiny crow’s-feet lines coming at their corners. Like her, he’s thirty-nine, and in these moments when he can’t help himself, it shows. Impossible not to feel tenderness, or something like tenderness, standing over his animal length in the sheets, and seeing all that force temporarily laid low. He is the only beautiful thing in her life, as well as being the cause of all the ugly ones. When she makes a clink putting down the mug on the side table, he mumbles ‘Thanks, Mum.’ Then she goes back to the living room to go on cutting corned-beef sandwiches under the portrait of Hitler.

She did manage to coax him to the doctor’s about the headaches. Unfortunately the doctor they got, Dr Sharma, was a young Asian woman. Mike was in his work clothes, but she could still read his tattoos. They glared at each other.

‘I see you work in a brewery, Mr Stone,’ said the doctor. ‘Do you by any chance drink to excess?’

‘This is crap,’ said Mike. ‘I’m not letting her put her hands on me.’

‘Believe me, I have no desire to.’

‘Shouldn’t you at least take his blood pressure, Doctor?’ Val tried. ‘He’s talking about seeing flashing lights and all when he has one of his heads.’

‘I suppose that would be sensible. All right, roll up your right sleeve, Mr Stone.’

‘No!’ said Mike. ‘There’s nothing wrong with my blood. It’s Nordic.’

Dr Sharma laughed.

‘Shut up, you Paki cunt,’ said Mike.

Dr Sharma stopped laughing.

‘I think you’d better leave,’ she said.

‘What’d you do that for?’ Val asked when they were outside.

‘What?’

‘You know.’

‘Well – it’s rubbish, isn’t it love; ’s all crap.’

And he started to do his pavement-clearing strut, with her tagging along behind. Places to go, people to scare. Mike likes people, in a certain kind of a way.

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