Read Online Fragrant Harbour by John Lanchester - Free Book Online

have been, if they’d come through. The pain was both immensely sharp and specific, on one precise point, and also dull, like an ache; it was two different sorts of pain wrapped around each other. I tottered to the bathroom, ran some cold water over the side of my face, gargled over the sore spot with brandy, took two Nurofen, and went back to bed to wake Michael.
    ‘Call a dentist,’ was his ultra-helpful suggestion.
    ‘If I had a fucking dentist do you think I would be in this state in the fucking first place?’
    ‘There must be a dental hospital or a twenty-four-hour clinic somewhere, mustn’t there?’
    ‘How do I know?’
    Michael then got up and went into a Superman routine with the phone book and with a guidebook that he had brought out with him (and which, to tell the truth, I had been secretly irritated by: why did he need a guidebook when he had me?). He eventually came up with a number for the dental hospital. By this time, however, the pain had mysteriously but thoroughly subsided , going away as quickly as it had come on.
    ‘I think I’d best leave it till morning,’ I said. ‘There’ll be some junior doctor on, he’ll probably pull all my teeth out just as soon as look at me. Best to wait for the senior chaps.’
    Rather than correctly diagnosing cowardice, Michael merely got back into bed, turned the light off, and fell asleep. Five hours later, I again came awake with fire-alarm abruptness, woken by the exact same pain. I sat straight up in bed, gave Michael an elbow and said:
    ‘It’s come back.’
    He made a certain number of mmph , mmph noises, and then went into the next room to call the hospital. About two minutes later he came back into the bedroom bringing a blushing Conchita in his wake. Monday was one of her days. The combination of six-foot-two Caucasian male in a too-small pink ruched woman’s dressing gown, and a five-foot Filipino female in flip-flops , jeans, yellow T-shirt, and rubber gloves, was quite something . Michael had on his man-of-action face.
    ‘Er, Michael,’ I said. I like to think that under normal circumstances , if my teeth hadn’t been hurting quite so much, I would at this point have made a joke about not being in the mood for a threesome.
    ‘Conchita is a dentist,’ said Michael.
    ‘What?’
    ‘Conchita is a dentist. That’s what she trained to be in Manila. Tell her what’s wrong.’
    ‘It’s true, Miss Stone,’ said Conchita, who was smiling and looking embarrassed. She was taking off her gloves and moving towards me.
    ‘Just describe the symptoms,’ said Michael. I moved over to let Conchita sit on the edge of the bed and said to Michael with an edge, ‘Could you excuse us please?’ I explained about the shooting pain, the Nurofen, the sudden and welcome going-away, the equally sudden and very unwelcome coming-back.
    ‘Is it always in the same place?’ asked Conchita, who was by now peering into my mouth. Dentist Conchita had, when comparedwith permanently smiling cleaning Conchita, a mild but immediately noticeable severity and briskness.
    ‘Same place.’
    ‘You still have your wisdom teeth?’
    ‘Aargh. They haven’t come through.’
    Finally Conchita said:
    ‘Okay, is one of two things. Maybe is your wisdom tooth, but I think maybe you too old for that now. More likely is another tooth somewhere else. Sometime tooth is sick here’ – she pressed down on the bed by my feet, ‘but pain comes here’ – she pressed near my head.
    ‘So what should I do?’
    ‘Go to tooth hospital,’ said Conchita, who by this point was putting her gloves back on. ‘They do X-ray.’
    ‘Right.’
    ‘Sorry I can help no more.’
    ‘No, that’s great.’
    ‘Tooth pain always worse at night-time,’ she said on the way out.
    I dressed slowly, like someone who had suffered a defeat, and came through to the sitting room.
    ‘I’ve called a cab,’ Michael said tightly. ‘I’ll come with you and wait.’
    We had the row in the cab on the way