cloud-busting Zeus in the flesh, lowered his voice so that only Freddy could hear.
‘A word in your ear … darling.’
As usual, Bob and Noreen Loach had eaten breakfast in silence, each reading separate sections of the Birmingham Post. In No Man’s Land, the small table between them, rested the final remains of their individually prepared petits déjeuners. The telephone ringing provided a welcome interruption from the monotony, and Loach took the call.
It was Jim, one of the Specials, reporting an attack of the ’flu. ‘Yeah, I hear it. You sound terrible. Well, look, lad, you stay put.’ Loach turned his back toward Noreen to provide some vestige of a private conversation. ‘Don’t worry. It’s not the end of the world … or the end of the Specials that you’ve got the ’flu. Better you stay put. I don’t want the rest of us catching it.’
Making his farewells and wishing Jim a speedy recovery, he banged the ’phone back on its cradle.
‘Flippin’ ’eck! That’s another one off the list.’
When he looked around, Loach realized once again that he was talking to himself. Noreen was stacking the breakfast things into the dishwasher. When he didn’t want her to listen, she listened; and when he did want her to listen, perchance to add to the discussion, she wanted to be elsewhere.
In one of her daytime uniforms, a close-fitting one-piece swimming costume, Anjali Shah was working with Mrs Pearce in the hydrotherapy pool at General Hospital. The middle-aged woman was lying against a support which held her at a 45-degree angle, allowing her to stretch her legs in time to the music playing softly in the background.
‘Very good,’ Anjali soothed her. ‘Now rest, and then we’ll try it again.’
Mrs Pearce heaved a sigh of relief, trying her best to relax. She looked out of the window, which occupied the entire space of the opposite wall. Beyond the thick glass she could distinguish the hazy forms of nature: healthy green shrubs, thriving infant trees … and a shadowy figure moving through them! She nearly jumped out of her skin, tried to scream, yet couldn’t emit a sound from her throat.
The figure reached the window, making erratic, hysterical gestures. Finally Mrs Pearce turned Anjali’s attention to the raving maniac at the window behind her.
Quickly Anjali looked back over her shoulder, but it was only Uncle Ram outside the window making a complete fool of himself – hardly a rare occurrence in her experience. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of acknowledging his presence, let alone his jumping around like a monkey outside the hospital where she was employed, so she paid him no mind and returned to working with her patient – realizing, of course, that ignoring his bizarre attempts to contact her would infuriate him even further.
Mrs Pearce could not even begin to figure out what was going on between her therapist and the lunatic outside. Now mad as a bee, he was waving frantically at her.
‘Try and keep your right leg straight, Mrs Pearce.’
The crazy man was rapping on the window with all his strength and fury, but its thickness prevented any noise from getting through: he might as well be hammering the glass with a rose petal. Still, his desperate efforts were frightening Mrs Pearce, and she was helplessly bewildered.
‘Don’t you think it might be something important?’
Anjali saw that Mrs Pearce had a kind heart, and calmly reassured her. ‘Believe me, Mrs Pearce, I know the man well, and there’s nothing important he has to say to me.’
Her patient still perplexed, Anjali tried to explain in as few words as possible. ‘He’s … he’s a bit eccentric. Now, can we try and raise the leg a little higher? That’s it …’
No longer quite so agitated or alarmed, nevertheless Mrs Pearce was entirely captivated by the blurry figure outside, as he implored heaven for an Excalibur to smash through the heavy glass window. Her fascination increased when another figure came into the scene, someone in uniform, perhaps a security man or even a policeman. While she couldn’t hear what they were saying, she could see that their conversation was clearly heated and getting hotter by the second.
‘Oh, dear, I hope he’s not going to be arrested.’
Anjali turned sharply just in time to see a querulous Uncle Ram being led away by a security guard. Stifling a bubble of laughter, she left the hydrotherapy pool and went over to an internal telephone, leaving behind a somewhat flustered and befuddled Mrs Pearce.
The security office in the hospital was a tiny, cramped room, sparsely furnished apart from a utility table. In a grim frame of mind Uncle Ram glowered at the security guard across the table, although the guard was completely unaware of being scrutinized, his nose buried deep in the Sun.
Abruptly Uncle Ram was startled when the only door in the room opened, and his daughter – rather, his niece – entered. At least she was dressed in normal clothing, though much too modern, covering much too little.
The security guard winked at Anjali and left her alone in the room with Uncle Ram, who waited until the door was closed before reproaching her for the terrible way he had been treated. Finally she had gone too far. Much too far.
‘Now look here, Anjali. You are a wicked woman!’ He shook his head sadly. ‘May Shiva hear me. I shall never forgive you this day.’
But Anjali was not buying his damnation today, any more than she would any other day. ‘What rubbish you talk, Uncle Ram. I am at work with patients, and you believe I can drop everything?’ He seemed confused rather than enlightened by her argument. ‘And what kind of foolishness is it that you creep around the hospital?’
Ram took this as an affront; responding directly to the insult would be beneath him. Yet he felt wounded, anguished by her insolence.
‘You have no feelings any more for your family.’
Anjali sensed he was being serious, not simply foolish. ‘That isn’t true, and you know it.’
Faintly, just perceptibly, there was a small kernel of a notion he thought he detected in her attitude, the layers of her bitterness peeled away for a brief moment, revealing a trace of old roots she had so long and fervently tried to bury. Even in this ‘modern’, rebellious woman perhaps there was yet a glimmer of hope for the ultimate flowering of family honour and tradition.
‘Ah, so you agree that the family is important?’ he ventured, careful not to invest too much hope at this point.
‘Of course.’
However, she didn’t seem to care much, not really. He decided to accept her contrition for what it was worth and try to guide her further along the right path, if only for the sake of his sister and the sacred responsibility she had entrusted to him upon the death of her husband.
‘I’m glad to hear it.’ Yet he couldn’t resist making a slight comment under his breath. ‘The way you mix out of your culture, it wouldn’t surprise me.’
As usual these days, she was much too impatient with him. ‘What are all these questions?’
‘Things
