A Woman of Many Injuries
My knees are real. Everything else I bring in a biscuit tin.
The tin used to contain Danish butter cookies. It now contains six teeth, three fingers, a piece of windscreen, and the tip of a nose that doesn't quite match me. I keep the large wounds in a fishing-tackle box. Once, on the bus, a child asked what I was fishing for. I showed him.
His mother moved him to the other end of the bus. He kept looking back.
For twenty-three years I had been a casualty in emergency exercises. I had been dragged from overturned coaches, discovered beneath collapsed staging, and lowered from a hotel window in a device that left me with the only authentic bruises of the day. I was particularly good at the woman who insisted nothing was wrong. Most amateurs want to scream. I could frighten a roomful of trainees by asking whether someone had fed the cat.
On the morning of the Bellweather Shopping Centre evacuation, Warren gave me a card that said WALKING WOUNDED.
Below that: MINOR CUT TO LEFT HAND. COOPERATIVE.
"Is this a joke?"
"No, Het."
Warren called me Het when he wanted me manageable. For the invoice I was Hester Pike. When I was getting on with my work, people tended to call me Jesus Christ.
"There are thirty-seven people here," I said. "Half of them students. You have a man over there putting his broken foot into his shoe."
"He's cold."
"I'm cold. My foot's in the right direction."
Warren pulled the Velcro on his fluorescent vest apart and stuck it back together. The vest went back to his instructor days. He was running the company now, but he still fastened one side an inch higher than the other and spent the morning pulling it straight.
"They're being marked today, Het," he said. "I need you on the card. No additions."
I read it again. My cut required a dressing. I could walk to the collection point without assistance. At no stage was I to deteriorate.
"You could use an envelope."
"You asked not to be carried."
"I asked not to be carried by Colin. Colin carries people like furniture he's trying to get his deposit back on."
"And your knees?"
"Leave my knees out of this, Warren."
Behind him, four young people in matching polo shirts were laughing as they applied soot to one another. One had drawn a magnificent wound across her throat and was photographing it with her tongue out. She would be dead before anybody asked her a question.
Warren followed my eyes.
"They're volunteers," he said.
I used to get that part. She'd bought a tube of red paint and walked in.
He lowered his voice. "I put your full day through. Same as usual."
I looked at him then. He looked away.
I would have preferred him to dock my money.
The shopping centre had been shut for eighteen months. The fountains were drained, the plastic palms wore dust, and the perfume department still smelled faintly of every woman who had ever been offered a sample against her will.
I knew the place. Before casualty work, I had sold tights in Arlen's on the first floor. Thirty-one shades of nearly the same leg. I could still have found the staff lavatory blindfolded. They had converted Arlen's into a discount bed shop after we closed; now the empty floor was marked with dirty rectangles where the mattresses had been.
Our scenario was an explosion in a service area. There would be theatrical smoke in the west corridor, a recorded alarm, and no actual explosives, to the disappointment of a young man named Curtis, who had travelled from Leeds.
I was placed on a bench beside the dead fountain with Curtis and a retired surveyor called Len. Curtis had a plastic bone sticking out of his sleeve. Len was supposed to be confused.
"What's confusing me?" Len asked.
"Your name. The building. Pick something."
"No, the cause. Has something hit me?"
I turned his card over. Nothing on the back.
"Doesn't say."
"So how am I supposed to know what to forget?"
"You've got all morning, Len."
Curtis noticed Len shivering and laid his coat around the old man's shoulders, careful of the bone in his sleeve. I reminded him he was supposed to have only one working arm.
Warren came past with two visitors wearing spotless white helmets. The taller one had a camera around her neck. They were from the council; Warren had pointed them out during the briefing, as if we might mistake them for casualties and disfigure them.
A successful day mattered. His company was bidding to operate the council's new training centre. The contract would keep six instructors employed and put proper heating in their warehouse. I knew this because Warren had told me while offering me tea, before he handed me the card.
At ten, the alarm began.
I put my good left hand in my lap and watched thirty-six people become interesting.
Curtis howled. Len asked him to turn it down. Across the fountain, a woman fell slowly to her knees with both hands at her throat. Somebody applauded before remembering.
The first response team came through the doors.
They were students in orange bibs, with instructors following at a distance. My assigned rescuer was a young woman with cropped hair, two pens tucked into her collar, and the expression of someone determined not to be impressed by blood. Her bib said 14.
"Hello. I'm Jo. What's your name?"
"Mrs Bell."
"Mrs Bell, can you tell me what's happened?"
"There was a bang. I cut my hand."
I showed her the little dab of red. It resembled an unsuccessful jam sandwich.
She asked the necessary questions. I supplied the prescribed answers. She looked at the card clipped to my coat, checked my hand, and pointed out the green flag across the concourse.
"You can walk over there?"
"That's what it says."
She waited.
There was something unpleasant about being waited for so patiently. I could have told her about the day I had stayed in character through a fire alarm that wasn't part of the exercise. I could have told her about the photograph Warren kept above his desk. It showed him kneeling beside me in a ditch. I had signed it, You took your time.
Instead I stood.
My right knee caught. For a second the floor came towards me.
Jo put out her hand.
"I'm fine."
"Take a moment."
"It's not in the scenario."
"It still looked sore."
Across the concourse, two people were being carried away on stretchers. The girl with the throat wound kept perfectly still. Somebody must have spoken to her.
I took my arm out of Jo's hand and set off for the green flag.
I got as far as the old directory.
Arlen's was still listed on it. LADIES' FASHIONS. HOSIERY. CUSTOMER ACCOUNTS. Somebody had scraped away the names of the shops that came after us, exposing ours underneath.
I looked back. Jo was kneeling beside Curtis, who had apparently decided to lose the whole arm.
There were nine months of mostly empty squares on my kitchen calendar. I had put Warren's dates in ink.
I stepped over the rope at the foot of the stopped escalator. The sign said FIRST FLOOR CLOSED. I climbed.
I knew exactly what I was doing.
Afterwards, several people kindly suggested I had been disoriented. I had read the sign. I knew where Warren had told me to sit.
I went to Arlen's because it was outside the exercise area, where nobody had been assigned to look. I wanted Warren to have to come looking. I wanted him to find me and discover what he had paid for.
There was a chair behind the former customer-accounts counter. I sat down, opened my tin, and considered my resources.
I had a small packet of stage blood in my pocket. It was left over from a rail exercise in February. I used a little at my temple, worked dust into one cheek, and loosened my hair. No grand wound. The good ones suggest something beneath.
I unclipped my card.
The old security grille was open. From the counter I could see across the gallery to the escalator. I called a small "Hello?" into the gap between two bursts of the alarm. Then another, louder.
A face appeared at the top. Not Warren.
Jo came into Arlen's.
She stopped at the end of the counter.
"There you are. They said you hadn't come through."
She said "Mrs Bell?" twice before I let my eyes find her.
"You said you were going to the green flag," she said.
"My grandson's here."
I hadn't planned that. It arrived fully dressed, a boy of seven in a yellow coat.
Jo looked behind her.
"Here in the shop?"
"He went to find the toilets. I told him not to go on his own."
She touched the radio on her bib. A voice told her to repeat her location.
She checked the dark doorway at the back of the shop. Her eyes returned to me, then went to the doorway again.
"What's his name?"
"Billy."
I disliked myself for that. Billy was a cheap name for an imaginary frightened boy. I should have done better.
"What does he look like?"
"Yellow coat. He's little."
"How little?"
I held my hand at the height of a child. Jo glanced towards the blank doorway at the back of the shop. She spoke into the radio again, clearly this time.
A woman answered, "Fourteen, remain with your casualty. Search team advised."
Jo took off one glove to work the radio buttons. Her bare hand was shaking. She put it against her trouser leg until it stopped.
I could have ended it there.
"He'll hide if he's scared," I said.
She pressed her radio again. "Tell the search team to check the cupboards, please. He might hide."
Soon I heard feet running along the gallery. I sat a little straighter in the chair.
When Warren arrived, Jo was beside me and two other students were searching the staff corridor.
He took one look at my temple.
"Exercise hold."
He said it again into his radio. The recorded alarm cut off midway through a whoop.
For a second I was pleased with him. He had stopped the whole exercise.
"Hester."
"She's asking for her grandson," Jo said. "Possible head injury. Her card said minor injuries, but there's blood at her temple."
"There is no grandson."
Jo looked at me.
I watched her wait for me to contradict him.
"Hester is one of our experienced role players," he said. "She has gone off brief."
One of the searchers emerged from the corridor. "The rear stairs are locked. We need access."
"No, you don't. Stand down."
"But the child—"
"There is no child."
I stood. They could at least look at me while they discussed me.
I came around the counter. My knee caught again, and I put a hand flat on the counter. Jo moved towards me, stopped, and looked at Warren.
He was watching my face.
"I'm not acting," I said.
Jo's hand stayed halfway out, ready if Warren nodded.
Warren brought the chair around the counter and I sat in it. He crouched in front of me, as he had in the ditch twenty years before.
"Is it worse than usual?"
"No."
"Do you need someone to look at it?"
"No."
He nodded. The loose end of his vest rasped beneath his thumb.
"Stay here, then. Please."
He took Jo into the corridor. His voice travelled perfectly through the empty shop.
"You left your assigned sector."
"A casualty I'd directed out hadn't arrived."
"You report that to your supervisor. You don't wander through an excluded area on your own."
"I did report it. I was told to check the concourse."
"Which doesn't include upstairs."
"I heard her calling. When I got to the top I could see blood on her face."
I could picture Jo below me, looking up at the empty escalator. I had waited for her to come the rest of the way.
Warren said, "Then you report again."
Jo didn't answer.
He'd write down her name, the instruction she had been given, and what she'd done instead. He was very careful about reports. There would be nothing in it she could say was untrue.
The council woman appeared in the doorway with the floor plan in her hand.
"I'm told we're looking for a child."
"No," Warren said. "That's been resolved."
Her eyes moved from Jo to me.
"Well," she said. "That's a relief."
She flattened the plan on the counter. Upstairs, every room was grey.
The exercise resumed without me.
I sat in Arlen's and cleaned the blood from my temple with a wet wipe. It had stained. The February batch always did.
From downstairs came the sounds of people getting on with things. Len asked three different people where he was and received three different answers.
My phone rang. It was the dentist's office. I let it stop. They were real teeth, and I couldn't afford them this month.
At noon Warren brought me a sandwich and a form.
"We're documenting the interruption," he said.
"How's Fourteen?"
"Jo."
"I know her name."
"Then use it."
He looked older than he had that morning. I didn't like him enough just then to be concerned about it.
The form asked for the reason I had left my assigned position.
"Put that you misunderstood the limits," he said. "We'll go through it at the debrief."
"I didn't misunderstand."
"I know."
He sat on the edge of the counter. His vest caught on a nail. He unhooked it with exaggerated care.
"Het, I can't send people to rescue you if we don't know where you are. The whole first floor was excluded. You crossed the rope and went where we hadn't put any staff."
"I worked here."
"That doesn't make it safe."
"I know where the stairs go."
"They've taken a staircase out."
I looked towards the back corridor.
"Since when?"
"Since you sold tights here."
He pushed the sandwich towards me. Egg, no cress. He remembered.
"You don't need to make this worse," he said.
When he left, I unwrapped the sandwich. I ate the smaller half first, as if the larger one might be required to last me until Christmas.
In the old days Denise had worked at this counter. A man behind on his payments had once stood here emptying his pockets onto the glass. Bus tickets, brown pennies, a sweet stuck to its wrapper. Denise waited, with the account book open, until he found his card.
Sometimes I had covered her lunch.
On Warren's form, I wrote: I wanted them to come and get me.
I read it. Then I added: There was no other reason.
At the debrief, the actors sat at the back of an empty shoe shop. The trainees occupied the front rows. Warren stood beside a screen showing a map of the centre. On it, Arlen's was a grey rectangle labelled OUT OF BOUNDS.
My incident was discussed as an unexpected development.
Jo had a notebook open. She was drawing a box around something she had already written. Round and round.
Warren went through the radio calls. Who had said what, how many people had been sent upstairs, when they should have checked with him. I wanted to interrupt. I kept waiting for him to say something I could correct.
The council woman asked whether the role player had been given the briefing.
Warren glanced towards me.
"All participants were briefed," he said. "We could have made the exclusion clearer."
I could misunderstand a boundary. I could develop a headache. I had lived whole mornings as a woman who couldn't remember her own address. They were offering me a part I knew.
I raised my hand.
Warren looked at the clock.
"We can talk afterwards, Het."
"I'm talking now."
Len moved his chair to give me room. I shook my head at him and stayed where I was.
"I knew upstairs was out of bounds. I took off my scenario card and made up the head injury. I invented the child."
Curtis whispered something to the throat girl. For once I didn't care about the audience at the back.
"Why?" asked the council woman.
I had hoped she wouldn't.
"I didn't like my part."
Warren looked down at his notes. I could hear Curtis peeling tape off his sleeve.
"I wanted a better one," I said.
The woman wrote something down.
Jo had stopped drawing. She wasn't looking at me.
Warren rubbed the strip of Velcro between his finger and thumb.
"Thank you, Hester."
"She thought I was telling the truth."
Jo turned in her chair.
"I know what I thought."
"Yes," I said.
"I still went upstairs. You don't get to explain that for me."
She faced front again. I put my hand in my lap. It had been hovering there, ready to help.
Warren paid the invoice. He cancelled my next four dates.
I could have called him a coward for putting it in an email. I might still, some evening when I have nothing to do and a bottle open.
I wrote my incident statement for the course administrator. It recorded what I had done and what I had heard. I left out the things I imagined Jo must have been thinking. There were quite a lot of those.
Then I rang everybody in my address book who had ever paid me to be unwell.
I did not lead with the incident at Bellweather. If they asked, I told them. Several did. Warren, it turned out, had no difficulty explaining a problem to the right people.
In June I got a morning's work at a community first-aid course, playing a shopper who had fallen outside a chemist. The fee was poor. I negotiated six pounds more and travel.
My card said MINOR INJURY. ABLE TO WALK WITH ASSISTANCE.
I brought the tin. Leaving it at home would have been an overreaction.
They sat me on a mat beside a table of unclaimed raffle prizes. A teenager approached. He had two big silver rings, a nervous smile, and the kind of carefully grown moustache that makes you want to lend someone a pencil.
He asked whether I could get up.
"Yes," I said. "It takes me a minute."
He offered his arm. I used it. My knee was awkward, and I made the noise I usually save for a crushed pelvis. He looked alarmed.
"That one's real," I told him.
He didn't let go.
We went at my speed. It was a dreadful speed. I made him go at it.