Free Facing the Tank by Patrick Gale Page B

shut mouth. ‘Cover the face with the sheet,’ the sage wives advised none the less, ‘and prepare all requirements for the final laying-out. While doing this it is advisable to find out the relatives’ wishes regarding any personal jewellery such as the wedding ring.’ There was a list of ‘requirements’ such as towels, soap and hot water, all of which were to hand. Jewellery, he assumed, had all been left to her fertile Scottish nieces. ‘Remove remaining bedclothes leaving top sheet to cover.’
    He pulled off the quilt and draped it over the landing banisters to air before starting to untuck the blankets. God bless the W I. It was like having a capable nurse in the room; starchy but comforting because her knowledge was absolute and so bore one up.
    Her body beneath the lone white sheet was slight as an old cat’s. He had grown used to it after countless bed baths but, suddenly so still, it seemed frailer than ever. He was not going to cry. She had been dying too long. She had been so unlike herself for so long that the corpse before him was not her. She had been mercifully removed from all these indignities some time before she left Lagos.
    Christmas had been when the lavatorial obsession had set in. No sooner did Dr Morton declare her physically well at Easter than she started her refusal to leave the bed even to hobble on his arm to the bathroom. Easter also saw her lapse into a hateful second infancy. She must have been a horrible baby. It was only when Lydia had kindly had words with Dr Morton behind Fergus’ back that the latter had discreetly delivered a large box of disposable nappies for the elderly and infirm.
    No. He was not going to cry. He did need to blow his nose, however. His hands shook and he dropped the handkerchief. As he stooped to pick it up, his head level with the mattress, Mrs Gibson let fly a long and expressive fart and proceeded to laugh uproariously from under her white sheet. Fergus watched her mouth opening and closing on the cotton, then pulled back her shroud and saw the monstrous glee in her eyes.
    ‘Devil!’ he shouted, pulling the pillow from under her jaw and preparing to hit her with it. She only laughed the louder, dribbling and farting some more, so instead he tucked it back behind her shoulders and unrolled the blankets over her again. With her giggling in his ears, he worked his way along both sides of the mattress, tucking the bedding back in and making perfect hospital corners, then walked out and shut the door. Slumped on the landing floor and pulling her quilt off the banisters and over his head, he tried to cry.

9
    ‘Faster!’ yelled Gloire. The air poured over the windscreen and into her artfully straightened mane. ‘Faster for Chrissakes!’ Tobit Hart flattened the accelerator as her brown hand clamped harder on his inner thigh. ‘Faster. Oh. Oh God! Yes. Please. Now !’ As the engine neared apoplexy Tobit blared the horn for a full eight seconds as his fiancée subsided in vanilla-scented ecstasy beside him. ‘I love you when you drive,’ she confessed at last.
    ‘I love you back,’ he returned and pressed his lips to the pale inside of her nearest wrist.
    ‘Child of nature, huh?’
    ‘More. Much more,’ he said and smiled at himself in the mirror. She took his left hand from the wheel and bit lightly at the fleshy part of its thumb.
    ‘My candy-coated conversion,’ she said and nibbled. ‘What have you told Lydia and Clive about their future in-laws?’
    ‘Not a lot,’ he replied. There was a pause before a grin laid bare his teeth. ‘They don’t even know about you.’
    ‘Oh Jesus,’ she murmured.
    ‘This is a surprise visit,’ he went on.
    Gloire laughed, then threw back her head and yelled into the motorway wind.
    She had strolled into his shop in Marylebone two months ago and ordered a white evening dress.
    ‘I trust the design entirely to you,’ she said, leaning an elbow on the anatomy textbook she had been clutching, ‘but it