by David Storey
11
A haze covered the hospital forecourt and amplified the light from the lower windows: in getting out of the car, the boys stepped into a puddle.
They took Attercliffe’s handkerchief, sponged down their jeans and, tip-toeing between the puddles, approached the lighted porch.
A lift took them up to the seventh floor; they walked along a corridor to a double door, pushed it open and, with several other visitors, passed amongst the beds, arranged in cubicles in groups of four.
Sheila, her hair drawn back beneath a ribbon, her face bright with make-up, was sitting up in bed.
‘Keith.’ She clapped her hands. ‘And Bryan!’ Embracing each of the boys in turn, she looked into the bags they’d brought: beside the bed itself stood a vase of flowers, a box of tissues and a bowl of fruit. ‘I hope you’re both behaving yourselves.’
The three other beds in the alcove were occupied by one younger and two older women; the latter were receiving visitors: an aged man, stoop-shouldered, sat beside each one.
The younger woman was knitting.
‘How’s Lorna?’
‘She’s very well.’ Bryan pushed back his hair after Sheila had disturbed it.
‘I miss her so much.’
‘She misses you.’ Keith allowed himself to be embraced, hanging in Sheila’s arms while she tapped at his back, her eyes closed.
‘You must tell her I miss her.’
‘We do.’
‘When I feel better you can bring her up.’
‘She’d like to come,’ Attercliffe said.
The clicking of the needles stopped; a page was turned on a knitting pattern: the woman counted numbers beneath her breath.
‘I miss her so much,’ Sheila said again. ‘Whereas you boys, and the girls, can look after yourselves. You don’t need me,’ she added, ‘at all.’
‘Dad does a lot, Mum,’ Keith responded.
‘He’s always washing up and cooking,’ Bryan said.
‘I’m sure you all do your share,’ Sheila said.
The clicking of the needles recommenced.
She took Bryan’s and then Keith’s hand, tapping each in turn, and, indicating the bowl of fruit, she announced, ‘You can have one if you like.’
The offer was declined.
‘We must have a big party when I come out.’
‘When are you coming out?’ Keith asked.
‘Oh, very soon. I feel so much better,’ she said, ‘already. And to hear,’ she continued, ‘you’re managing so well.’
It was to Bryan that she turned, straightening his collar, retaining his hand, adjusting the front of his jacket, brushing back his hair.
‘I’m okay,’ he said, and backed away.
‘Have a look round.’ She indicated the ward. ‘The nurses,’ she went on, ‘are very nice. So patient,’ she added, ‘and understanding.’
She lay back in the bed; the boys wandered off: Attercliffe, a moment later, could hear their feet stamp along the floor of the corridor outside.
‘This is my husband, Wendy,’ Sheila said.
The woman opposite smiled.
‘Wendy’s husband isn’t available this evening,’ Sheila added.
Returning to her knitting, the woman smiled again.
‘Is there anything you need?’ Attercliffe asked. ‘Anything I can get you?’
‘Peace of mind.’ She examined a thread in the cover of the bed. ‘It’s not a lot to ask. It’s not a great deal,’ she went on, ‘after all I’ve been through.’
‘Maurice rang,’ Attercliffe said. ‘He sends you his regards.’
Leaning back, she gazed at the ceiling.
He added, ‘So does Gavin.’
‘The doctor says,’ she said, ‘I haven’t to get upset. I want no further contact with either of those men.’
She smiled across the cubicle at one of the two older women, whose hand had been enclosed in both those of the stoop-shouldered man sitting beside her bed.
‘Freddie is in here as well,’ Attercliffe said.
‘Is he?’
‘Three floors down.’
‘Anything wrong?’
‘He’s dying.’
‘What of?’
‘Cancer.’
She bit her lip, looked away, raised her head, and said, ‘He’s lucky.’
‘You’ve everything to live for,’ Attercliffe said and noticed that, rather than raising her voice, she’d lowered it.
‘I’ve nothing to live for.’
‘You have five children.’
‘They don’t need an additional burden,’ she said. ‘I was born before my time.’
From a distant cubicle came the sound of someone crying and the words, repeated like a chant, ‘I can’t! I can’t!’
‘I may be transferred from here,’ she added. ‘Therapeutic treatment goes on elsewhere.’
‘Do they say when?’ Attercliffe asked.
‘Getting ready to throw me out again?’ she said.
‘It’s something we’ll have to discuss,’ he said.
‘Gavin and Maurice were good at discussing. They’ll discuss anything,’ she said, ‘for hours.’ She added, ‘It’s a man’s world. Women’s rights are another illusion.’
The young woman on the bed opposite looked up; to Attercliffe’s surprise he saw she was crying: the tears, suspended from her chin, dropped on to her knitting. She wiped her wrist across her cheek, rolled up her wool and, getting up, crossed the alcove and said to Sheila, ‘I haven’t had a good cry for years.’
She returned to her bed, took out a handkerchief, blew her nose, turned and, crossing the cubicle, disappeared to the outer door.
‘She’s upset because there’s no one to see her.’
‘I thought she had a husband.’
‘He never comes. Guilt is the only thing that brings them.’ She gestured to the women in the other beds.
‘You shouldn’t let this bitterness get a grip of you,’ he said.
‘I shan’t,’ she said. ‘Once I get home, everything,’ she added, ‘is going to be different.’
‘That’s something we’ll have to discuss,’ he said again.
‘Discuss,’ she said. ‘We’re back to that,’ and added, ‘It’s all very well for you, offering advice to a woman. One, I might add, that you helped to destroy.’
‘I did nothing of the kind,’ he said.
‘A woman is a victim in these situations. She is conditioned into submission, and when that submission ends in her destruction those who are responsible have to be called to account. The doctor here has mentioned that. “Your husband, Mrs Attercliffe,” she told me, “is as much a part of this as you are.”’
‘Perhaps I could have a talk with her,’ Attercliffe said.
‘When I told her of the way I’ve been treated it was all I could do to restrain her from taking out a prosecution. She said, “A woman in this world, Mrs Attercliffe, doesn’t stand a chance. We are all victims, and must stand together.”’
The two male visitors raised their heads; tired faces gazed across the ward in Attercliffe’s direction.
He could hear the footsteps of the boys coming back; a moment later they appeared at the cubicle entrance.
‘Can we have some money for the shop?’ they asked and, after Sheila had revealed, for their benefit, a sudden tear, he handed them the money and they scampered off.
‘None of this is true,’ he said.
‘Isn’t it?’
‘It’s propaganda.’
‘Propaganda to you,’ she said. ‘Reality to me.’
‘Why don’t you concentrate on the practicalities?’ Attercliffe asked.
She buried her face in a tissue taken from the box beside the bed. ‘Such as?’
‘The impracticality of you and me living in the same house. We’ll have to sell it.’
She subsided into the pillow, turned on her side, and drew the covers about her.
‘I’ve no intention of thinking of anything,’ she sa
id. ‘Except myself. Which is all you’ve thought about,’ she went on, ‘all the years I’ve known you.’
‘There isn’t much time for self-absorption with a wife and five children to support,’ Attercliffe said.
‘The traditional patriarchal attitude,’ she replied, her mouth half-turned to the pillow.
‘Which doesn’t exclude a matriarch,’ Attercliffe said.
‘Matriarch. Patriarch.’ She laughed. ‘Another sop. Like knitting, and looking after your children.’
The woman from the bed opposite returned.
Attercliffe got up and stretched his legs.
‘The doctor suggested,’ she added, ‘I shouldn’t even speak to you.’
‘That’s what you get,’ he said to the three other women and the two other men, ‘for doing her a favour.’
‘Favours!’ Sheila said.
She got up from the bed and would have picked up the vase of flowers or the bowl of fruit, only a figure in white appeared at Attercliffe’s shoulder and a hand was laid on Sheila’s arm and as the young woman across the cubicle, having sat down on her bed to recommence her knitting, began to laugh, and the two men stood up by the other beds, the white-gowned figure said, ‘It may be better, Mr Attercliffe, if you leave,’ while Sheila cried, ‘I’ll kill him!’
From the bed opposite the laughter ceased and calls of inquiry came from the ward outside.
‘It’s a healthier response than all that other crap,’ Attercliffe told the nurse who, drawing Sheila back, declared, ‘Into bed, Mrs Attercliffe. You’ve been told about your temper,’ and, finally, to Attercliffe, ‘I really think you ought to leave.’
Nevertheless, she allowed him to take Sheila’s other arm and, between them, they guided her back to the bed: she sat, lifted her legs, allowed her dressing-gown to be drawn around her and, the covers having been raised, she slid herself inside. Gazing at the nurse, she announced, ‘Thank you,’ and, a short while after, when the boys came in, she called, gaily, ‘Good night, boys. I’m off to sleep,’ scarcely raising her cheek, her eyes closed, as each stooped down to kiss her.
‘Why will it do us good?’ Bryan asked.
‘Because,’ Attercliffe said, ‘it’ll do Mr Fredericks good,’ only, when they got out of the lift at the appropriate floor and saw the signs of discomposure in most of the faces in most of the beds in most of the alcoves on either side, he added, ‘Apart from one or two players, there’s scarcely anyone he sees.’
Fredericks had been moved from his previous alcove to a smaller one further along the ward; his colour, from its more traditional blend of red and white with bluish tinges, had faded to a uniform yellow. His eyes were shadowed, his cheeks drawn in.
‘These thy young ’uns? O’d enough soon to look after thee,’ he said.
‘They were against coming in to see you,’ Attercliffe said.
‘That’s the spirit,’ Fredericks said to each of the boys. ‘Do what thy’s told, and not what thy wants. It goes against conventional opinion nowadays, but it’s t’on’y advice thy should have.’
The boys drew up chairs to sit by the bed. Raising his head, Fredericks added, ‘You haven’t brought me a snifter?’
‘I haven’t,’ Attercliffe said.
‘Been to see your wife?’
‘I have.’
‘Better?’
‘By the time we left.’
‘This place’ll do wonders,’ he said. ‘It’s done wonders for me,’ he added to the boys, ‘already.’
‘She’s being moved to another hospital,’ Attercliffe said.
‘Be seeing less of you, in that case,’ Fredericks said.
‘I doubt it.’
‘On the way theer, is it, or on the way back?’ A disturbance took place inside his chest: he wheezed, coughed, and added, ‘They’ve got me buttoned down.’
He indicated a harness which, restricting his movements, was attached to a framework at the head of the bed.
‘I’ve had that many things pushed up, stuck in, pulled out, I’ve near nought left to come out inside.’ He winked at the boys, adjusted the front of his pyjama jacket, and added, ‘See thy does what thy faither says. Thy’ll never get another chance.’ He winked again.
‘Is he going to die?’ Keith asked when they were outside, and when Attercliffe decided to tell them, ‘Yes,’ they got into the car without adding anything; only when they were halfway home did Bryan ask, ‘Will we go mad as well?’
‘Why?’
‘Our mother’s gone mad already.’
‘Your mother’s only tired,’ he said. ‘Tiredness,’ he continued, ‘takes many forms. Mr Fredericks’s is one way,’ he concluded, ‘your mother’s is another.’
‘Why do you call him Mr Fredericks?’ Keith asked.
‘Because he is Mr Fredericks to you,’ he said.
Long before they had left, unable to concentrate on anything for very long, Fredericks, suddenly, had said, ‘What do you think to pain?’ and, without waiting for an answer, had added, ‘It has to have a purpose. I never thought it had to have before, but now I’m beginning to wonder,’ and, moments later, he had begun to hum a tune, lightly, his gaze directed beyond a glass partition to the ward from where a voice had called, finally, ‘Singing again, then, Freddie?’
Bryan said, ‘I don’t think he knew we were there.’
‘He asked about Sheila,’ Attercliffe said.
‘I think, after a while, he forgot who we were.’
Only when they were leaving had Fredericks looked across and, as he shook Attercliffe’s hand, glanced down and said, ‘If there isn’t a reason, it all comes down to nothing-othing-o,’ and, grasping Attercliffe’s hand more tightly, concluded, ‘Here’s to the old times, Frank.’
‘You didn’t cry when we left Mummy,’ Keith said.
‘No,’ he said.
‘She doesn’t mean as much.’
‘She doesn’t in some ways, Keith,’ he said.
‘How can you love someone one year,’ Bryan said, ‘and not the next?’ He sat beside Attercliffe in the front of the car, Keith by himself in the seat behind.
‘It only happens between the sexes,’ Attercliffe said. ‘In a family,’ he added, ‘it never quite subsides.’
‘It has with Mummy.’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It has with her.’
Only as they turned into the lane and approached the house did Keith remark, ‘I’m glad we went. I didn’t want to when we first set off. But,’ he went on, from the seat behind, ‘I shouldn’t like to go again.’
‘Why not?’
‘Somehow I don’t feel,’ he said, ‘we shall have to.’
The glare from the television was visible from the road but, a moment after the door was opened, the set was switched off, followed, an instant later, by Lorna’s complaint, ‘Why not?’ then the living-room door opened and Elise came out and said, ‘Would you like some tea?’
She brought it in on a tray; Lorna sat with her legs kicking against the settee: the boys each took a piece of cake and went to their room. Finally, taking a piece, Lorna sat on Attercliffe’s lap, kicked his shins, tucked her head against his chest then, jumping down as she heard a record being played upstairs, banged up to the landing.
‘How’s Mum?’
‘Argumentative.’
Cathy sat in a chair by the window; after her departure with her friends from the house, she had returned, without speaking, a short while later and, since then, scarcely a word had passed between them.
‘Argumentative about what?’ she asked.
‘Her usual obsessions,’ Attercliffe said.
‘Obsessions to you,’ she said, ‘are realities to other people.’
‘That’s very much what she said,’ Attercliffe said.
‘She’s had a hard life.’
‘She has.’ To Elise, he added, ‘I appreciate the tea.’
‘Appreciate,’ Catherine said, ‘like everything else.’
‘How else should I describe it?’ At
tercliffe asked.
‘Mum is in that hospital,’ she gestured with her arm in the direction of the town, ‘because of you.’
Attercliffe said, ‘I don’t see why.’
‘Your whole life is based on prejudice,’ she said. ‘And prejudice,’ she added, ‘is depicted blind.’
‘I thought,’ Attercliffe said, ‘that that was love.’
‘Life,’ she said, getting up from her chair and standing by the unlit fire, ‘has moved on since the time when you were living it. It’s gone a long way. The attitudes you have are no longer relevant. They denigrate,’ she went on, ‘everything of value.’
‘Like what?’
‘Like when I bring my friends home.’
‘I don’t want this place turned into a dope-den,’ Attercliffe said.
Tossing back her head, her hands on her hips, she laughed. ‘Like drinking alcohol.’
‘I want Lorna, and the boys, to stand a chance.’
‘Of what?’
‘Of growing up without apeing their sisters.’
‘It’s better they follow their sisters’ example than they follow yours,’ she said. ‘Just look at the place they live in, with windows broken, with never a meal,’ she continued, ‘ready on time.’
‘I’m here as often as I can get,’ Attercliffe said.
‘This place is a shambles. And all the while,’ she glanced at Elise, ‘he’s setting an example we ought to follow.’
‘There are other values which operate in here, apart from mine,’ Attercliffe said.
‘There are,’ she said, ‘And those are mine. And Elise’s. But not Sheila’s. She’s still caught,’ she added, ‘by the old mystique of male domination and female submission. Look around you. All your values are irrelevant, Dad. They represent everything that’s finished. Whether it’s running people out of your home, or driving our mother mad.’
‘She isn’t mad.’
‘She’s the next best thing.’
‘The only illness she’s ever had is listening to half-baked ticks like you.’
‘Who’s half-baked?’
‘You are.’
Elise clapped her hands and began to stack the tray, collecting the cups and saucers.
‘We’re like orphans,’ Catherine said. ‘We can’t have a mother and we don’t have a father.’