Maddie

by Claire Rayner

  ‘Oh, it’s not that far. It’s just that I never thought it worth the trouble, just for the theatre.’ She loved the way he said theatre, shifting the emphasis subtly, so that he sounded like someone in a film, like Frederic March or even Franchot Tone, so shivery exciting. ‘A ball game now – that I’d go to New York for. I’d go all the way to the West Coast, like my Pa, for that.’

  ‘And yet you won’t take me to the theatre in London, and it’s only just down the road!’

  She smiled as vivaciously as she could, but wondered if she ought to cry instead after all. And wondering that made her look worried and he grinned again, that lazy easy sort of grin he had and said, ‘Well, if it’s so important, I guess I could.’ And at once she jumped up and clapped her hands and ran round the table to lean over and hug him.

  It was all beginning to work as it should. It had taken her weeks to get to know where he was all day and where he lived and to find ways to get to know him. She couldn’t possibly ask Daddy, so she had to try all her girlfriends, one after the other, and it hadn’t been easy because obviously none of them must know why it mattered. None of them could be trusted not to go after him themselves or to sneak to her father, bitches that they were, so she had to be so careful, go out to tea with even the silliest ones, gossip with them about all the things they were doing and where they went. So boring. But it had been worth it, in the end. Shirley had known him, because he was staying in a flat with her brother David, who also did some work for Alfred Braham, as did Shirley’s father come to that. Was there anyone in London who didn’t have business connections with him? Maddie wondered, and was glad the answer was probably no. It might make it harder in one way to get to know a man she wanted to, because of the risk of her father finding out her interest, but it also made it easier in other ways. It gave her some power, for a start. People wanted to please Alfred’s daughter as much as they wanted to please Alfred. A pleased Alfred was a generous man. A displeased Alfred was uncomfortable to have around.

  Even for me, she thought then, sitting again in her chair on the other side of the small table and beaming at Jay. Even for me. If he knew I was here taking afternoon tea at the Ritz with a man, what would he say? What would he do? Not good things. So he mustn’t know.

  And Jay mustn’t know, not yet, how important it was to keep quiet. He’d have to be taught that, and she cast around for a lie to use now to make sure he kept his tongue between his teeth, and smiled again, not vivaciously this time, but cheekily.

  ‘Now, Jay, there’s just one thing. You mustn’t tell a soul where you got the tickets from.’

  He looked blank. ‘But I haven’t got the tickets,’ he said and then frowned. ‘You said you had.’

  Oh, but you are even more beautiful when you frown. The way your eyebrows cock in the middle, the way your mouth curves down at the corners and the shadows get darker in the cleft in your chin. So beautiful, oh, so beautiful!

  She laughed, making it sound as much like a cascade, a tinkling cascade for preference, as she could. ‘Dear man, I know you haven’t! I have! I managed it through – well, never mind. I have my little ways, and they wouldn’t be mine any more if I told you, would they? But my father would be so mad if I had first-night tickets and didn’t get some for him. He likes the theatre too, you see. But I don’t want to go with him – I mean, he’s a lovely father to me, but you know how it is! A girl likes –’ And now was the time to dip her head and smile and look up at him swiftly from beneath lowered lashes, ‘– a girl likes to choose her own company. So not a word to anyone about my getting the tickets, hmm? What Daddy doesn’t know doesn’t hurt him.’

  ‘Listen, I don’t want no trouble with your Pa. He’s kind of – I work for him, you see. My old man’d cut up real rough if there were any troubles here. Bad enough what happened at home –’

  Her eyes sharpened and she stared at him, but trying to look casual. ‘Oh? What did happen?’

  ‘I’m not telling a little girl like you such things! Pollute your young mind, then your Pa’d really get mad.’ But his laughter wasn’t as easy as it might have been. He looked a bit sulky, and she knew that wouldn’t help at all.

  ‘Daddy won’t mind what I do or who I do it with!’ she said and gave another of her brilliant smiles. ‘It’s only if he thinks I’m neglecting him. And even with my own ways and means I can’t get more than two tickets for a show like Brigadoon and if he knew I’d decided to share them with you instead of him, then he’d be hurt. I’m not trying to avoid trouble for me, you see – I just don’t want to hurt the dear old buffer’s feelings.’

  ‘As long as that’s all it is. Bad enough the fight with your brother – he got pretty shirty over that –’

  ‘Oh, Ambrose!’ She waved her hand airily, dismissing Ambrose, but watching him carefully for all that. Please don’t be frightened, dear, dear Jay, don’t be frightened by anything. Just look at me, think of me, love me. ‘He’s always doing that.’

  ‘Doing what?’

  ‘Getting drunk at parties, making a scene. Been doing it for years. Daddy used to be able to do things to stop him, but not any more, not since he got some of his own money.’

  ‘What money?’ Jay leaned forward now, and looked closely at her, and Maddie lifted her chin to match the way her belly lifted with sudden excitement. ‘Is your brother a rich man like your Pa?’

  ‘Not rich, exactly. Not according to Daddy. It’s money he got from my mother’s will, when he was twenty-one. That was almost two years ago. I’ll get my share when I’m twenty-one, New Year’s Eve – well, Day, really, 1951. For ever to wait! But Ambrose has got his and spent most of it, Daddy says. He says he’ll be skint in another year, the way he’s going and then Daddy’ll be able to sort him out properly. He just laughs, because he says sooner or later Ambrose’ll have to do it his way, and a chap has to sow his wild oats. It’s what makes a man a man.’

  ‘I wish my Pa thought that way,’ Jay said with more feeling than she had heard in his voice before. ‘Sending me to this lousy country to shiver and half starve and no decent bourbon anywhere, and all because of –’ He had shrugged then and leaned back. ‘So your Dad isn’t mad at me for hitting Ambrose?’

  ‘Oh, he didn’t like that much. But he knows what Ambrose is like, and he won’t be really angry at you. Even if he is, he’ll get over it. But let’s not let him know I’d rather be at the theatre with you than with him.’ And again she laughed her special silvery laugh. It had been worth practising that because now he grinned at her, a really nice friendly look and again she shivered with the excitement of it.

  ‘You’re a funny kid, you know,’ he said. ‘You remind me of my sister Bernie. One minute she’s all over me and the next she’s laughing and kicking her heels up like some colt. A real kid –’

  She was devastated. All this effort to make him notice her, to get to know him properly, to make him love her, and all he could say was that? Where had she gone wrong?

  ‘I’m not a kid. I’m –’

  ‘Sure.’ He grinned even wider. ‘Nineteen. So old!’

  ‘And you? Are you so old?’

  ‘Six years more than you are, my child! Twenty-five soon – another six weeks –’ And now he stopped grinning. ‘And not a goddamned thing to call my own. It’s crazy. There’s my Pa loaded with it, and what have I got? I have to beg him for every lousy cent and if he says go away, I have to go away. I tell you, it’s a lousy business being my age – a kid like you, what can you know what it’s like?’

  ‘It’s not easy being my father’s daughter either,’ she said then, not pretending now, not acting any more, not trying at all to impress him or catch his fancy. Just talking. ‘There’s only us, me and Ambrose, and with Ambrose doing all his wild-oats stuff, it’s really only me as far as Daddy’s concerned. He’s in charge, you see. I have to wriggle and slide and cheat to live any of my own life. And really I do love him. I mean, I don’t hate him or anything. I just have to –’ She shrugged, ‘cheat a lit
tle. That’s the way it is. For me as well as for you.’

  He smiled at her, now. A warm nice smile, not a grin that mocked at her or a polite grimace just because she was talking at him. A real look-at-us-we’re-together-and-we-like-it sort of smile, and she felt her own face crease to match and contemplated the bubble of accord that hung in the air between them. It was the first such moment since she had first seen him facing her when the Paul Jones music had stopped at her birthday party, and he had been there, brought by chance, magical wonderful chance, to be her partner. She had known then what he was to be, that he was not just the most beautiful man she had ever seen but also the most important one she would ever know.

  It was beginning, the rest of her life was beginning. It could only get better and better from now on.

  October 1986

  There’s nothing useful I can do here, Annie thought as Gresham’s voice, light, cheerful and oh so reasonable, went on and on, nothing at all. I should never have agreed to come on this damned committee in the first place, and now I’m here, I should have the sense to say so, and get up and go. And she imagined herself doing just that; getting to her feet, pushing back her chair, saying in ringing tones, ‘I’ve had enough of this. It’s a waste of time and I’m bored. I’m going. Goodbye.’ And she’d go and never look at Joe Labosky at all, leaving him sitting there staring after her –

  The image was so strong that she actually felt her thigh muscles tense beneath the table; but she didn’t get up. As usual the inertia that filled her was too heavy to allow her to do anything. And after all, what did it matter where she was, or what she did? What did it matter whether she was interested or bored? She couldn’t imagine ever being interested in anything again, and for a moment she tried to remember if there had ever been a time when living had been amusing, purposeful, worth the effort, but again the dead inertia swamped her, and she just sat and listened.

  Down the table Joe Labosky leaned forwards and so moved into her line of vision and she looked at him and he winked outrageously, and she found herself almost smiling back, almost against her will. He made her angry, the way he meddled, had done ever since the day he had first come marching into the living room at the old house, so full of himself, but it was hard to dislike him. He looked so ridiculous for a start; all that fluffy dark hair curling all over his head and the long chin and the big mouth that was more often than not curved upwards; how could anyone dislike him? But he was often irritating and this morning was no exception, because he was talking about her now.

  ‘As I see it, this is something our patients’ representative could help deal with. You say there are just these three patients you’re concerned about?’

  ‘I’m concerned about them all,’ Gresham said, reprovingly. ‘But yes, there are just the three for whom we have no disposal plans at present and need help –’

  ‘Disposal?’ Joe said, and there was a sardonic note in his voice. ‘You make it sound as though you’d be just as happy to polish ‘emoff with a shot of something lethal and pop ‘em into the incinerator.’

  Gresham reddened but managed to laugh lightly. ‘Always so witty, Dr Labosky – you know quite well what I mean.’ He tapped the file in front of him. ‘This came up from the Department labelled as you see it – Disposal – and it refers entirely to where patients are to be sent when we close the West Pavilion. Forty-six to the neighbouring boroughs –’ He flashed another of his emollient smiles round the table then. ‘And I do think someone might have congratulated me with my fiddling of the books on this, you know,’ he said with mock petulance. ‘To find forty-six patients with family addresses outside this borough and make them another authority’s problem – it really is the cheapest and most satisfactory way to deal with disposal. And –’ he added hastily as he caught Joe’s eyes on him again, ‘a most compassionate and – er – humane way to solve the problem. It means patients will be nearer their families and there’ll be more visiting and presents and so forth for them –’

  ‘Oh, come off it, Gresham,’ Joe said, but there was no malice in his tone, ‘you know as well as I do that most of the addresses you got hold of are long since forgotten by the patients who are supposed to have come from them, and certainly the people who live in them now won’t be taking any responsibility. That’s a bit of bureaucratic fiddling you’ve been up to, and let’s not pretend it’s been anything else.’

  Gresham grinned, disarmingly. ‘And it’s got us well off the hook, hasn’t it? So it can’t be all bad. And the patients won’t come to any harm in other hospitals.’

  ‘Until they want to sell ‘em off like this one,’ growled the tall black man at the far end of the table. He was sitting very upright, very neat in his grey suit and tightly knotted blue tie and glittering white shirt. ‘Where will they go then?’

  ‘I’m afraid that isn’t part of my remit, Mr Oliver. I simply have to make sure that all the patients currently at Greenhill are dispersed. With your help, of course. What happens to them afterwards can’t be our concern – we’ve far too much to worry about as it is. I can’t impress too much on all of you how urgent this matter is. If the developers can’t get in here to complete clearance of the site by the end of the financial year in April there’s a real risk the deal will collapse. There’s a time clause in the contract – and that means a fifteen million pound development up in flames, the DHSS in one hell of a state –’

  ‘Well, I’ll tell you, Mr Gresham, that that is no part of my worry.’ Mr Oliver stuck his chin forwards and looked ferocious. ‘I was asked to serve on this here committee to represent the interests of the non-medical staff –’

  ‘And the non-secretarial staff –’ murmured the large woman in red on the far side of the table.

  ‘– and the non-secretarial, all right, Mrs Franey, I won’t make no claim to your fancy ladies – I repeat, the other non-medical staff, but that don’t mean I’m not interested in the patients or that my people aren’t. That’s what you senior types with fancy ideas about how important you are always do – forget porters and cleaners and suchlike. They don’t care about patients, you think, but I’m here to tell you that the members of my union, and our brother unions, we care about the patients more than some of you lot do, and I say –’

  ‘Come, Mr Oliver, no need to get aerated.’ Gresham smiled easily at him down the table. ‘No one doubts for a moment your commitment to your work or to the welfare of the patients at Greenhill. But we must be practical – and –’ And he looked pointedly at the clock on the wall above his head, twisting himself elegantly in his chair, ‘and we really must get on. As I was saying, forty-six to neighbouring boroughs. Thirty to the hostel at Pattison Way on the Larcombe Estate and another thirty to the Foster’s Walk hostel on the Norbury Corners Estate. No, Miss Barber, not now. We’ll deal with the matter of the nursing accommodation and arrangements later, after the meeting. No need to waste everyone’s valuable time with minutiae, is there? Then there are twenty-three patients to be discharged home to the care of their families –’

  ‘And I’d like to know just how much support is going to be provided for them too. Not the patients – the families. As far as I can tell, this business of being put back into the community means lumbering some poor bloody woman somewhere with all the work and the headaches and –’

  ‘Yes, Mr Fordyce, we know your views on the matter. We’ve heard them often and have digested them carefully.’ Mr Gresham’s veneer was beginning to wear a little thin now and he almost glowered at the man in pugnaciously casual clothes who was sitting on the far side of him. ‘You must not think that the nursing staff has a monopoly of caring, you know. There are those amongst us who are just as concerned for the happiness and welfare of patients and their families as you are. And Miss Matthews who is the patients’ and families’ representative has made no demur to the plans we’ve outlined here, so I really don’t think we need to go haring off down that cul de sac again. We’ve spent the last two meetings on it, after all –’
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br />   ‘Jimmy, no need to worry,’ Joe said. ‘The medical staff committee have been dealing with that matter in some depth. We’ve got a considerable commitment from the Department of Social Services for the borough, and we’re pushing for more. I’ll tell you after this meeting, if you’ll just wait for me. Let’s sort out first what these arrangements are to be, hmm? Then we can do what’s necessary to make sure they’re good arrangements and that they’ll work to the patients’ benefit.’

  Joe didn’t like taking over meetings like this, and rarely did it, but this morning’s had been particularly heavy going and showed signs of getting worse, and using the weight of his position as the sole medical member was the only way he could think of to improve matters. It was worth doing damage to his decent democratic principles, a part of his mind thought, to get this bloody business settled for good and all. ‘So, according to the arithmetic, that leaves three patients not accounted for. Tell us again who they are, Gresham.’

  Gresham, who had bridled a little at the way Joe had taken control, moved his shoulders petulantly as a bird does when it is ready to preen and said a little sulkily, ‘Yes. Just three. And if we can sort them out, we’re really on stream for getting through in time. We’ve already disposed of – made arrangements for – the seven pavilions at the north side of the site and there’ll just be the last two hundred patients to sort out from South Pavilion, and since most of them are under fifty, it won’t be so difficult to find places. It’s these old long-term people who make the real problems – no one wants them. It’s even easier to dispose of – damn it, find places for – the mentally handicapped than it is for these geriatrics.’

  ‘They aren’t all geriatrics,’ growled the male nurse. ‘I’ve plenty in my ward there in West who’re under sixty. Or are you suggesting that all folks o’ that age are automatically geriatrics?’ And he thrust his chin at Gresham who blinked and smiled and tugged on his tie, very aware suddenly of his own thirty-eight years as compared with Fordyce’s fifty-seven.