The A to Z of You and Me

R

Rib

MAL HOLDS UP a sticky spare rib and turns it about, before greedily stripping off the meat with his teeth.

‘Mal,’ says Laura in a warning tone.

‘What?’

‘That’s probably not very nice for a vegetarian to have to put up with.’

Mal looks up at you and grins, dropping the bone on his plate and licking his fingers noisily. ‘You don’t mind, do you?’

You shrug, and continue with your risotto.

I knew this was a bad idea. All I’ve done is sit here and hope that Mal behaves himself. But he’s in one of his petulant, contrary moods. Careful piloting required.

The look you gave me when he blatantly whipped the reserved sign off the table pretty much set the tone for the evening. You’re only here reluctantly anyway, and so now I have half an eye on you and whether you’re having an OK time. Now we’re all just tense that we’re about to be found out. All of us except Mal.

‘Have you taken your shot?’ you ask me suddenly.

‘Mm? Yeah,’ I say, and show you my insulin pouch as proof.

‘That’s probably enough potassium for a while though, isn’t it?’ you say, pointing at the amount of tomato on my bouillabaisse.

Mal can’t help but give me a look. An under-the-thumb kind of look.

‘Are you sure you don’t want a spare rib, fella?’

‘Probably not a good idea, cheers. Not too good for me.’

‘Ah, whoever ate anything because it was good for them, eh?’

I hear you sigh beside me, and I pray that you keep it all in. Your head’s down now and I can tell you’re concentrating on getting through this.

‘Do ribs freak you out then?’ asks Mal.

You pause and contemplate a while, and I try to catch your eye to remind you of why we’re here. Building bridges, remember? For a sustainable and friendly future? But you won’t look at me.

‘Not particularly.’

‘How’s the chicken?’ I ask Laura.

‘Bit dry,’ she says, graphically.

Makes me feel faintly queasy, so I get on with what I’m eating. We can make it through to coffee if no one says anything too–

‘Did Ivo tell you our news?’ you say.

‘No …’ says Laura, looking up all interested.

‘It’s not that,’ I say.

‘No, we’re looking at getting a place together,’ you say. ‘My contract’s up in three months, and you’re technically at your mum’s still, aren’t you?’

Mal drops a rib to his plate, and looks at me, frowning deeply.

‘Well — what about our flat, man?’

‘What flat?’

‘I’ve got a place lined up for us, we said we’d — ah, Jesus.’

‘Sorry — I didn’t — I didn’t know you were going to go ahead and do anything.’

‘I’ve put two hundred down on that, man. Two hundred you’ve lost me.’

‘Anyway,’ I say. ‘I didn’t think — that was going anywhere.’

‘Yeah, well.’

We fall to an awkward silence, save the percussion of cutlery on crockery; even the people at other tables don’t seem to have much noise to make.

‘So — where are you thinking of staying?’ asks Laura.

‘Somewhere up close by the hospital,’ you say. ‘At first, anyway. We can always try a few short contracts, see what’s best.’

We eat on, subdued, with Mal sitting back on his chair legs, pointedly chewing.

‘So, how does it feel, as a woman then?’ says Mal. ‘Being made out of the rib of a man?’

Laura frowns. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘Adam and Eve,’ I say, a little warily. ‘Eve’s made out of Adam’s rib.’

‘Oh,’ she says, squinting to somehow summon up the memory. ‘I’d forgotten about that. Old Cecil Alexander taught us that at Sunday School.’ She turns to you. ‘He was the vicar at Mum’s church before Mal’s dad took over.’

‘Oh,’ you say.

‘Is it true then that men have one less rib?’

‘Yep,’ says Mal.

‘No,’ you say. ‘Men and women both have twelve pairs.’

Mal draws in a breath and raises amused eyebrows at me.

‘So how does that make you feel,’ he says, ‘being a tasty offcut?’

I think you’re not going to answer. I’m hoping you’re not going to answer. ‘Well, it’s not the best story, is it?’ you say.

‘No? You don’t like this bloke being ripped open, and one of his ribs being snapped off, with all the jelly bits hanging off and dripping on the ground?’ He takes another rib and starts stripping the tacky marinated meat down with his fingertips. ‘And that’s what a woman is.’

‘Well, not only that,’ you say, ‘but then she goes on to ruin the whole of human existence. Let’s hear it for the girls!’

‘We do get it a bit hard in that myth, don’t we?’ says Laura.

‘But it’s not a myth though, is it?’ says Mal. ‘It did really happen.’

‘No it didn’t,’ says Laura, girlishly.

He tears a strip off another rib, and forces us all to await his explanation.

‘The story had to come from somewhere, didn’t it?’ he says, pointing at you with his stripped rib. ‘So it came from women’s bodies, and all their weaknesses. And if it didn’t have any truth to it, it would have died out centuries ago. Here’s a man, and here’s a woman, and the other is the servant of the one. That’s what people feel. That’s biologically true.’

‘It must be,’ you say.

Oh, this is all going horribly.

‘It’s nature,’ he says drawing a circle in the air, using the rib bone as a pointer.

‘Tell that to all the women who come into the hospital after a botched late-term abortion because they’re expecting a girl.’

I flash you a look. Do we really need to go there?

Sustainable and friendly future?

Yeah?

Again Mal raises his eyebrows at me, but I won’t look at him.

Silence settles once more between us all, filled only by the gingerest of clinks of forks reluctantly hovering over flesh.

Maybe we should skip dessert.

‘What are you doing?’

I look up to see that Mal has jabbed his rib bone into your risotto.

‘What? I wanted to try a bit.’

‘Mal, she’s vegetarian,’ says Laura.

‘Oh, so what? It’s not got any meat on it, has it?’

‘Look,’ you say, standing, ‘I’m going to go, all right? I’m not feeling too good. There’s twenty quid for my share.’ You turn to me. ‘Are you coming?’

‘Here we — here we go,’ says Sheila, catching the telephone trolley on the door frame and stopping up short. She unhooks it with a wiggle and wheels it into the room. ‘It’s old-school telephony for us, I’m afraid. I’ll pop that there. Now, I’ve given him the number, and he said he was going to leave it about ten minutes and then ring.’

I look up at her and nod in reluctant acknowledgement. All of this, reluctant.

‘Then it’s up to you, lovey. Pick it up, or don’t.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Listen,’ she says. ‘It’s none of my business, but I think it’s really good you’ve agreed to this. I know it might seem a bit silly, accepting a phone call from someone sitting fifty yards away in the car park, but — well, if you’re willing to even think about being a bit flexible, well, that’s real character in my book. That’s real strength.’

I smile an administrative smile. I can’t do any more.

‘I’ll leave you be,’ she says.

She tidies herself out of the room, pulling the door softly shut behind her, and as soon as the light of her departure has shifted and settled in the frosted glass, the phone begins to ring. Cheap electronic chirrup. Annoying. I look at it for a moment, but the instinct is too strong. I can’t let that noise carry on, troubling the other patients.

I let it go on.

Chirrup-chirrup.

I pick up the receiver.

‘Hello.’

‘Hello, mate.’

‘Hello, Kelvin.’

‘How you doing?’

The habitual first question, not worth answering.

‘You wanted to speak.’

‘Sorry, mate, it feels a bit weird talking from a car park. A bit Cold War spy.’

‘They still want me to see Mal.’

‘Yeah.’

‘I’m not going to, Kelv.’

‘No.’

An awkward pause.

‘I wanted to tell you the stuff that no one else is saying,’ he says.

He pauses again. I know he wants me to say something, help lubricate his way. But he can work for this. I don’t need to lift a finger.

‘I know this is the last thing you need, people coming up to you with demands when you’re feeling so shitty, but I know you’d want to know. Even if you don’t change your mind. I know you’d want all the facts.’

More unnatural silence.

‘No one wants to upset you, least of all me, but things are pretty bad. For his mum and dad, for Laura. They worry themselves sick about him all day every day. And the times when he does come back, he’s usually in a real state. The last time he was shivering and crying because — well, you know, he’d run out of money and he hadn’t had his fix.’

My mind darts over this scenario, searches for an emotional response. Comes back blank.

‘That’s a lot for them to take. He’s not the swaggering lad you used to know. He’s changed. He’s changed a lot. And he’s paid heavily for everything that happened.’

‘So have I, Kelvin.’

‘I know you have, mate, I know. And I’m sorry to come to you like this when you’re — you know.’

‘Dying?’

He can’t bring himself to say it.

‘Look, mate, you can’t carry on going through life thinking no one’s going to notice or care whether you’re here or not. When you’re gone, you’re gone for ever. There’s a lot of people going to be very upset by that. Damaged by it.’

‘Why are you trying to do this, anyway? Why are you trying to make me feel guilty for this?’

‘I’m not trying to make you feel guilty.’

‘He killed her, Kelvin.’

There.

That’s stopped him.

That’s fucking shut him up.

‘I don’t see why you’re so interested in all this anyway. Is it because you want to get in Laura’s knickers? I reckon you want to see him gone.’

Thick silence. Nailed him. I’ve nailed him there.

‘You can take the piss out of me all you like, mate,’ he says, quietly. ‘I’m just saying it as I see it.’

‘Is that right?’

‘That’s right. And I’ve seen you do this over and over again to these people’s lives, and if I can stop you from doing it again, I will.’

‘I’m not doing anything.’

‘Yeah, that’s you all over, isn’t it?’

The phone goes dead.

I place the receiver gently back in the cradle, and press my buzzer.