She tore it out carefully: someone such as she, who had lived through the destruction of whole cities, respected the least of inanimate objects because she knew what their total absence was like: unlike the spoilt flibbertigibbets that she worked with. But, neat and careful though she was, the torn edge of the page she had removed was still slightly visible in places, ragged and uneven. This was disturbing: you couldn’t write perfect words on an imperfect page. Miss Falkenhagen had therefore to pull out the corresponding page which formed the second half of the sheet of the tied-in paper. That meant that the book was now four pages short of one hundred and twenty and that, instead of having twenty-eight thousand eight hundred words when filled, it would have twenty-seven thousand seven hundred and sixty. That, of course, hardly mattered; still Miss Falkenhagen felt uneasy at writing her memoir in notebooks of uneven length. She did not know where this uneasiness came from, but then, who does know from what source emerge his feelings?
The page in front of her was pristine once more, and her pen hovered over it, as if possessing a physical power of itself to remain in the air. Miss Falkenhagen thought hard: she needed a really striking opening sentence, something as memorable as the first words of Anna Karenina. She could take her time over it, because once it came, the rest would flow much more easily, as with the contents of a bottle whose neck was blocked with dried up sauce, say, and then suddenly unblocked.
Then she had it. ‘Once I nearly met Hitler.’ That, surely, was as good as a swastika on the cover. But then she began to have doubts. True, it was arresting; but might it not be thought ridiculous – that the high point of someone’s life, and her sole claim to attention, being that she nearly met someone, but didn’t quite meet? Besides, everything else afterwards might seem like an anti-climax. A first line should be good, but not so good that it put everything else in the shade.
On the other hand, it struck her as so good that she was reluctant to let it go. She could see how she might continue: for example, by recounting how it was that she nearly came to meet Hitler. But then her narrative would not be a strictly chronological one, and it would need more thought about its structure than she had so far given it. Well, there was no hurry; she would sleep on it. Often one’s mind sorted out things by itself, as it were, without one having to think about it. The tip of the tongue phenomenon was like that: you tried and tried to remember something that you knew that you knew, but failed miserably, until you gave up and thought about something else, when hey presto! it came to you. The structure of a book could be like that, too. After all, some of the greatest authors had probably not been all that intelligent; they had simple possessed a powerful and accomplished subconscious.
And true enough, next day Miss Falkenhagen, or her subconscious, had taken the decision. ‘Once I nearly met Hitler’ it would be. And afterwards, it was just as she thought: it was like the liquid pouring from a bottle whose neck had been cleared of a blockage. What she wrote seemed to her to be very good.
Until, that is, she read it the next day. How she could ever have thought it remotely readable, let alone good, now puzzled her. Even making allowances for the fact that she had written it out of her memories, and therefore knew in advance everything that it said, it struck her as dull and uninteresting. Although she knew the English language well – none better, in fact – and her vocabulary was extensive (she made a point of looking up any unfamiliar word in the dictionary and committing it to memory by writing it down and testing herself later in the day) all her similes and metaphors came out hackneyed and lifeless. Of course, not every line could glitter: those writers who tried to be witty all the time soon grew tiresome to the reader, even if they succeeded; but still one needed sometimes to lift one’s words from the realm of the conventional and the expected.
There was no choice, alas, but to start again, keeping nothing but the first sentence. This time, because she had already written so much, she had to tear twelve pages out of the notebook, which left only a hundred and four pages and the notebook palpably thinner than the others. She therefore discarded it – though it could still be used for other purposes – and took another. But that left her with one fewer in reserve, and she thought that she ought not to start writing again until she had replenished her stock. If she made a similar mistake in the new notebook, after all, she would be left with just one. Unfortunately, the shops were now closed, and she wouldn’t have time to go to them for a couple of days to come. She therefore satisfied herself with writing ‘Once I nearly met Hitler’ in the new book, knowing that these five words, at least, would not need to be altered.
She was relieved to have a couple of days off from writing. It was hard work, writing, perhaps harder than she had suspected. The beginning of any book was bound to be difficult, more difficult than any other part of a book, and so she did not begrudge herself a few days’ rest.
By the time her next appointment with Dr Brown came round, she had added another sentence to the manuscript: ‘I will tell you how this came about.’ Simple, unegotistical (the reproach of egotism being possible to level at any memoirist) and establishing a tone of honesty.
Dr Brown asked her how she was.
‘Very well, thank you,’ she replied.
‘You look a little drawn to me,’ said Dr Brown.
‘Perhaps I’ve picked up a virus. There’s one going about the office.’
Dr Brown seemed satisfied with that. He asked her how the book was going.
‘Slowly,’ she said. ‘I want to get it right, word-perfect, first time.’
Dr Brown said there were two types of writer: those who wrote impulsively, torrentially as it were, and then corrected what they had written, and those like Miss Falkenhagen, who took minute care so that their first draft could and should be their last.
He fixed their next appointment for a month’s time.
On the way home, Miss Falkenhagen began to wonder whether Dr Brown was quite such a good doctor after all. In fact, she began to be irritated by him. There was something glib about him, shallow. He hadn’t enough experience of life for a job like the one he was doing, he hadn’t known tragedy. It was obvious that he came from a decent family, he had probably gone through life like a hot knife through butter. Furthermore, he didn’t know as much as he pretended about literature and the way it was created. He talked about it as if it were the same as revising for an exam and all that was necessary was a little self-discipline and firmness with yourself. Had he not heard of inspiration? Miss Falkenhagen supposed that medical studies were inclined to make you literal-minded and unimaginative. Was there not an old proverb, ‘Where there are three physicians, there are two atheists?’ Miss Falkenhagen was not religious herself, but despised the facile, know-all certitudes of those who had studied a little science.
She did not attend her next appointment with Dr Brown. This surprised him a little, even though he was quite accustomed to patients in general failing to attend, because Germans were punctilious in such matters. Still, everyone makes mistakes and forgets sometimes. Dr Brown sent Miss Falkenhagen another appointment through the post for two weeks’ time.
She missed that appointment as well. It was very strange: someone dressed as neatly as she, especially in these casual times, was likely to be almost obsessional in her conduct. He sent her yet another appointment.
This, too, she failed to keep. Dr Brown dictated a letter to her general practitioner, informing him that as she had now missed three appointments in succession at the Mary Lamb Mental Wellness Centre, and had not contacted the clinic with an explanation, she was being discharged from follow-up. As he signed the letter, Dr Brown felt a slight unease.
A few days later, he received at telephone call from Miss Falkenhagen’s general practitioner, the one who suggested that she came to see him.
‘I thought you ought to know,’ he said, ‘that Miss Falkenhagen has died.’
‘Has died?’ repeated Dr Brown. Suicide, he thought? Suicide was to psychiatrists what dying on th
e table was to surgeons. It gives you a lot of trouble, quite apart from the tragedy of it.
‘Yes, about three weeks ago.’
‘What of?’
‘Pneumonia. She was found dead in bed. The funny thing was that she didn’t call anyone for help.’
2 - The Proper Procedure
When they came to take screaming Miss Budd away, they allowed her a few minutes to collect her things. They could hear her banging about upstairs for a time, but the ambulance men knew that she was not trying to escape. Seventy-five year-old ladies, however mad they are, do not jump from windows to avoid capture, unlike sane young men who will do anything to avoid authority.
Miss Budd came back downstairs with a bulging plastic carrier bag. The ambulance men were astonished by her appearance. They had heard that she had so terrified her neighbours that they had demanded that something be done about her. But how could anyone so small and frail have caused so much trouble? True, she had a slightly wild look, with glittering eyes and spikes of hair, not yet entirely white, sticking up like quills from her scalp. But she was not so much bird-like as bird-sized, and seemed to have desiccated to the absolute minimum compatible with life. Surely, then, she had been more a nuisance than a threat, with her constant imprecations and banging on the walls with her stick for hours on end? No one could seriously believe that she was dangerous, as the neighbours had claimed she was, exaggerating merely to get the attention of the authorities.
The ambulance men smiled at one another ironically.
‘Come on, Lil,’ one of them said, coaxing Miss Budd out of the front door.
She was completely compliant, as is a man who recognises the inevitability of his own execution.
It was a short drive to the hospital. Miss Budd had never been there before, but she displayed little interest in her surroundings as the ambulance men guided her along the corridors, deserted at that time of night. At least there was nothing wrong with her walking, or mobility as it said on the paperwork that the men were carrying.
They reached the ward. All three of them stood for a time like people waiting to be seated at a restaurant; then they were approached by an unnaturally fat young woman, not in uniform, with a small stud in her nose.
‘Lilly Budd for you,’ said one of the ambulance men.
‘Couldn’t you’ve brought her earlier?’ she said. ‘I’m the only one on duty now.’
The ambulance men were not put out; they were used to this exasperated reception. It would have been just the same whatever time they had brought her; there was no convenient time to arrive.
‘We’ve had lots of emergencies,’ one of them said.
‘All right,’ said the nurse, not believing them, on the contrary believing that they had arranged to arrive now just to make her life difficult. ‘You can leave her to me.’
The ambulance men left without saying goodbye to Miss Budd. It was late, and they were tired.
‘Well, Lil,’ said the nurse turning to Miss Budd, ‘what have we been up to, then?’
Miss Budd did not answer. In fact, she did not know what the nurse was talking about. She had only done what anyone else would have done in the circumstances, that is to say when their neighbours were pumping poison gas through the walls and shouting abuse day and night, preventing them from sleeping and making them feel ill.
‘Follow me,’ said the nurse, adding, ‘No problems walking, I suppose,’ half a statement and half a question. She led Miss Budd into an office with glass walls through which you could see passages leading to the bedrooms. In the foreground was a kind of sitting room, with low armchairs and some plastic-topped tables.
‘We’ve got some paperwork to do before you go to bed,’ said the nurse as she sat down at a desk. Miss Budd was still standing, her hand clutching her carrier bag.
‘Why don’t you sit down,’ said the Nurse, and Miss Budd sat down gingerly, as if the invitation were a trap. Once she was in her chair, she found herself looking up at the nurse.
‘Now then, said the nurse, drawing some papers towards her on the desk in front of her, ‘I’ve just got a few questions…’
Miss Budd shifted slightly in her seat.
‘You are Lilly Budd, of 47 William Cobbett Tower?’ asked the nurse. ‘We don’t want any silly mistakes.’ She laughed at the thought of silly mistakes: the wrong medicine for the wrong patients, that kind of thing. The effects of silly mistakes could be very peculiar.
Miss Budd did not answer and the nurse repeated her question. This time she nodded her assent.
‘Date of birth?’ asked the nurse. The details had already been given over the telephone by the doctor who had arranged for Miss Budd’s admission, but there was nothing like having it from the person herself. It was also a test of how far gone the patient might be, if she couldn’t answer.
Miss Budd took a long time over it, and the nurse eventually read out the date the doctor had given and asked Miss Budd whether it was right.
Miss Budd only muttered or mumbled her answers to subsequent questions, which – because of the late hour – the nurse took as assent to her own answers to her own questions. It would have taken all night, probably, to elicit genuine answers.
‘Now I’ve got to make a list of your property,’ said the nurse.
So saying, she came round from the desk and bent down to take Miss Budd’s carrier bag from her. But Miss Budd withdrew the bag from her reach with surprising speed and dexterity.
‘Now don’t be silly,’ said the nurse. ‘I’m only trying to make a list, I’m not trying to take anything. We have to make a list of everyone’s property.’
By now Miss Budd was clutching her bag to her bony chest. The nurse tried to be reasonable, and to make her see reason.
‘If we don’t make a list and something goes missing we won’t have a record of it, will we?’
This evident fact did not strike Miss Budd very forcefully, for she still clutched the bag to her as if for dear life, and the nurse had to admit to herself that the problem with patients, sometimes, was that they were just not very bright.
‘I’ll just make a little list of what you have and hand everything straight back to you,’ said the nurse, in a last ditch effort at persuasion. ‘There’s nothing to be afraid of, I’m not going to steal anything.’
Miss Budd stared around her in a distracted fashion.
‘Right,’ said the nurse firmly. ‘We haven’t got all night. There are other patients who need attention, you know.’ And she ripped the bag from Miss Budd’s bony grasp.
‘There, that wasn’t so bad now, was it?’ said the nurse, as if she had just finished an examination of a child, or vaccinated it.
Miss Budd accepted the loss of her bag as a fait accompli and the nurse returned behind her desk, on whose top she now placed it.
‘What have we got here?’ she asked, lifting a crumpled white night-dress from the bag and suspending it in the air between her thumb and forefinger, and then bringing it close to her and giving it a sniff.
‘Not very clean,’ she said. ‘You’ve been letting yourself go, Lilly, haven’t you?’
‘I been too… They won’t let me,’ said Miss Budd, in the clearest voice she had used up till now.
‘Never mind,’ said the nurse, dropping it on to the floor and glad to see it go. ‘We’ll get it cleaned. You won’t need it here. We’ll give you a fresh one to wear. That would be better, wouldn’t it?’
Miss Budd said nothing, so the nurse took it that she was pleased; after all, who wouldn’t want her washing done, and for nothing?
She rummaged further in the bag and found two further items of clothing that she held up as if in an act of public accusation.
‘Now what are these?’ she said, dropping them very quickly. ‘They’re filthy. We’ll have them washed too – perhaps they’ll need more than one wash. Maybe they should even be thrown away. We can get you some new clothes. And you probably need a wash too. We can’t have you going to bed like that, can we Li
l?’
The nurse put her hand back into the bag without looking.
‘What’s this?’ she exclaimed.
She drew out some bank notes, a whole fistful of them in fact. Then she put her hand in again, peered into the bag and tipped the contents out on to the top of the desk. Money emerged like confetti, a small fortune, or at least more than two or three months’ wages.
‘What did you bring all this for?’ asked the nurse, a little angry that a little old woman, obviously unqualified and not very clever, should have so much cash. ‘You don’t need money here.’
Miss Budd muttered something about savings and it not being safe to give the money to anybody else, but so indistinctly and apologetically (it seemed to the nurse) that she must have had a bad conscience about it.
‘You’ve really landed me with a serious problem,’ said the nurse. ‘What to do with all this money. Normally, it would go to the office, but the office is closed at this time of night.’
Miss Budd offered to keep it with her but the nurse was horrified by the suggestion.
‘Patient’s aren’t allowed to have more than five pounds cash on them,’ she said. ‘For obvious reasons,’ she added.
The reasons were not clear to Miss Budd. She said something about it being her money.
‘Nobody’s saying that it isn’t,’ said the nurse sharply. ‘That’s not the question. The point is that you can’t keep it here with you. I’ll have to count it and then look after it until the morning when it can go down to the office.’
It took her a long time to count it because she lost her thread two or three times and had to start again.
‘I’m a nurse, not a bank clerk,’ she said.
At last she came to the total: two thousand three hundred and sixty-five pounds. She sucked air through her teeth and then found some rubber bands in the drawer of the desk with which to tie up the money in little piles.
The Proper Procedure and Other Stories Page 3