As I was sitting in a bath of steaming hot water earlier, soothing myself with a soap that smelled like stargazer lilies, I remembered something and I sat weeping in the cloud of steam, hot tears dripping into hot water. Blessed memory.
I’m thinking back four months. The Hay festival was in full swing nd the market town was crowded with journalists and writers and critics, all looking the part. A stall just below the castle was selling barely passable Vietnamese food. Stirfried whatever. Roger was down from London and staying with us, very urbane and a littke condescending at moments. Another friend’s young daughter and her friends from York university were having lunch with us and we all sat precariously balanced on stools under a canopy and giggling infectiously, spooning up clumpy rice and dull strips of carrot.
Then S saw Richard, the man who turned this village into a booktown. Richard was all alone and fussing with callipers, all by himself at a table near the entrance to the grassy terrace. S asked him over, and as he staggered towards us, Roger muttered,’S is like a fucking saint, I can’t stand this. So embarrassing.’
Richard has been severely incapacitated by a stroke. He had ordered a meat burger and half masticated burger mince fell out of the side of his mouth, juices dribbled down his chin. Half his face was numb and he felt nothing there. He dribbled and his speech was hard to follow. A brain tumour had been removed and he had suffered a stroke. It was hard to follow what he was saying. The students from York stopped eating and seemed to be struggling with revulsion, looking away. I smiled at Richard but he wanted to flirt with one of the students and asked for her phone number. Talked about cowboy porn being the next big thing. Demanded K’s phone number again, saying indistinctly that he had plans for her.
‘Leave out a digit,’ said S to her in his firmest tone, and Richard grinned as S wiped his mouth and chin with napkins. S wasn’t bothered at all. Roger beside me was staring into space. The students all looked down, grimacing, and waited for the ordeal to end.
That moment I loved S more than I have ever loved any man because he is one of my own people. He has compassion and doesn’t even fucking know it. I will always remember that. The way he didn’t see disability and just made Richard welcome, just went on wiping Richard’s chin as if all of us everywhere should do the same. Talking to Richard as a man behaving naughtily with young women. As if death was not waiting, as if disability was not important, as if the impaired were always and forever whole. My kind of man.
Kindness is beauty, kindness sets the world alight. Compassion is the reason we walk the shared path. S was not always kind to me but he has that beauty in him. The beauty of the male at his most human.
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