Die of Shame (21 page)

It had been Caroline’s idea to meet Robin near the hospital and her suggestion that they go for a stroll on Hampstead Heath, but even getting to the nearest entrance involves a five minute walk that is largely uphill, so by the time they have been on the heath for a few minutes, she is out of breath and keen to stop for a while.

‘Sorry,’ she says. ‘Bloody ridiculous.’

Robin seems perfectly happy either way, so they sit down on the next bench they see, content to watch others do the walking for a while.

‘None of us are as fit as we were,’ he says.

It’s one of those early March days that cannot quite make up its mind. It had been raining half an hour before, but is now clear, the sky almost cloudless. It’s still far from warm, but that doesn’t stop Caroline pulling off the thin jacket she is wearing in an attempt to cool down. She reaches behind her to lay it across the bench, revealing sweat patches the size of dinner plates beneath her arms.

‘I need to do this,’ she says. ‘I know it’s not great for my knees, but ultimately the only thing that’s going to sort them out is shifting some weight.’ When she looks at Robin she seems close to tears. ‘This is less painful than not eating. Just.’

Two women jog past, one hard behind the other. Lycra, headphones, the works; a fierce focus etched across their thin faces. Caroline watches them until they disappear round a corner.

‘Have you thought about hypnotherapy?’ Robin asks.

‘I’ve thought about everything.’

‘I know a good man, that’s all.’

‘He’s not going to make me start quacking like a duck, is he?’

Robin smiles. ‘Not unless you want him to. Let me give you his number and you can think about it. I’ll have a word, tell him you might call… I’m sure he can sort out mates’ rates.’

Caroline thanks him and takes out her phone. Robin texts her the number. She stares at it and says, ‘Well, I’ve tried almost everything else.’

‘I want you to know that it’s only your health I’m concerned about,’ Robin says.

‘I know.’

‘I’m not making any other kind of judgement. It’s certainly not about how you look.’

Caroline nods. She says, ‘Judge away, mate. Trust me, I don’t want to look like this. I try to have a laugh, don’t get me wrong, that’s one of the reasons I joined the group… for the social side. But the last thing I am is one of those jolly fat women. You know? I can’t stand all that.’ She stares at her feet, the ankles bulging above the cheap training shoes. ‘Truth is, I’m as miserable as sin.’

‘All of us get down from time to time,’ Robin says. ‘That’s why I still find meetings so useful. We get depressed and we crawl into our respective holes or we get angry and lash out.’

Caroline looks at him.

‘Well, yes, you saw.’ He takes off his glasses and reaches into his jacket for a cloth to clean them with.

‘You and Chris made friends yet?’

‘That’s never going to happen.’

‘OK…’

They can hear enthusiastic shouting from a hundred yards or so away to their left and, rising suddenly above the brow of the hill, a stunt kite soars and swoops like a brightly coloured bird.

‘He’s trying to blackmail me,’ Robin says.

‘Chris?’ Caroline almost laughs, but then sees that Robin is most definitely not joking. ‘How?’

Robin tells her about the note, his confrontation with Chris in the Red Lion. ‘My wife hinted at much the same thing back when we got divorced,’ he says. ‘Going to the medical authorities and telling them about my history. At the time, I was terrified. I would have done anything she wanted to prevent that happening. Now, strangely, it doesn’t scare me in the same way. Now I’m just raging. I will not be threatened, least of all by someone like him.’

‘You can afford it, though,’ Caroline says.

‘That’s not the point.’

‘So, what are you going to do?’

‘If I don’t hear any more, then I’ll probably leave it and move on. The anger is something I’ll simply have to deal with in my own time. I’m not sure whether he and I will be able to sit in the same room any more, but I won’t be the one who leaves, I’m damn sure of that.’

‘What if it doesn’t stop?’

‘I’ll go to the police.’ Robin shrugs. ‘What else can I do? I know everything will come out about my past and it will probably mean the end of my career, or worse, but I don’t really have any choice.’ He looks at her. ‘What’s the point in any of us going through the recovery process if you can’t live with yourself?’ He sits back. ‘We all have to complete a moral inventory.’

In the distance, the multicoloured kite has been joined by a second. For a few seconds they dance around one another, before colliding and disappearing quickly from view.

‘How can you be so sure it was Chris?’ Caroline asks. ‘Why couldn’t it be someone from one of the other meetings you go to? NA, or whatever.’

‘It’s only in Tony’s group that I’ve talked about working when I was still using drugs. Infecting patients.’ Robin shakes his head. ‘Ironically, it’s the only place I’ve felt safe enough.’

‘OK, but why does it have to be Chris?’

‘Who else could it be? I think I put the idea in his head myself when I told him about my ex-wife making similar threats. Rather more veiled, mind you, but basically the same. Aside from anything else, who else would need the money badly enough to do something like this?’

‘Diana’s certainly got plenty.’

‘Yes, and you have a job.’

Caroline laughs. ‘You got any idea how much I get paid? Trust me, I certainly need the money.’

Robin smiles and lays a hand on her arm. ‘I think I’m a rather better judge of character than that. I know very well that neither you nor Diana nor Heather would ever stoop to something like this. To try and ruin someone’s life.’

‘I still think you’re jumping to conclusions,’ Caroline says. ‘What happened to seeing the best in people? All that stuff about faith, that’s part of the whole step thing, isn’t it?’

‘It’s funny,’ Robin says. ‘When you’re finally able to look at yourself, to really look, you get an awful lot better at seeing others for what they are.’

‘I suppose. I still can’t believe it was him, though.’

Robin smiles at her naivety. ‘I think I’ve always known what Chris was. I mean, it’s not like there haven’t been enough clues.’

‘Oh…’

He turns to Caroline, sees the look on her face. ‘What?’

‘It’s nothing.’ She reaches behind for her jacket. ‘Come on, let’s see if I can manage another ten minutes without collapsing.’

‘What’s the matter?’

She slumps back in her seat. ‘Oh shit. It’s… nothing, like I said.’ She seems frightened, suddenly. ‘Just something I saw at the party.’

Chris leans in close, his breath fogging the glass, and peers at the yellowing skull. He moves back a few steps so as to take in the full length of the skeleton inside the case, then turns to Heather who is on the other side of the room looking at a display of knives, saws and what look frighteningly like pliers.

‘You are seriously weird,’ he says.

She waits for him to walk across, unwilling to raise her voice because several other people are also looking around the room.

‘It’s interesting,’ she says.

‘If you say so.’

They are visiting the Old Operating Theatre, a museum of surgical history housed above St Thomas’s church in Southwark. For the past few minutes they have been walking around the herb garret, the province of the apothecary in what was once part of St Thomas’s hospital and which now houses a permanent exhibition of instruments, physical specimens and gruesome-looking medical paraphernalia from almost two centuries ago.

Chris looks down at the display. ‘Tell me why we’re here again.’

‘Because I like this stuff. Well, not
like
… but I’ve always been sort of fascinated by it. Always wanted to come.’ She looks at him. ‘Anyway, it’s a nice change to go somewhere in London where you haven’t shagged anyone or got high.’

She walks across to another cabinet, this one dedicated to samples of the ancient herbal remedies that were used in healing. The blue, green and yellow jars sit alongside an arrangement of artefacts associated with rather more drastic treatments: trepanning, bloodletting, and, of course, the laying on of leeches.

‘See?’ Heather says, pointing.

‘Christ on a bike,’ Chris says.

‘They do these re-enactments,’ Heather had told him excitedly, reading from a leaflet as they’d climbed the steep spiral staircase from the church lobby. ‘Every Saturday, apparently. They use actors or whatever to show you what the operations were like, and… oh my God, they do live
leeching
.’

Chris’s reaction now is much as it had been then. He stares at the cracked earthenware bowls labelled
Deer Horn
,
Wormwood
and
Snail Trail
. He wrinkles his nose at the smell which still lingers after two centuries, and says, ‘How much did it cost us to get in?’

‘Six-fifty each.’

‘Bloody hell, we must be mad.’

‘What do you mean
we
? I paid for you, remember.’

A middle-aged man comes and stands a little too close for conversation to feel comfortable. He nods, in acknowledgement of their shared fascination, and Heather nods back. She leaves it a minute or so, then moves sideways to another cabinet. Chris follows her.

‘Yeah, since when were you so flush?’

Heather leans closer to the display. ‘I had a bit of luck, that’s all.’

‘Lucky Heather,’ Chris says. He leans down too, so that his face is only an inch or so from hers. ‘Lucky enough to lend me twenty quid?’

‘Nowhere near.’ Heather goes back to her leaflet, but glances up after a few seconds and sees the profoundly miserable expression on Chris’s face. She points to one of the pages, stabbing at it, like he will be interested. ‘When they first restored this place they found dried poppy heads in the rafters.’ She looks at him expectantly. ‘For making opium.’

The mention of the drug does the trick and quickly drags Chris from his sulk. ‘Nice. You ever had it?’ He doesn’t wait for an answer. ‘I had it a couple of times. Bloody lovely.’

Slowly they move on past a large oak dresser crammed with all manner of peculiar odds and ends – antlers, ostrich eggs, a pair of stuffed baby crocodiles – and arrive at a display case full of truly grisly-looking devices. The labels alone are disturbing enough:
Piercer
,
Scarificator
,
Decapitation Hook
.

Heather points down at what might almost be an antique egg-whisk, were it not for the fact that each thin piece of metal attached to the handle ends in a vicious-looking hook. ‘If I was to use that on you, d’you think you might tell me what happened with you and Robin?’ She smiles and claws her fingers, then inches them towards his groin. ‘Come on…’

He backs away, his face a blank.

She has tried once already – on the walk from Borough tube station – and got nowhere. Chris had said only that there was nothing to tell and changed the subject when she’d pressed him. It was strange, considering how much Chris loves to tell a good story.

‘I told you to leave it,’ he says.

‘All right, blimey.’ Heather pulls a face. ‘Just looked nasty, that’s all.’

‘I don’t like being accused of things. Leave it at that, OK?’

‘Accused of what?’

In spite of his obvious irritation, Chris can’t quite suppress a smile. ‘What part of “leave it” don’t you understand?’

They walk up another flight of creaky stairs to the operating theatre itself. At its centre is the wooden operating table, surrounded by ranks of raised benches and railings, from which students would have watched and tried to learn, while others there merely to observe would simply have been trying to hang on to whatever they had last eaten.

They walk slowly round the table, Heather pointing out the box of sawdust that would have presumably been there to collect the blood, running her fingers across the worn-down patches in the wood. Chris goes across to study yet another skeleton, this one suspended from a hook. He reaches out to delicately touch a rib, while Heather studies a picture of a patient struggling on the table, six men fighting to pin him down before the surgery, such as it was, could begin. ‘Bear in mind, this was all before anaesthetics,’ she says. ‘Can you imagine having your leg sawn off or whatever? Just a stiff brandy and something to bite on.’

‘I’ve had a few sexual encounters like that,’ Chris says.

‘Amazing how far things have come though, when you think about it.’ She walks towards him. ‘Wonder what they’d have done with the likes of us back then?’

‘Maybe leeches were good for withdrawal,’ Chris says. ‘Maybe badger spunk was like methadone. Maybe they could drill a hole in your head to let the demons out. How the hell should I know?’

‘Easier ways to get inside people’s heads now.’

‘Not sure that’s progress though.’ Chris starts slowly climbing the benches. He shouts back to her. ‘I don’t think I want anyone inside my head.’

‘That’s your problem.’ Heather follows him up and sits next to him on the topmost bench of the theatre. They stare down at the operating table.

‘I’m not stupid, you know,’ Chris says.

‘Never said you were.’

‘I know exactly why you wanted to go out today.’

‘I told you, I always wanted to come here.’

‘Yeah, but you didn’t have to drag me along.’ He lets his head drop back and stares up through the enormous skylight above them. He closes his eyes against the sunshine. ‘You want to have another go at me about this shame shit.’

‘It’s not shit,’ Heather says.

‘You think it helped Diana last week? She didn’t look very happy about it when she’d finished.’

‘Nobody says you’re going to be singing and dancing afterwards,’ Heather says.

‘Who says I’m going to do it?’

Heather turns to look at him. ‘Shame is primitive,’ she says. ‘That’s why it’s so powerful. It’s all tied up with why we feel unworthy all the time, why we feel bad about who we are.’

‘You been borrowing some of Tony’s books?’

‘Look, the only way you’re going to learn your own pain isn’t shameful is by connecting with other people’s. That’s pretty bloody obvious, isn’t it? I know you’re scared about it, because so am I, but you have to expose yourself.’ He turns, grinning, but she holds up a hand before he can exploit the unintentional double entendre. ‘Being scared of showing who you really are is what leads to all the lying. Lying to yourself as much as anyone, which is the stupidest thing of all, when you think about it.’ She reaches across and takes his hand. ‘You’ve really got to do this.’

‘I haven’t got to do anything.’

‘All right, you
need
to do this… both of us do. And if you don’t, how do you expect me to have the bottle?’

‘Since when does what I do matter so much?’

‘Please,’ Heather says.

There’s half a smile as Chris turns away and stares down into the scrubbed and airy well of the theatre. It isn’t hard to imagine the place crowded with people, stinking of blood and piss and loosened bowels. The squeak of the drill or the grind of the saw against bone; the screams of the hapless patient and the grunts of effort from those trying to hold him down.

‘I think I’d rather be strapped to that table,’ he says.