Hunger for Life

by Andy Marr

Emma had never sworn as a kid, but in the past few years she’d been confronted with the full ugliness of life and her childhood cries of darn it and blooming heck had been replaced with fuck and shit and all manner of other profanities. Mum and Dad had staged a few protests when they first heard her curse, but pretty soon they’d grown so used to it that they’d given up asking her to stop.

I knelt down beside Emma, and when I placed a hand on her bony shoulders I started to cry. At twenty years of age, she had the body of someone of eighty or more. Her once-soft skin was stretched tight over her face, her hair dull and brittle. It broke me to remember how she’d used to laugh as we played together as children, how deeply in love she’d been with life and the world. Now, lying asleep on a hospital bed hundreds of miles from home, she was too old to be young, and always would be. She’d learned the cruelty of life, and no longer had room in her heart for anything but sadness and pain.

At a mere five feet seven inches, Dan was a head shorter than most of the boys. His body sagged slightly where their muscles rippled, his teeth were crooked where theirs gleamed, and his brown hair was thick and unruly where theirs shone. To judge solely from appearances, it was difficult to believe he’d been accepted into this prestigious little clique. But to judge from appearances was to ignore Dan’s quick wit and effortless charm. These were the characteristics that each of the boys aspired to, and the fact that Dan possessed them in such abundance was a constant source of fascination to them. No matter that he looked so freakishly average. His sense of humour and charisma were the benchmarks toward which the entire group was working, and few within the circle were held in higher esteem.

A deep sadness welled up inside of me. For some time, I stood, silent and still, by my friends’ side, hoping the feeling would pass, but it only grew worse. The muscles of my chin began to tremble, and a great white noise rushed into my head, fizzing and buzzing, the way it always did when grief got the better of me. More than once, Holly tried to catch my eye, but I looked away every time. If I met her gaze, I knew I’d cry, and I didn’t want that, didn’t want her to see me with my defences down.

It wasn’t just the Grange. In the past few months, all these public exchanges, all the countless social dealings that made up the fabric of the day, had come to seem incredibly difficult. I tried desperately to fit in, but for the most part I was only physically present, attempting to match my facial expressions to the people around me while my mind drifted back to Emma in her hospital room.

by the time I climbed into bed I could already sense the first signs of panic. I’d lost count of how many times this had happened recently, how many times the thought of Emma had led my mind to places I didn’t want it to go. Bedtime was always the worst. I’d lay still for hours, waiting for sleep to take hold, but every time it did, a new wave of terror would wash over me and I’d be awake once more. I was superstitious about the scenes I imagined in those moments. Whenever I pictured something terrible, I had to shake my head and count to three; it was the only way I could stop it from really happening.

I turned on the telly and closed off my mind, switching channels whenever the thoughts came close to getting me. I wished there was some kind of remote control for my brain, that I could turn it off in the same way that I could turn off the telly. It would be so nice just to press the off switch and immediately empty my mind of all its thoughts. Leave a blank screen where the nightmares used to be. I turned the remote to my forehead and pressed the off button. ‘Beep,’ I said. But nothing else happened.

I felt a twinge of shame for drinking as much as I had, but the feeling was more than offset by the lovely feeling of emptiness inside my head. Staggering to my feet, I stumbled out to the garage and placed the empty bottle with the rest of the recycling. Squinting into the bin, I counted another four bottles, one for every night I’d run panicking from my bed in the past week. As I stared at them, the thought occurred to me that I could become an alcoholic. At that precise moment, it did not seem like an unreasonable solution to my problems.

With two years’ experience under her belt, Sharon was the longest serving of all the County bar staff. As the hotel’s sole barmaid, she should really have been driven screaming from the premises long ago. But throughout her time at the hotel she’d continued to move behind the bar with an incredible elegance, ducking the sexist jokes and lame attempts at protracted flirtation from the lustful clientele. In doing so she’d managed, against all odds, to maintain not only her position, but also her sanity.

I was out of my chair as though catapulted, my head filled with such a sudden, powerful rage that I thought for a moment I might throw a fist into Gordon’s face. ‘Don’t say that,’ I demanded, my teeth clenched. ‘Say whatever else you want around here, but don’t ever let me hear you say that again.’ Gordon raised his hands submissively. ‘I’m sorry, James,’ he said. ‘You had me thinking, that’s all.’ ‘Think all you want, Gordon. Just don’t fucking say it. Okay?’ ‘Okay,’ Gordon said, glancing nervously towards Sharon. ‘I’m sorry.’

By midnight I was slumped low in my seat, a shot glass in one hand and a beer in the other because, fuck it, why not? Why go home now, miss out on the rare opportunity for a little fun? What, was there some rule now against me letting my hair down every once in a while? I put these questions, slurred these questions, to the room, mumbled angrily when I got no answer. A moment later, Sharon was by my side. ‘I think it’s time you thought about going home, James.’ I laughed loudly then. ‘Home, James!’ I said. ‘Ha! You’re funny.’ Sharon looked at me, confused. ‘Oh, come on,’ I said. ‘You know, it’s that old saying. Home James, and don’t spare the horses! It’s funny!’ I raised my shot glass in honour of the joke, reached for it with my mouth and missed by such a distance that the

I suddenly became aware of an accent. Vile ve could, she said. Ve got out of there vile ve could. ‘You’re not from here, are you?’ I said. ‘Are you German?’ ‘No, but you’re close. We’re from Austria.’ Steve and I widened our eyes and gave an impressed nod, the standard look when someone tells you where they’re from.

she listened attentively to everything that was said, and observed us all closely as we continued our conversation. When she did speak, she looked you straight in the eye, as though she was daring you to open your heart to her right there and then.

‘How are you enjoying Scotland?’ I asked, grateful, at least, I didn’t stutter. ‘Oh, I like it,’ Hannah said. ‘The people are kind and the beach is on my doorstep.’ ‘And you’re here to stay?’ Hannah shook her head. ‘I’m going home to Vienna in September for a month or two. Then, at the end of the year, I have to travel.’ ‘Travel where?’ ‘Oh, all over – Rio, Israel, New York, Vietnam, Japan, Taiwan. Some other places, too.’ ‘That’s a long list.’ ‘It’s a big world,’ Hannah said, and grinned.

Hannah leaned forward and reached for the dial. The radio hissed, shrieked and blasted a few bars of Mozart before finally settling on Radiohead’s Exit Music (for a Film). Hannah, delighted with her discovery, smiled and slumped back in her seat. She listened to Thom Yorke’s nasally vocals in silence for a couple of verses before joining in. Singing heartily and drumming away on her knees, she was like a ball of energy, and already I felt this energy permeating my own body. I felt as fresh and as happy as I’d been in months. Radiohead ended and became The Stone Roses, who in turn became The Killers. Finally, when they became the hourly news, Hannah rolled her eyes and turned off the radio.

she picked out a Walkman from a box on her floor and turned triumphantly towards me. ‘I want you to lie down and listen to this,’ she said, handing me a pair of earphones. ‘And remember,’ she added, smiling, ‘it’s one of my favourites, so you’re not allowed to hate it.’ ‘What is it?’ I asked, as I sank into Hannah’s mattress. ‘It’s Sigur Ros. And it’s beautiful. Close your eyes. I’m going to press play.’

Katie had soft features and a wide, honest smile that gave her a certain kind of understated grace. She’d worn her dark chocolate hair in a cute pixie cut when I’d met her, but she’d recently started to grow it out, and now fought endlessly with several unruly strands of hair that fell down over her eyes whenever she made the slightest move. She was charming and teasing and sweet and funny, and in the three months since her first visit even the most cynical of the hotel’s regular customers had fallen a little bit in love with her.

Hannah sighed heavily, then stood up and brushed the sand from her skirt. Turning towards her, I noticed the heart she’d drawn by our feet and blew out my breath. ‘We really don’t make things easy for ourselves, do we?’ I said. Hannah looked at me and smiled gently. ‘If life was easy, then where would all the adventures be?’

The doctors say that it will take me a long time to get over this illness. But I don’t want to get over it. I want to turn the clocks back to a time before it, when all the future was sunny. Then I could do it all again, but do it right. There’d be no illness, no need to find the courage it takes to recover. For I know I don’t have that courage within me, and I know I never will. The doctors disagree, of course. They tell me I don’t need to go back to move forward, to stop dwelling on the past and concentrate on what’s ahead. They make it sound so simple. But what do they know? Seriously, what do they know? They break my heart.