by David Storey
‘You’ve never once asked how Sheila is,’ he said.
‘I don’t have to ask,’ she said. ‘I know. She’ll go to that place, or one just like it, and in a few weeks’ time she’ll come back out in much the same shape as she was when she first went in. They’ll make her more,’ she went on, ‘of what she was before.’
Elise went out; crockery rattled in the kitchen: voices went past on the pavement outside.
‘Your attitudes to everything are no longer relevant. Your attitudes to Benjie, your attitudes to my friends, your attitudes to me. You’re a man,’ she continued, ‘who has outlived his time. None of the teachers, some of whom are older than you, at school, has any of your attitudes. They don’t believe in crime and punishment. They believe in sympathy and understanding. They believe,’ she concluded, ‘in being free.’
‘To me,’ Attercliffe said, ‘they look like people who’ve compromised with everything because they haven’t the strength to do anything about it.’
‘They’re not like that at all,’ she said. ‘Those that are good reflect society and don’t oppose it. They go out and meet it and don’t strike back. They try to understand and not criticise. They offer sympathy instead of rebuke.’
The house, apart from the music from upstairs, was silent: Catherine dug her toe at the carpet. ‘If it wasn’t that your attitudes were so destructive, you could even describe them as comic, Dad.’
‘You have such a clear-cut view of everything,’ Attercliffe said.
‘I don’t have a clear-cut view at all,’ she said. ‘I expect to learn a great deal more, but not from people who have shut up shop.’
The room – not unlike the cubicle at the hospital, he reflected – had taken on the configuration of a prison cell. At the hospital, he recalled, there’d been bars on the windows: here there were the vertical folds of the curtains. ‘There is no escape,’ these folds announced; ‘there is no escape,’ beat the tattoo of noise above his head; ‘there is no escape,’ suggested the silence from the kitchen; ‘there is no escape,’ declared the estate of detached ‘executive’ dwellings; ‘there is no escape’ (his wife had told him): ‘there is no escape’ – he had had it, finally, on the authority of a dying friend.
12
‘I inveigled you into getting me in.’ Fredericks smiled. ‘I wa’ too bloody freetened to do it mesen. I got drunk, made a scene, and had you do it for me. A back-door job, and I wish to God I’d cho’ssen a front ’un.’
His eyes moved from side to side; shadows ran from the corners of his mouth and across each cheek: the backs of his hands had a scoured look, the skin scaling along the fingers.
‘They’ve taken me bowel out.’ He drew back the bedclothes and revealed a system of tubes running to a plastic receptacle on the floor beneath the bed. ‘If tha knows of any tablets I can take I’d be very grateful. The fact is,’ he pulled up the covers, ‘none of it is worth all this.’
Fredericks leaned forward and cried, so that Attercliffe, in holding him, could feel the harness on his back, and the pressure of the tubing, and in that instant it was as if he were holding Keith or Bryan, or Catherine or Elise, or even Lorna.
‘I’m frightened.’
‘There’s no need to be,’ he said.
‘Think nought of this. It’s not me, but only summat, tha knows, I left behind.’
‘Now I’m in here,’ Sheila said, ‘everything at home, I suppose, is going well.’
‘Not exactly,’ Attercliffe said.
‘Who’s this girlfriend you’re supposed to have?’
‘She’s already engaged.’
‘That won’t stop anyone from doing what they want,’ she said.
They were walking in the grounds of Beaucliffe Hall: a chapel at one end of its Victorian façade balanced a conservatory at the other; from behind its glassed-in walls patients gazed out at the uncut grass and overgrown flowerbeds between which, along a meandering footpath, he and Sheila were walking.
‘You were always very popular, Frank.’
‘Not always, Sheila,’ Attercliffe said.
‘I’ve been let down,’ she said, ‘by everyone.’
‘The children come and see you.’
‘Do they?’
‘They see it,’ he declared, ‘as an achievement. To have,’ he went on, ‘a mother who’s mad.’
Bare-headed, her coat pulled up beneath her chin, her gloved hands fisted at her sides, she rapped her heels into the ash of the path and looked across the fenceless walls at the traffic passing in the road outside.
‘I don’t see anything to be proud about,’ she said.
‘Catherine admires you a great deal,’ he said. ‘There’s scarcely a moment, when I’m in the house, that she isn’t lecturing me about your example.’
‘What example?’
‘Only a real person could have reacted like you did. All the unreal people, like me, do nothing.’
Sheila smiled at a gardener who, straightening from digging up weeds in one of the flowerbeds, nodded, and smiled back at her in turn.
‘How’s your friend,’ she said, ‘who’s dying?’
‘He had his bowel removed,’ he said.
Her stride lengthened; she stooped, watched the flicking of the ash from the toes of her shoes, and asked, ‘How does he manage without one?’
‘He has a container.’
‘How awful.’
‘He’s talking of coming out. In one or two weeks,’ he added, ‘they hope to have him walking.’
Having crossed in front of the building, they approached the chapel with its metal-studded door.
‘A God who gives you free will in order to have you suffer like this, to my mind, doesn’t make sense,’ she said.
She kicked her toes against the ash, first one toe, then the other.
‘What about love?’ Attercliffe asked.
‘Don’t talk to me about love,’ she said. ‘Talk to me about a gratuitous impulse. Talk to me about egotism. Talk to me about fantasy.’
‘If there’s such a thing as a gratuitous impulse,’ Attercliffe said, ‘there’s such a thing as love.’
‘Don’t you understand?’ She pointed to the chapel door from which, as they approached, two figures emerged: both women, one nodding, the other smiling, they passed on either side of Attercliffe and Sheila. ‘Love,’ she announced, ‘is a get-out.’
‘I’d have thought,’ Attercliffe said, ‘it puts us deeper in.’
‘Oh, does it?’ She started back, past the door of the chapel, towards the central door of the building. ‘I never realised until I came here and listened to a vicar talking that all religions are based on despair. The world becomes unbearable and we start inventing another. On the one hand it doesn’t matter what we do, on the other we feel pain and out of that grows the necessity to make ourselves as comfortable as we can. That comfort comes,’ she went on, ‘from gratifying ourselves by doing good, by being charitable, by having children, by taking an optimistic view of things. It’s all,’ she concluded, ‘a gratuitous urge.’
The hallway of the building, as they entered, echoed to their feet for, unlike the corridors and wards, it was lined by flagstones: an interior of plastic chairs and tables was overlooked, on one side, by a counter at which, throughout the day, it was possible to buy items of food. A white-overalled figure stood here serving tea and coffee.
They sat at a table; Sheila stirred a plastic spoon inside a plastic beaker: the handle came out bent: she set the spoon by her plastic plate and ate a paper-thin sandwich.
‘Every generous act,’ she said, chewing, ‘is part of the same egotistical urge.’
Picking up the plastic spoon, she bent it until, with a snap, it came apart.
‘I felt it at the beginning. It really is a case of the Emperor’s clothes. At first you’re accused of paranoia, then certain things occur and you see how everything is pointless.’ She laughed. ‘Even if you are “saved”, what’s the purpose? “I am saved!”’
Although there were only two other people in the room – the two women from the chapel – one of them threw up her arms and called, in a strange falsetto, ‘Alleluia!’ and smiled in their direction.
‘She believes you.’
‘I don’t see the point,’ she said, ‘in going on.’
‘When you get out of here you’ll feel differently,’ he said.
‘I can easily get out of here,’ she said. ‘I haven’t been certified,’ she added.
‘Are you going to kill yourself after you come out or before you leave?’ Attercliffe asked.
‘You don’t believe a word of it.’
‘All this is a smoke-screen,’ Attercliffe said, ‘in preparation for your coming home.’
She shook her head; having raised her cup she drank her tea. ‘It’s one thing you’ve never understood.’ She put the cup down. ‘I’ve reached the point of no return.’
‘Did you talk like this to Maurice?’
‘Never.’
‘How about Gavin?’
‘I tried to make it seem it mattered.’
‘They weren’t convinced?’
‘It was me who wasn’t convinced. No matter how hard I tried, in the end I knew each one of them, like you, was only out for himself.’
The cafeteria was filling up.
‘End of recreation time.’ She picked up her gloves, got up, and led the way to the stairs which led, in turn, to her ward.
‘I’ve been asked to see your doctor,’ Attercliffe said.
‘She never mentioned it.’
‘It’s a prelude,’ he said, ‘to your coming out.’
‘I can come out of here,’ she said, ‘whenever I like,’ but when they reached the first-floor landing and, at the far end, they could see the sitting-room alcove with its wooden-armed chairs turned towards a television screen, she began to cry.
‘You don’t have to stay,’ Attercliffe said.
She said, ‘Of course I have. To live in this society I need all the help they can give me.’
The corners of her mouth were wet; a dampness ran down on to the collar of her dress.
‘Women are encouraged to strike out for themselves, and all they strike out for is something that men have prescribed for them already.’ And when, a moment later, Attercliffe endeavoured to take her arm, she suddenly cried out, ‘Don’t touch me!’
‘You’ve received the letter,’ Butterworth said. ‘I was hoping that you had.’
‘It’s the first I’ve heard of it,’ Attercliffe said.
‘Discussions have been going on for months.’ He stroked his square moustache, first one way then the other. ‘Decisions have to be made,’ he added.
‘What about Freddie?’ Attercliffe asked.
‘Freddie doesn’t come into it.’
‘He’s talking of living,’ he said, ‘and coming back here in ten or twelve weeks.’
Leaning to his desk – a square, broad-shouldered man, with absurdly long grey hair – in shirt-sleeves, a worsted jacket draped on the back of his chair (the offices of the paper were grossly overheated), Butterworth announced, ‘The redundancy pay alone is worth it. Not to mention the prospect of another job.’ He added, ‘Use us as a reference. I’ll write you a good ’un, you can be sure of that. Your recent work has taken a lift. I’ll be sorry to lose you.’
He took a pipe from a rack on his desk, tapped its bowl against the flat of his hand and, reaching behind him to the pocket of his jacket, took out a pouch of tobacco and a box of matches.
‘Thy’s alus had this problem. As a professional athlete obliged in early maturity to find a new profession. There’s also,’ he continued, ‘the problem of class. Professional rugby is a bloody long way, tha knows, from writing on entertainment. I know. I was a rugby union man myself.’
Butterworth’s office looked out on to Norton Square: cars were parked around the central gardens, characterised not by trees but by a tarmacked playing-area given over to children.
Booth, his head gleaming in the light, passed across it and, stooping, got into a recently purchased car.
‘You’re a loner. Which is why you and Freddie got on so well.’ He pressed his finger into the bowl of the pipe, depressed the mound of tobacco, and added, ‘He taught you a lot. Stand you in good stead.’
‘There’s hardly an opportunity, at my age,’ Attercliffe said, ‘to find another job.’
‘You mustn’t give up,’ Butterworth said. He added, ‘We’ll help you all we can.’
‘How?’
‘I have connections.’
‘Where?’
‘All over.’ He struck a match. ‘Didn’t Freddie tell you it was coming?’
‘Perhaps he was hoping I’d take over,’ Attercliffe said.
Butterworth produced a cloud of smoke, puffed, produced another, took out the pipe, and said, ‘We’ve to take account of rising costs. If this paper doesn’t do summat drastic I’ll be out of a job mesen.’ He returned the pipe to his mouth. ‘There was one notion, at one time, you might take o’er a pub.’
Attercliffe allowed his gaze to rise, above the square moustache, to the pugnacious-looking nose, then to the eyes – dark-brown, yellow-flecked and bushy-browed – then to the absurd avalanche, parted to one side, of greying hair.
‘You could retire for a month or two on this.’ He tapped the redundancy notice, still folded, with his finger. ‘Rather than one door closing, another opens. There’s still life, tha knows, o’er fifty.’ He showed his teeth. ‘Circumstances will not always remain,’ he added, ‘as they are at present.’
‘They might get worse.’
‘That’s the spirit,’ he said. ‘Take the gloomiest view and the good news alus turns out better.’
He banged the desk with his hand.
‘I’ll pass on your complaints,’ he added. ‘I’ve already made my own views known. I hate to lose a good ’un. There are quite a few I shall have to say goodbye to at the end of this month.’ He laughed. ‘I may be saying goodbye to mesen in the not too distant future. Nobody’s job is assured.’
Attercliffe got up, debated whether he might shake Butterworth’s hand, and turned to the door. Butterworth pushed back his chair, got up and, extending his hand, called, ‘We’ll see you around in the next few weeks.’
Attercliffe glanced down, looked up and, having taken Butter-worth’s hand, said, ‘If you don’t do something with this you’ll be likely to lose it,’ and, having shaken it once, went out: the clattering of typewriters from the general office, together with the closing of the door behind, obviated any response that Butterworth might have made.
13
‘What I don’t understand,’ Doctor Morrison said, ‘is your need to antagonise your wife whenever you come.’
‘I don’t,’ Attercliffe said.
It might, to some extent, have been a repeat of his interview with Butterworth: the attitude behind the desk, he reflected, was very much the same.
‘You appear to be without any sympathy for her whatsoever.’
Beneath Dr Morrison’s glasses her eyelids were tinted green, and marked with a line around the lashes: grey-green eyes gazed out like specks of light at the end of a tunnel. She smiled; lavender-tinted lips (a fashion popular with Elise) encapsulated a line of lavender-tinted teeth: her unbuttoned overall – revealing a buttoned blouse beneath – rasped against the desk: not only did she not look a great deal older than his eldest daughter, but she was having trouble with spots on either cheek, the upper contour of each of which was under-edged by a smear of rouge.
‘A revolution,’ she added, ‘has taken place.’
‘Recently?’ Attercliffe asked.
‘Quite recently,’ she said.
Sheila’s file was open on her desk; apart from an inconsequential drawing of a bird in flight attached to the wall, the room was devoid of decoration: filing-cabinets occupied all the available space not taken up by the desk, a visitor’s chair and the window.
‘Your wife’s situation,
’ she went on, ‘has changed. The transition, for a woman of her generation, has been difficult to make. For your daughters no such transition has had to take place. They have no need of the adaptative techniques necessary for, but not peculiar to, your wife.’ She tapped on the file with a pen. ‘Mrs Attercliffe’s independence can only be achieved by a great deal of assertiveness on her part. It’s an act of courage, like plunging into the sea merely on the insistence of her instructor that once she is in she will know how to swim.’
‘It doesn’t seem to have done her,’ Attercliffe said, ‘a lot of good.’
‘I realise a great deal of your attitude is merely obtuse.’ The grey-green eyes ignited. ‘It’s the kind of obtuseness,’ she went on, ‘which, while antagonising your wife, merely impedes my trying to help her. I can do it,’ she continued, ‘with or without your co-operation, though naturally I’d prefer to take you with me.’
‘She has had all the help I can give her,’ Attercliffe said
‘Her problems are different from yours.’ She raised her hand to her glasses, smiled, and added, ‘In certain areas there is a recognition of this, in other areas not. Her principal concern,’ she smiled again, ‘is where she is going to live.’
Attercliffe leaned back. Sliding the pen between her thumb and finger, Doctor Morrison tapped at the file.
‘Part of her strategy in going mad is to put herself into such a position that the offer of our home,’ Attercliffe said, ‘is the only solution.’
‘She’s been happy there in the past.’
‘She won’t be in the future.’
‘The symptoms that you describe have a cause,’ she said. ‘She has sacrificed whatever opportunities she may have had in order to fulfil the traditional role of a mother. She is, in short, dependent on you. She needs a home. And specifically the home that you and she have created together.’
‘She left it.’
‘She wants to come back.’
‘The house,’ Attercliffe said, ‘is all I’ve got.’
‘What about the children?’
‘All I care about,’ he said, ‘is the children.’
She dropped the pen on the folder. ‘However motivated you say she is, these motives represent a legitimate need.’ She took off her glasses, smiled, pressed her forefinger and her thumb against the corners of her eyes, blinked, replaced her glasses and said, ‘One way of alleviating that condition is to provide her with a home in which she can live with her children.’