Written Down

They moved him at half past eight into a bay at the end of the old ward, behind a curtain, because a bed had come free.

His mother did not say how. Tom did not ask. A bed had come free at the end of the ward, by the window, and the porter with the empty trolley who had known Tom in the waiting hall came and took Frank’s trolley out of the corridor and down to the end of the ward and put it beside the bed, and he and the student nurse and his mother lifted Frank across from the trolley to the bed on a sheet, all at once, on a count Tom could not hear, and Frank’s face did a thing under the gauze when they lifted him, and his mother’s face did the same thing at the same time, and then he was in the bed, and the porter pulled the curtain round on its rail, and went.

The window was open at the top. The river was outside it, very wide, going dark, with the lights coming on along the far side in Queens. There was a chair. There was a locker with a jug of water on it and a plastic cup. There was a pad on the locker, a pad of the hospital’s nursing notes, white, lined, with a printed heading and boxes, and a pen clipped to it.

His mother looked at her watch. She looked at Frank. She looked at Tom.

Her mouth moved, slow and large, for him.

I’ve got thirty people.

He nodded.

He’ll wake. He’s been waking every few minutes since scan; that’s what they said. He’s got three ribs on the left and a concussion and his face. Nothing else. They looked at everything. Nothing else. She stopped. Don’t let him sit up. Don’t let him talk much, it hurts him. Call me if anything.

He nodded again.

She looked at the two of them for a moment longer, her two sons, the one in the bed and the one in the chair, in the bay at the end of the old ward behind a curtain with the river going dark outside the window. He could not read what was in her face. Then she took the pad off the locker, and unclipped the pen, and put them both in his lap, and went out through the curtain, and the curtain swung, and was still.

---

Frank woke at a quarter to nine.

The one eye opened, the right one, slowly. It looked at the ceiling. It looked at the curtain. It found the window and the river, and stayed there a while. Then it came round and found him in the chair.

The split mouth moved. He saw a word. He could not read it.

He pointed at his ears. He shook his head.

The eye looked at his ears. At the dried blood below them. At the gauze on his neck. It looked for a long time. Then the mouth moved again, and he read it this time, because it was short and Frank made it very slowly.

Both?

He nodded.

The eye shut. When it opened again it was looking at the pad in his lap.

He took the pen. He wrote, in the capitals that went up and down, and held the pad up where Frank could see it without moving his head.

I CAN’T HEAR. YOU CAN’T TALK. MUM SAYS DON’T. SO WRITE.

Frank looked at it. Then his right hand came up off the blanket, slowly, the hand with the ridge on the thumbnail and the white scar on the knuckle, and opened, and Tom put the pen in it, and held the pad on Frank’s chest, on the right side, away from the ribs, flat, with both his bandaged hands, so that Frank could write on it lying down without lifting his head.

Frank wrote. It took a long time. The letters were very big, and went all over the line, and some of them were on top of each other.

WHERES MY JACKET

Tom looked at it. He took the pad back, and turned the page, and wrote.

ON TWO POLES. WITH A WOMAN ON IT. MICK LARKIN SAW YOU DO IT. DINNY TOLD ME.

He held it up. Frank read it.

The split mouth went in at one corner. Tom saw it go. It hurt him; Tom saw that too. It went anyway.

He held the pad on Frank’s chest again. Frank wrote.

GOOD. IT WAS A GOOD JACKET

---

They wrote for an hour.

It was slow. Frank could manage four or five words before the pen went out of his hand and he had to lie still with his eye shut and breathe, shallow, the way you breathe with three ribs gone on one side. Tom wrote more, because he could, sitting up in the chair, and held the page in front of Frank’s eye and waited while he read it, and then turned the page and held the pad on Frank’s chest and waited while he wrote. The pad of nursing notes filled up. The printed boxes at the top of each page, PATIENT, WARD, DATE, OBSERVATIONS, went past unfilled, one after another, under their capitals.

I WENT IN AFTER YOU, wrote Frank. WHEN SHEA SAID.

I KNOW.

I LOOKED FOR THE HAT. ALL OVER. YOU DIDNT HAVE A HAT.

LOST IT AT GRAND CENTRAL.

The eye looked at that for a long time.

THEN I WAS NEAR THE CORNER, wrote Frank. THE BIG BUILDING. THE WINDOWS GONE. A BIT OF THE FRONT CAME DOWN. STONE. He stopped. He breathed. He wrote: THEN SCAN.

Tom looked at it. He thought of the fireman with the grey face and no helmet, in the junction, pointing at the building on the corner with its windows gone, and making a flat chopping movement with his hand. Not there. Not that one. Not yet. He had seen the fireman do it. He had not gone there. Frank had gone there, looking for a man without a hat.

He did not write that. He turned the page.

YOU WERE RIGHT, he wrote.

Frank read it. The eye came up off the pad to his face, and stayed there.

He wrote the rest under it.

THERE WAS ANOTHER ONE. KING’S COLLEGE. IN A LECTURE HALL. SOMEBODY SAW IT AND TOLD SOMEBODY. IT DIDN’T GO OFF. IT WAS ON THE TELEVISION AT 2.

THERE WAS ANOTHER ONE, FRANK. LIKE YOU SAID.

Frank read it. He read it for a long time, the one eye going back to the start of it, twice. Then he held his hand out for the pen, and Tom put the pen in it, and held the pad on his chest, and Frank wrote, very slowly, the letters even bigger than before.

NOT AT THE JUNCTION

Tom took the pad and looked at it. He wrote.

NO.

Frank looked at the NO for a moment. Then he held out his hand again.

THEN YOU WERE RIGHT TOO

---

Tom sat in the chair with the pad in his lap and looked at what his brother had written.

He did not know what to do with it. He looked at it for a long time, the big letters going all over the printed lines, THEN YOU WERE RIGHT TOO, and he thought about the steward line at the foot of the bridge, and Frank’s arms out, wide, and the men of the local pushing against them, LET US GO, FOR CHRIST’S SAKE, FRANKIE, and Frank’s mouth, HOLD, THERE MAY BE ANOTHER ONE, and Frank’s fist on his sleeve, and Frank’s fist opening.

He thought that they could not both have been right. And he thought that they had been. He thought that a man who held a line because there might be another one was right, and that there had been another one, and that it had been in a lecture hall a mile away and a student had seen it; and that a man who went into the junction past the line because there were people in it who were moving was right too, because there had been, and some of them were in this hospital now, in this corridor, and one of them was in a bus company’s uniform with his jacket on her side, if she had lived. He thought that both of those things were true at once and that he did not know how to hold them both and that he was going to have to.

He did not write any of that.

He looked up. Frank’s eye was on him, waiting.

He nodded.

Frank looked at the nod. Then the eye shut. Not asleep. Resting. The split mouth was not moving. The hand with the pen in it lay on the blanket.

---

His mother came through the curtain at a quarter past nine with a cup of tea.

She gave it to him. She did not ask whether he wanted it. She put it in his bandaged hands and closed his fingers round it, and it was hot and very sweet, and he drank it, and it was the second best thing he had ever drunk, after the paper cup of water on the kerb on Vanderbilt Avenue.

She took the pad from him and turned it to a clean page and wrote, in her quick slanting nurse’s hand, and held it out.

I RANG YOUR FATHER. FROM THE WARD DESK. THE LANDLINE.

He looked at her.

I TOLD HIM BOTH. FRANK HERE AND YOU HERE. I TOLD HIM ALL OF IT. EARS AND RIBS AND THE REST. HE LISTENED. HE DIDN’T SAY ANYTHING.

She stopped. She wrote the last line under it.

THEN HE SAID “GOOD.” AND PUT THE PHONE DOWN.

Tom read it.

His mother looked at him. Her mouth went in at one corner, the way Teresa’s did, and Frank’s, and he understood for the first time that Teresa’s did it the way his mother’s did, and that he had walked a concourse for two years beside a woman who did it and had never once noticed where he knew it from.

He put the tea down on the locker.

---

Frank woke again at twenty past nine.

His mother had gone back to her thirty people. The eye opened and found the window, and the river, black now, with the lights along it, and then found Tom in the chair.

The hand with the pen in it moved on the blanket. Tom held the pad on his chest.

DID YOU SEND IT, wrote Frank.

Tom looked at it. He took the pad back, and wrote.

6.10. OUTSIDE A LAUNDROMAT ON 2ND AVE. ONE BAR. IT SAID SENT.

Frank read it.

MY PHONE WAS IN THE JACKET, he wrote.

I KNOW.

SO IT WENT ON THE POLES WITH THE WOMAN

I KNOW.

The split mouth went in at the corner again. Frank lay there for a moment with his eye shut. Then he held out his hand for the pen, and Tom held the pad, and he wrote, slowly, in the biggest letters yet, so big that it took the whole of the page.

WHAT DID IT SAY

Tom took the pad back.

He looked at the page for a long time, at the four words in his brother’s hand. Then he turned to a clean one, the last clean one in the pad, and wrote it, the way he had typed it in the kitchen in Sunnyside at twenty to six that morning with his coat on, and not changed it.

MUM’S STITCHES.

He held it up.

Frank read it. He read it for a long time. The one eye did not move off it. Then it shut, and something ran out from under the gauze on the other side of his face, the left side, and down into the bandage, and was gone, and Frank did not do anything about it, and Tom did not either.

The hand came up off the blanket, the last time, for the pen.

Tom held the pad. There was no room left on the page; Frank wrote over the top of it, across MUM’S STITCHES, at an angle, in the big letters, very slowly.

SUNDAY

He stopped, and breathed, and wrote under it.

YOU BRING THE BREAD

Tom looked at it. He took the pen out of his brother’s hand, gently, and wrote under that, in the last bit of white at the bottom of the page.

FROM THE ITALIAN.

Frank read it. The split mouth went in at the corner, and hurt him, and went anyway.

Then he shut his eye, and his hand lay still on the blanket, and he was asleep; really asleep, this time, breathing shallow and even, the way you breathe with three ribs gone on one side; and Tom sat in the chair beside the bed in the bay at the end of the old ward with the pad of nursing notes in his lap, full, every page, the printed boxes at the top of every one unfilled, and the river black outside the window with the lights going along it, and did not move until his mother came back through the curtain at half past nine and put her hand flat on the top of his head.