Fifty-Minute Hour

by Wendy Perriam

  ‘Oh, no – no, really.’ Mary looked embarrassed, started fumbling for her purse.

  ‘I insist.’ He paid for the two cups of tea (polystyrene cups, no saucers, plastic spoons), her Aero and a Lion Bar. He liked the picture on its wrapper of powerful mane and strong white sharp incisors. His Father had lost neither mane nor teeth.

  All the tables were now crowded with their classmates, though again the word was wrong. Few seemed really matey, most still sullen silent, communing with their currants or sorting through their notes. And not a soul had said hallo to Mary, despite her month’s attendance. He was much relieved by that, steered her to the far end of the room, where he put the plastic tray down on a sort of jutting ledge thing which should have been a windowsill, except the canteen had no windows. (Perhaps they’d been a casualty in the recent swingeing cuts. Glass and china cut, as well as courses.)

  ‘D’you live nearby?’ asked Mary, as he passed her the sugar which was damp in patches like the floor, and streaked brown with coffee drips.

  ‘No. Er … Woodford.’ It sounded slightly more acceptable than Upminster, and definitely more rural. Upminster’s only claim to fame was its position as last station on the District Line at its unfashionable east end. The last station on most tube lines seemed invariably down-market, except for Wimbledon and Richmond, and maybe Amersham.

  ‘Ah, quite a long way out.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Like me.’

  She lived in Woodford? God, no! He’d never been there in his life, and now she’d ask him if he knew the Smiths or Joneses, or that marvellous little restaurant in the High Street which …

  ‘We live in Walton – well, it’s almost Weybridge, actually – a sort of no-man’s-land between the two.’

  ‘Oh, really?’ He put his Lion Bar down, choking on that ‘we’. He hadn’t even thought to check her ring. He checked it now: a wide one – thick, expensive – yoking her to someone solid, wealthy. She could be widowed, though. ‘We’ needn’t mean a husband. There were endless permutations, enough for several lists – a son, a dog, a daughter, a mother, father, sister, brother, aunt, a workmate or companion, or all of them together. Perhaps she was divorced, which might explain the tears. She’d come straight from her solicitor, or from a cruel and stormy meeting with her ‘ex’. He must keep talking, mustn’t lose her between the nisi and the absolute. She was already glancing round, would be straying any second, joining that big tall man by the radiator, or the dark one with that daunting college scarf.

  ‘Did you … um … find it hard to choose the class?’ he asked.

  ‘Hard?’

  ‘Well, I mean, there’s such an enormous choice. Not just all the sciences, but languages and arts and crafts and all the different histories and philosophy and music and keep-fit and archaeology …’ He forced himself to stop. John-Paul had told him many times that his lists were counterproductive, since not only did they squander great reserves of time and energy, they also put his emotional life in a straitjacket.

  ‘Well, my husband chose it, actually. I was rather keen on “Gateaux and Patisseries”, but he said I ought to stretch myself, and also try a London class, instead of always local ones, which he said aren’t half as good.’

  Husband! Bryan jabbed his plastic spoon against the ledge, watched it split in three, then snapped each third into splinters. Perhaps the husband had lost interest, and was insisting on the class so he could keep that evening free for someone else; had probably only suggested London so he could woo a local woman without Mary running into them. Silence loomed and jarred again, though it wasn’t very silent in his head. He could hear the clash of sword blades as he and Mary’s husband duelled in the Vienna Woods; could hear his rival’s breathing, agonised and laboured, the harsh cry of a vulture, as steel clanged angry steel. Mary cleared her throat, kept glancing at him nervously, as if hoping he would speak. He couldn’t speak and fight. At last, she spoke herself.

  ‘I didn’t realise there’d be so much of the science. I mean, I thought we’d have more of the “Society”, but he hasn’t even mentioned that, not in four whole weeks. I’m not criticising – please don’t get me wrong. He’s obviously quite brilliant and …’ Her voice tailed off. Bryan didn’t help her out. He had fallen to one knee to inspect his rival’s wound, blood sticky on his fingers, the dawn mist closing in. She took a bite of Aero, brushed chocolate crumbs from lips and lap before spilling out a few more nervous words.

  ‘I’m not that keen on London. It’s so noisy, isn’t it? But this centre was convenient, especially on a Friday. I … er … have to see a doctor every week. I’m having … treatment, actually, and the place I go to is only round the corner, so …’

  Bryan streaked from the Vienna Woods back to the canteen. Mary’s voice was breaking, one hand clenched, knuckles almost white as she fought to hold the tears back. So that’s why she was crying earlier on. She must have something really serious – maybe even cancer. His aunt had died of cancer, and his boss’s chauffeur’s wife. No wonder she was stumbling on her words. Cancer was a word you couldn’t say, nobody could say, just skirted round in terror or embarrassment. ‘Treatment’ would mean that ghastly radiation, or drugs which made your hair fall out, or even a major operation. They’d probably just informed her that the tumour wasn’t shrinking, or they’d discovered secondaries. How brave she was to come on to the class, not to let his Father down when her life was in the balance.

  She’d taken off her jacket now and he could see several small but livid marks blistered on her forearm. Was that part of her treatment, some tiny but malignant growths they’d cauterised this very afternoon? He knew nothing about cancer – save it killed. Those bum marks on her hands – they weren’t to do with oven-gloves or cookers, but had been inflicted by some doctor in a bid to stave off death. He glanced down at her remaining stub of Aero, its texture of brown holes, peered at it in horror as he recognised the fabric of the universe. Spacetime was like that – he’d just read it in the books – a complex labyrinth of holes and tunnels, exploding bubbles, frothy foam-like structures collapsing on themselves. Chaos in a chocolate bar – and not just Aero. Wasn’t Cadbury’s Chocolate Flake every bit as threatening, paralleling the crumbling microworld where nothing was substantial, but all solidities and certainties flaked away to nothing?

  He closed his eyes against the baneful images, tried to focus on the counter of the sweet-shop near his office. Why were all those chocolate bars called after the stars – Galaxy, and Milky Way, and even solid Mars Bars, named for a planet which was arid as a desert, dark and cold and barren, hostile to all life? Astronomy was even worse than physics – all those huge and dwarfing numbers where a million million was nothing but a sneeze. What had one book said – that the nearest – yes, the nearest star to the sun was a mere thirty thousand billion miles away? He couldn’t grasp distances like that. He could judge a hundred yards (which was his front gate to the postbox, or his office to the sweet-shop), but light-years left him baffled – and horribly afraid.

  He looked up apprehensively as nervous footsteps tap-tapped through the door. Skerwin – late again – tripping on a bucket and being refused a tea or coffee, as they’d just closed the till and turned off the hot water. He scuffed back to the door again, pausing at their table.

  ‘You’re a new student, aren’t you? I don’t think I’ve seen your face before. Nice to meet you, anyway. I’m Skerwin – Bertram Skerwin. They said someone new was joining, but I thought it was a lady. “Miss Pain”, I’ve got down here. Oh, dear!’ Skerwin jerked his coat away, retrieved its drooping sleeve, which had been dangling in Bryan’s coffee and was now dripping down his neck. He threw a clutch of ‘Sorrys’ on the table, beat a swift retreat. Bryan leapt up to his feet, came face to face with Mary who had already kicked her chair back, and was staring at him, shaken, her face creased in sheer bewilderment.

  ‘But I thought you said …’

  ‘Look, he is my Father, honestly. He just doesn�
�t realise yet. We’ve never met, you see. It’s slightly complicated. Let me try to …’

  No good, no good at all. Mary was already through the door, shrugging back her jacket with a mixture of distaste and almost fear. He picked up her Aero and its cast-off paper wrapper. Should he save them as a relic to remind himself he’d once had a real woman, sat next to her for forty-one whole minutes (and opposite for ten), exchanged names, addresses, shared a meal – well, two half-bars of chocolate? No. Best forget it, destroy all evidence. He crumpled up the wrapper, bit into the Aero, heard the crash of world on world colliding as he was punctured like a bubble, sucked down and down into the biggest of brown holes.

  Chapter Seven

  ‘Yes?’ the buzzer purrs, sounding slightly more excitable than usual.

  I swallow, find my own voice, press closer to the door, to shelter from the vicious grabbing rain. (I don’t know why it always rains the days I see John-Paul. He’d probably try to analyse it, suggest that perhaps I needed rain, as I appear to need his anger or my illnesses, as just another variation of self-punishment. Nice to think my psyche can affect national annual rainfall.) ‘It’s Nial,’ I say. ‘Wet through.’

  ‘Could you wait downstairs a moment, please.’

  ‘Wait? But …’ I’ve waited two eternities since three p. m. last Thursday. It’s now Monday – two-eleven – a whole minute past my time.

  ‘Come in and close the door, but just take a seat down there until I call you. Right?’

  No, it isn’t right, though my swearword is cut off as the intercom upstairs is disconnected. I slam the door behind me, spurn the three hard chairs, just slump against the wall of the dank and chilly lobby, where the stone is undisguised – no furnishings, no carpet, nothing much at all on the ground floor of the tower save the chairs themselves, an antique brass umbrella-stand, and a heavy wooden door which says ‘TOILET, OUT OF ORDER’. That toilet’s been dysfunctional (to use one of John-Paul’s words) for at least a month or more. It makes me really mad. Patients need a toilet. Supposing they’re caught short, or sick with nerves (as I am myself most sessions), or are suffering from a prolapse or cystitis? And anyway, it’s not a good advertisement. If he can’t sort out a ball-cock or an S-bend, what hope of curing psyches?

  I mooch towards the toilet door, realise with annoyance that a second notice has been added to the first – just ‘SORRY!’ in red capitals. Of course he isn’t sorry, or he’d get a plumber in, and that jeering exclamation mark gives the game away. ‘SORRY’s just a new sadistic twist to make us feel he cares, when he’s no intention whatsoever of providing any relief, either literal or metaphorical.

  I mount the first two steps, strain my ears so I can try to hear what’s going on upstairs. Impossible. I can’t hear anything except the usual haunting sirens, the bad temper of the wind, and the stop and start of traffic which sounds uncertain of its course in life, plagued by indecision. Not a whisper from John-Paul. What in God’s name is he doing? He’s never late – ever – never keeps a patient waiting. It’s all part of the treatment – to make you feel secure, provide order, regularity, in a treacherous shifting world. You’re not even meant to see his previous patient, nor the one who comes straight after, so you won’t suffer sibling rivalry, or feel you’re not his sole concern. Each and every patient leaves precisely on the hour, and the next one doesn’t enter till ten past. Those vital ten minutes prevent overlaps and jealousies, collusion, or vendettas (and probably give him time to have a pee. I imagine his own toilet is kept strictly operational, with only ‘PRIVATE’ on the door).

  Actually, I must confess I’ve cheated several times, hung around the stairs till ten past three, so I could murder his next patient, or at least snatch a look at him – or her. They’re mostly ‘hers’, in fact. I suppose he finds females more exciting, and can spend his breaks enjoying a quick wank after all that talk of vaginal orgasms or penis envy. I bet he’s got some woman with him now – not a patient, a mistress or a wife – fair, of course; small, of course, and loathsomely attractive. They’re screwing on the couch, have lost all track of time – my time – my overpriced (and precious) time which I’m wasting in this dungeon, where the stone smells almost fetid like some dead and rotting pond, and the walls are so thick-skinned they don’t give a damn that I’m almost crying with frustration. He mustn’t see me crying – never will, never has – not once in six months, two weeks, three days, which is how long I’ve been coming – except months and weeks mean nothing much when two minutes take so long to pass I’m just opening my royal telegram with gnarled arthritic fingers, peering at the words: ‘Congratulations, Nial. A hundred today!’ Actually, time for me is simply B. J-P. and A.J-P. – before John-Paul and after. Before I had more money, fewer problems, and masses more free time. Now I have

  John-Paul

  John-Paul

  John-Paul

  John-Paul

  John-Paul

  John-Paul

  John-Paul

  I also get more coughs and colds from my eight long walks each week, six of which seem invariably to be wet. I’ll probably get pneumonia this time, since it’s not exactly healthy to sit around in dripping clothes in the stone bowels of a tower. I check my watch again, aware I’m over-reacting, yet still horribly upset. It just seems so unfair, when he never lets us patients have a single extra second. When your fifty minutes is up, it’s up, and you’re turfed out in the cold, even if you’re sobbing and hysterical, or have just reached some vital breakthrough you’ve been struggling towards all year. A month or so ago, I worked myself into the most terrifying panic, but at three o’clock precisely I heard that cruel ‘It’s time, Nial’, and was firmly shown the door, though I was shaking and near-vomiting, and in no state to leave at all.

  The memory makes me shiver, and I start pacing round and round, not to warm me up, but because it’s vital to keep active to stop myself from crying. The thought that he’s forgotten me, or doesn’t give a damn, makes me feel quite strange – sort of faint and blank and empty, as if he’s rubbed me out or expunged me from his page with Tipp-Ex or blue pencil. I stop at the umbrella-stand, grasp its solid shoulder, envying its strength. There’s just one umbrella in it, a pathetic broken thing, all skin and bone, with torn black flesh hanging from its ribs and a curved arthritic spine. I use it as a battering ram, poke its tip between the ancient stones, gore out a shower of debris from each join. Already I feel better. I’ve got a useful task now: I’ll simply destroy the tower. The longer John-Paul screws that girl the more stones I’ll dislodge. So if she’s multi-orgasmic (like all those preening females in Masters and Johnson or Cosmo magazine, whom I always suspect of lying through their teeth), they’ll both be simply rubble by climax eight or nine.

  The dismantling doesn’t work, only makes me wretched. I don’t want John-Paul as rubble, only her. But I just can’t seem to separate them. They’re joined all along their bodies – mouth to mouth, breast to chest, groin to filthy groin. I sink down on a window-seat, ashamed at how I’ve injured the umbrella, which is scarred and scored and dirty now, as well as very sick. It looks like a dead crow, its black wings drooping, its beak split and sort of gaping. I’ve always loathed dead birds, dream about them sometimes – dead in cages, dead in butchers’ shops.

  Monday’s dead as well – drooping, nothing left of it. The days just don’t exist without John-Paul. I’ve got to see him – now – start toiling up the stairs towards his rooms, terrified of what (or who) I’ll find. I can’t bear to see the girl, or John-Paul naked, sweaty, yet if I stay down there without him then I die. There’s a sudden yell of fury, a fusillade of footsteps. I dodge swiftly back to base again as a tall man with dark stubble but a haughty fine-boned face comes scorching down towards me, screaming out obscenities. He jumps the last three stairs, crashes towards the toilet, a taunt of naked flesh revealed between his shrunken purple sweater and his low-slung denim jeans.

  ‘It’s out of order,’ I warn him, frightened he’ll throw up where
he is, from sheer rage or desperation.

  ‘So is this whole fucking place!’ he roars, as he slams out through the door, the wind and rain whirling in a moment, and a siren wailing, wailing, as if he’s planned his whole wild exit with the appropriate sound effects, even bribed the elements to help him.

  The silence seems more frightening when he’s gone. Is John-Paul cold and dead upstairs, lying in his own congealing blood? Was the man some mad intruder, or just another of his patients, a psychotic dangerous one? I suddenly, feel threatened. My rival siblings aren’t mere virgin Marys, but violent psychopaths. I sag against the toilet door, wish I could creep in there, splash my face, dry my clothes, escape from all the blood and mess and mayhem. ‘Nial,’ says a voice – his voice – disembodied, but indisputably alive. ‘Would you like to come upstairs now?’

  ‘Would I like to …?’ How can he be so cool? No explanations, sorrys, just that phlegmatic low-key drawl, as if it were normal ten past two, instead of monstrous two-nineteen. Nine whole minutes lost, which is the cost of a good meal, though forget the cash, it’s the principle that hurts; the fact he’s got this power to so disturb me. The stairs have never seemed so long before, and I’m shaking when I reach his room, in desperate need of comfort. He’s got to touch me this time, meet me at the door, put a kind hand on my shoulder, apologise, make some restitution. Touch me, hell! He’s just his usual crully self, keeping his safe distance a yard or two away – no overture, no word of reassurance. I stand my ground, refusing to speak either, still scared I might start snivelling. Stalemate. The wind frets round the tower, filling in the silence, and two drivers start a honking match somewhere far below, their double anger screwing up the tension. My legs are weak as sago. I’ve been on my feet since half past twelve; left ridiculously early, because my empty mocking bedsit seemed to close me in and in. At last, John-Paul decides to speak, his voice so low and passive, you’d think he’d been anaesthetised.