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CHAPTER 31

  Keith was in the lions’ den talking to Daniel. As far as the nurse who had taken him there knew, he was in the toilet, which was the only place Keith found he got any privacy, but mentally he was with Daniel.

  'Ring the bell when you need me,’ the nurse told him. 'Sure you don't want me to wait?’ She had wanted to bring him a bedpan in the ward, or at least a commode, but he had insisted on being taken to the toilet, even though the plaster on his leg made it hard to balance and he had to be put in a harness so he didn't fall off. He refused to let someone stay and hold him.

  He needed to be alone, just Daniel and himself and a few hungry lions. They came out of the shadows now. Keith could feel the roar starting in his throat.

  'What would you do?’ he asked Daniel. 'I don't want to be angry. All my life I've been told that God made me like this and I'm special. But all my life they've been trying to improve me. And if I just want some part of me left as it is, they tell me not to do or say anything to upset my mother. I can tell you this, Daniel, and I can't tell anyone else. I'm starting to hate my family.’

  He closed his eyes and focused on his friend, standing upright and watchful in the centre of the lions’ den. Interesting, that he chose to stand there, Keith mused: not in the corner or clinging to the bars for security. Right in the middle. In charge, like the ringmaster of a circus.

  Daniel's eyes were cool and unshockable. Keith was encouraged to continue. 'Everyone says how wonderful my mother is, Daniel, and at other times, how wonderful I am - how brave, putting up with my disabilities. But it's just life, isn't it? This is my life. And this is her life. She could put me in a home or send me away to a special school. But she doesn't. Why doesn't she?’

  Daniel shifted his weight slightly. The lions around him were immediately alert. Their eyes were huge, like spotlights trained on this human being whose body language refused to spell the word victim. He was not afraid of their jaws. Even Keith's claim to hate his family didn't make him flinch. His eyes were steady.

  'I'll tell you why I think she keeps me at home,’ Keith said. 'Partly, it's guilt. She feels guilty for having given birth to a child who's such a mess. She'd feel even guiltier for sending me away, even though sometimes it would be a relief for her not to have to look every day at the mess she made. But it'd make her feel like a bad parent, not looking after her child herself, and then she'd see herself as being a worse mess than me. So it's better for her if I stay. Then I'm the cripple, not her.’

  Daniel continued to gaze, as if thinking over what Keith was saying, suspending judgment until he'd heard the full complaint.

  The nurse pushed the door open. 'Have you finished?’

  A couple walking past with a bunch of flowers looked in, then looked away. Keith was embarrassed.

  'Shut the door!’ he said.

  'All right, but have you finished? I'm due to go on my break.’

  'No,’ he said.

  'Okay,’ she said. 'Call me when you're ready.’

  She was tired, he could see, and looking forward to ten minutes with a cup of coffee. He was being selfish again. How was it that someone had to suffer if he put his own needs first? Staying in here was his only way of being left alone to think. But asking for this concession meant a nurse had to wait for her break.

  'Everything's my fault,’ he told Daniel bitterly. 'It's great that Mum puts up with me, because of course it wasn't her fault I was born like this and yet she's accepted that this is how her child is. So it must have been my fault, for being so tactless as to expect any family to want me. Perhaps they think I should have quietly aborted myself - not with their help, of course, but spontaneously, so no one could blame themselves for it. What made me, as an unborn child, so arrogant as to expect a family welcome?

  'What kind of visitor arrives in this state, needing everything, with nothing to give? We're expected to be helpless when we're babies and then grow out of it. Because I still need help, I get seen as the baby who didn't have the decency to move out and let the grown-up take its place. I'm the baby who outstayed his welcome. That's how everyone sees me. I'm told all these operations are meant to increase my chance of a normal life and normal activity, but really what they're designed to do is make me more grown-up and self-sufficient and less of a burden on the family and a drain on society.’

  Daniel, among the lions, looked tiny. He was not tall, and of slight build. He would only give the lions a couple of mouthfuls. Hardly worth eating, except that they were hungry and would have eaten anything. How had he convinced them not to devour him? How could he resist their accusing gaze? We're not asking much of you, their expressions said; just let us feed on you, just one little bit. You haven't got much to offer us, but what you have we're entitled to, surely? Otherwise, why would you be here, in our territory? How can you refuse our modest request, when we ask so nicely and wait so politely for the consent you're bound to give?

  But Daniel knew he wasn't there to feed their desires. Their need was genuine and he was sympathetic but it would have to be met by somebody else.

  'God put you in that lion pit,’ Keith told him, 'to be his representative. A great prophet, to be a sign to everyone of what a real man is: a man who listens to God.’

  A wisp of a smile then and an almost imperceptible shake of the head - his hair long, like the lions’ manes. A lion of a man himself, but a small­scale one. Not a great prophet, the smile seemed to say. Not a great anything. A child who remained a child, a child of God, always helpless. dependent on his eternal Dad for safety.

  Keith seemed to see people around him, crowding in - people who glowed with light, with huge featherlight folded wings. The lions, after all, were nowhere near Daniel, even though he could feel their breath on his bare skin. They were centuries away from devouring him. He was shielded from them more effectively than by any electric fence, by the sheer depth, tier upon tier, of spiritual beings who took up no space in the pit but surrounded this one human being with a wall of infinite depth. Keith was overawed by the sight. He had never suspected that angels had been in the lions’ den with Daniel - much less in the hospital toilet with him.

  'Come on now, Keith,’ said the nurse, coming in without knocking, and leaving the door open again. 'You must be finished by now.’

  He shook his head mutely.

  'You all right?’ she said. 'You look funny. You're not going to have a fit?’ She shifted him towards her and peered into the toilet. 'Oh, you have finished,’ she said. 'Good boy. I was thinking we'd have to give you an enema.’ Her tone was indulgent; she wiped him without thinking. Her coffee break was in sight.

  She wheeled him back to bed in a hospital wheelchair, not his own electric one, and lifted him in. 'I'm putting you back to bed for a while,’ she said, 'because you look a bit white. You'll be having your lunch in half an hour but I can make you a slice of toast now if you like?’

  He looked at her in amazement, seeing a rim of white light around her head. She had looked normal a minute before.

  'Thanks,’ he said, 'but I'll be all right. You have your coffee break now. Have a sweet,’ he added, nodding towards the bag that Grandad had left on the bedside cabinet.

  She smiled, unwrapped a sweet and popped it into his mouth. 'You have it for me,’ she said. 'I'm on a diet.’

  She looked perfect to him. Though, when she walked out of the ward, he couldn't see any wings.