by Sue Townsend
St Luke’s was an enormous edifice, now sandwiched between Costcutters and a parade of boarded-up shops. The stained-glass windows were protected by mesh shutters and the roof shone with anti-vandal grease. Confetti had been trodden into the muddy patch of ground near the porch. Music was coming from a building round the back, ‘Red Sails in the Sunset’.
Jack and the Prime Minister picked a path through the mud and the rubbish from an upturned wheelie bin and found the church hall. The little building had the appearance of a stockade: it was barred and spiked and razor-wired. The door was locked, so they peered between the bars on the windows and saw old women and a few old men waltzing together. They were wearing sparkling dancing shoes. The women in pretty dresses, and the men in suits, shirts and ties. Their normal, everyday shoes were lined up in a row against the back wall.
Jack was surprised to find that his eyes were wet, though he had never particularly liked ‘Red Sails in the Sunset’.
A young black man wearing a dog collar and a dark suit came out of the front door of the hall; he smiled when he saw Jack and the Prime Minister, and asked in a heavy African accent, “Have you come for the dancing?”
The Prime Minister answered, “Yes.” Suddenly he longed to twirl and dip in time to the music and get away from the mud and the metal and the cold wind.
The vicar introduced himself. He was Jacob Mutumbo and he had come from Pretoria as a missionary to help the poor people of the Gumpton estate. He had been at St Luke’s for only six months, but he had made much progress: he had started the pensioners’ dance club because dancing was good for the soul and, he was sorry to say, and please don’t take offence, but the souls of the people on the Gumpton estate were damaged and needed to be repaired.
Jack took the Prime Minister in his arms to the Latin rhythms of Edmundo Ross. It was years since either of them had danced a rumba, but they moved well together and Jack was almost sorry when a wheezing old man called Ernie Napier cut in and whisked the Prime Minister away to a far corner of the hall.
Jack sat down to catch his breath and noticed that several old ladies were casting venomous looks at the Prime Minister as he rolled his hips suggestively to the hot Latin beat of ‘Guantanamera.
After Jacob Mutumbo announced a ladies’ excuse me, an elderly woman with red spangled court shoes and loose dentures asked Jack to quick-step. As they sprinted around the hall together she told Jack that when she was a little girl she had given a penny of her pocket money towards sending a missionary to Africa. “Now it’s us who needs ‘em,” she said.
Ernie Napier was showing off to the Prime Minister, executing steps and turns that he had dropped bit by bit from his dancing repertoire as old age and arthritis had crept up on him. But now, inspired by the Prime Minister’s comparative youth and flashy glamour, he pulled out all the stops and the Prime Minister, having taken the unfamiliar woman’s part and being hindered by high heels, struggled to keep up with him.
During the interval Jacob spoke to the small group about God. He made Him sound like a benevolent paterfamilias trying to keep his six-billion-strong family on the straight and narrow.
During Jacob’s homily, Ernie Napier placed his hand on the Prime Minister’s thigh and said, “I might be seventy-nine but I can still do it.”
The Prime Minister pushed his hand away and said, “You dance very well.”
Ernie put his wet mouth to the Prime Minister’s ear and wheezed. “Who’s talking about dancing? I can still do IT.”
The thought of having sexual intercourse with wheezing, slobbery Ernie Napier tightened the Prime Minister’s chest and made his palms sweat. He signalled to Jack that he’d like to leave now, but when he stood up his head swam and he sank slowly to the floor.
Pensioners crowded around him, suffocating him with the smell of old clothing and mothballs. He couldn’t get enough air into his lungs and felt a rising panic together with a dull pain in his chest. A vision of the Queen with a Hitler moustache came to him. “I’m dying,” he thought, and closed his eyes.
The ambulance took well over its recommended guideline time to arrive and the paramedics were on the defensive—blaming the anti-joy-ride barricades and their computerised call-out system for the delay.
Jack had moved the Prime Minister into the recovery position; with one hip thrust out and an arm above his head, he looked as though he was posing for a fully clothed version of Readers’ Wives.
Ernie Napier broke down in tears after the ambulance had gone and confessed to the vicar that he was to blame for his dancing partner’s collapse. “I brought sex into the conversation,” he wept.
Jacob comforted Ernie by saying that God enjoyed sex himself and that he mustn’t take the blame. When Ernie was changing out of his dancing shoes he wondered who God had sex with. It was a question that was to keep him awake for most of the night.
Jack had agreed not to contact Alexander McPherson except in the case of a life-or-death matter and now, as he sat in Ali’s taxi following the ambulance carrying the stricken Prime Minister to hospital, he thought that this constituted an emergency. He phoned Alexander McPherson and reached him immediately on the designated number.
“McPherson here.”
“It’s Jack. Edwina’s in an ambulance on his⁄her way to hospital.”
“Bollocking Jesus! What’s up with him⁄her?”
“The paramedics are treating him⁄her for a heart attack.”
“Is he I she fighting for breath, sweating, pain in chest and left arm, pins and needles, feels faint, high blood pressure?”
“Yes,” answered Jack.—“Jack, he’s hyperventilating. He’s always at it. The last time was just before he spoke to Congress last month. Bush’s cardiologist checked him out; he was A-1 all round. What was he doing just before he…”
“Dancing the rumba with a pensioner called Ernie.” Jack couldn’t resist adding, “He⁄she’s in a Marilyn Monroe get-up now.” He was rewarded by a rare sound—Alexander McPherson laughing.
“We’re almost at accident and emergency. Shall I ring later?”
“Yeah, keep me posted.” He then did a not-too-bad imitation of Marilyn Monroe and sang breathily, “Ooo shooby doo.”
It was Jack’s turn to laugh, which caused Ali to look at him in puzzlement. If it was his missis who was being taken to hospital in an ambulance wearing an oxygen thingy he wouldn’t be laughing, he’d be shitting himself and calling all his relations to come to the hospital and praying, innit. He sometimes wondered if the English felt things like other people. His own kids had been born in England and he had noticed that when their rabbit had died from the cold they hadn’t cried for long, nor, as far as he knew, had they mentioned Flopsy’s name ever again.
Jack paid Ali what was shown on the meter plus a twenty per cent tip. He also advised Ali to mend his left brake-light.
Ali wrote his phone number on the back of the receipt and told Jack that he would be welcome to come to his house and meet his missis and kids.
Before Jack got out of the taxi Ali said, “Allah is looking out for your missis, innit, even though she ain’t a Muslim.”
Jack thanked him and got out of the car.
The Prime Minister lay on the hard narrow bed in the back of the ambulance and listened to an argument about trolleys between the paramedics and another unseen person. Every now and again somebody smelling of cigarettes and aftershave would bend over him and murmur, “Keep taking long deep breaths, Edwina.”
The Prime Minister liked the smell of the oxygen and the feel of the mask. It was absolutely marvellous to be ordered about and told not to move. A glorious languor overcame him and he slept aware that, given his status as a bona fide patient, he was absolved for at least twenty-four hours from having an opinion, making a decision, issuing a statement about anything at all.
Jack was surprised to find that the Prime Minister was still in the ambulance; he had expected him to be somewhere inside the accident and emergency department being attend
ed to by doctors. It was explained to him that no trolleys were available, and until one became free the patient would be better off where ‘she’ was.
Jack noticed the inference that the gender of Edwina was questionable and wasn’t surprised. The Prime Minister’s beard was visible under the transparent plastic mask, his lipstick had worn off and his feet without the high heels looked decidedly masculine, especially the hairy big toes.
Jack asked, “Can’t you get a doctor to come out here?”
And was told that there was a motorcyclist in resuss and that a man with the end of a vacuum-cleaner suction pipe stuck to his penis had gone berserk in the minor-injury department when the doctor informed him that his wife as next of kin would have to be told he was there.
Jack said, “So the whole department’s ground to a halt, has it?”
He left the back of the ambulance and went to look for a trolley. He pushed through a set of double doors and entered another world—the waiting area of the accident and emergency department.
It was a large, windowless room lit by banks of fluorescent lights into which came the accident-prone, the clumsy, the unfortunate and the innocent. They brought their fractures, scalds, lacerations, sprains, cuts, dull aches, constipations, vomiting, high temperatures, nose bleeds, fits, drug overdoses and listless babies to this room. They had fallen off ladders or roofs, drank bleach or whiskey or nothing. They had tipped boiling water on to their feet and trodden on broken bottles or had stumbled on pieces of Lego and fallen downstairs. Their backs had gone and they had forgotten to take the contraceptive pill and their babies had choked on various small objects. They had been sent by their GPs and telephone help-lines, and none save the occasional sufferer from Munchausen syndrome wanted to be there.
The door hinges gave an agonising piercing squeak that set Jack’s teeth on edge.
A large glass cubicle with a sign saying ‘Reception’ held three women in grey uniforms. A short queue stood in front of each window. A room at one end of the waiting area displayed a sign saying ‘Assessment Nurse’ above its door. Rows of silent people sat waiting and listening to the confidential information being bellowed through the intercom which connected the reception desk to the waiting room.
While Jack waited to request a trolley he read a scrawled notice written on a white board with what looked like a black crayon.
Welcome to the Casualty Department
Waiting times:
Children 2 hours
Minor injuries 2 hours
Major injuries 2 hours
He felt insulted—not by the message, though that was worrying, but by the medium. He didn’t expect the hospital to employ a calligrapher—though there were enough notices to keep one busy—but surely a little more time and care with the lettering on the notice would give patients and their companions confidence that similar standards prevailed throughout the hospital?
A plump woman, two in front of Jack, was giving her name and date of birth. Emily Farnham, four, five, fifty-three. The intercom whined and the people in the waiting room covered their ears against the banshee-like noise.
“I fell off a horse. I should have let go of the reins but. I think I’ve broken my ankle.”
“Take a seat, the assessment nurse will see you as soon as she can.”
Emily looked round for a seat and hopped to it unassisted. The man in front of Jack held up his hand. Blood seeped through a white pillowslip wrapped around it. He was in shock and struggled to remember his name and date of birth.
“Is anybody with you?” shouted the receptionist. Feedback distorted her words and they were three times repeated before the man understood.
“My wife, she’s parking the car.”
Jack looked around; surely somebody would come and help the man? A woman in late-middle age pushed to the front of the counter. “I’ve got my dad in the car outside, he’s fell and hit his head. He keeps being sick. He’s eighty and he’s a diabetic. I can’t move him, can somebody come?” The receptionist said, “I’m dealing with this gentleman.”
“But he’s eighty. He’s a diabetic. He’s hit his head. He keeps being sick.”
“You’ll have to get him out of the car,” said the receptionist.
“He’s a big man. I can’t move him,” she replied.
“You should have called an ambulance,” the receptionist said.
The woman released hours of tension and screamed, “I’ve been waiting for an ambulance for five and a half hours!” She turned away from the counter and said to the man with the bleeding hand, “I’ve left the engine running and I’m parked in the ambulance bay.”
He answered, “I’ve cut the top of a finger off. I brought it with me. It’s in a little plastic bag in my pocket.”
Jack was a strong man but he struggled under the weight of the ex-sergeant major Philip Doughty as he carried the old man from the little Fiat car into the waiting area. Once inside the door he laid Mr Doughty across five plastic seats because there was nowhere else to lay him. The old man’s daughter took off her coat and folded it to make a pillow for her father’s head.
Jack pushed angrily through a door marked ‘No Entry’ and found himself in a corridor lined on both sides with sick people on trolleys; some were on intravenous drips, others on heart monitors.
A young man in motorcycle leathers lay pale, and still with his head between two immobilising blocks. His red helmet had been placed between his feet. An old woman with white hair called out to Jack as he passed by: “Help me, son, they’re trying to kill me!”
Jack prowled the corridors looking for an emergency trolley or an empty cubicle. Eventually he came to a door marked ‘Overnight Assessment’; not knowing what else to do, he asked the sweet-faced girl who appeared to be in charge of the department for help. There were two phones ringing, each with a different tone. The girl told Jack that this was a quiet day, and that she was sure a couple of trolleys would become free soon.
Jack left the department and continued to search the corridors. He saw an empty office and went inside and grabbed a pile of papers. He knew that almost anybody could go anywhere providing they looked as though they knew where they were going and had a pile of documents in their hands. He took off his jacket and rolled up his shirt-sleeves and was able to roam where he pleased.
In the empty X-ray room he found two trolleys and a porter and commandeered all three. Jack was now Dr Jack Sprat and within minutes the Prime Minister and ex-sergeant major Doughty were lying in a corridor waiting to be seen by a qualified doctor.
The Prime Minister slept fitfully; he was disturbed by strange dreams. The Queen was making a speech at Nuremberg, phalanxes of golden-haired youths looking remarkably like Prince Philip when young were chanting ‘Mein Führer. He woke gasping for air and it was some time before Jack could calm him down and reassure him that he wasn’t dying and that a doctor would see him soon.
Early evening came and went and by the time night fell camaraderie had sprung up between the friends and relations of the trolley patients. Adversity had revealed to them basic nursing skills that they had not known they possessed.
At midnight friends of the motorcyclist went out and returned with boxes of Domino’s pizza, which they distributed to those able to eat. The Prime Minister was given a slice of Napoli thin ‘n’ crusty. A small piece of pepperoni fell from his mouth and lodged on one of the suction pads that were helping to monitor his heart.
Jack removed the crumb and wiped round the Prime Minister’s chin with a tissue given by the woman who had fallen from a horse. He then took a lipstick from the Prime Minister’s handbag and asked him to repair his lips.
Dr Singh was not as interested as his colleagues were in the appearance of the man in the blonde wig and women’s underclothes. He came from Rajistan and had been taken to Pushkar where a troupe of transvestites—beautiful, exquisitely dressed creatures—had danced for the delight of the male crowd. He was almost sure that this poor chap—who badly needed a sha
ve and whose blonde wig kept slipping to the right—had a sound enough heart, but even so he was sorry that he had to detach the heart monitor from him and give it to another patient, an older man with angina whose need was probably greater.
The man who called himself Edwina had tried to stop the nurse from detaching the rubber pads, and had become hysterical and shouted that he had paid into the National Insurance scheme all his life and that he was entitled to have a heart monitor of his own for longer than a paltry ten minutes. He was the Prime Minister and if he died the hospital would be sorry because Malcolm Black, the Chancellor, was convinced that the NHS had more than enough resources but had no idea how to manage itself. Dr Singh had to smile at the poor fellow; he was obviously suffering from an acute-anxiety neurosis. He would keep him in overnight and let the psychiatrist see him in the morning.
∨ Number Ten ∧
TWELVE
At three a.m. the Prime Minister was admitted to Bevan observation ward. Jack helped an exhausted junior doctor to fill in an admission form then settled back in an armchair to watch over the Prime Minister as he drifted in and out of sleep. It was not quite bedlam on the ward—tickets could not have been sold to gawp at the patients—but there was constant noise and disturbance. Ex-sergeant major Doughty was in the bed opposite and he cried out constantly, thinking himself back in a pontoon about to land on a Normandy beach.
A woman in the next bay said, “Nurse, nurse, nurse!” But none of the angels came.
The suction-pipe man in the next bed put his head under the blankets and cried because of the pain and humiliation and the awful certainty that his wife would surely leave him now. He told Jack it was the second time this year that he had ‘fallen’ on to a suction pipe with his trousers round his ankles after the dog had accidentally turned the vacuum cleaner on in the bedroom. It stretched incredulity; even he had to admit that.
Jack was glad when the ward lights were turned on at six o’clock sharp. The Prime Minister woke and said that he felt much better, but he looked a fright. Jack passed him a lipstick and went in search of a razor.