The Walkers
The Walkers
Eve clings on to Nick’s arm as they walk along the city street. She feels frail today, and her legs are somehow both heavy and wobbly. But that’s because she’s been in hospital, she reminds herself. Yes. For something to do with her head. She had an operation. That’s right. It’s all coming back to her. Her head was bandaged and for a while it felt heavy and alien, as though it had been replaced by a metal robot’s head.
But apart from that, she’s fine. Isn’t she?
She can’t really remember. At the back of her mind, something is nagging at her, something that feels like it might be important…but she can’t recall it now.
“Good for you, love!” calls a builder from a nearby building site. “You’re getting stronger every day.”
“How does he know?” she says, astonished. “Have we been out here before?”
“A few times,” says Nick, squeezing her hand. “And he’s right. You are getting stronger every day. So—you don’t remember coming out for any other walks like this?”
“Not really.” She pauses. “Maybe if I think hard.”
They walk on a few more steps and a light flurry of snow hits them in the face.
“Snow!” exclaims Eve. “What date is it?”
She has no idea even what month it is, she realizes. But there again, she’s never been good at dates. It doesn’t mean anything.
“It’s December the twentieth,” says Nick.
“Christmas!” She stops dead. “Christmas! We need to get presents! The children! Have they done their lists? Where are the children?” she adds, in a flurry of panic.
“The children are having a lovely time with your mother and the presents are bought and wrapped,” he says patiently. “The children did lists and we ordered them together. You sat up in bed and we did it on the iPad.”
“Right.” Eve roams around the recesses of her mind, but draws a blank. “I don’t remember.”
“It doesn’t matter.” He squeezes her hand. “Just don’t worry about it. Christmas will be fine. You’ll be home!”
“Home!”
Eve is about to ask how long it is since she’s been at home when a sound distracts her. It’s a sound deep inside her head and she doesn’t likeit.
“Are you OK?” asks Nick as she stops dead in the street.
“My head is ticking,” she says. “It’s the weirdest thing, Nick, it sounds like a fast electric alarm clock ticking away in my brain.”
“That’s just your brain knitting back together,” he says reassuringly. “You’ve heard it before. It’s common after the kind of surgery you had. We asked the doctor.”
“It’s freaky.” She makes a face.
“I’m sure it is. But don’t worry about it. Oh, I spoke to your mother,” he adds. “She sends you her love and of course says she hopes you feel better.” He pauses cautiously. “You know you’ve been unwell?”
“Of course I know I’ve been unwell,” she says as robustly as she can, because this conversation is secretly unnerving her. She keeps searching her head for clues, but comes across great gaps instead. What’s happened to her brain? It feels patchy and incompetent and not like herself at all.
“Do you remember the words to ‘O Come All Ye Faithful’?” asks Nick. “Only we sang it yesterday, as we were walking along.”
“Of course I remember ‘O Come All Ye Faithful’!” she says with a laugh, and draws breath to sing. “ O come all ye faithful…Long live our noble king… No, wait.” She stops. “That’s wrong. Stupid.”
“Never mind,” says Nick. “It’s only a carol. I just wondered if it had stuck.”
“I can remember a carol, for God’s sake!” says Eve in frustration and, mustering all her mental energy, begins singing again. “ O come all ye faithful…Glory to the newborn king… ” She stops doubtfully. “Is that right?”
“Take a break,” says Nick. “Don’t push yourself. It’s only a carol. It doesn’t matter.”
“But I want to remember, ” says Eve desperately. “What’s wrong? I never…” She trails off as memories suddenly crowd her brain.
“Hang on. Did I need a Zimmer frame?” she asks, appalled by the idea.
“Yes, you used a Zimmer frame for a while,” says Nick matter-of-factly.
She is silent for a moment as it all slowly returns to her. The huge effort just to move an inch. The voice of the physiotherapist as she struggled forward. Her arms trembling with effort. Her head numb with disbelief that she—the sporty one, the lover of high heels—should need a Zimmer frame to walk.
“I remember that now,” she says. “And I rememberthat time I fell over.” More images are filling her brain. CALL, DON’T FALL. The phrase flashes into her head. She can see it written in Sharpie on pieces of paper, stuck up on the walls of her room. Her hospital room.
Now she’s remembering the nurses. The meals; the wide shower with its red plastic call button; the meds cart. She’s been in hospital for a while, she realizes.
“ Call, don’t fall, ” she says out loud, and Nick gives a wry laugh. “Yes, indeed. You had to learn that one. You kept forgetting you couldn’t walk.”
“I pulled over that piece of hospital machinery,” she says, recalling the entire incident in a fresh flood of memory. “I thought I could walk to the bathroom. I got that awful bruise on my arm.”
“You did.” Nick’s mouth twitches. “You had lots of nurses very worried. In fact, I’m only allowed to take you out now because I’ve promised to hold on to you tightly. They don’t trust you to behave.”
She laughs, thankful to have something to smile at, even if it is her own pratfall.
“But I can walk now.”
“Yes. You learned again. You did brilliantly.”
“I had an operation, didn’t I?” she says, trying to sound matter-of-fact, as though she remembers everything.
“Yes. And it went very well. So that’s a positive.”
Other things aren’t so positive, he thinks . But you haven’t asked about those. Not yet.
“Another carol?” he suggests. “?‘Silent Night’?”
As they walk to the corner, they sing an approximation of the carol together, arm in arm, laughing when they go wrong. But even though she’s enjoying the little sing-along, Eve can’t focus on it. She keeps losing her grip on the words, and besides, that nagging feeling is back. What is it? She feels like she needs to know something, like there’s a missing piece to this jigsaw….
“Nick?” she says at last, cutting into his rendition of “Silent Night.”
“Yes?” He stops singing; looks down at her.
“What’s wrong with me?”
For a full minute, Nick stares at his wife, unable to speak. It comes every time, this moment. This terrible, impossible moment. And each time, it seems to come sooner; her eyes seem wider; her incomprehension seems greater.
You have incurable cancer, my beautiful Eve. But you keep forgetting and I have to keep reminding you and these are the hardest moments of my life.
He will tell her the truth, as he has told her on every walk. And he will deal with her shock, as he has done on every walk. He will deal with her questions, her tears, her worries, her fears for the children. For all of them.
But not just yet. Let me have just a few minutes, he thinks. Just a few more minutes of happy innocence.
“Before we get to that,” he says, “what about ‘O Little Town of Bethlehem’? Do you remember that?”
“I must do!” She draws breath and sings. “ O little town of Bethlehem…the silent stars go by… No, that’s wrong…. Wait, I’ve got an idea.” Her face brightens. “You print me out the words of all the carols and I can relearn them by Christmas.”
“Of course. Good idea. I’ll give you a printout,” says Nick.
He’ll give her the printout he’s already given her and that she’s discarded in frustration three times now, sitting up in her hospital bed, wailing, “I can’t learn these sodding carols!”
“Well, shall we just walk for a bit?”
“Yes. Let’s just walk for a bit.”
So they carry on, the pair of them, arm in arm, snowflakes flurrying around them. Occasionally he glances down at her and she smiles back. Her eyes are already vague again—he can tell her thoughts are scattering away—but her steps are firm and steady. And right at this moment, he thinks, right at this exact, magical moment, he could almost think that nothing was wrong at all.