Come Dance With Me

8 Elias Newman

23 January 2003. An owl tattoo. Not just any old owl but a beautifully-done copy of a Caspar David Friedrich owl, wings outspread, perched on the little roof of a wooden-cross grave marker. This is the bird I know as a great horned owl; in German it’s called uhu. Spreading its wings across her sacrum. Without thinking I said, ‘Who’s buried there?’

‘Various hopes,’ she said, and began to cry. I took her in my arms and she was shaking all over. I got her into bed and under the duvet and held her while she cried herself out. I felt a fool for saying what I had and I was honoured that she was giving me her naked sobbing. What was she crying about? I wondered. Anything to do with that owl tattoo? What buried hopes did it signify? And it wasn’t like a photograph or a note you can tear up and throw away; it was permanent, following her around for ever.

When her sobbing had died down to whimpers and sniffles she sighed and cuddled closer and fell asleep in my arms. After a while I gently withdrew the arm she was lying on and I fell asleep too. That was the extent of our lovemaking on our first night together.

In the morning she woke up with a smile, hugged me, looked at her watch, and said, ‘I’ve got a recording session.’ She and her owl flew out of bed and into the bathroom, from where she emerged fully dressed in about half a minute.

‘I’ll make us some breakfast,’ I said.

‘No time,’ she said. ‘Phone you later.’ She blew me a kiss and was off down the stairs and away, leaving only the smell of her in my bed. Not a fragrance out of a bottle but her own smell that had in it her nakedness against mine. Not a word about the owl tattoo.

I was still trying to figure out our Vertigo session. It had been some kind of test and I’d passed but I didn’t know why. The Kim Novak character was called Madeleine Elster. Christabel obviously identified strongly with her but again I didn’t know why. Madeleine Elster was unlucky, she’d said. Anything with her was going to end up badly. Was Christabel speaking about herself? She was surrounding herself with a hedge of mysteries and warnings, becoming, intentionally or not, a fairy-tale princess. Naturally I was beginning to feel like the prince who would break through that hedge to rescue her. Had I ever been in love, she wanted to know. Not irrationally, I’d said. But what other way was there to be in love? And was I?

It was Thursday, a working day for me. I thought she might have been a little more forthcoming than that speedy hug and kiss. I didn’t need a certificate of my sensitivity and understanding but there could have been more of … I don’t know. On the other hand, maybe the easy ordinariness of her departure was her way of showing that there was more between us than there’d been before. Yes, I was back at the high-school level of wondering about girls. Would she go to the prom with me? Mustn’t rush things. I sighed and caught an II bus to St Eustace.

It’s an old hospital and it smells old. The flickering fluorescent lighting made the day seem as wintry indoors as out. I took the lift to the third floor and got ready to stick my thumb in the dyke yet again while the flood of diabetes rose higher and the walking statistics briefly abandoned McDonald’s and Pizza Hut and Coca-Cola to present themselves to me. There are of course more young ones than there used to be but most of them are middle-aged or older, some walking unaided, others with sticks or in wheelchairs, all of them unable to metabolise the satisfaction they’re greedy for. As far as I know there is no Sweetaholics Anonymous. And along with their burgers and fries the diabetics are eating up more NHS money all the time. Right now we’re spending ten per cent of our £72 million budget on treating the disease; by 2010 it’ll be twenty per cent. Things change, but always, it seems, for the worse.

I do what I can and console myself with small gains: Imran Patel has been balancing his blood sugar better than he did six months ago; Sarah Blum’s Charcot joint has reached Stage 4 and she’s ready for a surgical boot, and so on. In the meantime I continue my research on the aetiology of the disease and the psychology of diabetics.

While I was working my way through the morning a motorbike messenger arrived with a ticket for the Mobile Mortuary concert at the Hammersmith Apollo on Friday. There was also a pass for the hospitality suite after the concert, and a note that said, ‘Can’t see you till after the gig. XXX’ Three paper kisses. Could do better. Humming ‘Is That All There Is’ I went through folders, checked histories, sent people for blood tests and X-rays and various scans, and in between ran my eye over the proofs for the third edition of Lipids: An Overview, a pocket picture guide on which I collaborated with the biochemist Phil Winston. This little book is elegantly produced; the tables and diagrams inspire the hope that there are answers for almost everything, while the photographs of such things as tuberous xanthomas and diabetic gangrene make it clear that for many the answers come too late. Between the clarity of the physician and the confusion of the afflicted the gap is wide and on some days I think it will never be narrowed.

Of course I didn’t stop thinking about Christabel. While doing that I had a mental visit from Professor Ernst, my predecessor, who walked into my mind without knocking and shook his head. ‘It’s a matter of the vertical vis-à-vis the horizontal,’ he once told me. He wore a pince-nez that never fell off. ‘The doctor is vertical; the patient is horizontal, even when they’re walking around. The doctor wears a suit, the patient is in pyjamas, even when they’re fully dressed. Keep this distinction in mind because a lot of people who aren’t patients should be patients of one kind or another if you take my meaning. Also: don’t sleep with anyone who doesn’t play golf.’ I don’t know why I was remembering his advice now. I was his registrar at the clinic for the ten years before his retirement. I doubt that Christabel plays golf. I’ve never slept with anyone who did.

When was I first attracted to Christabel? It was when I saw her standing in front of The Cyclops. She wasn’t just looking at the painting, she was giving herself to it, and as I’ve said before, her response excited me. Then when she smiled I wondered what she was smiling about.

Now in my working day I remembered her trembling last night and my right arm involuntarily moved to encircle her.