The girl lay slumped against a wall in front of me and someone ran to push the emergency button. I was nearly at the bottom of the Jubilee line escalator when I came across this scene. I found it shocking, but then I’m not used to drama these days.
An eventful day in West Cork is popping to the small supermarket in the village to meet my friend June for a takeaway coffee while she sits in her car selling tickets for the pitch and putt lottery.
Someone we know might walk past while she’s hanging out of her driver’s window passing tickets to customers, and they might climb into the back of the car with me to tell us some urgent gossip: ‘Did you hear Roisin’s son has bought that big house on the road to Drinagh? It’s got a gate that opens when he presses a button.’
And I’ll sit there slurping my latte, thinking absolutely nothing, aside from: ‘What am I going to cook him for his dinner? I better go and buy a couple of steaks…’ This emptying of my head has been an absolute pleasure, and if it never fills back up again I shall be delighted, given what we’ve had to deal with and think about these past four years. If I never thought about anything that mattered again, it would be a result. If I never have another row again, that’s fine by me.
‘Can you move your elbow?’ shouted a well-dressed man in Waitrose earlier, standing behind me in the queue, trying to load his shopping while I was leaning casually against the conveyor.
‘Hm?’ I said dreamily. ‘Move, so I can load my shopping!’ ‘Oh yes, I see,’ I said, but I didn’t see, because I’m used to someone scruffy and friendly behind me in the queue at the Centra saying in a thick West Cork accent, ‘No bother! No bother!’ as I take ages putting my shopping into bags, and when I tell the cashier I’ll see her tomorrow, her saying merrily: ‘Please to God!’
Being set about by tightly wound middle–aged men in a hurry to buy red wine and ready meals, I longed for the scruffiness, the rain on the mountains, the sea mist enveloping our house in a desolate white-out, the sound of the builder boyfriend banging his hammer, the horses in the barn whinnying for their hay. I had become slow, I realised. Slow and maybe, dare I say it, happier.
When I’m there, I long for the hustle and bustle. I had been looking forward to this trip. Now it felt like it was bursting my ear drums, re-entering the city atmosphere. Never content, always wondering if I’m better off somewhere else, that’s my pathology.
So I was on an escalator going down into the Underground feeling disorientated when I came across this girl in her twenties who had collapsed.
She was lying slumped against a wall, crying to herself about how she didn’t understand what was happening. The passer-by who was helping her pushed the button on the help point: ‘There’s someone fainted down here, can you send help?’
I wonder why? I thought, because it wasn’t hot or crowded. The Underground was nearly empty, it wasn’t rush hour.
The builder boyfriend’s father blacked out in his builder’s yard. One second his tough-as-old-boots dad was standing there holding forth about something, and the next second he was lying face down.
He landed on top of a gas canister and smashed his ribs. All the hospital could confirm was that his ribs were broken. They couldn’t explain why he had had the first fainting fit of his life, aged seventy-something.
Later, it was declared not of interest. It’s normal, his doctor said. Is it normal? My father had a heart attack a few months ago, from a blood clot, and now faces investigations for something else that’s scary. My mother has vascular dementia and a tumour in her neck. All of this is presented to me as normal, as in to be expected, by their doctors. But if that is so, what does normal mean?
I feel totally overwhelmed by how sick my parents are. I always knew they would get something, but it’s as though they got everything. My father is covered in a permanent rash – not shingles. I know one in three has shingles.
The GP said this rash was down to long Covid. Did you get long Covid? I asked him, because he might remember. He said he must have had it, because his GP says so.
My father has accepted everything. I refuse to accept anything and this feeling grows the more I’m told I’m not allowed to have it. I argue with the doctors. I say what I see. But that’s all I have in my remit.
I stood near the girl on the floor and waited until the lady calling for help was back with her. And then I got on the train.
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