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

one with a colostomy bag, one in a wheelchair, the rest standing hunched against the cold, and I saw their smoke snaking upwards towards the dark sky. They were like statues, cold, marble statues, their only movement the taking of their cigarettes in and out of their mouths.

‘You’ve not taken me out here to smoke, have you, Margot?’

‘Lenni!’ She nudged me in the ribs with her elbow and it made me laugh.

A man who was leaning against a lamp post smoking caught my eye, and I wondered for a moment how we looked. Like a girl and her grandma on a late-night pyjama party stroll around the hospital. He looked down and I thought I saw a hint of a smile. I don’t have time to care what you think, I thought.

Margot pulled me further, past the smokers and towards the car park. ‘Are you all right, Lenni?’ she asked. ‘Not too cold?’

‘I’m fine,’ I said. Although it was freezing, it was a nice freezing, like when you leave a hot country to come home to the cold and you feel like you can finally catch your breath.

‘We need to get away from the light,’ she said, and she took me to the left, past a building signposted as the haematology lab and another entrance, until we reached a quiet fire exit door. From there, we were invisible. The lamp post above our heads was broken, so it was a good patch of darkness.

After several moments of standing there, I began to feel a creeping sense of disappointment. What did Margot think was happening? We stood holding hands in the darkened spot.

‘Margot?’ I said slowly. ‘I—’

‘Look up, Lenni,’ she said.

And I did, and then I saw the stars. Remembering the words of an eccentric astronomer spoken to a woman on a dark road in Warwickshire sometime in 1971, I knew I could see for millions of miles.

I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen the stars. If we’d been on that dark road in Warwickshire we might have seen more, but those we could see were like the whole galaxy to me. They made the world seem big again. It’s been just the hospital for so long.

It felt like the first time I had breathed in years, the air cold and crisp and wonderful. I could feel it in my lungs. Unlike the warm, medicinal hospital air, it was fresh and real and new. And when I exhaled, my breath danced away, up to the stars.

‘This is a very clear night,’ she said. ‘It’s supposed to be the best visibility in weeks.’

I gave her a look. ‘How long have you been planning this?’

She didn’t say anything and kept her eyes on the stars.

‘Though my soul may set in darkness, it will rise in perfect light. I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night,’ I said.

‘You remembered.’ She smiled.

And we stayed there, watching the stars.

‘I find it so peaceful,’ Margot told me after a while.

‘Me too.’

‘Do you know,’ she said slowly, ‘that the stars that we see the clearest are already dead?’

‘Well, that’s depressing.’ I took my hand from hers.

‘No,’ she said gently, linking her arm through mine, ‘it’s not depressing, it’s beautiful. They’ve been gone for who knows how long, but we can still see them. They live on.’

They live on.

Verboten

‘YOU’RE JUST NOT up to it.’

‘Not up to it?’

‘Not well enough.’ New Nurse looked at her shoes.

‘I’m fine,’ I told her.

‘This isn’t working.’

‘What?’

‘Pretending to be fine.’

‘I am fine.’

‘You’re …’

‘What?’

I watched New Nurse out of the corner of my eye as she pretended to check one of the charts above my head.

She didn’t say anything for a long time.

‘What?’ I asked.

‘Lenni, your temperature is high, you’ve not responded well to this new drug, and I know you’ve not been sleeping.’

‘How do you know that?’

‘Linda told me.’

‘How sneaky. Obviously, Linda can’t be trusted.’

‘Lenni, she’s the night shift nurse, it’s her job to—’

‘She’s lying. I sleep with my eyes open.’

‘You do not.’

‘Like Frankenstein’s monster.’

‘What?’

‘Or a bat.’

‘They’re blind.’

‘Yeah, so why would they bother closing their eyes?’

‘Lenni, this is serious.’

‘It is. You are stopping me from going to the Rose Room because I happen to sleep with my eyes open.’

‘That’s—’

‘Aside from Linda’s version of events, what other reason do you have to think that I haven’t been sleeping?’

‘Those.’ She pointed.

‘My eyes?’

‘No, the bags under them.’

‘Don’t you know it’s rude to make personal remarks?’

‘I wasn’t being rude. I was simply saying that you’ve got—’

‘Bags under my eyes, I know.’

‘Lenni, will you calm down a bit? I can’t think. I’m just saying that maybe this week you could use this time to rest, your body needs a break—’

‘My body doesn’t need any breaks. It’s my mind that needs the break.’

She looked at me for a moment like a little girl about to cry, and I felt like a parent telling her that summer was over, that her favourite teddy bear had been left behind in the hotel and that school was starting early in the morning.

‘Lenni, please.’

‘Fine!’ I shouted louder than I needed to, and folded my arms because now I was committed to being furious.

She leant in closer and whispered, ‘This is the first time they’ve let me make a decision like this.’

‘Fine,’ I said again and unfolded my arms, because maybe the hotel maid would find her teddy bear and post it home.

And then she left.

And nobody came.

No Father Arthur, no Margot, no Pippa.

Not even a friendly smile from Paul the Porter.

Even an evil stare from Jacky wouldn’t have gone amiss. But nobody came. And in the end, I slept. I slept for days.

When the Planets Align

‘HELLO, PET.’ MARGOT peeped around my bed curtain.

I tried to give her a smile, but I’m not sure if it worked.

She came in and gave me a kiss on the top of my head. ‘If Lenni can’t come