Number 10

by Sue Townsend

  The Prime Minister lay back against his pillows and watched a dowdy woman in an ill-fitting nylon overall pushing a rancid mop along the middle of the ward floor.

  Ex-sergeant major Doughty shouted, “You should clean under the bed, that’s where the germs are!”

  Jack bought a bag of Bic razors from the poorly stocked hospital shop, and then went outside to phone Ali on his mobile. Their bags were still at the hotel, and he asked Ali to pick them up and deliver them to the hospital, Bevan ward. Ali said he would do it as soon as he could, but he had to go to the mosque first.

  When Jack returned to the ward, he found the Prime Minister talking to the wretched-looking woman with the mop.

  “Jack, this is Pat, she’s been telling me about her impossible workload. She has to clean two wards all by herself in only three hours. Before they privatised the cleaning service, there were two of them on each ward and they had pride in their work and could even help the nurses. I’ll have to talk to the Department of Health when we get back.”

  After he had shaved the Prime Minister, Jack arranged some flowers in a vase for a skeletal old woman who had only a few wisps of white hair on her pink head. “Have you been in here long?” Jack asked politely.

  “Five weeks,” she said in a voice that resembled a child’s.

  “I’m a bed-blocker—that’s what the doctor said when he last came to see me. He stood at the end of the bed and said to his students, “Mrs Alcott is a bed-blocker.” What does that mean?”

  Jack stuffed the last carnation into a vase and said he didn’t know, but then the Prime Minister called out, “It means you can’t be discharged because there’s nobody at home to take care of you.”

  “Yeah, because the bleeding government’s closed all the nursing homes to save a few bob,” said a coarse-looking woman in a tartan pyjama suit.

  The ward gave the appearance of being busy and efficient, but below the surface confusion reigned. Notes were lost, drugs were given to the wrong people, discharge letters went unwritten and a bouquet of flowers was delivered to the bed of a person who had died two days before. Two people called Smith were prepared for one operation; a diabetic was served a bowl of Kellogg’s Sugar Puffs and given sugar in his tea. A patient with ‘Nil by mouth’ above her bed was asked what she would like for lunch. Meanwhile nurses bustled about busily, though with a slightly martyred air.

  Doctors came and went on their rounds, but the only one who stopped to see the Prime Minister was a quietly spoken psychiatrist who had trained in Zagreb.

  His report would read that he had attended at the bedside of a male person who called himself Edwina St Clare. He was struck by ‘Edwina’s’ ever-present smile. “He smiled fixedly throughout our conversation, which lasted an hour This ‘Handicapped Smile’, as named by Valerie Sinason the noted psychotherapist, in a recent paper, is where an anxious studied grin is used as a defence mechanism.”

  “When I asked Ms St Clare if she had any particular worries she said, ‘Yes, I have worries’.”

  The report continued:

  I asked her to list a few of her worries and she spoke for a full twenty minutes. I have transcribed from the tape only some of those on her list, as time restrictions prevent me from reproducing them in full: the Gaza Strip, electoral reform, fox-hunting, Rail-Track, the Social Exclusion Unit, the Parliamentary Privileges Committee, the last cover of Private Eye, the Race Relations Act, the Royal Ulster Constabulary, the former Yugoslavia, the Prevention of Terrorism Act, child poverty, the housing crisis for essential public-service workers, illegal immigration, September the eleventh, constitutional reform, ethnic foreign policy, genetically modified crops, devolution, the tobacco-advertising ban, global warming, the exchange-rate mechanisation, the next G8 Summit, Prime Minister’s Questions, Osama Bin Laden, the Euro, Kashmir, the Royal finances, cod quotas and the European Fishing Policy, Air Traffic Control, the national football stadium, Al-Qu’eda, unemployment in the northeast, Robert Mugabe, Saudi Arabia, the reintroduction of foot and mouth, Rupert Murdoch, rogue asteroids, the scarcity of National Health dentists, dead dolphins on British beaches, his compulsion to wrap Bronco toilet paper around his penis, the Crown Prosecution Service, Cornish nationalists, the Financial Services Authority, street crime, identity cards (should they be called Entitlement Cards?), Bush, Iran, Iraq and Star Wars.

  I attempted to comfort ‘Edwina’ by reassuring her that these were not her concerns but rather the government’s, and that no one person could be expected to have the knowledge or expertise on so many disparate issues. I joked that even God would have His work cut out to keep up with such an extensive list. ‘Edwina’ became agitated at this point and said, “God is a very able deity and I want to make it absolutely clear that He has my full support.”

  He shows a fear of differentiation and a marked preference for the ill defined—the androgynous. When I asked him to name his favourite flower he replied, “Spring and summer flowers.” When asked if he had a favourite rock band, his answer was, “The bands that everybody likes.” Asked to name a favourite book, he replied, “The classics.” He is pathologically unable to commit to an opinion for fear of displeasing the questioner, in this case me. I asked him about his childhood. He said, “I want to make it absolutely clear that I had a hugely enjoyable childhood.” At this point he began to cry.

  Mr Jack Sprat, ‘Edwina’s’ companion⁄partner, confirmed that ‘Edwina’ had been under an enormous strain for many years. I suggested to Mr Sprat that ‘Edwina’ would undoubtedly benefit from a holiday. Mr Sprat asked if ‘Edwina’ would need any treatment. I said that I would let him know.

  ♦

  It was difficult for the patients to distinguish one rank of nurse from another. The Prime Minister committed a major faux pas when he asked a nurse with an MA distinction to straighten his pillows.

  Jack got sick of waiting for somebody in authority to write a discharge letter and was concerned that the psychiatrist might return and keep the Prime Minister in. At four o’clock in the afternoon he disobeyed hospital rules and used his mobile phone on the ward to contact Ali and ask him to meet them at the main entrance and take them to a country-house hotel. He thought the Prime Minister would benefit from somewhere quiet where he could convalesce.

  Ali said he knew the very place—he had once taken a star from Emmerdale there after a ‘domestic’ with her husband. It was miles from anywhere, and it used to be a loony bin.

  Jack said, “It sounds perfect.”

  ♦

  Morgan Clare removed the plain cover and introduced the tape to the slot in the video machine. It slid in easily and after a few moments began to play. Morgan glanced at the door to his bedroom. Should he lock it or would a locked door imply that he was ashamed of what he was about to watch? He knew his parents would disapprove but he was entitled to make his own mind up about such things, wasn’t he?

  During the build up to the main attraction Morgan was aware of a raw excitement building up inside him. His breath was coming fast and his legs felt as though they wouldn’t support him if he stood up. The phrase ‘weak with desire’ came into his mind; he now knew what it meant.

  Malcolm Black, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, had slipped the tape to him yesterday: “Keep it out of the way of your mother, lad.”

  Morgan knew a bit about it, of course. There had been a few lessons at school—even his grandfather Percy had been involved at one time, though the family didn’t talk about that scandalous episode. So it was time to discover for himself. But why did he feel so guilty?

  He crept closer to the television set. The film was in black and white and some of the images were indistinct.

  The introduction to the serious hard-core stuff tormented Morgan, but he knew he’d probably have to sit through a lot of tame crap before the really astounding bits appeared.

  Morgan got up and slid the bolt across the door. He knew he was breaking one of the rules of the house: Mum and Dad were not keen on privacy; so
metimes Morgan thought they were afraid to be alone.

  He took up his place in front of the screen again and was soon rewarded with the object of his adoration, even love. Aneurin Bevan was addressing a Labour Party Conference at Blackpool and entertaining and educating a vast hall full of delegates. Morgan drank in the cadences of his beloved’s voice and the wit and wisdom of his words. He was mesmerised by Mr Bevan’s passionate championing of the working class and his scathing contempt for the Tories.

  Somebody rattled the outside doorknob then his mother shouted, “Morgan, it’s me. Mum. Why is your door locked?”

  Morgan picked up the remote and stopped the video, then moved quickly to the door to let Adele in. She hardly ever came to his room—she disliked the musky smell that teenage boys exuded, and she hated the way they kept their windows and curtains closed. Morgan’s room reminded her of visiting the souk, but without the pleasure of buying pretty oriental things.

  “What were you doing in here?”

  When he didn’t answer she said, “It’s the wrong time of day to be masturbating, Morgan. You haven’t done your homework yet, have you?”

  “I’ve been working on my project,” he mumbled. He hated it when she went on about masturbation. In his opinion she had an unhealthy obsession with it, encouraged it, even, as though it were a healthy pastime like cricket or tennis.

  Morgan worried about his mother. She was always doing things. She never sat still. He had caught her yesterday breast-feeding Poppy at the same time as she was crouched at a table correcting the proofs of her new book.

  She looked around the room suspiciously; she would have made a good CID officer, he thought. Suddenly she picked up the remote and pressed play. Aneurin’s beautiful head appeared on the screen and his voice filled the room. “The language of priorities is the religion of socialism.”

  Adele ejected the video and said in a hurt, quiet voice, “Where did you get it?”

  Morgan remained silent.

  Adele said, “You’re betraying everything your father stands for. Do you want us to go back to the bad old days of Old Labour with the unions holding us all to ransom, and the rubbish and the dead piling up in the streets?”

  Morgan didn’t know what his mother was going on about. What was a bit of litter in the streets compared to the glorious ideals that Mr Bevan and his mate Mr Beveridge had spoken of in the olden days?

  After Adele had left the room, taking the video with her, Morgan lay on his bed and gave himself up to glories of self-pity. He had become a sort of martyr of the left, he thought, and was being punished for his political beliefs. He didn’t care if he never got the Nike trainers; he would go to school barefoot if it came to it, just as children had in Victorian times until the labour movement gave them shoes.

  ♦

  Estelle heard the shouting coming from Morgan’s room, something about ‘the people’ and ‘the means of production’. Morgan was turning into a total dork, she thought; he had no idea who was in the Big Brother House or who was in the MTV charts. He was Morgan no-mates. She heard her mother crying and wanted to go next door and tell her to have a rest, to stop being a career woman for a few days.

  Estelle didn’t want to have a career. She might do a job for a few years—until she had her first baby—but it would be one of those jobs that you could walk away from at the end of your shift and not have to worry about. She might be a plumber, or a painter and decorator—there was supposed to be a skills shortage, wasn’t there? Estelle thought careers only made women unhappy. She had seen it with her own eyes. Career women never had enough time to do anything properly. Her mother called it multitasking but all that meant was running around doing five things at once before panicking and shouting that you were going to be late for a meeting.

  It meant saying to your children, “Not now.” And sometimes crying when you couldn’t find your stupid purse and keys. Estelle wasn’t fooled by the part-baked bread that Mum sometimes put in the oven. It smelled nice while it was cooking but it wasn’t real home-made bread.

  Dad’s career was worse, of course. It had made Estelle a prisoner. She was like a princess in a tower except that she didn’t have long hair because Mum said short hair was quicker to do in the morning. Dad pretended to be interested in what she was doing but Estelle could tell that he was only half listening. She wanted to be the most important thing in his life. But when she complained to him, he said, “We all have to make sacrifices, Estelle.”

  ∨ Number Ten ∧

  THIRTEEN

  That morning Alexander McPherson had called a meeting to discuss the management of the crisis that the press had already dubbed ‘Barry’s Leg’. Present were McPherson; Ron Phillpot, the Deputy Prime Minister; the Chancellor, Malcolm Black; David Samuelson; the head of MI5, Sir Niall Conlon; and Adele’s doctor, Lucinda Friedman.

  Dr Friedman had landed at the London City airport only an hour earlier before the meeting was scheduled to begin. Alexander had sent a private jet to bring her back from Skýros, a Greek island that was also conveniently a NATO base. It was McPherson’s personal opinion that Adele had been going mad in public for the past three days. Even her clothes were mad. That morning she had been wearing what he thought looked like a bollocking clown suit, for Christ’s sake. All she needed was an exploding car and she could get a job in the Moscow State Circus.

  On her arrival at Number Ten Dr Friedman had gone upstairs to Adele’s bedroom and had found her in bed in the foetal position with her hands over her ears. She quickly established that Adele had stopped taking her medication and that the voices were forecasting Eddy’s downfall.

  “Malcolm Black was behind it all,” Adele told Dr Friedman. He was apparently beaming messages through the party wall that linked Number Ten to Number Eleven. He had demonic powers and was responsible for the floods, the rail crashes and the foot-and-mouth outbreak that had plagued the land in recent years. Did Lucinda realise that Eddy was the new Messiah? He was much better qualified for the job than Jesus had been, Adele had said, combatively. “And Eddy would not have allowed himself to be crucified before his work on earth was finished, either. He would have come to some sort of agreement with Pilate just as he had done with the Liberal Democrats.”

  When Dr Friedman remarked that, so far, she thought the Chancellor had done remarkably well to keep inflation so low, Adele had whispered, “But don’t you see, Lucinda, he’s lulling us into a false sense of security. But next time you see him, look into his eyes and see the flames of Hell burning within them.”

  Dr Friedman said wearily, “Are you telling me he’s the Devil, Adele? Should I also be looking out for horns and cloven hooves?”

  Adele had laughed. “We live in a post-modern age, Lucinda. The Devil is in the detail and Malcolm Black is obsessed with detail.”

  Such religious babble was all too familiar to Dr Friedman. She thought that her profession ought to be grateful to the established religions for providing them with a constant supply of anguished clients.

  She stood over Adele and made her swallow a large dose of a new psychotropic drug. Before she left the room she asked Adele, “Does Eddy think he’s the new Messiah?”

  Adele said angrily, “Would I have married a lesser man?”

  Lucinda went downstairs and joined the meeting. She informed the distinguished company sitting round the cabinet table that Adele had suffered a psychotic episode, but that she had started her on a new drug regime and was confident that within a week or two Adele would be more or less back to her normal self.

  “More or less?” said David Samuelson.

  “She could gain a massive amount of weight,” said Lucinda. “It’s one of the side effects.”

  “How massive?” asked Samuelson.

  Lucinda said, “Patients have been known to balloon up to twenty-three stone in a very short time.”

  Alexander McPherson said, “It could be good for Ed, to have a fat wife. The average woman in Britain takes a size 16.”

 
; Ron Phillpot screwed up his pugnacious face and shouted, “She’ll be a bleedin’ liability until the drugs take ‘old. She can’t be allowed out attending the funeral of a leg, can she?”

  Phillpot flattered himself that he was a pragmatist.

  “Don’t worry,” murmured Sir Niall Conlon. “I’ll take care of Barry’s leg.”

  Malcolm Black, aware of the power of silence, said nothing.

  Lucinda said, “She’ll sleep for a few hours, but somebody should be with her when she wakes. Does she have any friends?”

  “Nobody we can trust,” muttered Alexander McPherson. “And Wendy’s at the hospital with bloody Barry.”

  Lucinda sighed and said, “Oh dear, and I was so enjoying my holiday. I’ll grab a few hours’ sleep and I’ll be here when she wakes up.”

  Lucinda excused herself and left.

  After she’d gone the men relaxed.

  Phillpot said, “The worst thing a politician can do is to marry a clever wife. My wife’s as thick as shit but she looks good on my arm at constituency functions and she keeps me in clean shirts. And as far as I know she hasn’t got any opinions about anything, let alone the sanctity or otherwise of extramural body parts.”

  Malcolm Black murmured, “I think you must mean extraneous body parts.”

  Samuelson said, “Might this be a good time to change the Party name, I wonder?”

  “To what?” scowled Phillpot.

  Samuelson formed a pitched roof with his fingers. “It’s been in front of us all the time,” he said. “It represents gaiety, fun, the loosening of one’s inhibitions, celebration, and it also means a group of people united in a cause.”

  It was Sir Niall Conlon who supplied the words. “Is this the Party Party?” he said. “It was all over MI5 this morning; you really should be more careful with your emails, Mr Samuelson. We live in a time post-privacy.”

  Ron Phillpot laughed, showing two rows of mean little teeth. “So you want to call it the Party Party, do you?”