Free Ashes by Now by Mark Timlin Page A

stung.

19
    That night they must have cut my medication. Or maybe it was because it was my first night back in the world. Or something. Who knows?
    But whatever it was, it was the first night that I had the dreams. The nightmares that still come back regularly to haunt my sleep.
    They turned off the main lights in the small ward at about ten. I lay and looked into the shadows until I fell asleep. Then I dreamt about what happened all those weeks ago. Starting at the end and working backwards.
    First I was in the operating theatre with the paddles on my chest, and my body jumping as the electrical current went through it. I saw Sailor Grant’s dead body and I remembered his words, and decided that, however shitty it was, living was preferable to dying. Then I was in the hospital corridor being rushed to the theatre, then the ambulance.
    Then I started to remember the really bad bits.
    It was like the memory of an acid trip. Or a film that had been burnt and melted.
    I dreamed about being driven along almost deserted streets, and a conversation about a piece of paper, that somehow was important, but I didn’t know why. And leaping from the car to bounce across the tarmac until I ended up in the gutter and saw that copper. The man who saved my life. After that I dreamed I was being beaten. Beaten hard by experts. Collier and Millar. Punching, kicking and gouging, until they nearly killed me. And then hearing that was what they intended to do.
    I dreamed of Sailor’s dead body on the toilet, and then that memory got mixed up with the Sailor Grant I saw in the operating theatre, and in the Live And Let Live. All asking for my help. And all being turned down.
    I came awake in the middle of the night, struggling to sit up, a silent scream bubbling in the back of my throat.
    Then I remembered.
    I remembered everything, and resolved to do something about it.
    I had to stay at King’s for another three weeks, convalescing.
    I had lots more visitors.
    My mother roused herself from deepest Sussex to make the pilgrimage to the big, wicked city, and brought me some sandwiches. Thanks, Mum. She didn’t stay long. Just as well probably.
    My ex-wife and daughter came down again from Aberdeen. Judith had grown up since the last time I’d seen her. A real young lady, dressed in the latest rave fashions. It made me feel quite old to look at her. Laura was ageing well. Maybe it was the Scottish air. They looked more like two sisters than mother and daughter. Mind you, her disposition hadn’t improved much. She moaned and groaned so much about the cost of the air fares down to London that I offered her a cheque to pay for them.
    Christ. We were married once. Love, honour and fucking obey.
    Bitch.
    At least she had the good grace to refuse the money. And why shouldn’t she? Her husband was rolling in it. But, if Judith hadn’t been there, I think she might just have taken it, out of spite.
    Dawn and Tracey were in and out all the time. What a popular pair they were with the other male patients, and doctors in particular.
    They actually rolled in when Laura and Judith were there one afternoon. The girls were on their way to a masonic do in Clerkenwell, where they were going to take off every stitch in honour of the Great Architect.
    Laura’s face was a picture. There they came, the Wandsworth two. Staggering in on the latest glam-rock revival: platform sole and pencil heel, toeless, suede St Louis Blues, their passage not helped by the two or three Drambuie-and-lagers they’d sucked down for lunch. With the shoes, Tracey had opted for a long, tight skirt that was split to the thigh, black fishnet tights, a patchwork tank top sans bra, and a red satin jacket with Concorde lapels. When Tracey went for a look she really went for it. And since I’d been in hospital the ’70s had obviously returned with a vengeance.
    Dawn had stuck with the basic Soho streetwalker image that she loved. Black stockings,