"In An Alternate World"   by   Raymond Soltysek

 

The consulting room smelled of herbs and vanilla, but wasn't any different from the dusty and dark-wooded offices Ian remembered as a boy, when old Doctor Corbett prescribed pain killers for his joint pains and constipation tablets for his "problems down there," and always told his mother to bring him back in a week. The early afternoon sun through the greasy sash window tossed panes of intense light across the over-stuffed armchairs and red linoleumed floor, highlighting the film of stoor across the woman's bureau. There was very little paper: no files, no prescription pads, no flyers for the latest drugs, as though she'd recently moved in to the surgery.

The woman gave all the wrong impressions, though: emaciated, flowery-dressed, salt-and-pepper-curled, she looked as if she belonged in a caravan somewhere caring ineffectually for half a dozen snot-nosed kids. She should have Feng-Shuied her consulting room, but didn't look as if she had the energy.

He hated his bile, but he was too tired to slap himself for it, and her aura merely added to his sense of taking backward steps out of a desperate need to rest.

"Yes, I remember Yvonne very well. I helped her enormously, so I'm sure we can help you too," she said, her voice reminiscent of Marianne Faithful, but flatter: an odd voice for a body so frail.

"Well, Yvonne had a nervous complaint and insomnia," he said. "It's a bit different from narcolepsy."

"But what you have to remember is that most ailments are a product of our environment: we get out what we put in. And in the modern world, with so many unnatural..."

There was no point in listening. Of course he'd been sceptical when Yvonne, his wife's friend, had suggested he visit her herbalist, right after his last cataplectic attack when they'd visited for dinner and someone had told a joke. Bad move. He'd laughed loud and long, then collapsed, helplessly watching his friends - Ann's friends, actually - from inside the vacuum flask of his head fuss round him and loosen his tie and cluck sympathetically, knowing they were thinking how much she had to put up with: what a life, being with a guy who can't laugh without having some kind of freaky seizure. It'll be okay, Ann said, he'll come out of it in a minute or two.

Did Ms Hemlock here realise? It had taken him two hours to get there, two hours for fourteen miles, because he couldn't trust himself longer than a few minutes at a time at the wheel of a car without at least a brief nap that usually left him feeling more exhausted than ever. He'd doped himself up to the eyeballs on Ritalin at midday and couldn't take any more until late afternoon, yet he still felt exhausted, still felt that something at the back of his eyes was pulling at his optic nerve, yanking it so hard that only closing his eyes, just for a moment, just for a second or two would...

"So I'm going to give you this diet sheet," the languid voice said.

"Pardon?" His head jerked awake. She was holding out a piece of buff-coloured paper towards him, recycled and bleach free. In his confusion, he took it from her and stared at it. It was pre-printed in a script font that was difficult to read through stinging eyes.

"Diet sheet. If we can control your intake of toxins, them I'm sure we can re-establish some sort of equilibrium."

"Is this a caffeine-rich diet?"

"Oh no. Of course not. Caffeine's a terrible toxin."

He pushed back his chair, got up and leaned heavily on the back of it, looking down at the woman. "You don't understand. Any diet that isn't chock-loaded with sleep suppressants - caffeine, Red Bull, Pro-plus, midnight cheddar - forget it. It's no use to me."

"But I've been trying to explain."

"Do you know anything about this condition? Did you know anything at all about it before I walked through that door? What did you do? Look up the internet?

She didn't have to answer him.

"Look, no offence, but you've no idea what this journey took out of me today. So, if you don't mind, I'm going to take this diet sheet and shove it up my arse, because that's the only fucking way it's going to keep me awake."

He had a vague notion of her open mouth as he turned his back. He'd gone too far, again, and felt an urge to apologise, but he was already out across the waiting area - plastic chairs and posters advertising spiritual healing meetings - and through the front door, wind chimes tinkling softly behind him.

He came out into the sun. He knew this place well, had taught here at the little primary school fourteen years before. Nothing had changed much in that time, still like any other market town: grey, single-streeted, closed down hairdressers' salons and a pervading smell of manure. How many of the children had dreamed of dung. What's your ambition, Steven?: To get ma da's muckspreader and drive down the Main Street with it going full blast, sir.

He'd parked in the little civic square, but knew he wouldn't be able to drive again until he'd shaken off some of the lethargy and desolation with which the herbalist had infused him. The square hadn't changed much. The council buildings were a single storey, pebble dashed prefab tacked on to the police station: he thought the disabled ramp was new, but couldn't be sure. The drainpipes and guttering, rusting beneath their peeling Corporation ochre paint, sprouted tentative seedlings and tiny flowering weeds. A magpie bounced along the apex of the roof. Across the road, the King's Arms hotel, painted in its burgundy livery, was closed for the afternoon: market-day hours, though he doubted the existence of a market for a good twenty years or so. At the far end, outside the tiny, understocked library, he found the telephone box where it had always been, and called home. His own voice.

"Hi, I'm sorry Ann and I can't take your call right now but..."

He waited for the beep. "Hi Ann, it's me. Just to let you know that I went to see Yvonne's herbalist quack. She says I've been eating the wrong things. She's given me a diet sheet. It's just I might not be back before you are. I'll be home as soon as I can." She'd have to see to her own dinner. He hated that, her working all day, him in the house, off sick since it'd got so bad he couldn't be relied on to last half an hour in class without collapsing face first into the sandpit and scaring the little ones. The machine whirred on. "Sorry about dinner. I'll bring in an Indian." There goes the diet sheet, he thought.

He hung up - no need to call back later, she always had Chicken Tikka Makhani - and leaned his hands on the plexi glass, feeling his knees go gobbledygook for a second.

What was it, he wondered, this thing called love, that could catch you so unaware in so commonplace a place. You built up structures of it, shared goals, a house, children; you remembered anniversaries, made little ritual proclamations, knew what each other would want for dinner, wrapped up the whole concept in a word like "ours", then allowed others to examine what you'd got, turning it over like an ornament in their hands and cooing how lucky you are, having all this. And all the time a speck of dust nags at you, spoils it all, just one tiny fleck you can't rub off your sleeve because you need to have it there.

When would you say you were really happy? a counsellor once asked him. Was there a time, a particular age, maybe in your childhood, at university, someplace you worked, a holiday you've been on?

Thirty-five minutes in this telephone box in this civic square on a balmy spring night, at Easter, when a young woman he'd worked with gave in to his tipsy, besotted fumblings and took him in her arms and said she'd love to be his girlfriend, and had kissed him so gently he'd felt that anything, anything good could happen.

That was all.

He left the booth and sat on a wooden bench: a plaque read 'In Memory of Jeanie MacFarlane, who sat here for twenty years, passed on 1996', and he realised that old women had died since he'd last been here, and children had been born, perhaps hers too, now what, nine? Ten? He could see her, her figure still slim, still luminescent beneath her cotton dresses, her legs long, her thighs firm, her breasts. She would be a much loved mother, a cool mum, full smile and wild hazel eyes, Julia Roberts before anyone had ever heard of her. She would have a boy who'd adore her, who'd have little pals who would adore her, and he'd bring her flowers from the field at the back of her house and be good because she asked him.

Gemma had been twenty-two, he was seven years older and separated from his first wife, and they'd been the last in the pub after a staff night out to celebrate her appointment to another school when he realised how beautiful she was. As the grumpy middle-aged barmaid nagged them to leave five minutes after last orders, they'd cast their eyes to the heavens in unison. She'd said, This is my town, I'm going to show you around, and they'd ended up dancing the rest of the night away at a cheesy discotheque above a hotel bar. He'd felt wonderfully flattered when her ex-boyfriend dug him up in the Gents and hissed at him to stay away from her. He told Gemma: she disappeared for ten minutes to give the guy a telling off, and came back to her seat flushed and frazzled and affectionate towards him. Don't worry, she said, taking his hand.

He'd gone home in a dwam of hormones and the next day his wife had arrived on his doorstep, drunk and shouting suicide, and claimed his attention, his time, his sex. He'd buckled at around half past five in the morning and never spoke to Gemma again.

A short, squat man with an iron-filings jaw and dressed in camouflage gear came out of the council buildings, a wiry-haired Jack Russell scampering after him. He looked the rabbit-coursing type, one of the seasonal odd-job men in the area who wanted their kids to go places they never could and thought people like Ian had the passport.

He'd let down so many. He wondered if, in another reality, he had made decisions which were right, said the right things, did what was good. If he lived a different life, not better, just different. Did he have children? Who was their mother? Would he have gone on to meet Ann, as he had in this life, or had he taken the plunge and grabbed with both hands the possibilities he'd been offered in that damp little telephone box?

And did he sleep normally? The thought of all that happiness somewhere else, somewhere with another him, gave him a dangerous surge of emotion up through his chest and into his throat.

The dog scampered over the square towards him, its little rump wagging eternally optimistically. He wanted to pat it, but felt the disconnection in his hand, the loss of muscle tone in his upper arm, and he couldn't reach out. He had only a second or two to before the attack hit him, enough only to yelp "Excuse me..." to attract the hunter's attention.

Aware as ever of how ridiculous he looked, he slid from the bench, sat heavily on his backside and then keeled over, his temple banging on the pavement and making him bite his tongue. He had all the muscular capability of a beached jellyfish: luckily, he'd never lost it anywhere he could be robbed and stripped buck naked, but there was always a first time, and maybe the hunter hadn't snared any rabbits today.

The dog snuffled around his crotch - he desperately hoped it wouldn't cock a leg, just to finish off the humiliation - and whined. The hunter came up and shoved it away with his foot.

"Are ye okay, pal?"

He willed his eyes to look at his wrist, at his SOS bracelet: it was so ugly, nobody, but nobody, would choose to wear it unless they were seriously ill. All he could manage, though, was a slight twitch.

"Wassup? Ye had a wee bit too much t'drink?"

The hunter rolled him onto his side, put him into a recovery position: it was a bit more comfortable, but he'd been eased over onto his left, the bracelet underneath him. Still, the hunter seemed concerned, so he settled down to wait for the attack to pass.

And behind it all, looking up through the clear glass pool around him, he had a dream.

Gemma stood in front of him, holding his hands, while an Eastern European sleet whirled around their heads in a semi-gloom cast by a sky of beaten silver. They stood in another small town square, and a taste in the air told him that War had just begun or ended. She looked just as she always had, reddish-blonde hair, wide brown eyes, a smattering of freckles and that gorgeous, ever so slightly gap-toothed smile. She was here, bright and vivid like a brazier in the monochrome winter of his soul, and he felt the weight close around his heart.

You made a mess of it last time, she said. You've another chance. One last chance. She took his arm and led him across the square, across cobbles shiny like an alligator's back, across slippery grass and into a tenement, flat fronted and grey with a tall pointed roof and dormer-windowed attic flats. He knew this was where he lived with Ann. You have to tell her it's over, that you want to be with me, and he knew he'd have to tell Ann that it was over, that he'd always wanted to be with Gemma.

They went up some worn steps into a dark red hallway. He knew the children he'd never had were in the derelict dining room on the left: they bent their heads over their homework at the long dusty table.

Where's mum?

They looked up at him, pale, thin faced, dark eyes. He heard their answer but didn't see them speak. He turned: Gemma wasn't behind him. He crossed the hallway, up the half-flight of bare wooden stairs to their bedroom, dark wood furniture and bare bulb. Gemma was already there, her hand on Ann's arm, talking gently, authoritatively, taking charge of ending his marriage. Ann turned towards him, smiling, brave, her eyes shining. She knew what he had to say, and she was dignified and adult and she loved him.

He couldn't say it. Gemma looked at him and waited, and Anne's tears spilled, and the hunter was slapping his cheek steadily and painlessly.

"Can ye tell me yer name, man? Are ye hearin me?"

Finding his muscles responding again, he raised himself on his elbow, lurched back into the exhaustion of reality and spat blood. He gripped the hunter's sleeve to steady himself in a sitting position.

"Thanks," he said, "I'll be fine in a minute."

"Christ, man, ye gave me a fright there. Are ye sure yer goin tae be okay."

"Yeah, honestly. It's nothing to worry about really." He shook his head, though the cobwebs were disappearing rapidly anyway, and smiled. "It's just something I ate."

"Don't tell ma missus what it is, for fuck's sake: she'll be putting it in ma pieces every day."

The hunter hefted Ian up under his shoulders and supported him until it was obvious his legs would hold. "Y'all right now?"

"Aye. Listen, thanks for all your help. I really appreciate it."

"That's no bother, ma friend." The magpie swooped off the roof, and the Jack Russell pirouetted on its hind legs to yap at it as it glided low over the square. "Can I help ye anywhere."

"No thanks, I'll be fine for driving in a minute" said Ian. He felt the recesses of his brain switching back on, powering up again. "I want to get back to my wife."

© Raymond Soltysek 2001

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