The One Hundred Years of Lenni and Margot, Marianne Cronin [top fiction books of all time txt] 📗

PART THREE

Lenni

‘I DON’T WANT to die.’

As I say it, I feel the goose bumps shivering their way onto the surface of my skin. I like that. Whenever my body announces a part of itself that’s working normally, I feel proud. My skin’s reaction to temperature? Fine, it turns out. Never better.

The man turns to look at me with disdain and confusion. His cigarette hovers somewhere between his shoulder and his mouth, outstretched as though he’s offering me a drag.

He has no hair on the top of his head, but it’s gathered in dark and grey tufts on the sides and I wonder if it’s keeping his ears warm out here. He’s wearing a beige dressing gown that goes down to his bare knees. The skin on his legs is pale but the hairs are really dark and long. So long you could brush them … if you wanted to.

He watches me, completely suspended in animation.

It seems an obvious sort of thing to say, but he doesn’t light up with recognition or agreement.

‘Did you know, the best place to scavenge for discarded cigarettes is the bus stop?’ I ask. ‘The chances are that someone will have lit up only to have to stub their cigarette out when the bus arrives. And that’s where they’ll be. Plenty of barely smoked cigarettes.’

‘You know, if you wanted to get some for free,’ I add, when I’m not sure if he’s understood me. ‘A homeless friend of mine told me that,’ I carry on. ‘He said I wasn’t likely to find a use for it, but I’ve passed it on. And maybe now that you know, you’ll pass it on and it’ll keep on going for ever.’

He holds the cigarette still, and I watch the snake of smoke curling left and right as it winds on up to the sky.

‘He’s already dead, that friend of mine,’ I say, though he still doesn’t respond. A breeze drifts through us both and I wonder if the man feels something.

‘I’m not ready,’ I tell him, and he turns away, looking out at the hospital car park and taking the cigarette almost to his mouth.

‘I’m not,’ I tell him. He looks back at me. The confusion has ebbed away and there’s just disdain now. I’m ruining his cigarette break and he wants me gone. But I am grateful for it. Hostility is fine. It’s the sympathy that kills you.

The roar of the outside is all around us – the road in the distance, the wind in the trees, the murmur of people, and the clink on the ground as pound coins miss the slot on the parking ticket machine. The noise should be oppressive, but it isn’t, it’s freeing. The hospital is so quiet. But out here, sounds can get lost.

‘How can I possibly die when I’m this afraid of dying?’ I ask him.

He wants me to go, but I can’t just yet. The grey stubble around his mouth twitches and he very briefly bares a yellow tooth. I wonder if this is an innate response. A jungle cat baring its teeth to a bird who just won’t go away. He throws the cigarette to the floor with a forward arc that makes it skitter and roll along the paving slabs and underneath one of the benches.

Then, with another look that tells me in no uncertain terms that I have ruined his cigarette break, he turns and hunches, with a slight limp on the left side, back through the revolving doors into the hospital. The doors stop with him halfway in, halfway out. They do that whenever the sensor thinks someone is too close to the pane of glass in front.

I follow the cigarette and pick it up. It’s still lit, but the light is fading. I’ve never held a cigarette before and I’m surprised at two things – one, it’s very light, and two, it’s very smooth. I roll it forwards and backwards between my finger and thumb, and hope I don’t see anyone I know.

When I am just beginning to entertain the question of what would happen if I smoked it, I take the option off the table and throw it into the bin. That’s my good deed for the day sorted.

I know I should go back inside before New Nurse notices I’m gone, but I linger for a moment or two, watching the cars perform their merry dance. A reverse into a space, a pause, giving way, a do-si-do around the mini roundabout.

When the smoke starts gently snaking its way up from inside the little green bin, I think that it might be time to go. By the time the flames appear, spilling out above the symbol on the bin with the three arrows all going in the same direction (I’m not sure what they stand for. Health, wealth, happiness? Father, Son, Holy Ghost? There are so many great threesomes to celebrate), it’s definitely time to go.

Margot and the Astronomer

‘PIPPA, HAVE YOU got any glitter?’

‘Glitter, Lenni?’ Margot asked sceptically.

‘Yes, glitter – of course glitter!’ I told her.

‘But won’t it end up looking like a Christmas card?’ Margot asked.

‘Of course not. So … glitter?’

‘I don’t think so, Lenni,’ Pippa said, pulling out each of the drawers in her desk in turn, ‘but I can certainly add it to The List.’

I nodded, authorizing the addition of glitter to The List. ‘Gold, please.’

Margot looked down at the piece in front of her that she was adding the finishing touches to – a dark blue sky studded with tiny stars, and a little cottage sitting patiently underneath.

‘I bet you fell in love with him. You did, didn’t you?’

‘That would ruin the story.’

‘Telling me would ruin the story or falling in love would ruin the story?’

Margot only laughed.

‘Can