Chapter 25It Can Wait Another Month

In the morning he fitted his right leg first, and with the hex key tightened the screws at the joint by half a turn.

The joint was a ring of six holes. Only five screws had been put in; the sixth hole was empty. The empty hole had once held a replacement screw, an M6, a little shorter than the other five, with a coarser thread. Last month he had unscrewed it. Five was enough. Every Monday he tightened them, half a turn, no more. The hex key had been given to him by someone else: a black handle, wrapped with a length of tape, which sat just right in his hand.

Before fitting the leg, he had already wiped the stump. Lukewarm water, a towel, pressing it dry a little at a time, never rubbing. The skin on the stump was thin. Rub it and it rolled up, and once it had rolled, the liner would not lie flat. He had learned this in hospital. The nurse had held his hand and taught him how to press. She had not taught him how to wipe.

The socks came in three layers. The innermost was thin and lay against the stump; the middle one was thick, for padding on cold days; the outer one was swapped for a new one every morning. The socks were folded into three stacks and kept in a small basket at the foot of the bed. He put them on one layer at a time, smoothing out the creases with his hand before each one.

Once it was fitted, he stepped down on it, heard the joint click once, and stood up straight. He stood for a while, letting it settle. Once he was upright, he made the bed square, with the pillow at the exact centre. On the folding table beside the bed, the glass, the tape and the scissors were all set out along the edge. He had picked up the habit in the army warehouse: a thing put back had to line up with the things next to it.

He had spent six years in that warehouse. At the end of every month they took stock, counting one row of shelves after another, and the figures they reported upward had to tally with the figures in the books. If they did not tally, they counted again. He counted slowly, but he seldom got it wrong. On the day he was discharged he was handed a paper bag. In it were his papers, a folded old uniform, and a form. On the form was a box that needed a signature, and he signed it.

He boiled a kettle and made a cup of tea. The tea bag took three steepings before the tea went pale. The string hung over the outside of the cup; he folded it in and covered it. The bread had been bought the day before. He cut off two slices, sandwiched a little jam between them, and ate standing up. Some sugar stuck to his fingers, and he wiped it off with a tissue. In the building opposite, the windows came on one by one. On the bedside table was an alarm clock. Its spring had not been wound, and its hands had stopped at one figure. He did not touch it. His phone was charging on the wall, its screen dark.

The flat was on the fifth floor, with no lift. A room and a half, its window looking onto a back lane. On the wall of the lane someone had once written in chalk. It had been wiped, but a little grey was still there. Each flight had twelve steps, forty-eight in all. He had counted them, and every day, going up and coming down, he counted them again. The heating pipe in the wall clanged once, stopped, and clanged again.

The strap of the canvas bag had been lengthened. The join was over the shoulder, with three seams running across it, and he had sewn them himself, the stitches pulled tight. While sewing, he had laid the two lengths of strap side by side. He had threaded the needle three times; only on the third did it go through. Inside the bag were a few bills and a key. He set the strap at the level of his shoulder blade, where it did not press on the shoulder and did not swing as he walked.

His boots stood by the bed. The toe of the left one had come unstuck. He had glued it again and weighed it down with an old book, all night. This morning he had lifted the book off. The toe was flat, and the glue was clean along both sides of the seam.

Behind his right ear was tucked a yellow wooden pencil. He did not use a ballpoint pen, which skidded on the back of a receipt. Halfway along the barrel was a ring of tooth marks, made while he did the sums, bitten many times, each new mark pressed over the one before.

His coat was dark grey, the cuffs worn fuzzy. He glanced at the cuffs and did not mend them.

Before going out he locked the door twice. The second lock needed three turns to go all the way home, so he gave it three turns, then pushed the door, very gently.

On the way down he held the handrail. It was iron, with a few patches of paint gone, showing grey beneath. His right leg came down: the joint clicked first, and only then did the sole of his shoe touch the step. He listened for each step until he could hear the street.

He had already planned the day: the check-up, the sums, the medicine. The medicine came last.

※

From the flat to the clinic it was twelve intersections; he had counted them. At the fifth, one of the red lights was broken, and that one stayed lit. This morning he did not wait. He judged the gap between the cars and went straight across.

At the roadside a grocery shop had two rows of fruit set out at its door. The apples were red, set one against the next, neatly stacked. Inside, the shopkeeper was giving change to a woman. She counted the notes one by one; at the third note she took them back and counted again. The shopkeeper did not hurry her. The shopkeeper waited until she had finished, and only then passed over the next note.

On the way he passed a shoe-repair stall. It stood at the corner: an iron table with a few old shoes on it, all of them old, set out in a row. The shoe repairer had not come yet, and a cloth covered the stall. He did not stop. He had gone ten-odd steps when he looked back. The wind had lifted one corner of the cloth, and under it was a shoe, its black lace trailing on the ground.

A paving slab on the pavement had come loose. The joint came down on it and rocked. He stopped, waited for it to settle, and only then walked on.

The door of a launderette stood open. Inside, five machines were turning, and the glass of the door was fogged, so the people inside could not be made out. As he passed, the machine at the far back stopped. Someone inside reached in, took the clothes out one piece at a time, shook each one out, and folded it.

Further on, a building site was fenced off with corrugated iron. An old poster had been pasted to the iron. The wind had torn off one corner, leaving only a hand holding a ticket.

Beneath a bus stop sign, a woman sat on a bench reading a very thick book; its cover had curled at the edges. She read slowly. Each time she turned a page, she first pressed her finger on the corner and paused. Beside the sign was a rubbish bin, its mouth facing up, stuffed with disposable cups.

The clinic was on the second floor. A sheet of paper on the lift doors said “Under Repair”, its edges curled. He climbed the stairs one step at a time, holding the handrail. In the waiting room was a row of plastic chairs joined together, their legs uneven. He took the third chair. Before sitting, he pressed the seat with his hand; then he rested both hands on the shoulder bag and sat up straight. On the wall was a notice of precautions. He read the top item twice. In the corner a television hung with the sound off. On the screen a person was chopping in a kitchen, the knife coming down on the chopping board again and again.

He set the shoulder bag on his lap, one hand pressed on its flap. There were five other people in the waiting room. A man had a plaster cast on his arm, covered in signatures. An old woman sat by the window on the phone in Spanish, not loudly; she said each sentence very clearly. A girl sat beside her mother, legs swinging. Halfway through a swing she stopped, and then swung again. Opposite sat a young man in a tracksuit, watching the screen in his hand the whole time; its light flickered across his glasses. On the roof of a building outside the window a pigeon had settled, and it stayed there a long time without moving. The light on the window moved from left to right, reached his knee, and slid down.

At the reception desk the typing came in beats, the gaps between them all the same length. The typist stopped, took a drink of water, set the cup down beside the keyboard, and began again.

A nurse called the numbers. She held a clipboard and did not look up while she read them out. When she had finished, she turned the clipboard over and waited for the next one.

He had waited two hours and forty minutes. He had worked out the figure from the clock on the wall: he looked once when he sat down, again when his number was called, and took one reading from the other. The clock face had no numerals, only twelve black dots.

His number was called. The doctor was a woman in thin-framed glasses, and she talked fast. She asked him to take the leg off. He sat on the edge of the examination couch, took the prosthetic off, and leaned it against the foot of the couch. The stump was uncovered. The skin was red, with a few patches at the edges that had gone hard. The doctor pressed a finger on it. Where she pressed, the red stayed for a while and did not go white.

She asked him to stand on one leg, one hand on the edge of the couch. The edge was cold. He stood for a while, putting his weight on his left leg.

Then she shone a torch on the inside wall of the joint, twice. The inner wall had worn to a shine, and the bright patch lay exactly over one spot. The doctor showed him. He understood the shine, but not the words she said next. One of the words was liner, which he knew: the soft layer inside the joint that touched the skin.

As she looked, she wrote letters and numbers on a sheet of paper. He could not read any of them. She drew a circle beside the joint on the paper, then a line, and at the far end of the line she wrote a letter.

“Is there someone at home to help you?”

“No.”

The doctor said one long sentence. He understood the first half: “The joint has to be replaced this week. If it isn’t, the skin on the stump will break down first.”

He said, “It can wait another month.”

The doctor looked at him and did not press him further. She put the cap on her pen, took it off, put it back on, and went on to the second half. The second half came fast. There were a few words he did not know, to do with money and approval. He caught only one figure, at the end of the sentence.

He asked, “How long does approval take?”

The nurse answered from beside him: “Two to three weeks.” He understood, and nodded once.

He asked again, “Who approves it?”

The nurse said it was the insurance people, in another building. He did not ask again where that building was. He kept this one in his head and did not copy it down.

The nurse passed him a form to sign. On it, his name had one letter spelled wrong. He did not point it out; he signed. He had signed many times before. On the form for the day he was discharged he had also signed once, at the very bottom. That time the paper had been thin, and he had pressed the pen very lightly. He passed the form back. The nurse glanced at the signature and clipped the form onto her clipboard.

The woman at the reception desk passed the receipt through the window. It was a narrow strip of paper printed with three lines: deposit for joint replacement, medicine, next check-up. The paper was thermal, slick to the touch, and the print was pale grey. He held it to the light from the window and looked; the print was still there. He had already paid the consultation fee at the window. The money had been counted out of his wallet, note by note. Two of the notes had soft corners, and he had put those on top. The back of the receipt was blank.

He copied the second half onto the back of the receipt.

In a corner of the waiting room he turned the receipt over and copied with the pencil. Some words he had not caught, so he left a small blank rather than guess. What he copied was only half a sentence: Before approval comes through, pay first. The words after that he left blank. That figure he kept in his head and did not write down.

He folded the receipt in two and put it back in the top part of the bag, back side up.

※

On the way back he sat down on a bench. The seat was made of several wooden slats, and one had split, so he sat on the side that had not. Beside him an elderly person held a newspaper folded into a small square, reading only the middle column. The elderly person looked at it for a long time; the newspaper did not turn a page. Behind the bench was a row of low trees, their leaves dusty. When the wind blew, the dust rose and settled again.

He took out the receipt and laid it across his knee. A wind came in from the corner and lifted one edge of the receipt; he held it down with his hand. A bus went past the intersection, and in one of its windows a person was reading a newspaper, the paper hiding their face. After the bus had gone, the dust on the road was lifted and carried into the gaps between the bench slats.

The first time, the rows went across. One for the deposit, one for the medicine. The check-up row he did not add. That was next month’s business. He had the check-up date in his head, and he did not write it down.

He laid the two figures across the strip and added them with the tip of his pencil, one at a time, very slowly. The deposit figure was the longest, with a string of zeros behind it. The medicine figure was short, only two digits. He had not yet worked out how long the deposit could be put off. The medicine had to be collected soon. The check-up was a date, not a figure. When he had finished, he wrote a figure in the bottom right-hand corner of the receipt and drew a ring round it. Every figure on the receipt had a small mark after it; he did not need to look to know where it was.

The people passing all walked with their heads down. A woman pushing a pram went by; the wheels crossed a gap in the pavement with a clunk. A delivery rider came round the corner on a bicycle, two bags hanging from the handlebars, the bags bellying out in the wind. No one looked up.

He glanced at the route map on the bus stop sign and chose a line that needed no change.

On the metro he sat in a seat by the door, his right leg straight out, the joint resting on the edge of the footrest. The carriage swayed. His face was reflected in the window, and behind it the tunnel lights slid backwards, one after another. The announcements came in a woman’s voice, flat and even. She read the stations through once, then read them through again, and told anyone changing at the next stop which way to go. He was not changing. Opposite, a child had fallen asleep against their mother’s arm, the schoolbag still on their back.

He turned the receipt upright and laid the figures down it, every column lined up on the right. The second time he included both figures. He only glanced at the check-up row. The figures came out differently from the first time. On the medicine row he added twice, once at the top and once at the bottom. Halfway through, he stopped and rubbed a streak of dust off the paper with the pad of his finger.

He shifted his right leg. The joint pressed a small mark into the footrest, and he watched the mark fade. On the carriage floor was a little scrap of paper, trodden flat by a shoe, with only half a shop name left on it.

The train pulled in. When the doors opened, the wind from outside rushed in and turned the receipt over. He pressed it back down, and pressed it once more.

That screw had been given away last month, to the person who had signed the form for him.

That afternoon, workers were repairing a water pipe in the street outside the clinic. A digger was parked at the kerb, and the back of a lorry was full of broken brick. He sat on the steps at the door, his right leg stretched out straight. He turned the screw with an adjustable spanner. The spanner did not sit right in his hand, and its jaws would not bite on the screw, so he changed the angle and turned it a little at a time. He kept at it for four minutes, not stopping, not switching hands. His heel scraped a line through the dust on the step. A child on a small bike swung round in front of him, and the bell rang once.

Once it was unscrewed, he put it into that person’s palm. The thread dragged across the pad of his finger, a little rough. The hand was dry, the fingers spread, and it caught the screw.

“You keep it.”

He had said three words. That person asked why. He did not answer. He pulled his trouser leg down and patted his knee twice.

The one who had signed for him was that same person. On the bottom line of the form, the strokes were pressed harder than those above. On that form his name was spelled right. When that form was approved, his leg was changed to the one he had now.

The doors opened and closed again. Half the people in the carriage had changed, and the other half still had their heads down. He picked the receipt up off his knee, folded it once, and opened it out again.

※

At three in the morning he sat down on the steps outside the pharmacy.

He lay on the bed until two, then got up, put on his boots, slung the bag over his shoulder, and went down. The stairs still had forty-eight steps. There were no cars in the street. Only a street-cleaning lorry went past the intersection, and its headlights swept over the steps. The lorry paused for a second, then moved on.

Crossing the intersection in the small hours, he waited. The red light stayed on. There was no traffic, but he still stood behind the stop line until it turned green, and only then stepped off. That morning he had not waited.

The corner pharmacy was one of the few shops still lit on this stretch. The cool white lights in its window were on, and the roller shutter was pulled down halfway, leaving a black gap beneath. The steps at the door were made of concrete, and one of them had cracked; he sat on the one that had not. The edges of the steps were rounded and worn smooth, and cold to sit on. On the third step was a small black stain. He did not look at what had left it. His back rested against the doorframe, and white light came out from under the roller shutter and fell on the tips of his shoes.

Across the street an exhaust vent breathed out steam, white, in puffs, and the wind scattered it as soon as it rose. Below the steps were a few shallow puddles, reflecting the white of the window. An empty paper cup had landed at the edge of the steps, with a little water pooled in its bottom. An orange-red street lamp stood not far off. Inside its shade a bug circled, bumped against it once, and turned back. A patch of light fell on the back of his hand, the size of a palm. The back of his hand had old scars, more of them over the knuckles, pale, in lines. Under the light, the pale marks looked paler still.

A man in a work uniform came up out of the metro entrance, passed the steps without looking at him, and went into the convenience store opposite. The light in the convenience store was white. The door swung open and shut, and the bell over it rang once.

He spread the receipt across his knee, back side up. The third time, the pencil lead broke.

The pencil was already short, just a stub in his hand, so his thumb and forefinger had to pinch close together. The lead had snapped inside the wood. He used the nail of his thumb to work the broken lead out of the barrel, a little at a time, until a bit of it showed, and went on with the sums. When his knuckle pressed against the barrel, he paused, then went on working it out.

He did not look up. He did not look at the disc in the sky. He pulled the zip of his coat up to his chin, kept his head down, and looked at the receipt.

Every time, the figures came out one line short. The third time, he did not write them all down. He wrote only a few figures: the last two digits of the deposit, and a ring on the check-up row. He did not write down the medicine row.

No two of the three results agreed.

He sat for a long time. The bug in the street lamp had stopped bumping the shade; it had settled inside it and did not move. Dust had gathered on the roller shutter’s track, and in the dust there were a few scratches, left by the shutter going up and down.

He folded the receipt and pushed it back into the bag. He pushed it in fast, and one corner stuck out.

The bag strap was wedged on his shoulder, and he took it off. The roller shutter was only half down; a person would have to stoop, and the strap would catch on the doorframe. He put his key in his trouser pocket first, then set the bag on the steps, leaning against the doorframe, its flap unfastened. Sheets of paper slid out of the opening one at a time and fell onto the steps. He did not look back at it.

※

Inside the pharmacy the lights were cool white, row after row, shining down on the shelves.

He stooped to get in, then straightened up. The shop was quiet; only the chiller cabinets hummed along the wall. The air smelled of disinfectant and cardboard. On the wall hung a sign that read “Please pay at the counter”, its corners curled up and stuck down with tape. Nobody was behind the till. On the counter a notebook lay face down, a pen across its edge. On a small shelf beside the till, a row of disposable masks sat in clear bags, the figures on the bags all the same size. The mat by the door was wet. He stopped on it, wiped his soles dry, and only then went in. His coat had brought in the cold from the steps, and the cuffs were a little damp.

The shelves ran all the way to the far end. Every medicine box had a small label, handwritten, one layered over another. In a few places the labels had been torn off, leaving a white mark. One row was labelled for anti-inflammatories, one for painkillers, one for skin. He went along them row by row and counted each one. The skin row held eleven boxes. In a glass case hung a row of razors in clear plastic packs, the plastic furred with dust. At the end of the shelves hung a row of price tags, white paper cards. The wind came in through a gap in the door; the tags touched one another, then parted. At the far end of the shelves one lamp was on, a small dim yellow spot.

The medicine on the second line of the receipt was on the middle shelf. He found it. The box was white, with a small tag stuck to its side. Along the side ran a string of letters. He could not read them, only recognise their shapes. That string of shapes was the same as the one the doctor had drawn on the paper. This bay was close to the door; in the glass of the door you could see the shelves and the lights of the shop.

The figure he remembered had one digit fewer than the one on the tag.

He took the box down, turned it over, and looked at the line of figures on the side. On the back was a date, still a long way off. He ran the sums through his head once, and when he had finished he did not take it. His hand stayed in mid-air for three seconds.

He did not look toward the far end of the shelves.

Then he put the box back in its place, label facing out, lined up with the boxes beside it. He set it down very gently, as if afraid of knocking it and making a sound.

In the reflection in the glass door, his face lay over the price tags.