The Listeners

by Monica Dickens

  At the end of the song, the boys and the girl waved and called out. ‘See you next week!’ and took their guitars and their healthy youth away. The girl kissed a very old man by the door, and he chuckled and made a grab at her thigh.

  ‘You off?’ the boy asked, as if Paul had only come for the concert.

  ‘I’ll have to go before Sister comes.’

  ‘Yes.’ He had lowered his voice when the music finished. Paul had to lean forward to hear his murmur. ‘She’s like when I was a boy.’ He smiled a little and shook his head as if it were a very distant memory.

  ‘Someone strict?’

  ‘Yup.’ No more.

  Paul let that go, and asked casually. ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘I’ve not told them.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because of the police.’

  ‘It won’t make any difference. Anyway, I don’t think the police will bother you.’

  ‘What I — what I done ...’ His pale-lashed eyes flicked to his arm.

  ‘Was that why you went off and hid, after you rung us?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ He had to keep his arm still, but the rest of him moved restlessly on the bed. ‘I don’t remember. I don’t remember nothing about what happened. It’s all so confused all the time. I don’t know what to do...’ His voice went wandering away, and Paul said again, ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Tim.’ His eyes came back to Paul as if in surprise that he did not know. ‘Tim Shaw. I live up Darley Road.’ He added without being asked, ‘Got a room there.’

  ‘A job?’

  ‘Oh yes, I’ve got a job but -1 don’t know if I’ll stay. It’s not much,’ he pursed his mouth in a businesslike way. ‘Not my kind of thing really.’

  Paul did not ask what it was, nor whether he should get in touch with the employer, because the boy seemed to have made it up. The door crashed open wide as if an army were coming through, and the birdlike Sister marched into the ward, buttoning her cuffs and looking round for trouble.

  ‘I’ve got to go.’ Paul got up quickly. ‘Goodbye for now, Tim.’

  The boy neither answered nor seemed to notice. He had withdrawn from behind his face. Paul put back the chair and was starting off with a conciliatory smile for the advancing Sister, when there was a nudging tug, like a child, at the edge of his jacket.

  ‘Will I see you again?’ the boy asked anxiously.

  ‘Of course.’ Paul steamed out of the ward in a glow of elation that frizzled Sister’s outrage and caused Nurse Drage to grumble, ‘There’s some people have to work on a Saturday evening

  Alice was not in the flat. That was not unusual, at drinking time. Not that she favoured any one particular drinking time over another, but the evening was when she wandered off to her favourite pubs and bars, or the Capstan Club down by the harbour.

  Tonight they were supposed to be dining out, but once gone, Alice was not likely to remember. Paul went on his own, and his friends accepted the excuse of Alice’s flu as if they had not heard it before, and not as if they were quite relieved. They were, because they had invited a strange couple, and with Alice, you never knew.

  You never knew when she would come home either. Paul got back to the flat at midnight, and paced about undressing and muttering to himself, ‘If I had a pound for every night I’ve had to worry about her ... If I had five quid for every time I’ve been fool enough to call the police and ask about accidents...’

  His pacing eventually led him into bed. He turned on the lamp to read, and saw, stuck into a book he had finished and would not have been reading, a note from his wife.

  She had gone to stay with Hazel Rencher, a stoical friend from days long past who had always been ‘good’ to her. Hazel thought that Paul was a bad influence on Alice, and traced her drinking directly to him.

  On Sunday, before he went to the Samaritan Centre, he rang Hazel’s number in a town farther along the coast, which Alice disliked even more than this one.

  ‘How’s Alice?’

  ‘She’s all right.’ Implying, why wouldn’t she be, since she is with me? ‘She expected you to ring up last night.’

  ‘I went out to dinner. She was supposed to go too.’

  ‘She was lonely with you off all day. She got on a bus and came here. She didn’t want to be alone.’

  ‘She could have gone with me.’

  ‘To Burlington?’

  ‘To see her son.’ The conversation was getting too righteous on both sides. ‘Let me talk to her.’

  ‘She’s asleep,’ said Hazel triumphantly and rang off.

  ’Vicky. How nice of you to come.’

  ‘It was nice of you to ask me.’

  ‘I expect you’d like a drink.’

  ‘Thank you very much, I—

  ‘You and Robbie are rather late. I expect you’d like to go up and dress first.’

  ‘Thank you very much.’

  The weekend with Robbie’s parents near Maidenhead had been no more stimulating than usual, though not completely a weekend since Victoria came back on Saturday evening.

  Robbie’s parents were afflicted with an anachronistic title, which was one of the reasons why she could not marry him. There were others — he was shorter than she was, she needed a couple of drinks before she could enjoy his hand on her, at the Bank he wore a braided Edwardian waistcoat and half glasses and was irascible with the melancholy trainee girls — but it was enough to tell him, ‘I couldn’t possibly ever be called Lady Roundswell.’

  ‘I don’t see why not.’

  ‘I’d have to pay for everything in cash because I wouldn’t be able to say my name in shops.’

  ‘Would you marry me if I gave up the title?’

  ‘That would kill your father.’

  ‘If I was Lord Roundswell, he’d be dead anyway.’

  The white house was beautiful, the garden falling in terraces to the river. If she married Robbie, this would eventually be theirs. What would they do with his mother? She was not the kind you put in a flat over the stables. Not likeable, she made it difficult to dislike her by giving you no cause. She was passive, placid, dull as bottled water, demanding so little of life and of herself that she did not appear to notice what was lacking. She was a stiff awkward shape, in dressmaker, not couturier expensive clothes, with a mass of grey hair piled haphazardly above a face blessed with a wild-rose skin from not drinking or smoking. She called Victoria Vicky although she had been asked not to, and thought she was not quite top drawer and had knocked about too long without a husband, but might do for poor ridiculous Robbie who had made such a fiasco of his first disastrous marriage. She did not remember that she had originally favoured it; only that he had muffed it.

  She was fairly inarticulate, from caution and lack of ideas rather than shyness. His fat, silly Lordship was so uncomfortably shy that you automatically checked the exits if you found yourself alone in a room with him. When Robbie was at home, he dropped back into their habit of clearing his throat and emitting little Hms and Wells and small nasal sounds to fill silences. Victoria was no great hand at small talk, but nervously she tried, and succeeded only in sounding garrulous.

  The two couples who came to dinner on Friday night were more or less untitled versions of the Roundswells. Everyone stood round with drinks, giving out little moans and hums from up in the nose, while his Lordship went ‘Ha ha, well’, and ‘Well, ha ha’ a few times, and Victoria wished they could all sit down and read magazines till dinner.

  The food was marvellous and the wine was good. Victoria looked across at Robbie’s nice polite face under the short fringe he had started to wear after he saw Richard Harris in ‘Camelot’, and tried to imagine eating with him at this table her own food that she was not allowed to cook. Why could she not throw everybody out of the kitchen? And have the guilt on her soul of Ethel Mobsby, whose whole life was here? And Robbie’s mother would move pointedly from the end of the table, though nobody asked her to, and watch Victoria trying to be Lady Roundswel
l; or sit stuffed into her Paisley, picking at the pheasant, because the Hon. Robbie had had himself demoted to Mister. Though if he did, they would not get this house.

  Sometimes Robbie went wild and heaped on Victoria exhilarating ideas of an island in the Hebrides, a boat in the south seas, a plunge to Australia. She joined in the heady plans, but when he pressed her, ‘Is that the adventure you want? Is that the kind of marriage you’d like to have?’ Victoria could not answer, because she could not say, ‘But it wouldn’t be an adventure with you.’

  Before they went home, one of the couples, who had not seemed to enjoy themselves at all, said with surprising warmth. ‘You must all come round to us for drinks tomorrow.’

  ‘Oh I say.’

  ‘Oh splendid.’

  ‘Oh jolly good.’

  That would be tomorrow taken care of then. ‘Well now. Ha ha, yes.’

  Victoria said, ‘Thank you so much, but I have to be back in the evening.’ But they meant drinks before lunch, bloody Marys, gin and bitter lemon. Ha ha, jolly good. She and Robbie would not be able to take the long walk across the hills and lunch at the Lamb and Flag.

  Afterwards when the Roundswells had gone up — there was a bed in his Lordship’s dressing-room, but Victoria could not guess whether he used it, and Robbie did not know, didn’t know whether his parents slept together! — he sulked under his fringe and said, ‘You didn’t say you had to go back tomorrow. I was taking you to a party.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Rob. I must get back. I have to be on duty by eight on Sunday so that Kathleen can get to Mass.’

  He groaned and tutted and swung his head about. He was not so enthusiastic about the Samaritans when they interfered with his plans.

  Victoria would not let him drive her back. She took a train and went straight from the station to a cinema, dropping into her seat in the darkness with the familiar drugged satisfaction, alone, unknown, craving the safety of the dream.

  When Billie rang up on Sunday, opening defensively, ‘You said to ring,’ she had been to the cinema too.

  With Morna. ‘That’s the name of my friend, I told you. Morna, her name is. Short for Maureen that her mother called her, but she spelled it wrong and they put it on the birth certificate as Momeen. Silly, you know, but then.’ Billie sounded very chirpy.

  ‘I’m so glad you’re feeling better.’

  ‘Well, I’m better than when I rang you Thursday night, I’ll say that much.’

  ‘I know. Poor Billie. Things are all right now, are they, between you and Morna?’

  ‘I don’t know about all right.’ Billie would never have everything roses. ‘She’s not really the sort of girl you can trust. A bit tricky, you see. Sometimes she won’t answer the phone, to make me think she’s gone out. I never quite know who she’s with. But Saturday lunchtime when I came back from work — oh, you should see my feet, the standing is criminal — there she was at the door, pushing a bar of chocolate nougat through the letter-box. So in the afternoon we went to see Twisted Nerve and we got a bit of supper and then went down to South Parade and saw Rosemary’s Baby.’

  ‘How is it?’

  ‘Smashing. All those old bags standing round without a stitch on, I had to laugh. And there’s poor old Mia Farrow stretched out like a stewing chicken, not a bit of flesh on her, and you see the devil doing it, right there before your amazed eyes, you ought to see it. Or are you prudish, Victoria? Funny, it’s as if I know you quite well, but I don’t know anything about you. You’re thirty-five. Old maid. Not a lez. Right? So you’re a prude.’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘It’s all orgasms now though, isn’t it, the films, all orgasms. I get a bit sick of it. Tereese and Isabella — I don’t know. Morna and I started to laugh, and pretty soon we had the whole house in fits. “It wasn’t like that when I was at school,” someone said, and it started everybody off again. In Twisted Nerve, where poor old Billie Whitelaw is off to the woodshed, there was a woman giggled. Nerves, you see. She was still sniggering when he smashes that hatchet down on her forehead and all blood and stuff comes out. How do they do that? Like that bit in Psycho where the dick is coming up the stairs and Anthony Perkins puts the knife into his face. I’ve seen that picture three times.’

  ‘I’ve seen it four.’

  ‘My God, you’re as bad as me, Victoria. Do you see everything?’

  ‘Except the surfing ones.’

  ‘I go all the time. That’s how I met Morna, as a matter of fact. It was The Americanisation of Emily. A person like an elephant came and sat down in front of me, so I moved my seat and there she was. Someone had finally got Julie Andrews into bed.’

  ‘James Garner.’

  ‘You’re right, I’d forgotten. It’s what they call a merciful oblivion.’

  When Victoria put down the telephone, laughing, Paul raised an eyebrow. Apart from bare facts in the log, you could tell or not tell about telephone conversations. No one would bother you.

  ‘Isn’t it nice when people ring up to say they feel better, instead of worse?’ she said. ‘I wish I knew what to do about Jean – you know, the agoraphobia woman I’m befriending. She’s terribly depressed. It just seems that every time she gets up the nerve to go out alone, something happens to panic her, and so she’s even more afraid to try it the next time.’

  ‘Is she married — what’s the husband like?’

  ‘Oh, he tried, but it’s been going on for so long, he gets a bit sick of it, you can’t blame him in a way, Their doctor told him it was nerves and she should pull herself together, and so he was against the idea of a psychiatrist from the start. That’s perhaps why Jean stopped going. I tried to persuade her on Friday, and said I’d go with her. She’s all right when we’re together. I thought at first that I was really helping, but now she’s afraid of that too, because she thinks she ought to be going out by herself. So what do I do now?’

  ‘That does happen,’ Paul said. ‘People feel guilty about some problems. They ask for help and then when they get it, they begin to feel guilty about needing the help.’

  ‘So should I go on nursing her along or encourage her to try and be tough?’

  Samaritan befriending seemed so clear when you were instructed in your training that what was needed of you was simply a caring, accepting friendship. Then when the clients were real people instead of hypothetical examples, it was not so clear. Jean was so sad, so difficult, quick to see the snags and slow to see the joys in anything. Victoria usually felt depressed when she had been with her, hearing Jean’s view of life where everything was a threat or a burden. ‘She’s difficult to help,’ she told Paul, ‘because she doesn’t seem to want to hope.’

  ‘But don’t forget,’ he said, ‘that if she wasn’t difficult, she wouldn’t need befriending. Why don’t you have a word with Peter when he comes in?’

  ‘I hate to bother him all the time.’

  ‘It’s not bothering. We can’t run this thing with a bunch of amateurs like you and me. There have to be the experts behind us.’

  One of them, a youngish man with a Christian name so intolerable that he was known simply as 200, came into the long reception room, where Paul and Victoria were at the desk in the bay window at the back. He held the door for a frail-looking girl, pregnant and down at heel, a huge red-faced child so heavy in her arms that she could hardly walk in her miserable shoes.

  ‘This is Judy,’ 200 said. ‘Will you look after her for a while? I’m trying some addresses.’

  Victoria tried to take the child, but he screamed and clung to his brittle childlike mother, who seemed to have no substance but her pregnancy. ‘He won’t go to anyone else,’ she whispered.

  ‘Sit down then, Judy.’

  She sat down with her double burden, and sighed. Victoria went out to get her a cup of tea. When she came back, Paul was talking to a middle-aged man and a boy who both looked furtive. Which one was the client? The man had brought the boy — no, the boy had brought the man, who was just out of prison.


  ‘Your son?’

  ‘No.’ The man laughed and pulled at the boy’s hair. ‘He’s what you might call a neighbour. “Here, what do you want, keep bothering me,” I tell him. “I’m going to see you don’t get back inside,” he says. ‘What do you think of that?’

  The boy giggled and ducked his head to flick back his hair, and the man rumpled it forward again. The pregnant girl watched apathetically, her flat anaemic eyes moving from face to face without interest.

  Paul took the man upstairs to talk in private. The boy settled down with a comic. A new young Samaritan called Ronnie came back from buying buns and was sent out again to drive Judy and her child to the address in the country which 200 had found for her.

  200 sat down by the desk with Victoria, an oldish young man with a high domed forehead and a slow, thoughtful way of looking at you intently and then suddenly relaxing into a deep, sweet smile. Victoria had known him for a year, because he was at the Centre almost every day, but it was not until she ran into him one evening in a corridor of the hospital’s new clinic, that she found out that he was a psychiatric nurse. He knew a lot about the other Samaritans but they did not know much about him, except that he was a strong, refreshing mixture of wisdom and naïveté, experience and discovery.

  ‘How was the weekend?’

  ‘All right. I stayed with Robbie’s family.’

  ‘What are they like?’

  Victoria shrugged. ‘They can’t help it, I suppose.’

  ‘As bad as that?’

  ‘They don’t bend in the middle, and they go ha ha and rub their hands.’

  ‘Not going to marry him, are you?’ 200 asked anxiously.

  ‘I shall if I want to.’ Victoria tired of the joke. ‘It’s too easy to jibe at those sort of people.’

  ‘The whole country’s turned on them,’ 200 said. ‘Backbone of England, they used to say. With fused vertebrae.’

  People came in and out. A boy in a tight leather jacket with the sleeves half-way up his arms, who looked as if he was on drugs. A regular called Nancy who had been dropping in several times a week since she had been hauled out of suicidal depression last year. A professor from the University to ask if the Samaritans would help one of his students. ‘Only if he will come in, or ring us himself.’