An Irresponsible Age. Lavinia Greenlaw
have been any room, any kind of waiting room, without a body in it. A waxed blind hung in strips across the frosted window, and the chairs, floor and walls were of colours so neutralised that it would have been beyond Carlo to describe them. The room admitted just a trace of noise and daylight, and was decorated with collages representing three of the four seasons and a copper sculpture which, at the flick of a switch, became a waterfall.
There was the body, like a subject waiting to be restored to a picture. Carlo looked, looked round, looked back, looked away and the collages and waterfall were there for him to rest his eyes on. All he could think of were the stories – of the people who fainted, threw up, wet themselves; of those who howled and those who were furious; of the fights that broke out. Some stayed for five minutes, others for hours and if certain rites were to be observed, they could be there for days. People prayed, sang, whispered and raved but most were quiet and still, and some were dreadfully embarrassed.
The nurses would have wiped some of the blood from Tobias’s body, but they would not have been allowed to wash him properly. A death like this had to be treated carefully, the details preserved until they had been recorded. Carlo pulled the bedclothes back. Why did it surprise him that Tobias was naked? When had he last seen him naked? His body must have been stripped in A&E, which meant that he would have been alive when they brought him in. How alive? Had he heard and felt things still?
Carlo laid a hand on his brother’s arm and wondered what he was touching. (On their introductory tour, another student had grabbed his hand and plunged it into a body bag. ‘See? Just like cold chicken.’) Tobias’s head had been aligned and propped up, but Carlo knew that his neck was broken. He made himself take note. Evidence of extensive lacerations around the eyes. Had he seen what was coming? The air splintering and rushing towards him and then himself rushing, to collide with the abruptly unmoving world. Had he screamed? Carlo noted his brother’s snapped wrists, crushed pelvis, smashed legs and unrecognisable foot. He knew that despite all this damage, it was what had happened inside that had killed him.
The next day, Tobias’s post-mortem would be performed. The fridge would be opened from the other side, and his body would be unzipped from its bag and laid upon a porcelain table. There would be a cradle for his head and a block would be placed in the small of his back to arch his spine. Beside the table would be a steel tray containing scalpels, knives, pincers and an electrical circular saw.
Let whoever is going to do this be loving, Carlo prayed as he sat beside his brother, holding his broken hand. This body was loved. Love this body.
Will you make the first cut behind the right or the left ear? Think about it, and don’t think about anything other than what you are doing as you draw the blade down one side of the throat and then the other. And if you’re not alone, don’t make conversation; don’t speak as you open this body down to the groin.
Part my brother’s flesh with tenderness and crack each rib in a swift and certain style. When you lift out his bowels, wash them softly, and as you reach for the heart, the liver, kidneys and lungs, think how precious this man was, how full. As you examine and weigh each organ, I hope you see that these are unlike any other you may have beheld. As you note each compaction, inflammation, haemorrhage and perforation, contemplate my brother’s pain but also acknowledge that these were once the good strong parts of someone.
When you arc your blade over the head, loosing the scalp, you might want to kiss my brother’s lips as his face folds itself away. Do not do this. Your touch must not disturb.
Is it your habit to tap the skull with a knife? If it is fractured it will sound dull, like a cracked plate but don’t think of a cracked plate, or an egg, or of anything other than this as yet human head, and as you saw into the skull, do so with confidence and artistry, remembering to tilt the curve down towards each ear so that when the crown is returned, it fits neatly.
Lift up my brother’s brain as if you were about to lift the whole of him to safety, adjusting your stance to the weight, which will always surprise. Take your time in locating the dark pools among all the pale containment and make sure that you know what each of them means.
And when you have finished, put a finger on my brother’s throat, here, as I am now, to know for certain that he is dead.
Tobias died because the traffic stopped because there might have been another bomb. Perhaps also because, and Carlo wasn’t ready to consider this, he had been driving too fast. This was likely. He crossed the city all day according to his map of shortcuts and rat runs, skimming pavements and jostling his way between lanes of traffic. Had he been happy? Tobias had trained for six of the seven years it took to qualify as an architect. He had been supposed to build things, not fetch and carry, but he got stuck looking after Mary and the child. Carlo did not like to think of Tobias as losing momentum so much as being taken up by love.
The dead struck Carlo not as absent but as removed. Now he would begin to understand what they did to what they were removed from.
In the days that followed, the Clough family dispersed and waited. Fred and Juliet spent as much time as they could at work, where Fred was surrounded by noise and Juliet by silence. Carlo made arrangements, and Clara went back to her husband and children in the country. Five miles away, in a large and empty house, her parents tried to help one another move through the days but each found that their pain became trapped in the other’s. At night, they lay and waited for morning. On the fourth night, Francesca Clough rose and left her husband’s bed for ever.
Juliet’s friends tried to surround her, but she felt that just as their circle formed, she slipped outside it. Her feelings were of such a size that everyone she spoke to or passed in the street had to stay where they were, miles away. Tania tried a few times to send her home, and then settled for bringing her cups of tea and slices of cake. Juliet stared at the wall.
Hour by hour, the truth of her brother’s death accumulated. She did not think about that other pain, or kissing a married man, or going to America; and then she did and forgot about Tobias with such entirety that when she remembered she had to begin again at the first shock.
She didn’t know that she had moved or made any sound until the door opened and Jacob was there, holding her and saying ‘You can stop now,’ and she did stop and asked, ‘Stop what?’ and he said, ‘Banging on the wall. You were banging so hard, I thought you’d bring what’s left of it down.’
Just outside the village of Allnorthover, Carlo turned into a gravel drive and pulled up outside a large, shabby greystone house. Jacob looked out of the window and then at Juliet who asked, ‘What is it, what are you thinking?’, which made Carlo frown. He did not like the fact that Jacob had come with Juliet, nor that she would not let go of his hand.
An hour of inching their way north through the city and an hour of signs and fields, more like fields of signs thought Jacob, a chain of mini-roundabouts, and a brief wind through a wood. Primroses, ice and mud.
Jacob answered Juliet’s question: ‘It’s barely outside London. Hardly the country at all.’
‘And here it is,’ said Carlo as he watched Jacob helping Juliet out of the car, ‘Hardly a home at all’, and Jacob laughed so warmly that Carlo felt pleased, which then made him cross.
Fred, who had chosen to come up by train, was in the kitchen perched on a particularly ugly chair that Jacob noticed was held together by string.
Francesca Clough turned from a sink piled high with dirty dishes and held out a soapy red hand to Jacob, who pursued her attention in her eyes, as dark and unreadable as Juliet’s, and sunk in brown hollows within planetary yellow rings. Her strong skin was still smooth but had lost its light and was shadowed by the mass of wiry hair, black spliced with grey and white. The bones of Francesca’s face were rising up as the flesh receded.
‘What did you think of Ma?’ Juliet asked later.
‘That she looks like a ghost of you.’
‘And Clara? Did you like Clara?’
Clara,