Cover Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
About the Author
Also by Michael Symmons Roberts
Chapter I
Chapter II
1. A Civil War in Nine Cigarettes:
Chapter III
Chapter IV
2. A Civil War in Nine Cigarettes:
Chapter V
Chapter VI
3. A Civil War in Nine Cigarettes:
Chapter VII
Chapter VIII
Chapter IX
4. A Civil War in Nine Cigarettes:
Chapter X
Chapter XI
Chapter XII
Chapter XIII
Chapter XIV
5. A Civil War in Nine Cigarettes:
Chapter XV
Chapter XVI
Chapter XVII
Chapter XVIII
Chapter XIX
Chapter XX
6. A Civil War in Nine Cigarettes:
Chapter XXI
Chapter XXII
Chapter XXIII
Chapter XXIV
Chapter XXV
Chapter XXVI
7. A Civil War in Nine Cigarettes:
Chapter XXVII
Chapter XXVIII
Chapter XXIX
Chapter XXX
8. A Civil War in Nine Cigarettes:
Chapter XXXI
Chapter XXXII
Chapter XXXIII
Chapter XXXIV
Chapter XXXV
9. A Civil War in Nine Cigarettes:
Chapter XXXVI
Acknowledgements
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Epub ISBN 9781407093451
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Published by Vintage 2009
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Copyright © Michael Symmons Roberts 2008
Michael Symmons Roberts has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work
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First published in Great Britain in 2008 by Jonathan Cape
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To Deborah, Stephen, James and William
BREATH
Michael Symmons Roberts is the author of a novel, Patrick’s Alphabet, and five collections of poetry, including Corpus, which won the 2004 Whitbread Poetry Award, and Burning Babylon, which was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize. He is a frequent collaborator with the composer James MacMillan and is also an award-winning radio writer and documentary film-maker.
www.symmonsroberts.com
ALSO BY MICHAEL SYMMONS ROBERTS
Poetry
Soft Keys
Raising Sparks
Burning Babylon
Corpus
The Half Healed
Fiction
Patrick’s Alphabet
The dogs have a lot to answer for. Something needs to be done, but nobody does it. It is not a priority. The dogs are not out of control. They control themselves. The people are not their masters. Wild can be tamed, but feral knows what tame means, knows its comforts and constraints, and chooses against it.
Before the war, they were lapdogs, guide dogs, sheepdogs. Then as village turned on village, house on house, son on father, they shook off their names and found each other. Five years into the new peace, they are just dogs. Packs form and fight and reform. As the city rebuilds itself, the packs move on. Kicked out of a derelict shop or hotel, they find new wastelands to pick and piss on. Somebody must be feeding them. They are too numerous to survive on scraps from bins.
A lot of people in this city think the war veterans are to blame. Privately, they say the war vets are feeding the dogs and sheltering them at night. No one says it publicly because feelings about the war vets are too difficult, too mixed. They did, after all, go and fight for their land, for their people. But in the years since they came home, many of them slid down through cracks in the fabric: losing jobs, hitting the bottle, ending up out on the streets in makeshift settlements.
Like the dogs, the war vets are shunted from place to place as reconstruction slowly spreads. They are the guilty conscience of this once proud Southern city, a city of imperial grandeur and high culture. But apart from turning a blind eye to their thefts and fights the city does nothing for them. As for the war vets themselves, if they are ever asked they blame the North for their predicament. If the North hadn’t started the war, they would still be living high on the hog in their glorious city.
After dark, a fleet of government sponsored vans sets out with guns, nets and poisons, to try to cull the dogs. The guns all have silencers, because the last thing this city wants to hear is gunfire at night.
A Tuesday. Late afternoon on a clear, sharp winter’s day. Witness reports said traffic was heavy and steady. Some cars had lights on, some not. It was dusk, and drivers make their own decisions about lights. That is why dusk is dangerous, according to the police. Eyewitnesses said he was cycling at a fair pace, weaving between the cars. He seemed to be in a hurry. He found a channel between two lines of cars, and stood on the pedals to get a burst of speed. He wanted to get through on amber, to beat the lights. At the second he broke through the queues, the lights turned red, and he alone flew out across the junction. The ridgeback hit the front wheel of his bike so hard that Jamie flew a good ten feet before landing on his head in the road. One driver said that moments before the accident he saw the dog’s head turn as its eyes locked on a rival pack across the road. In that instant, said the driver, he could see what was about to happen, but by the time he hit the car horn it was over. The boy lay without breathing on the tarmac, and the ridgeback – a pedigree, and once a treasured pet – was shaking a collie by the throat on the other side of the road. The rest of his pack had followed him into the attack, and they were making such a noise that only one driver got out to look at the boy. That driver was the main witness. When he felt for a pulse there was nothing definite. There was something, but he half believed it was his own pulse echoing in his fingers. A shopkeeper came out to see what the fuss was, then went back into his shop and called the police. The driver had made a full statement. The ridgeback, rare enough to be picked out in any pack, was tracked down and destroyed.
Control. These are his staff. This is his hospital. Control. As soon as they see you emotionally naked you’ve lost their respect, and once you’ve lost that you never get it back. Those walls are a disgrace. It’s all very well having hi-tech touch-screens next to every bed but what happens when the building falls apart? Jamie. Jamie at two or three toddling on the beach, picking up shells. Jamie. Those walls. He thought he’d issued a written order for the corridors to be painted. He did issue an order. So why hasn’t it been done? Unless it was done, and now that coat is peeling too. When was the order issued? It’s years since he’s been up here. He stays away from clinical areas. It’s for the best. You don’t want your staff to think you’re spying. Picking up shells, and holding them against his ear. Jamie at two. Control. PLEASE WASH YOUR HANDS. Something should be done about the lighting here. It isn’t adequate. On a winter’s afternoon you could come a cropper. Oh God, Jamie. Control. If you can run a hospital you can run yourself. You can run your life. In the end, they are your staff, and you have to be professional. This is what the world does. You can try to run your life, but then a pack of dogs runs into the road. Jamie on a bike. Jamie at two or three picking up shells. Jamie in the road. Jamie behind that door, on a bed, wired up to God knows what. Control. Control. The world does this. The world will punish you for settling down in it, for thinking you know the way it works. He knew that the world did this to people. But now he KNOWS it. This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang. Is Jamie behind that door? Has he already gone? What are they doing? Why is it taking so long? Whoever comes out of there, and whatever they say to him, control will be maintained. He will sit here for as long as it takes. Why is it so dark? This is Kristin-tide, and it should be light. So much for saints. So much for St Kristin and her dazzling festival. Kristin and all the saints please pray for Jamie. Kristin and all the saints please pray for me. Is that what they say? Kristin and all the saints. Where are they? Who are they? Do the saints stand in serried ranks watching us all fuck things up and not lifting a finger unless you specifically ask them? Unless you ask them by name? Kristin please pray for Jamie. A shut door is a wall. There is no sound from the other side. Not a hum nor a murmur. Is it the thickness of the door sealing in the sound? Or is all silent in there? Has the world lapsed into silence? Has the world gone dark at Kristin-tide? Can the world not hear the siren in his heart? Dark. Dark. O God. Our help. In ages. Past. O God. St Kristin. Can a name have power? How about St Lucy? How about using her Northern name? St Lucy, yes. Perhaps the saint prefers her Northern name, and favours prayers sent to that address? How ridiculous. How utterly fucking ridiculous. Jamie at three picking up shells . . .
‘Sir.’
The door is still shut, but a doctor is standing next to him.
‘Mr Andrews, sir.’
The voice is soft, but Andrews doesn’t want to hear it. The doctor must have come round the corner. Why didn’t he come through that door? Why didn’t the man come through the big silent door that he’s been hitting with prayers and pleas?
‘Sorry, I was miles away.’
‘I’m sorry, sir, but I do have some news about your son . . .’
‘Jamie.’
‘Yes, the news on Jamie. There is no easy way of saying this . . .’
‘You don’t need to say it. I knew as soon as I came in.’
He can’t remember the doctor’s name. He knew it once, because he knew everyone’s name. He issued all their contracts. He interviewed most of them when they applied for their jobs. He could go up to his office now and find out how much that doctor is paid, where he trained, any disciplinary issues, everything. But just now his name has gone.
‘I’m sorry.’
The doctor dips his head, as if in prayer. It doesn’t look right. It looks phoney. People who are really sorry don’t dip their heads like that. Andrews wants rid of him.
‘Thank you. There’s no need for this. I know all about the bedside manner courses. I probably sent you on one. That’s enough, thank you. Now leave me to it.’
The doctor looks hurt, but tries to hide it. He nods and says sorry again before hurrying away. Andrews stands for a moment in the corridor. What does he do now? Who is he now? Not a father any longer. A bereaved father? So does he go home? Oh God. Jamie. He remembers a family holiday, when he still had a family. Jamie was about two or three and he was wandering along the beach stopping every now and then to pick up shells. He was so caught up in his world that he wandered away, two or three hundred yards away from his parents. Then he suddenly looked up and howled. He had lost his bearings and looked the wrong way for his parents. All he could see was a vast, empty shore and the sea crashing onto it.
Andrews is standing in a corridor of his own hospital, outside a room in which his dead son lies. He can’t seem to move, but he can’t just stand here. He’s still the hospital administrator. Manager. Executive. Chief. What does he do now? What do people do when this happens to them? He’ll go back to the office and do some work.
At his office door, his PA looks anxious.
‘Any news of Jamie?’
‘It’s not good.’
For a moment, she looks as if she wants to comfort him, but he walks past and into his office, closing the door behind him. Work. Work will be the answer. Work can save the world, can save a life. If he loses himself in his work, he will find a way forward. The Way Forward . . .
He wakes up his computer and finds the document open in front of him. It is a very important piece of work. Crucial. He has been drafting and redrafting for weeks, but the hardest part keeps coming back to haunt him: the war, old enmities, deep-seated hatreds. How can this be managed in a modern workplace? He is the man. His is the beacon trust, the exemplar hospital, the one to show The Way Forward. The cursor blinks mid-sentence, just where he’d left it. Some things are constant. He is a senior executive. He has work to do. He has a mission statement to complete: The Way Forward – Strategies for Integration and Cooperation in Modern Healthcare. He rests his fingers on the keyboard. Section Three: The Challenge of Sectarianism. The cursor vanishes and reappears repeatedly after the word ‘history’. He reads back over the paragraph:
Effective recruitment and retention can be compromised by a failure to address this issue. Although existing anti-discrimination policies are producing more equitable structures in many of our hospitals, there is a need for ongoing training and appraisal to ensure that we move forward together, nationally and regionally. Through effective management of this issue, staff can take ownership of their own future, as stakeholders in an integrated healthcare system. Far from an attempt to deny our recent history
He stares at the cursor: on off on off on off on off. He types a comma and the words ‘this is . . .’ but the sentence resists completion. He reads the paragraph again, but cannot make sense of it. Concentration. He holds his head still in his hands, and starts to read again. But there’s no sanctuary here. A knock on the door and it’s opened by a woman in a business suit. She’s peering in, staring at him, looking awkward.
‘Geoff, I’m so sorry.’
‘I’d like to be left alone please, Karla.’
‘There are things I need to discuss with you.’
‘It’s hardly the time.’
‘About Jamie.’
‘Whatever it is, it can wait.’
She comes in anyway, quietly pulling the door shut behind her. He stands up from his desk and turns his back on her, looking out of his window. His hands are in his pockets. Outside, there are rows of cars and rows of trees. It all looks very neat. It was worth the spend – whatever the arguments – to give the hospital an orderly appearance from outside. He is proud of the landscaping. Presentation is part of The Way Forward.
One moment he is gazing out across rows of young pine and spruce, the next he is on his knees and gasping for breath between sobs.
‘Come on, Geoff. Sit down.’
She helps him up and sits him on the sofa. She sits next to him with her arm around his shoulders. His head is buried in his hands. After a few minutes, he regains enough composure to speak.
‘Thank you. I’m glad you came. Can you leave me now, please?’
She doesn’t move, just keeps holding him and shushes him like a baby. He moves away from her and stands up.
‘Karla, we need to keep this on a professional level. We agreed.’
‘We did. We will.’
‘So why are you here?’
‘I’m here on a professional level, Geoff. I’m duty counsellor today, and you are a bereaved parent.’
‘Oh please . . .’
He gets up and brushes his jacket, straightens his tie. She gets up too, and walks across to him, putting her arm around him again.
‘Don’t touch me.’
She takes her arm away, steps away from him, and folds her arms.
‘You appointed me, remember.’
‘Not to counsel me, I didn’t.’
‘You’re not making this easy.’
‘Easy for whom?’
He opens a desk drawer and takes out a cigar. He lights it and ostentatiously blows smoke in her direction. Opportunities for rebellion are few and far between in his life. Responsibilities crowd them out. To smoke a fat cigar in a hospital is as far as it goes these days. Not much of a rebellion, but his office is just down the corridor from the lung transplant unit, so there’s always the chance that a faint whiff of tobacco will find its way down there. Karla decides to ignore the cigar.
‘Geoff, there is an issue to discuss.’
‘What issue? My son has died in an accident. Is that the “issue”?’
The smoke is pungent, and far from sweet. It’s a dry, rather old cigar he had been saving for a celebration. He didn’t know what the celebration would be, but he felt it was important to mark significant events. He spent too much of his life in the future. The present was just something to get through on the way there. It had its urgencies, its challenges, even its satisfactions as work was done, but it rarely amounted to pleasure. About a year ago he felt his life was racing by and he decided to anchor it with tiny weights, details, private rituals to mark the passing of this or that. When he bought the cigar he had in mind completing the annual appraisals, or signing off next year’s budget. He didn’t have in mind the passing of his only child.
‘The issue is transplantation. Donor organs.’
‘I see.’
He hadn’t seen it coming. It had never crossed his mind. As soon as she said it, it was obvious.
‘Jamie is in a state of brainstem death, but most of his other organs are still in good condition. There is an opportunity to save life here through transplantation. But we need your permission as the next of kin.’
He stubs out the cigar in an empty coffee cup, and snaps back at her.
‘Bit predatory, isn’t it? Do you always prey on the bereaved like this?’
‘Please, Geoff. You know there is a narrow window of opportunity. Jamie didn’t carry a donor card, but many people don’t. It doesn’t mean they’re against the idea. It is accepted in such cases that we can make an early enquiry of the next of kin. You run this hospital, so you know better than anyone the importance of donor organs and the reputation of this hospital for providing and receiving them.’
‘Have you finished?’
He turns his back on her to look out of his window again. A very light rain has drifted in from the sea, washing the cars and making the leaves shine on the trees. On another day, in another life, it might be beautiful, but not today.
‘Geoff?’
All he can see in his mind’s eye is an image of his son, lying in the middle of a busy city street, with his bike in twists and bits around him, and his head broken on the road. Was it rain like this, was it this very rain that made the road slick and gave his tyres less purchase? Was it cold enough for the rain to freeze a little as it touched the road? Did the dog hit him with a glancing blow, and would he have saved himself if his bike hadn’t slid from under him?
‘Geoff?’
Was it meteorology? Just a natural confluence of temperatures, levels of humidity, landscape and pressure combining to produce a shower of rain little thicker than a mist? If that shower was playing a role in the death of his son in one street, and perking up the leaves of a window box in the next, then the world was insane. It was insane or random. Either way, his emotional response to it as something purposeful, predictable, was nothing short of madness.
‘Geoff. I need an answer.’
‘Okay, okay. Do it. But not the eyes. Leave his eyes.’
She looks into his. She can see they are pinched and moist. It is a long time since she has looked into his eyes. These days, she avoids them and it’s only their voices that meet. She wants to put her arms around him, but that would cross a line. The line of professionalism is all that protects them from each other. She has to ask the professional question.
‘Is there something wrong with his eyes? A problem?’
‘His eyes are perfect. Were perfect. I just don’t want them taken.’
‘Okay. That’s fine. I don’t think it’s the eyes they need.’
‘What is it?’
‘Lungs.’
‘Okay. That’s fine. Thank you.’
He turns back to face the window. She walks away, wondering why he would single out the eyes to bury with his son. The heart she could understand, but why the eyes? Bereavement changes the way people think. They make irrational judgements, and it’s her job to help them through that. In this case, she decides there’s nothing more to say. Perhaps he wants his son to have vision, to see what’s in front of him when he wakes up on the other side. Perhaps he fears he won’t recognise his son in the next world without those eyes. Perhaps he just sees Jamie’s eyes each time he shuts his own, and cannot bear the thought of them being cut out. Sometimes working in medicine can disable you, can stifle you with too much knowledge, too much detail.
‘Karla.’
She is about to shut the door behind her. ‘I’d like to see him, one last time. Complete. Before they take anything.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Quite sure.’
‘I’ll arrange it.’
The one lit by a new father in the waiting room of a hospital maternity unit after witnessing the birth of his first and only child. He was struck by the boy’s blue-black head of hair – no bald baby this – and his near-translucent skin as smooth as his mother’s. He stepped outside while the midwives weighed and checked him over. He hadn’t prayed for years, but he lit a cigarette like incense to help him.
It was the middle of the night. The unit was full of babies: sleeping, crying, feeding, some still kicking to be born. But none of the other babies looked like his. This boy was a Northern boy. The shuffle of the gene-pack between Southern father and Northern mother had produced a baby from the mountains.
‘Good luck to him. No. More than that. Not just good luck, not chance. Take care of him, O Lord. Take care of this son of the mountains as he grows up in this city on the plains.’
Each week, each month, each year more ravens, kites and crows were swooping from the peaks to scavenge on the streets. They came in search of carrion, but there was none. Their senses had misled them. Either that or their senses were so keen that they perceived a feast before it came.