Read Online The Devil I Know by Claire Kilroy - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Claire Kilroy
Tags: Fiction
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were blatantly not part of the medical corps. âWhat the fuck is this?â I wanted to know, because I used to curse a lot back then. I used to do a great many bad things back then. I am paying for it now. The nurses had kitted me out in a pair of geriatric pyjamas and a maroon dressing gown since my luggage hadnât accompanied me to the hospital. I wouldnât accompany me either, given the option. The porter rolled my wheelchair into the circle and made a song and dance of applying the brake, letting me know in no uncertain terms that I was parked.
The group turned to me and smiled the meek, apologetic smile. I scowled, wondering what their game was. They would have registered that I was a hard case. You soon learn to recognise the signs. I wasnât there of my own volition and they knew it. All I knew was that I could murder a pint.
The meeting was conducted in French. Salut , je mâappelle Marcel . Je suis un alcoolique . Salut Marcel , letâs hear it for Marcel,a big hand for Marcel. I stared at him with open hostility. What had he ever done that was so great? Then Marcel started speaking. The meek smiling stopped and the earnest listening began.
The woman beside me leaned in and took to translating Marcelâs story into English, making a fair fist of it too. Marcel knew it was time to knock his drinking on the head when he woke up in the North Sea one freezing November dawn clinging to a rock. He rolled up his sleeves to show us the scars of the wounds he had sustained, and the stump where his ring finger used to be, at which sight I looked away and stared at my feet. They were clad in another manâs slippers, old brown things that smelled a little ripe. Then one of them slid off and landed with a slap on the linoleum floor. Marcel broke off his narration to glare at the slipper as if Iâd laid a turd. No one stooped to pick it up and replace it on my bare foot. And me in a wheelchair. Marcel re-embarked on his story. When he was finished, he wiped away a tear and everyone clapped except me. Then they chanted some class of prayer.
The meeting ended, but there was no sign of the porter coming to rescue me. The lot of them tramped out, leaving me alone in an empty circle of seats with my back to the door. There is nothing so atmospheric as a recently vacated room. I extended my foot to the floor and hooked the slipper with my big toe, flipped it back onto my foot. Why the staff had installed me in a wheelchair, I could not say. I still had the use of my legs. Fuck this, I thought, and got up and headed out for a smoke.
That was my first meeting. It was a beginning.
*
They discharged me a few days later, and I was standing on the hospital steps looking up and down the street in search of the nearest bar when my mobile phone rang. I took it out and frowned. Last Iâd looked, the battery had been dead. Unknown , read the screen.
âHello, Tristram.â The voice was a cultured one, grave and authoritative. âMy name is Monsieur Deauville,â the caller continued. âI realise that you are dying for a drink, and I am ringing to inform you that if you pursue this course of action, you most certainly will die for it.â
For a lurid moment, I saw my death certificate. Temps de mort, 00.01h . I reached for the handrail to steady myself, blinking to drive out the sight of those words, but the pulsing letters had seared my retina and were superimposed on the street, and the hospital and the sky, and anywhere else that I cared to look.
âDo you wish to die?â M. Deauville asked.
I was having trouble breathing. A man came up offering assistance but I waved him away because what help could he possibly have given me? My heart had stopped and I had been pronounced dead, during which time a signal had been triggered and my death certificate retrieved from whatever vault it had been stored in. It had been loaded onto a trolley just as my body had been loaded onto a
The group turned to me and smiled the meek, apologetic smile. I scowled, wondering what their game was. They would have registered that I was a hard case. You soon learn to recognise the signs. I wasnât there of my own volition and they knew it. All I knew was that I could murder a pint.
The meeting was conducted in French. Salut , je mâappelle Marcel . Je suis un alcoolique . Salut Marcel , letâs hear it for Marcel,a big hand for Marcel. I stared at him with open hostility. What had he ever done that was so great? Then Marcel started speaking. The meek smiling stopped and the earnest listening began.
The woman beside me leaned in and took to translating Marcelâs story into English, making a fair fist of it too. Marcel knew it was time to knock his drinking on the head when he woke up in the North Sea one freezing November dawn clinging to a rock. He rolled up his sleeves to show us the scars of the wounds he had sustained, and the stump where his ring finger used to be, at which sight I looked away and stared at my feet. They were clad in another manâs slippers, old brown things that smelled a little ripe. Then one of them slid off and landed with a slap on the linoleum floor. Marcel broke off his narration to glare at the slipper as if Iâd laid a turd. No one stooped to pick it up and replace it on my bare foot. And me in a wheelchair. Marcel re-embarked on his story. When he was finished, he wiped away a tear and everyone clapped except me. Then they chanted some class of prayer.
The meeting ended, but there was no sign of the porter coming to rescue me. The lot of them tramped out, leaving me alone in an empty circle of seats with my back to the door. There is nothing so atmospheric as a recently vacated room. I extended my foot to the floor and hooked the slipper with my big toe, flipped it back onto my foot. Why the staff had installed me in a wheelchair, I could not say. I still had the use of my legs. Fuck this, I thought, and got up and headed out for a smoke.
That was my first meeting. It was a beginning.
*
They discharged me a few days later, and I was standing on the hospital steps looking up and down the street in search of the nearest bar when my mobile phone rang. I took it out and frowned. Last Iâd looked, the battery had been dead. Unknown , read the screen.
âHello, Tristram.â The voice was a cultured one, grave and authoritative. âMy name is Monsieur Deauville,â the caller continued. âI realise that you are dying for a drink, and I am ringing to inform you that if you pursue this course of action, you most certainly will die for it.â
For a lurid moment, I saw my death certificate. Temps de mort, 00.01h . I reached for the handrail to steady myself, blinking to drive out the sight of those words, but the pulsing letters had seared my retina and were superimposed on the street, and the hospital and the sky, and anywhere else that I cared to look.
âDo you wish to die?â M. Deauville asked.
I was having trouble breathing. A man came up offering assistance but I waved him away because what help could he possibly have given me? My heart had stopped and I had been pronounced dead, during which time a signal had been triggered and my death certificate retrieved from whatever vault it had been stored in. It had been loaded onto a trolley just as my body had been loaded onto a
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