The Proper Procedure and Other Stories

by Theodore Dalrymple

  Sister Lee, of course, was different. She knew all about his condition – more than he knew himself, in fact – but it did not put her off. She had seen him at his lowest point, at his most vulnerable and unattractive, denuded of the clothes that alone can give dignity to the old. She had seen him with his unpleasant abdominal wound. She had thus looked beyond the surface to the man within; and that spoke well of her.

  Besides, he had heard that eastern women were obliging to the point of subservience. Mr Montagu was by no means a dictatorial man, in search of someone to dominate, but it was undeniable that, in his present weakened condition, it might be pleasant to have someone whose main object in life was to please him. The last thing he needed was a power struggle in his own home, of the kind that too often occurred these days between men and women. He wanted above all to avoid complication.

  All things considered, then, a reply to Miss Lee was perfectly in order. She might perfectly fulfil his need for companionship without emotional depth and all the undercurrents that depth brought with it. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

  Besides, any initial contact with Miss Lee was like buying something on approval. If things turned out badly, there was no commitment to continue.

  Mr Montagu sat down at his desk to write. Although an articulate and sometimes even an eloquent man, the correct form of words came to him on this occasion with great difficulty. He had no experience of this kind of thing. Unusually, he found it necessary to draft version after version, striking out words that had seemed appropriate to him only moments before, when they were in his mind, but which looked foolish or stilted once committed to paper.

  At length, however, he could improve it no further, and sent it as it was:

  Dear Miss Lee,

  Thank you for your letter. You and your staff were very kind and attentive to me when I was in hospital. I could not have wished for better care.

  Your letter surprised me because I was not aware that I was any more to you than just another patient among many others.

  It would be very pleasant to meet again. If it is convenient for you, please ring me on the number above, and we will arrange things.

  With kind regards.

  Yours sincerely.

  Two days later, at about six in the evening, Mr Montagu’s telephone rang.

  ‘Can I speak to Mr Montagu, please.’

  ‘Speaking.’

  ‘I am Victoria Lee – Miss.’

  ‘How are you, Miss Lee?’ Mr Montagu felt at once that his question sounded odd, false even, as if she had been the patient and he the nurse.

  ‘I am very well, thank you, Mr Montagu,’ said Miss Lee.

  There followed a stilted conversation during which the real subject on their minds was not mentioned. It was like being an adolescent again, Mr Montagu thought: awkward and unsure how to proceed.

  They discussed Mr Montagu’s scar (completely healed) and his bowel habit (once again regular after a period of turbulence), and finally agreed to meet in an Italian restaurant, neither plush nor basic, expensive nor cheap, at a time of the evening neither early nor late.

  After an initial period of awkwardness, the evening went surprisingly well. After one drink, Miss Lee flushed a little and began to laugh in a bird-like, but not stupid, way. She began to call him Montagu, as if that were his first name, and he found it charming. She told him about her life in Malaya, which is where she came from; her father, until his death, had had a shop in a small town on the banks of a great brown river. Mr Montagu told her proudly of his children, his son an advertising executive, and his daughter a producer at the BBC.

  She had wanted desperately to escape the muddy banks and sacks of rice among which she had grown up. How she had loved the asphalt and paving when she had first come to England to train as a nurse, that did not turn slithery in the rain! How wonderful to get away from all that bargaining, all that haggling, with its bogus protestations of inability to pay more or to accept less! Here, you just decided what you wanted and whether you could afford it; no nerve-wracking trials of will. It was possible to live quietly here, with no one knowing, or caring, who you were or what you did.

  At the end of the evening, they agreed to go to the theatre together.

  Miss Lee began to stay three or four nights a week in Mr Montagu’s elegant flat. She did not move in completely, nor did either of them suggest that she should. She kept her own flat and Mr Montagu never went there. Nor did she ever meet his children: they were not kept out of sight of each other, but somehow their paths never crossed. It was the perfect arrangement, a permanent courtship.

  They went to the theatre together, to concerts, the cinema, restaurants. Mr Montagu would buy her small things – trinkets, really, but expensive – that pleased her inordinately.

  And she in turn made his flat more comfortable by little touches that reduced the impersonality of a single man’s taste. Together, they had the pleasures of intimacy without its tensions: their company seemed sufficient to each other, and they never indulged in the furious quarrels that some couples indulge in to persuade themselves that there is feeling left between them.

  They had been happy together for more than a year when Miss Lee received a letter that troubled her deeply. It came from Malaya and was written in Chinese. She carried it with her wherever she went, and from time to time would remove it from her bag, unfold it and sigh over it. She did this sometimes in Mr Montagu’s presence.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ he would ask.

  ‘Nothing,’ replied Miss Lee.

  ‘There must be something, or you wouldn’t sigh like that.’

  Miss Lee would then fold the letter and put it back in her bag.

  ‘Who’s the letter from?’ asked Mr Montagu.

  It was only after several times of asking when, despite his habitual patience, he displayed the first signs of exasperation, that she told him that it was from her mother.

  ‘Is she ill?’ he asked solicitously.

  ‘No,’ said Miss Lee.

  ‘Then what is it?’

  ‘Nothing,’ said Miss Lee.

  Eventually, Mr Montagu told her that she must tell him what in the letter was bothering her, especially as she had now received another one.

  Miss Lee saw that she had no alternative but to tell Mr Montagu, though it made her uncomfortable to do so.

  ‘My mother would like to visit me,’ she said.

  Mr Montagu laughed.

  ‘Is that all?’ he said. ‘Why didn’t you tell me before? Of course she can come and visit you. What’s the problem in that?’

  Miss Lee was silent again. She looked down at the floor.

  ‘What’s the matter now, Victoria?’ asked Mr Montagu.

  There was a long silence, and then Miss Lee said:

  ‘She can’t afford the fare.’

  In more than a year, Miss Lee had never asked Mr Montagu for anything. She received whatever he gave her with pleasure, of course, and thanked him politely for it, but she had never expressed a desire for anything, not even by so much as a movement of her eyes in the direction of something she coveted, in case he took it as a request. Mr Montagu sensed with what difficulty Miss Lee had mentioned that her mother could not afford the fare.

  ‘I’ll pay it for her,’ he said.

  A younger woman from a different part of the world might have squealed with delight and flung her arms round Mr Montagu’s neck, and kissed him; but such was not Miss Lee’s way. She did not smile; instead, she looked sad.

  ‘It is impossible,’ she said. ‘She couldn’t accept.’

  ‘Why not?’ said Mr Montagu.

  ‘You are a stranger. She doesn’t know you.’

  ‘She doesn’t need to know it comes from me. I could give you the money and you could buy the ticket. There’s no difficulty there.’

  ‘But it wouldn’t be true, it would be a lie.’

  ‘A white lie, and a small one at that. It’s only to make her happy, after all.’

  M
iss Lee accepted after some hesitation, and after a few more attempts at refusal. They sent her mother a ticket to come in a month’s time.

  They drove to the airport together to collect her. Mr Montagu’s car, which he seldom used, was a powerful one, smooth and comfortable, a cocoon of luxury in a disordered and uncomfortable world. It was the car of a man of distinction and though Miss Lee said nothing, she noticed it.

  They stood together at the arrivals gate, waiting for her mother to emerge. Crowds of people came out in spurts, like water from a malfunctioning tap.

  ‘Would you rather wait for her alone?’ asked Mr Montagu.

  ‘No, she knows all about you,’ said Miss Lee.

  When Miss Lee’s mother emerged, it seemed as if she was swept along on a tide, like a small piece of flotsam. She was a tiny woman, dressed in black pyjamas and grey slippers, who looked as if she must have travelled by accident.

  Victoria stepped forward to greet her once she had passed the barrier. It was not an emotional reunion. There was no physical contact between them and no signs of joy or even pleasure. Except for her mode of dress, her mother might just as well have arrived for a business meeting as to see her daughter.

  Miss Lee presented her to Mr Montagu. She spoke not a word of English and merely lowered her eyes a little, and nodded faintly, as recognition of his existence.

  Although – or was it because? – she had never left her town before, she showed no curiosity about her surroundings. Clearly she had not come to see the sights, though it was at her own instigation that she came. In the car, on the way back, she talked a little to her daughter, but though Mr Montagu spoke no Chinese, he had the impression that this was no idle chatter, no mere catching up after a long separation.

  It had been agreed that, Miss Lee’s flat being tiny, and Mr Montagu’s flat being large, Miss Lee’s mother should stay with him. This was not an arrangement that Mr Montagu had ever anticipated with much pleasure, but now he had met her he looked forward to it with foreboding. To live with someone without a word of language in common was difficult enough even when non-verbal communication was possible; but Miss Lee’s mother appeared uncommunicative even with the aid of language, her face giving away nothing. The next three weeks – the duration of her stay – were not going to be easy, to put it mildly, even though Miss Lee promised to come at every opportunity her duty rota permitted.

  Miss Lee’s mother established herself quickly in Mr Montagu’s flat, however. Whether she appraised it in any way, whether for example she took its size and furnishings as evidence of its owner’s wealth, was impossible to tell. To all appearances, she took everything for granted, as if she had lived all her life in such a flat. She was surprised by nothing, and examined nothing.

  She kept mainly to her own room. Victoria had warned Mr Montagu that she would eat only Chinese food and prepared everything in advance for her. She would not try so much as a slice of bread: her life in the town by the river bank had left her as undeviating from her habits as a tram, the slightest deviation representing not a detour but a disaster. And yet the first journey of her life had been one of eight thousand miles.

  It was only natural, of course, that she should not venture from the flat with Mr Montagu, since he would not have been able to explain to her anything that she saw; but she evinced no desire to go out with her daughter either.

  She talked a little with her daughter when she came, or rather seemed to make pronouncements to which her daughter replied by only a word or two; she seemed to take no particular pleasure in her daughter’s company and Mr Montagu thought he could detect a harsh timbre in her voice, as if she were uttering unpalatable truths which it was her duty to propound. Mr Montagu did not enquire of Miss Lee what these were, just in case her mother’s apparent lack of English were only a ruse to make him unwary. He began to have the uncomfortable feeling that he was being watched in his own home.

  Certainly Miss Lee’s mother was a brooding presence in the flat, even when – as most of the time she did – she stayed in her own room. What she did in her room was a mystery. She appeared to have brought no reading matter with her, and she never turned on the television though Victoria had showed her how. Mr Montagu was aware that the Chinese were not a religious people, so it was unlikely that she spent her time in prayer or even in meditation. Of course, how she spent her time was entirely up to her, it was her choice; but even though she was silent, at most padding around no more noisily than a cat, Mr Montagu could not rid himself of an awareness of her presence. She seemed watchful; he couldn’t even leave the flat while she was there, because he couldn’t explain to her where he was going and when he would be back. It would have been as irresponsible to leave her on her own as to leave a child on its own. It was as if she had imprisoned him.

  During the three weeks that Miss Lee’s mother stayed, Mr Montagu hardly spoke to Miss Lee; but at his age, three weeks, however ill-spent, is not an eternity, and he was soon enough driving Miss Lee and her mother back to the airport for her return flight. The mother was still wearing black pyjamas, though whether the same pair it was impossible to tell.

  The parting of mother and daughter was as unemotional as their reunion had been. As he saw the tiny woman disappear into the maw of the departure hall, Mr Montagu felt a weight fall from his shoulders. So light a woman, so heavy a burden! Now life could resume its pleasant, even tenor.

  As was only natural, this did not happen straight away. Her mother’s presence had been a strain on Miss Lee, too; her normally unlined face had developed some wrinkled while her mother was there. On the way back from the airport, they hardly spoke; Mr Montagu could not express his feelings of relief, at least until Miss Lee had made her own feelings clear, for fear of giving offence. And since, as he knew, filial piety was so important to the Chinese, it was probable that she would never let him know what she felt.

  However, two months after the departure of her mother, it was clear that Miss Lee was not returning to her normal, pre-visitation self. On the contrary, she remained tense and monosyllabic. When they went out together, she ate without appetite, looked at pictures without seeing them, and listened to music without hearing it. She seemed to enjoy nothing as she had before; in short, she was preoccupied.

  ‘What’s the matter, Victoria?’ Mr Montagu asked.

  ‘Nothing,’ said Victoria with surprising vehemence. And though she was otherwise very self-controlled, Mr Montagu could tell that the muscles in her face were, despite her best efforts, tightly clenched.

  He let the matter drop for now, but repeated his question in two weeks’ time, receiving the same answer.

  ‘But Victoria,’ said Mr Montagu, ‘there’s obviously something the matter. You must tell me what it is.’

  But this importunity only angered her, so that her silence was not merely the absence of words, but something positive and almost aggressive. Mr Montagu began to feel tense in her presence, for fear of breaking in on her world unbidden.

  One day, Mr Montagu found Miss Lee reading a letter while she was sitting on his sofa. It was in Chinese, and he guessed who it was from. The fact that she was reading it in his presence emboldened him to ask her about it.

  ‘It’s from my mother,’ Miss Lee said.

  ‘What does it say?’

  ‘She says you are a very nice man.’

  Mr Montagu laughed, a short explosive laugh, for Miss Lee’s mother had shown no sign of regard for him while she was living his flat. Miss Lee, however, did not give the impression that she thought she had said anything funny.

  ‘I wonder how she discovered that,’ said Mr Montagu. ‘She couldn’t have understood a word I said.’

  ‘She says I must marry you,’ said Miss Lee.

  Mr Montagu smiled, but without mirth: more as a grimace.

  ‘I don’t see what she has to do with the matter,’ he said.

  ‘She said so before she left,’ said Miss Lee.

  ‘You should tell her it’s none of her business.�
��

  Miss Lee fell silent. This is not how the Chinese speak to their parents. Westerners did, perhaps, with what result was only too plain to see.

  Although Mr Montagu thought that he now understood the reason for Miss Lee’s change of mood, this understanding altered nothing. He tried to jolly her along, and he appealed to her rationality. After all, he asked her, what had really changed between them? They could go out together as before. The food in the restaurants was just as good, the music just as inspiring, the plays just as absorbing, as before. They were both of an age to decide for themselves how they lived, and how they had lived before the visit was perfectly agreeable to them both. There was therefore no objective need for change.

  Mr Montagu was surprised, and displeased, to discover that his arguments, though perfectly sound, had no effect. Miss Lee did not so much side with her mother as appear to believe that she had to obey her. It was not that she was herself desperate to marry Mr Montagu; the question hadn’t arisen before the visit; and if Mr Montagu had asked her but her mother had forbidden it, she would have refused him. But now the question obviously obsessed her, especially after she began to receive regular and frequent letters from her mother.

  ‘Why worry so much what your mother wants?’ said Mr Montagu. ‘She’s thousands of miles away.’

  Miss Lee was silent.

  ‘What can she do to you? Witchcraft?’ Mr Montagu laughed again, but somehow his laughter sounded hollow. He decided on another tack, equally rational. ‘Why is it so important to get married anyway? It’s only a piece of paper.’

  Miss Lee looked down at the floor and said nothing.

  ‘We have theatre tickets,’ said Mr Montagu. ‘Restoration comedy. You’ll love it. There’s nothing like it when it’s well done.’