Only Human

She’s still in her pyjamas. Pink candystriped bottoms with a drawstring at the waist, and a candyfloss pink top. Still in her pyjamas and starting to stink.

His stomach rolls, or is it hers? Someone’s stomach rolls and gurgles. He hasn’t been able to eat, so it might be his. She’s decomposing, so it might be hers. He has the feeling that it’s his, though, that his stomach wants some food, the digestive acids fighting amongst themselves, breaking down what little they can find.

He wants to move her. He has to really. She’s sitting up in bed, pillows at her back, staring glassily, mouth half open. He stands in the bedroom doorway, looking at her. He’s had to sleep in the spare room the last couple of nights. Obviously. He wonders why she hasn’t fallen forward, why her head at least hasn’t slumped or lolled. Her eyes haven’t rolled back in their sockets, haven’t even closed as though she had fallen asleep. She is upright, glass-eyed, unmoving. Her book has fallen. That’s the only thing that has moved. He can’t remember now whether it was fallen when he found her, or wether it has fallen since. It lies there on the duvet now, though. No longer in her hands. Her hands look as though they should still be holding it.

He has opened the bedroom window. He had to. She isn’t smelling too good. Next door are having a barbecue and the faint smell of beefburgers, sausages, god knows what, is wafting into the room with the chatter of voices. Laughter mixes with music and children screeching as they race in a stew of overexcitement around the garden. Helen caught him yesterday, over the fence, and mentioned it was Dave’s 40th. They were having a bit of a do, and she wanted to know if they wanted to join them. He had muttered something about her not really feeling up to it. Helen has asked if she was still unwell. Unwell was one way of looking at it.

The simplest thing would have been to report it as soon as he’d found her, but he’d panicked, like the fool he was, more worried about how it would look and what people would say. She’s the local GP. Was the local GP, he corrects himself. He knows it doesn’t matter now, what people think or say. He’s in more trouble now than he would have been if he’d reported it straight off.

He needs to move her somehow, needs to get her out of the house. Not today, obviously, but soon. He wonders how long it takes for a body to decompose. Maybe that was something she would have known. Was that the sort of thing a GP would know. He hasn’t a clue, and wishes instead that he had paid more attention to Silent Witness, the scenes where they move the bodies – whether they’re flexible or rigid. He frowns. Of course, they’re actors, still alive. If a body that’s been dead for a couple of days is stiff, an actor who is still alive wouldn’t be able to fake that easily.

You don’t think of these things when you’re watching tv, though. He realises that now. If he’d known he was going to come home on Thursday and find her like this, he would probably have made time to think about it. After all, it’s fairly important now, he thinks. What if he tries to move her and she is stiff, and he can’t unbend her? Will he have to try to bend her more? And what if she isn’t stiff, but is floppy? Has she decomposed enough to be floppy? He hasn’t a clue.

Really he should phone the police, call an ambulance, suffer the consequences. He knows this is technically the right thing to do. It no longer matters, saving face. She’s dead, he’s left her there too long, people are going to talk now, no matter what. People talk anyway.

He decides to put off the decision, and goes downstairs. Perhaps sitting with a nice cold beer will help him work out how to deal with this. No point in ringing the police or anyone else until he’s absolutely sure how this is going to go.

He walks into the kitchen and takes a beer from the fridge. He looks out of the French Windows and sees Dave barbecueing away in the garden next door. Dave raises his tongs to him, so he raises his bottle of beer in response. He walks over to the French Windows and slides them open.

“Happy Birthday, Dave,” he says.
“Cheers, mate,” Dave replies. “Are you sure you won’t join us?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Thanks for asking.”
“Oh come on!” Helen comes to the fence. “Have you eaten?”
“Well, no, actually, I haven’t,” he says, beginning to think that he might be able to eat. Those sausages are smelling good.
“Come over, then,” says Dave, waving a sausage at him.

He steps out into the garden, the fresh air hitting him and reviving his spirits. Through his back gate and over into Dave and Helen’s back garden. Helen hands him a plate and Dave loads it with sausages.

“Burger as well?” he asks, raising one from the grill, adept with his tongs.
“Why not!”
“That’s the spirit!”
“How’s she doing?” Helen nods in the direction of the bedroom window.
“Oh, you know. Still not too clever,” he says through a mouthful of sausage.
“One of the perils of being a GP, I suppose,” says Helen. “She must have the immune system of an ox, not to get ill more often.”

He nods. One of the perils of being a GP isn’t the number of germs you get exposed to, he thinks, it’s the access you have to the drugs cabinet. He bites down into a sausage.

“There are buns around, somewhere,” Dave says.
“Oh yes, and salad and relish over here.” Helen takes hold of his arm and leads him to another table. She introduces him to the gathered friends and family. “This is one of our neighbours. His wife’s a bit poorly. She’s the local GP.” She looks at him. “He’s probably not eaten properly since she fell ill,” she smiles.

He smiles back and helps himself to salad. Amazing how quickly his appetite has come back, now he’s not in the house with that smell.

“What do you do, then?” asks one of Dave’s relatives.
“Teach at the local comp,” he replies, trying to chew and speak at the same time. He’s aware that he looks like a pig, but he’s ravenous. He tries to think when his last meal was. He doesn’t think he ate the day he found her, but he’s no longer sure.
“A teacher and a doctor, eh?” smiles the relative, trying to ignore the half-chewed food that’s on clear view from his mouth as he speaks and chews. “Pillars of the local community.”

He smiles and swallows, takes another bite. Helen pops up again with a cold bottle of beer.

“You haven’t got a drink!” she trills. She’s always been a bit of a triller, has Helen. She’s small and bubbly, and probably more intelligent than she lets on, but she does the stay-at-home-Mum thing really well. He takes the beer from her and drinks. It washes the sausage and bun down perfectly.

“I was just saying,” continues the relative, “how he and his wife are pillars of the local community, being a teacher and a doctor.”
“Oh, you know,” he says, a touch bashfully, “we’re only human, really.”

He wonders if it’s true, that they’re only human. Her up there, dead and decomposing, she’s not human anymore. She’s just a shell. And as for himself, he’s not sure that he’s human either. He suddenly catches a whiff of something unpleasant. He looks around. Nobody else seems to have smelled it. Perhaps it’s just got stuck in his nostrils. He thinks now that maybe he should have had a shower today. He drinks more beer.

The relative is chatting away about something and nothing. He hasn’t been paying attention. He wonders what sort of a relative she is. An aunt, a cousin? She doesn’t look like she’s Dave’s mum. But then, maybe Dave looks like his dad. Families are funny things.

He’ll have to tell her parents. They’ve never really liked him. Now they’ll have more reason not to. Perhaps the police will tell them for him. He takes a bite out of the burger. It’s cooked to perfection, just the way he likes it. He closes his eyes and savours the taste.

When he opens his eyes again, Helen is carrying a birthday cake down the garden to where Dave is still overseeing the food. Everyone starts to follow her down, and they form a crescent around Dave and his self-igniting gas barbecue. Personally, he’s never understood gas barbecues. He smiles to himself. He’s never understood barbecues full stop. Still, the food tastes good. Not all charred and half-cooked like some barbecues he’s been to.

Dave’s blowing out the candles on the cake. Someone makes a joke about being able to use the cake as the barbecue. They all laugh politely.

She would have hated this. She hated living in suburbia. She hated that she was a GP. He was quite enjoying it, though. He liked people, liked meeting new ones. Dave’s family are great, he decides. Very welcoming. Friendly. He raises his bottle of beer in the toast to Dave and his 40 years on the planet, then he takes a deep swig, and smiles at Helen’s sister. He’s half tempted to wink. She smiles back.

Yes, he likes meeting new people.

It’s fun.

Helen’s sister crosses the grass towards him. She’s still smiling, so he broadens his own.

“You live next door, don’t you?” she says.
“I do,” he replies.
“Helen says your wife’s ill.”
“Yes, she is. Been a bit off colour for a couple of days now.”
“It’s a shame she couldn’t come to the barbecue with you.”
“Isn’t it?”

He can’t work out whether she’s flirting with him or not. He’s now on his third bottle of beer, and he thinks the alcohol might be going to his head.

“Helen says you’re a teacher.”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“What subject?”
“Geography.”

She laughs. “I hated Geography,” she says, and touches him lightly on the arm. He looks down at where she touched him.

“Lots of people do,” he says.
“You don’t look like a Geography teacher,” she says.
“Thanks,” he replies, confused. “What does a Geography teacher look like?”
“Not like you,” she laughs.

He smiles nervously. He wonders whether Helen’s sister might be a bit drunk. He can’t smell anything on her breath, but then all he can smell is barbecue and that faint whiff of unpleasantness, that must be lodged inside his nose. He decides he needs to get away from Helen’s sister. He also needs another beer. And maybe more food.

He heads towards the house. As he walks up the garden, he sees Helen next door in his garden. She’s walking away from the house, with a plate in her hand with cake on it. Her face is white. Like a sheet. Clichés are only clichés because they’re true, he thinks.

He stops. Helen is in his garden. Walking away from the house. She stops. They look at each other across the fence.

“I think you should call an ambulance,” she says, still holding the plate, although it’s at an angle now, and the cake could fall at any second.
“Yes,” he says, “I think you’re probably right.”

© J R Hargreaves, 14 August 2005