Lullaby by Bernard Beckett Read Free Book Online Page B

then, weirdly, my jaw too. I clamped my mouth shut, pushed my foot into
the floor, heard a noise something like gargling take hold of my throat. I looked
down, embarrassed and frightened.
    ‘If you need to take a short—’
    ‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘It’s just, with the doctor, I…’
    ‘What?’
    ‘It doesn’t matter.’
    ‘You don’t get to decide that.’
    She put her hand on mine, over my knee, and the trembling subsided.
    ‘Do you think I should do it?’ I asked her.
    ‘What I think isn’t important.’
    ‘You might help me understand.’
    ‘Understand what?’ Maggie asked.
    ‘Everything.’
    ‘The doctor asked if you had any more questions.’
    ‘It’s not a doctor question.’
    I could feel myself on the edge of letting go: forgetting what the interview was
for and allowing the words to take over. I suppose that was what she was counting
on, fear getting the better of me. I could feel the sweat building up, between her
hand and mine. She pulled back gently. Her gaze didn’t falter.
    ‘What do you need to know?’
    ‘Two people wake up, after an operation, and both of them think they’re me. Does
that…does it make any sense to you?’
    Safe territory, in a way. If I hadn’t asked her eventually, she would have wondered
why not. No, she would have decided I was hiding it from her.
    A long pause, as if she was trying to find me an answer. ‘That’s the question, isn’t
it.’
    ‘I would say it is,’ I admitted.
    Another pause. She watched me, the way a cat watches a bird. Only the bird flies
away, when it realises.
    ‘I don’t think I can help you with that,’ she said.
    ‘You’re a psychologist, aren’t you?’
    ‘It’s not that sort of a question.’
    ‘What sort of a question is it?’
    ‘A question for philosophers, I would say.’
    ‘So how would a philosopher answer it?’ I asked her.
    ‘They’d ask you what you meant by making sense.’
    That was a joke, I suppose, and an attempt to sidestep the question. But I had started
now.
    ‘Is it going to do my head in?’
    ‘That’s closer to my area of expertise.’
    ‘And?’
    ‘I don’t know. There are no precedents.’
    ‘Your guess then.’
    ‘I don’t know enough about you,’ she said.
    But the way she looked right through me, it felt like there was nothing she didn’t
know. She was playing me, and she was so much better at the game than I could ever
be. But Theo needed me. I had to try.
    ‘We have a little more time. Tell me about drama school.’
    ‘What would you do?’ I insisted. ‘If it was you. What would you do, to help you understand?’
    I watched the slight inflation of her nostrils, and the slow flattening of her chest
as she let the air go.
    ‘I suppose I would try to accept that it’s beyond understanding. I think I would
try to make peace with my ignorance.’
    ‘Is that possible?’ I asked her.
    ‘We live with many mysteries.’
    ‘But this?’
    She shrugged.
    Tears stung my eyes.
    ‘Take me to Theo, please. I need to see him.’

6
    Three people were in the room when we got there—doctors, researchers, scientists,
I don’t know what to call them. We watched through the window. They were preparing
him for the operation, getting ready in case.
    ‘Get them out of there.’
    Maggie nodded and moved into the room. They listened quietly, made a few last adjustments
and filed past me without making eye contact.
    It was a great relief to cry the way I did: deep from the stomach, the sheet on his
bed clumped in my fist, wet with my tears. I felt awful, but also, for the first
time since I’d arrived in the hospital, human. I no longer saw an accident, a patient,
a problem to be solved. Now I saw Theo. My brother. My other half.
    I don’t know how long I stayed that way. At some stage I stood, stroked his hair,
and kissed him—on the bridge of his nose, so its tip pressed against my chin.
    Lips, chin, nose. Rare, medium, well done. Theo taught me that. I backed into the
middle of the room,