The Eavesdroppers Read online

  NeWest Press wishes to acknowledge that the land on which we operate is Treaty 6 territory and a traditional meeting ground and home for many Indigenous Peoples, including Cree, Saulteaux, Niisitapi (Blackfoot), Métis, and Nakota Sioux.

  Copyright © Rosie Chard 2018

  All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication — reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system — without the prior consent of the publisher is an infringement of copyright law. In the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying of the material, a licence must be obtained from Access Copyright before proceeding.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Chard, Rosie, 1959–, author The eavesdroppers / Rosie Chard.

  Issued in print and electronic formats. ISBN 978-1-988732-44-2 (softcover).—ISBN 978-1-988732-45-9 (EPUB).— ISBN 978-1-988732-46-6 (Kindle)

  I. Title.

  Board Editor: Douglas Barbour

  Cover and interior design: Michel Vrana

  Cover images: istockphoto.com

  Author photo: Nat Chard

  NeWest Press acknowledges the Canada Council for the Arts, the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, and the Edmonton Arts Council for support of our publishing program. We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada.

  NeWest Press

  #201, 8540-109 Street

  Edmonton, Alberta T6G 1E6

  www.newestpress.com

  No bison were harmed in the making of this book.

  Printed and bound in Canada

  1 2 3 4 20 19 18

  For Nat

  To those who have never visited the Whispering Gallery. . . it may be proper to mention. . . that a word or question, uttered at one end of the gallery in the gentlest of whispers, is reverberated at the other end in peals of thunder.

  Thomas De Quincey,

  Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, London, 1822.

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  CHAPTER 37

  CHAPTER 38

  CHAPTER 39

  CHAPTER 40

  CHAPTER 41

  CHAPTER 42

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  CHAPTER

  1

  “Can you hear me? Mr. Harcourt. Can you hear me?”

  I thought I was alive. My fingers were moving; my nose itched; yet I was detached from the world. Something lay on my face. A binding of sorts, it stopped me opening my eyes and seeing where I was. I felt a twinge of panic at the base of my throat.

  “Everything’s alright, Mr. Harcourt.” A female voice beside my ear. “The surgery went well.”

  A voice, just a voice – sugar-coated and impatient. I couldn’t judge the distance of the disembodied sound, so far away, yet I could feel breath on my cheek. I could smell coffee wafting up from a stomach. Was this person about to kiss me? I struggled to remember where I was – a faint smell of antiseptic, a rustle of rubber curtains, then yes, the details of a face poured in: tired, bloodshot eyes and eyebrows that were badly plucked. The nurse had missed a bit just above her left eye, and with sudden clarity I recalled my thoughts as the gurney had been pushed through the double doors – could a nurse with badly plucked eyebrows be trusted to hand over the correct scalpel?

  “Why can’t I see?” I said, trying to keep the slur from my voice.

  “It’s the bandage, dear.” A pause. “Over your eyes.”

  I imagined a child in the room, so laden was her voice with condescension. I waited for the child to retort but all I heard was my own breathing and the sound of something being dragged down a nearby corridor. A bag of clean sheets perhaps? Or a bag of old bones.

  “Where am I?” I said, my tongue sticking to the roof of my mouth.

  “You’re back in the room.”

  The room? I tried again to recall where I’d spent the last few hours but the only room I could remember bumped and rattled across the ground at speed. “Can I go back to sleep now?”

  “Yes, you can go back to sleep. But, wait. Just a couple of questions . . . what year is it?”

  I tried to visualise numbers. “Two thousand . . . two thousand and fifteen . . . no, eighteen.”

  “Correct. How old are you?”

  “Thirty-four.” The air held a pause. Could I be wrong?

  “Also correct. Finally, where are you?”

  Tight within the bandage my brain struggled to form a picture of the route to the place that now held me. Inside, yes. A hospital without doubt, but where? For how long had the siren screamed into my brain? I concentrated on my ears, my most reliable sense, so reliable they could pick up the distant throb of a black cab. “London,” I said.

  “Correct. You can go back to sleep now.”

  “Mr. Harcourt. Mr. Harcourt.”

  My thoughts snapped to attention. I was no longer a dullard, a woozy patient in post-op; I was sharp as a pencil. “Who’s there?”

  “Nurse Rigby.” The sugar had melted from her throat.

  “Are you the same person as before?”

  I heard her chest rise and fall. “Yes, I’m the same person as before.”

  I tried to roll my eyes. “How long is this thing going to be on?”

  “What thing?”

  I couldn’t halt the sarcasm. “The bandage.”

  “Two days.”

  Two days in the dark. The bandages felt tight already and, with a new twinge of panic, I tried to visualise how I’d aim straight in the bowl of the hospital toilet. “Will I be getting a dog?” I said. Faked innocence is entirely about the eyes. I realised this as I waited, trying to hear her laugh or at the very least hear a smile, but lips turning up at the corners make no noise at all.

  “Is that meant to be a joke, Mr. Harcourt?”

  I sighed, just like her.

  Flat on my back with a bandage over my face it was impossible to be myself. That half-raised eyebrow I used so often to project sarcasm was immobilised, and it was difficult to tease someone with your nose. And it was nigh on impossible to look sheepish with a bandage over your eyes.

  “I’m going to feed you now,” said the nurse.

  Forget pissing on the toilet seat, forget the anonymous breath on my cheek, this woman was going to feed me now. “I’m really not that hungry.”

  I heard the tut of her tongue. Then I heard what sounded like glue being whipped up with a spoon before the immortal words cut the air. “You need to eat to keep your strength up.”

  Defeat was not sweet. The five-year-old me opened his mouth and tipped back his head. Such tepid mush I never experienced from my mother, but luckily it was quickly over, my mouth wiped with a rough cloth and the rattle of bowls being put away.

  Icy hands – why always icy? – began making the bed with me still
in it. I lay stiff, mulling over the hospital protocol concerning the making of beds while still occupied. No ‘do you mind if I make the bed, Mr.Harcourt?’ and no, ‘I’ll just tuck this bit under your chin, sir,’ – just strange hands glancing private parts.

  “I think you’re done, Mr. Harcourt,” the nurse said after the sheet was tightened somewhere down by my feet, sealing me in like a piece of vacuum-packed fish. “I’ll be back later to check on your temperature.”

  The idea of being ‘done’ quickly quashed all speculation on unfamiliar hands in private places, but before I could utter a comeback I heard a whoosh of hospital-starched skirts – as I imagined them – and was left alone – as assumed.

  “And. . . .” A sentence was deposited at my ear. “If you need any help, just press this.”

  Disturbed that the starched skirts scenario could be so wrong, I fingered a plastic object that had been placed into my hand. “Okay.”

  People could clearly come and go without my knowing it. I lay still for several minutes before I felt satisfied I was alone. Feeling my wrist, I found it bare. Bastards, I thought, they’ve nicked my watch. I gingerly tested the space beside my bed. A table was uncomfortably out of reach, but by wrenching my arm out from my sheeted bondage and stretching out I could explore its surface: a plastic cup with water inside – I surmised by sniffing it – and a card that tipped over under my touch – who’d send me a card? – plus my wristwatch. How cheerful it sounded pressed against my ear. But I soon grew weary of the chipper little sound and strapped it, with surprising difficulty for an activity so familiar, back onto my wrist.

  For a while I lazily formed a picture in my mind of the nurse tidying her eyebrows in the Ladies loo, then I fingered the callback object, resisting the urge to press ‘nurse’ just for the sheer hell of it. Finally I sank back down into my pillow. It smelt funny and creaked a bit. My God, there was nothing to do in a hospital bed with a bandage over your eyes. Nothing to do, but lie back and listen.

  “He’s not going to make it.”

  “I know he’s not.”

  My ears pricked up, as far as is possible for a human with a head encased. I heard a pause. Bandages on less than a day and already I knew the sound and weight of a gap in proceedings.

  “How are we going to tell mum?” said a woman – young sounding.

  “God knows,” replied a male voice.

  It was the first time I’d heard fingers being run through hair, but there it was, distinct as a rake through straw.

  “We have to say something, don’t we?” said the female.

  “Do we?”

  More raking, more silence. A knuckle cracked.

  I tried to breathe quietly. It was hard to tell how much time had passed since I’d woken up the first time, but my fingers had sweat between them so I felt confident that time had moved on. I had no idea how long these people had been in the room and I felt uncomfortable that they’d entered without me knowing it. Had they befriended me in my sleep? How long had I been asleep? My lack of judgment was beginning to worry me.

  The conversation started up again and, like a thief beneath a windowsill, I tried to angle my poor squashed ears and listen.

  “We can’t lie to her.”

  “I think we should keep it to ourselves, Jane, I really do.”

  Another pause, long, oh so long.

  “Joe, I can hardly bear it.”

  “I can’t bear it either, but Jane, I think we need to play for time. Let’s give her a few more hours of hope, shall we?”

  I could hardly bear it. I thought I heard something being rubbed, a shoulder maybe, or a knee.

  “Alright.”

  Later – how much I’m no judge – I sensed that several people were coming into the room again in shoes with soles of varying thickness – oh, I was getting good – and muttering about the lack of chairs in this ‘godforsaken place.’ They took a long time to organise themselves and I lost count of the numbers. Was it three? Four? Or perhaps it was just two people who couldn’t settle, the sort of people who couldn’t decide where to leave their vehicle in an empty car park. Having wanted them to just sort themselves out, I was left regretful when they did just that and a horrible silence hung in the air. Were they looking in my direction? I wondered. Maybe they were reading my chart. They always did that on the telly, read the poor bastard’s chart while he was asleep, then switched it with another poor bastard’s – the one who was about to have a leg taken off.

  “How was the bus, Mum?”

  It was the same deep voice as earlier, yet different in a way I couldn’t identify. I tried to think how I’d answer that question. I hardly used the bus if I could help it. The paired seats were never big enough for two people and there always seemed to be someone already there, oozing over the line.

  “It was late. It took hours to get down the Euston Road.”

  Good answer.

  “How are you doing, Mum?”

  I heard a sniff and felt like a real shit. But in my situation I couldn’t help but listen. And listening was painful. They were a family of four, it transpired, a mother, a father, two adult children who seemed to be the owners of the earlier voices, and a mute patient in a bed. I tried not to think of the mute patient in the bed and focused on the people around them. ‘Joe’ was clearly the one in charge. Almost every comment was followed by a, ‘Don’t ya reckon, Joe?’ and although he sounded young he answered quickly. He was the one who had all the answers, the bloke down the pub who could sort things out.

  “Is he going to get through, Joe?” asked the mother after a pause I could almost smell.

  For some reason it’s quite hard to hold your breath with a bandage over your eyes, but I managed it, for just long enough.

  “Of course he’s going to get through,” said Joe.

  My face reddened. I knew from the heat beneath the cloth that I was blushing like a schoolboy. Or maybe it was just my bandage, rubbing against burning ears.

  “Of course he’s going to get through,” repeated the grown-up daughter.

  I heard a slight movement, shoulders slumping perhaps.

  “Thank God,” said someone.

  I breathed. The big sentences were over and the little ones quickly followed. Everyone was rushing out details at once, trying to get them in before another pause opened up: the terrible food, the fearsome nurses and wasn’t it funny when they forgot to pay for a ticket in the car park and Dad ‘made a face’ at the receptionist. I tried to imagine ‘Dad’ making a face. Maybe he had a lopsided grin, or a ragged moustache or maybe he just had a strained look all over his face. It wasn’t long before they ran dry. In my mind ‘Dad’ was making his ‘I think we should go’ face and I felt triumphant as I heard them gather themselves up and leave the room, their departure more efficient than their arrival.

  That left just me. And him. Funny how they’d never mentioned his name. Was he even there? Perhaps it was all just a little play. Something to keep old Bill amused while his eyes healed up. He was certainly very still. Not even a cough. Then I began to worry. Perhaps he was dead. Maybe the morgue was full and there was nowhere to store him? I tucked my sheet tighter beneath my chin and tried to occupy myself. But there was absolutely nothing to do. Nothing to do, but lie still and listen.

  MISSY’S lounge walls were thin. Voices seeped into them like vapour through cotton, but often the sounds were muffled and she liked to imagine, as she lay on the floor of her flat, the people next door sitting in armchairs, their mouths covered with a soft layer of muslin. Her ears worked best in the horizontal position. Her sense of the world worked most efficiently with her legs stretched out and her arms limp by her sides. It was the only time she could really relax. Odd, when the floorboards were so hard. The rest of the time she held her body taut. Not that she was fit; she hated exercise and a ring of surplus fat girdled her waist, but because she had to be ready for what was around the corner. She had to be ready to run. But down there on the floor she could close her eyes
and slow her heart and hear what was coming through from the other side of the wall.

  Mrs. O’Malley ran up the stairs at a quarter to two every day. Missy knew it was her, the step so distinctive, chipping onto the wood with the ball of her foot. Mr. O’Malley shuffled on loose-sounding slippers and occasionally the grown-up daughter visited, rushing through the tiny flat on impatient heels. Sometimes someone would slap the wall and Missy would jump and feel anxious right through the evening.

  She was lying on her back, waiting for the sound of Grandma O’Malley’s eight o’clock trip to the toilet, when she heard the garden gate squeak. She angled her ears towards the window. Lightweight shoes skipped up the path, one kicked a stone. Then the sound of something being forced through the letterbox. Missy sat up, counted to ten then walked downstairs into the communal hall. She picked up the newspaper lying on the doormat and carried it back upstairs into the kitchen. Beer cans littered the countertop so she sat at the small breakfast table and opened the paper at the entertainment section. Here she would find the photographs she liked best – the ones that showed people out on the town. Londoners living it up until the small hours with feathers flying and crooked ties and tiny skirts riding up and make-up, so much make-up, shiny on their cheeks. She’d linger there. Not long, but long enough to imagine a stocking clinging to her own ample thigh, and tinsel in her hair.

  Next to this section she would find the job adverts, designed by clever people to make her feel guilty. She scanned the page as she did every day, hoping that this would be the day for which she had been waiting.

  CHAPTER

  2

  Time does pass in hospitals, but I didn’t know how much. My usual methods of measurement, glancing at my watch, checking my phone, glancing over a shoulder and checking someone else’s phone, were gone in a world without eyes and now I was dependent on a new set of clues. I imagined I’d be able to actually hear night fall but it wasn’t some godly sense that took me over, it was the lack of sound that let me know the day had ended and the ward had gone to bed. The snores creeping from a distant room were a distraction, but soon I learnt to ignore them and concentrated on the sound of the routines that divided not my night, but my day. And these routines were all about pills. What sounded like a small go-kart was wheeled down the corridors at what I gauged to be three-hourly intervals and I would be held in a state of high alert as I succumbed to the ever-increasing sounds of packages being unwrapped and lids being popped. Feeding rituals also punctured my day. A friendly, ‘How are we, Mr. Harcourt?’ followed by the almost imperceptible sound of plastic being wiped told me food was about to be served. Eating was a whole new world of burnt tongues and spilt drinks, but the skills came. Quickly I improved my accuracy and I had managed to get my entire breakfast into the hole in the middle of my face on the third morning when I was paid a visit.