The Listeners

by Monica Dickens

  ‘No, it isn’t that, but...’

  He gave her back her hand and she kissed where he had kissed, dreamily. ‘A company of Samaritans. It sounds so ... heroic.’

  At the next lecture, given by a psychiatrist, Meredith was surprisingly there, this time with no make up and a scarf whose colours had run in the rain, to show she did not care.

  Sarah, with opposite tactics, had spent longer than usual on her eyes. Before she got her ragged crop, hair had been her fetish. Then it was boots. She still could hardly run down to the corner for milk without them. Now it was eyes. Without the artistry of shadow and liner and lashes, she would have felt naked before anyone, including Dr Harold Greiff, who was technical enough to satisfy Meredith’s impatience, but not too technical for Sarah and the anxious man at the back who kept shooting up his hand like a schoolboy and saying, ‘Would you repeat that? I want to be quite sure I’m getting this perfectly clear.’

  ‘Don’t worry too much, Mr – what was your name? -Richard Bayes. Don’t worry too much, Richard Bayes. A Samaritan must have some psychology, that’s obvious, but you don’t have to know it all. The client doesn’t want you to have all the answers, don’t you see? He wants you to be human, fallible, on his level. Otherwise, how can he tell you the despicable things, the stupid, shaming things? For the answers, there will always be the experts behind you. And all the very practical agencies, like A.A., Alanon, Synanon, Gamblers Anonymous, Weight Watchers – no, that’s not funny. Perhaps you didn’t know that overeating is often related to depression?’

  ‘Everyone knows that.’

  It was a loud enough mutter. Dr Greiff lowered his peppery eyebrows towards Meredith and asked, ‘And do they also know that it can be a form of slow suicide, the same urge to self-destruction as alcoholism or drugs or smoking, hainh?’

  ‘And dangerous driving?’

  ‘And dangerous driving. That can be a very quick way.’

  ‘My name is Peter. My number is 100. I am the Director of this branch of the Samaritans.’

  He was a burly man of about forty-five, with tawny lion’s hair, although his eyes were not reincarnated cat, but brown and calm and concentrated, like the kind of dog that has been reincarnated from a man, a good lost friend. When Sarah had met him at the hotel, he was in old clothes, terrible wide-cut trousers of a style long gone. He kept pulling them out and up, as if he had recently lost weight, and was proud of it. Now in a dark suit, he was not much more stylish. He had the kind of shape and movements that break clothes in to their own requirements, like a saddle.

  He spoke rather softly, sitting behind the desk and fiddling with a pencil, but everyone could hear him, because everyone was quiet.

  Meredith was still there, although last week when Sarah had said, ‘See you on Monday.’ she had answered, ‘If I come.’

  She was in slacks this evening, the collar of her white sweater high up under her determined chin, her shiny black hair newly cut with geometrical sideburns. She was attractive in a bright, glittery way, her teeth very white, her lips smooth and wet, her eyes like green glass on a sunny beach.

  ‘People in our society,’ Peter said, ‘are supposed to know what it’s all about. They know who they are, because the State has slapped labels on them. Homemaker. Educator. Computer Programmer. White Collar. Blue Collar. Law Enforcement Officer. Student. They are trained in what are called Skills, and they either have jobs or things with names like Earnings Related Supplements to Flat-rate Unemployment Benefit, from the Department of Employment and Productivity, which used to be the Labour Exchange.

  ‘They move like a restless wind back and forth in cars and buses and trains and planes. They know where they are going. They know they are going towards death, but they don’t think about it much, since the angels and thrones and cherubs aren’t there any more. They know what they want in shops. They have to, since there is nobody to ask, “Have you got any chutney?” or “What’s the pork like today?” They know what they want in marriage, having been sleeping together for a sensible period. They paint up a flat and eat paella and drink wine out of pottery mugs, and their children are called Tanzia and Melody and all speak slightly cockney, whatever the class of their parents.

  ‘The State has everyone in a plastic shopping bag, and it’s pretty sickening for our masters that there are still so many people who fall through holes and get lost among the broken cabbage leaves and crumpled grocery lists. That there are people who can’t be neatly classified, except as Layabout. Failure. N.F.A. People who don’t fit in anywhere. Who won’t go along with the master plan. They are drifters, rejects. They can’t cope. They have nowhere to go and no one to love and no one who will listen to them any more – if they ever did.

  ‘Some of them have been like this since they were children. Some of them started out quite promisingly and then gradually everything went wrong. They are lonely because they are not very acceptable, and the more they are alone, the less acceptable they become. A vicious circle, sometimes subconsciously deliberate (that’s not a contradiction in terms) to back up their slogan: Nobody loves me. In the same way that teenagers will make themselves unlovable, in order to be able to accuse parents, “You don’t love me.” ‘

  He paused for a moment, and looked at the reflective smiles of the older people who were seeing their teenage children. Sarah was seeing herself, hiding behind her hair, rejecting her father’s knowledge, scornful of his social antics, impatient with her mother’s patience, sadistic to everyone but her animals.

  ‘And so you see,’ Peter went on, turning the pencil over and over, tapping the desk first with the point, then the end, ‘it comes about that life has no place for these people. They drop out of school, of college, of jobs, of social groups, of marriage, of anything that emphasizes their own inadequacy. They don’t like their lives, or themselves. They are confused, rejected, lost. They will end their lives. Why not? You can’t live if you don’t like yourself. You can’t love anyone unless you can love yourself first. So if you hate yourself and your life and you have nobody to turn to – absolutely nobody, consider that – you kill yourself. That isn’t the answer, but it seems like the only answer, when the world has left you for dead.

  ‘But at the last moment, because you are a human being and self-preservation is your second strongest instinct, sometimes at the last moment, you send out one more cry for help.’ He laid his hand on one of the telephones on the desk. ‘And it is answered. At the last moment, because you can’t bear to go unnoticed into your final act, you ask someone to listen to you. And they listen.

  ‘And then?’ He shrugged his broad shoulders. ‘Perhaps you still kill yourself. Perhaps you don’t. The Samaritans will never physically prevent you from taking your own life. They’ll try to show you that it could be worth while not to.’

  He sighed and leaned back, passing a large brown hand across his face, pushing back his springy hair.

  ‘I hope I haven’t bored you,’ he said politely. ‘I do so much listening that I grab at a legitimate excuse to talk. Listening. Befriending. Counselling. You have been told by now that this is the main work of the Samaritans. Those of you we choose—’ He looked round the room as 200 had done, as if he were deciding now (what sort of face was best to make?) – ‘will learn to listen and to befriend, both on the telephone and face to face with clients. I don’t like that word, but it’s the only one -patients, customers – there’s no other. English has more words than any other language, but it lets us down there.

  ‘I can’t give you a typical Samaritan client. There’s no such thing. I could sit here all night giving you example after example, each one different, and then your first call when you’re alone on 4000 will be something you never heard of or even imagined in your wildest fantasies. What’s the basic rule?’

  ‘Listen,’ someone said.

  ‘Yes, that of course, but how?’

  ‘Tolerantly.’

  ‘And?’ He lifted his chin.

  ‘Not be shocked?’
Sarah wanted to sound mature, but her voice came out naively high, as if she would run screaming at her first four-letter word.

  ‘Right.’ He did not seem to recognize that he had seen her before. ‘You’ll get sex calls. Filthy sex calls. You’ll have to listen while people are masturbating in phone boxes, and you can’t hang up. Ever. You’ll hear foul abuse. Crude things about yourself and what might be done to you, but you hang on, because behind it is probably a cry for help. It’s not a hoax. It’s never a hoax. It may be some of the vilest words to get your attention before the real problem can start to be told. In any case, if it’s masturbating in a phone box, that’s a real problem in itself. If that’s the only kind of sexual satisfaction someone has, then he surely needs help.

  ‘I’ll give you an example. One of the Samaritans, a middle-aged lady, very respectable, her husband was mayor or town clerk or something, she was walking in the park and she saw a man with his trousers open. He was wanking. That’s a word you’ll hear on the telephone. You may as well get used to it.

  ‘The Samaritan lady, instead of screaming and running for the police, said to the man, “Look here, my dear, it wouldn’t do for anyone to see you doing that. Better step back a bit behind that bush.” She stood guard until he had achieved his orgasm, then asked him in her kindly motherly way if he felt better.’

  He stopped and said suddenly to one of the college girls, the fat one with the bad skin, ‘What’s the matter? You’re shocked.’

  ‘No, I’m not.’

  ‘Yes, I can tell. And a client would be able to tell right away, even on the telephone. Sometimes that’s all it takes to scare them away. The first impact of your voice is crucial. It could make the difference between saving a life and losing it. Don’t be embarrassed. This isn’t a personal attack, I’m only making a point.

  ‘Were you shocked?’ He nodded to a comfortable country-veined woman with a bright blue fur felt hat of the kind made only in England and worn only by English women.

  ‘You couldn’t shock me, my dear.’ She sat with her knees apart, feet planted square, from years of making a lap for children, and because her legs were too fat to cross.

  ‘All right. I’m a client. I say to you, “I’m screwing my pet dog every night, and before that it was sheep.” How would you take that ?’

  The woman smiled, her outdoor cheeks forming red balls. ‘I was brought up on a farm.’

  ‘What would you say?’

  ‘I don’t know. “Oh yes?” I suppose, or something like that.’

  ‘And you?’ Peter looked at Richard Bayes.

  ‘Let me think.’ He blinked and twitched and sniffed his nose to get his glasses up.

  ‘You can’t think in silence. You must say something to let the poor chap know you’re still there.’

  ‘How long has this been going on?’

  ‘Too severe. You?’

  The knitting girl said innocently, ‘What kind of dog?’

  Meredith did not laugh. She shifted on her hard neat bottom and asked, ‘What are we supposed to say?’

  ‘Not much. Just be interested. Murmur encouragingly. He wants to tell you, so let him tell you. I’ll give you another one. A woman rings up. She says, “I’m forty. I’m not attractive. I’ve never had a man. What’s wrong with doing it to yourself?” People don’t always use technical terms.’ He pointed to Sarah. ‘What would you say?’

  ‘Nothing. I mean’ – Don’t blush, Sarah, he’ll think you’re shocked – ‘That’s what I’d tell her. “Nothing.” ‘

  ‘Was that right?’ Richard Bayes asked.

  ‘Didn’t you think so?’

  ‘Well, it doesn’t seem to solve anything for the poor woman.’

  They visualized, this assorted group of all ages, classes and types, the plain ungainly spinster on her virginal bed.

  ‘That’s the point,’ Peter said. ‘You’re not supposed to give instant solutions. You can’t. It’s very humbling to be a Samaritan. Everyone thinks they can change people. A Samaritan knows he can’t. He can only support and listen and reassure them that they are not alone. If you can’t learn that, we can’t take you.’

  Someone asked, ‘When will we know?’

  ‘We’ll have the telephone test after Christmas. Then we—ll let you know.’

  ‘How many do you take usually?’

  ‘About one in five, one in six, or something like that.’

  ‘You mean only two or three of us will get in?’ They looked at each other in consternation.

  Sarah wished that she had not told Mrs Wrigley, at the Mens Sana, about the Samaritans. Mrs Wrigley had said, ‘The young are so dedicated,’ chopping nuts for banana loaf. ‘If they don’t take me, I’ll ring them up and say I’m going to kill myself,’ she told Meredith.

  ‘Quite honestly,’ she said, ‘it all sounds so difficult. I don’t think I could cope with it anyway.’

  ‘Oh you could.’ Sarah grabbed at the sycophantic talisman.

  ‘Do you really think so?’ The shining lips parted on the white teeth in a smile of genuine pleasure. She wasn’t really aggressive at all. Why had she pretended?

  Peter came up to them. ‘How were the Americans?’ he asked Sarah.

  ‘I didn’t think you recognized me.’

  ‘Not everyone looks like you.’

  He looked at her like a man, and Sarah said, ‘Thanks. The Americans were fine. They liked being at your hotel. I talked to one man who said he was coming back in the summer.’

  ‘Mr Reynolds. I hope he won’t be disappointed. He seemed to be ... chasing something which he thought he had found here. How’s Meredith tonight? Still think you want to be a Samaritan?’

  ‘No.’ She grinned with her mouth closed, denting her chin. ‘I never did. It was you who said I wanted to.’

  She lived outside the town. Sarah drove her down to the station. In the car, Meredith asked, ‘You know Peter then?’

  ‘I met him once, with my husband. He’s at the Front Royal.’

  Meredith made a face. ‘Ghastly place,’ She would have said it anyway, if Brian had been the owner or the manager. ‘That why you volunteered?’

  ‘No. It was other things. Coincidences. A bell rang in my head, you know?’

  ‘I try not to listen to mine. It usually tolls doom.’

  ‘Why did you volunteer?’

  ‘God knows. No – Peter. Don’t confuse the two.’

  ‘Do you know him well?’

  ‘Mm-hm.’ Meredith nodded, her chin cupped in the neck of her sweater. ‘Too well. Hours and hours of battle.’

  Sarah tried to keep her face incurious, but Meredith said in her clipped defensive voice, ‘It’s all right. I don’t care. When you’ve got that tube down you sucking your guts out, you don’t care about anything. He’s seen me at my worst anyway. You could say that.’

  Four

  MRS OLIVE BARROW, a dark plump widow with a shadow of moustache and trotting feet in small soft shoes, was a Nursing Assistant on the ward at Highfield where they put Tim. From the start, she was the one who focused for him the complicated hospital scene.

  When he arrived, stiff and speechless, she helped him to put away his things and showed him his island of property - bed, rug, locker, chair - in the long dormitory. She took him into the day room and introduced him to Mr Gilbert, the Staff Nurse, who for days was only freckled hands and buttons on a white coat to Tim, who could not raise his eyes. She told him the names of some of the other men and which were the warmest places to sit and what time dinner would be. She fussed about in a bunchy blue overall with her hair piled up under a crumpled cap, exuding warm female sweat and kindly stock phrases, both comforting.

  Tim could have died when Paul left him alone among thousands in this place which looked like a mad giant’s castle outside and a giant anthill within, but after Mr Gilbert had left him too, Olive Barrow had come and said, ‘Ah now, lovey, don’t carry on. It’s not as bad as that. Turn off the taps, there’s a good boy, and you can come and he
lp me set the tables for dinner. One hand will do the work of two, I’m sure. Keep busy, that’s the ticket. Here’s Uncle Fred, he’ll show you the ropes. Uncle’s my right hand man, aren’t you, Uncle dear?’

  She was there in the morning for breakfast, filling up mugs from the huge tin teapot, handing out the bacon and fried bread. ‘Tomatoes! It must be Thursday already. Where does the week go?’ She was there when Tim came back from the workshop, clattering the metal covers on the kitchen trolley with a noise that spoke of dinner. She was there at tea, her fingers smelling of bread and butter, and when she finally knocked off after helping the maid and some of the men with the washing up, she always looked for Tim to say, ‘I’m off then, Timmy.’

  ‘See you in the morning.’

  ‘If I’m spared.’

  Tim went every day with a batch of others to the carpentry workshop that was part of the Industrial Therapy unit. A male nurse went with them and they went in file, not like soldiers, but to keep out of people’s way, tromp tromp down the long branching corridors, through doors and up and down stairs. Highfield was not locked, but if you were brilliant enough to find your way out, you did not need to be shut in.

  After a week, they had taken the cast off his wrist to show the raised scar. Did I do that? A cramp clutched his stomach at the thought of the glass going in. They asked him what work he would prefer to do.

  He shook his head. ‘Nothing.’ He kept his hand in his pocket now. When he had to take it out, he held it turned down.

  ‘There’s not much outside work at this time of year,’ the doctor continued as if Tim had kept silent. Perhaps he had? Sometimes he thought he had spoken when he had not.

  ‘There’s the small parts assembly where we put together bicycle valves and things like that. Or the carpentry shop might be the place for you. Are you any good with your hands?’

  Tim shrugged, spreading the fingers of his good hand and examining it back and front.

  ‘What sort of jobs did you do?’ the doctor asked quite casually, but if he expected to catch Tim by pretending to look for something on his desk, he was not as clever as he would like to think.