He straightened up as Ibrahim slouched off, handed back the ball and was ushered in by one of the fathers. He smiled once more to himself and moved forward.
Two things struck him, almost simultaneously. The first was Lorna. He would barely have recognised her. Gone was the fleece she wore for cold walks in the early morning, hair pulled back. Instead, she was wearing the prettiest summer frock – Saif didn’t know a lot about women’s clothes, but he could see the tumbling flowers and the way the long skirt swayed in the light breeze, and it looked pretty to him. Her hair was loose and glorious – that shimmering red that looked so exotic and foreign – and tumbled down her back. She was wearing a little make-up, and her eyelashes were long, and she was laughing in the sunshine, and Saif felt a jolt of something he hadn’t felt for a long time, and he remembered suddenly last year, when they had nearly, just for a moment, kissed at the town ceilidh. Suddenly he found his throat was dry, and his cheeks were pink, and as the sun glinted off her hair he felt a way he hadn’t felt for a long time. It was several seconds before his reflex guilt kicked in, before he told himself, I am married, I am, I am, in the eyes of God and the world, to a woman I love, even though every day brought less and less news; even though even the boys now only asked at night.
Then Lorna turned and saw him and her heart leaped, and every idea she’d had of playing it cool or not reacting or ignoring him in favour of Innes …
She stopped, frozen, caught in mid-smile, unable to disguise her delight at seeing him, her heart lurching. Oh, he was exactly the only person she wanted to see and they gazed at one another …
‘Hey, beer?’ Saif blinked, and tried to focus on the person handing him a drink. It took him a moment to realise it was Colton, and he was about to make his excuses and move towards Lorna when he stopped and looked twice, and suddenly everything changed.
Chapter Fifty-four
Colton wasn’t Saif’s patient – Saif presumed he had a private doctor elsewhere – so Saif hadn’t seen him for a long time.
Probably it wasn’t as noticeable if you saw him day to day.
But Saif knew. In his country, where medicine could be expensive, many people put off going to the doctor until as late as they could. Often far too late. And when they came into his surgery, they had a look about them. It was experience that taught you, and Saif knew it very well.
Saif stared at Colton, who was looking at him cheerfully, beer still outstretched.
Gradually, Colton took in the look. Saif glanced around to make sure nobody was standing too close to them. He didn’t see Lorna’s face fall rapidly into deep disappointment, as he had seen her and then immediately snubbed her to talk to Colton.
He did not see her tip the rest of the glass of wine down her neck in double-quick time, grab a huge refill, then march off, face hot, to look for someone – anyone – else to talk to, and to stop herself bursting into tears.
‘What is wrong with you?’ Saif said quietly and urgently. He never realised how direct and rude his English could sound sometimes. The English language not having a formal tense meant he just assumed nobody minded how you spoke to them.
‘What are you talking about?’ said Colton. ‘Have a beer, enjoy the lovely day. You drink beer, right?’
Saif rolled his eyes and didn’t answer, taking the beer. ‘You have not been to see me.’ His voice was barely louder than a whisper.
Neither was Colton’s. ‘Why would I have to do that?’ he said uncomfortably.
‘You have lost a lot of weight.’
‘I’m getting married. That’s what people do.’
Saif shook his head. ‘I do not want to alarm you. But I would like very much for you to come in and see me. In fact, I would like to send you for some tests. I do not want to scare you or spoil your party. But I would highly recommend that …’
Colton grabbed Saif by the arm and marched him over to the quiet side of the barn, where there was no one else around. ‘Shut up,’ he hissed. ‘I don’t want to hear it. And I don’t want you shooting your mouth off either.’
‘What would I be shooting my mouth off about?’
Colton spat on the ground. Saif looked into his clouded eyes and heaved a sigh. ‘Doesn’t he know?’
There was a long pause. Colton stared at the ground.
‘You’re getting married! You should tell him! Where is it?’
There were so many options now. Treatment in the West was astonishing to Saif. For all the complaints about the NHS, he found it passionate and compassionate and mind-bogglingly successful.
‘Pancreas. Well. It started there.’
Saif never swore, as he was never sure which taboo words in his new language were mild and which were unfathomably insulting. But now he did. There was barely a worse prognosis.
‘Fuck,’ he said.
‘You sound funny when you say that,’ said Colton.
‘Stage?’
Colton held up four fingers. ‘You’re a doctor, right? You can’t tell anyone.’
‘You should perhaps tell your husband.’
‘After the wedding,’ hissed Colton.
They glanced round. The scene under the wispy clouds in the sky was idyllic. The football match; the dancing; the laughter in the air; the children running; the fiddle music; and the green hills stretching down, dabbed with lambs and wildflowers and bright waving poppies all the way to a deep blue sea that went on for ever.
‘There is nothing they can do …?’
‘You think I can’t afford the best doctors, Doc? No offence. You think I haven’t checked this shit out? That that hasn’t been my full-time job for months? I have my own morphine supply, my own whisky distillery … Hell, I’m just happy it isn’t dementia.’
Colton’s bravado was touching, but he wasn’t even fifty.
‘Doc.’ Colton leaned over. His voice was slightly slurred. It seemed impossible Fintan hadn’t noticed.
‘I have one. Last. Summer. I want to spend it here, on this place I love. I want to get married to the boy I love, without everyone giving me fucking puppy dog face. I want to be happy, and then I want to drift away. Chemo will give me an extra six months of throwing up in a fucking bucket. It doesn’t matter anyway, because this shit is spreading to my brain and you know what that means.’
Saif did. Delirium. Hallucinations. Mental incapacity. The full checklist of horrors.
‘I’m not having it,’ said Colton. ‘I control my life. I control what I do. I always have. And I am telling you. I’m not having it.’
‘Don’t say any more,’ said Saif. This was perilously dangerous, legally speaking. ‘Please don’t say any more.’
Colton swigged from a paper cup of whisky. ‘I find I worry less these days,’ he said. ‘About how much alcohol is good for me.’
He pointed at Saif.
‘Vow of silence, right? Hippocratic oath.’
‘Who knows already?’
‘That piss-ant lawyer of mine,’ said Colton, sighing. ‘I sure wish I’d never told him. He fell apart. That is the one thing I feel bad about.’
Agot suddenly appeared, her little witchy face sly.
‘UNCO COLTON! UNCO COLTON, IS AGOT YOUR BRIDESMAID?’
‘Yes, of course you are, Agot. Always.’
‘WE NEED HORSIE! ME AND ASH NEED HORSIE!’
Ash was jumping up and down, pretending he knew what was going on.
‘AND YOU, ASH DADDY ALSO,’ said Agot indignantly.
Which was how, after receiving the devastating news, Saif and Colton, after another slug of his whisky, ended up on all fours in the long, sweet-smelling green grass, riddled with tall daisies and dandelions, each with a child on their backs, roaming the garden and making appropriate noises.
And Lorna gave up, and drank another too-large glass of wine, and decided to go and see what Innes was up to.