How the Dead Live by Will Self Page B

shout instructions to passers-by in the street. He’s nothing if not communicative, our Mr Elvers.
    ‘She’s awake, Natty, be quiet now.’
    ‘I didn’t say any – ‘
    ‘Sssh!’
    ‘Girls? Is that my girls?’
    ‘We’re here, Mum.’ Charlotte leans forward and takes my hand, swollen with arthritis, in hers – which is merely swollen.
    ‘Is that you, Charlie?’ I’m cramming as much wavering sincerity into this as I can.
    ‘Yes, Mum, it’s me.’
    ‘Then why’ve you got a snapshot of your fucking father taped on your face?’
    Charlotte recoils, Natty laughs. ‘All right there, Mumu? Still wisecracking, are we?’ She leans down and plants a kiss on my mouth which is more like a blow.
    ‘Mother!’ Charlie exclaims – she’s always chosen to regard my hatred of her paternity as a mischievous bit of play-acting. ‘Dr Steel has had a talk with us both.’ And now I know the game is up. While it was only the doctors, the nurses, the Mr Khans who knew, it couldn’t be true. It was a messy but implausible fact – to be whisked away in a cardboard kidney dish. But now Charlie knows, efficient Charlie, well– my bones might as well already be being pulverised in that cremulator. I bet as Steel and she talked she was taking notes in her Filofax, under neatly underlined headings: Death certificate ; Undertakers ; Funeral . Dusted and done – that’s Charlie.
    ‘Natty-watty.’
    ‘Mumu.’
    ‘My baby.’ I open my arms and somehow she manages to curl her near-six feet of limbs into my embrace. I can smell the henna in her hair and feel the coarseness of it against my sallow cheek, but she feels good, feels like my baby. When she’s my baby – I’m hers. It’s like that with the youngest child – for their whole life they make you feel like the youngest. I can never see any of David Yaws in her at all.
    ‘D’you wanna go homey, Mumu?’
    ‘It’s shitty in here, Natty – the food’s shit, the decor’s shit; and my dear – the people.’
    ‘You go home, Mumu. I’ll come with and look after you, promise.’
    ‘I thought you had a new job?’ Charlotte says.
    Natasha rears up. ‘I do – but what’s more important, eh? Making money or looking after your dying mother, hmm? No – don’t answer that.’
    ‘There are practicalities to consider’ – Charlotte was born to say things like this. ‘Mum will need proper nursing. I assumed you’d want to go back to the flat, Mum, so Richard’s arranging for nursing cover and I’ve sent Molly round to clean it up – OK?’
    ‘I guess so.’ Guess so only because Molly – Charlie and Richard’s Filipino factotum – has different ideas about cleaning to me.
    ‘Now Mum – you can’t be ill in a messy house.’
    ‘I’ve been ill in it these last two years; what you mean is I can’t die in a messy house. Go on, say it. Messy-messy–messy. Die-die–die.’
    ‘Mu-um!’ they chorus; and both are at one with this: the continual need to bring up Mummy, admonish Mummy. What will they do when I’m gone? There won’t even be this to hold them together.
    But it’s good to keep up the contemptuous, dismissive, cynical pose – it keeps the fear at bay. I don’t want to break down in front of them, not now. There’ll be plenty of time for that later.
    ‘Dr Bowen – the senior registrar – she’s doing your discharge now.’
    ‘It won’t be the first time.’
    ‘I’m sorry?’
    ‘She’s had to deal with a fair few of my discharges recently.’
    ‘Oh Mother, really!’ I’m really, really, really, actually sick and tired of hearing that ‘really’. My life really might be worth fighting for if I could be certain that after they’d burnt out my remaining hair with their radiation and poisoned me with their drugs, no one would never ever say ‘really’ in that tone again, within my earshot. But Natty doesn’t say ‘really’ – she wouldn’t be so crass. She laughs instead. She’s an earthy soul, my Natty. A farter and a