The Commonplace Day

by Rosemary Friedman

  “Mrs Ellen Potter,” Sister said writing, “thirteen A, Colchester Street, W6. Date of birth January the seventh 1891.”

  It was definitely depressing; the hospital and the people and the man next to me with his grubby handkerchief; most of all Ellen Potter with her plastic head-gear, old as time.

  “You’re going to be kind enough to sit with her, Doctor Macintosh said.”

  I nodded.

  “It’s like a mad house today after the fog.” She handed me the pension book which I put back into the handbag of which I seemed unable to rid myself.

  “I have to make a telephone call.”

  Three

  I dialled the number picturing Dobbie having gone home wondering what had happened to me. Then I looked at my watch and it was still only 2.30 so if he had given up the wait he would probably still be in the traffic somewhere en route. I let it ring and ring and ring to the empty flat, which should have been witnessing scenes of passion, then replaced the receiver slowly.

  The telephone booth was in the main hall. Outside it people were coming and going with purpose or sitting passively on the benches. I walked across the black and white floor towards the Casualty department then thought how utterly ridiculous. There was no need to go back in there at all. I owed nothing, nothing at all to Ellen Potter. She would be quite adequately looked after, these accidents happened every moment of the day, and I could walk right out, pick up a taxi and go straight to Dobbie’s, be there waiting for him. I had after all promised and he had kept the afternoon free. Stupid really to have arranged to meet him at the car park. I made up my mind, redid the mink tie which had come loose round the collar of my coat, and hurried towards the main doors. Something flapped against my side. It was Ellen Potter’s handbag; also I had left the red umbrella in the Casualty department. There was a dreamlike quality in the brown plastic handbag of which I seemed unable to rid myself, the edifice around me of the hospital. In my snake-skin shoes I did not belong. Why was I here in the middle of the afternoon when I should have been making love with Dobbie? I could give the handbag to one of the porters; there was still the umbrella. I couldn’t send him in for that. It wasn’t an hotel. Half an hour then. I had after all promised. I would do the stint with the old lady then ring Dobbie again.

  They had taken off her navy blue mac. She was wearing a print dress unsuitable for November and a hand-knitted cardigan. The inevitable red blanket was over her but her hands were on top of it twisted a little with rheumatism and desperately plain. She was still sleeping and I wondered if there was anyone to care. Had it been me Tim would have been there fussing about private rooms and specialists and Martha and my mother from Sussex. There was a chair by the curtain and I moved it a little nearer to the bed. The legs made a squeaking noise on the floor and the old lady opened her eyes and looked at me.

  “Jean. Is that you, Jean?”

  “No. I’m afraid it isn’t.”

  “Of course not. Jean’s dead.”

  She shut her eyes again and I wondered who Jean was and whether I should call someone.

  “Is there someone I could get in touch with?” I said. “Tell them you’ve had an accident.”

  There was no response. It was twenty to three. I thought of Dobbie. The old story came into my head about the butterfly and I wondered whether I was really sitting here in the Casualty department of St Patrick’s hospital imagining I was with Dobbie or whether I was in fact with Dobbie and dreaming myself beside Ellen Potter of whose existence I had been unaware until less than an hour ago. The child waiting to be seen by Doctor Macintosh was still crying. Shutting my ears to the sound I returned in the rain to Orchard Street; a butterfly dreaming I was a man. Next to the lady in the plastic rain-hat I waited to cross the road. The lights changed from red to amber, green. In a posse we charged heads down. The old lady disappeared in the direction of Marble Arch.

  “You’re late,” Dobbie said. “I was getting worried.”

  I slid in beside him. “I had lunch with Martha. I couldn’t get a taxi.”

  Tim would have said you’re all right? You’re sure you’re all right?

  Dobbie put the red umbrella at the back.

  “I had to buy it,” I said nervously. “I didn’t know it was going to rain.”

  He turned the key in the ignition. “Better than that damned fog.”

  No kiss; talking about the weather like…anybody.

  He put a hand on my knee. “Don’t look so worried.”

  “I’m not. Just harrassed. I had to rush.”

  “Calm down. You’re here now. Nothing to worry about.” He looked as he did any other day; unperturbed.

  “I wonder when it will stop?”

  “What?” He looked at me.

  “The rain.”

  He laughed.

  “What’s funny?”

  “You are nervous.”

  “It’s the first time, for me.”

  “Now now!”

  “Sorry. I can’t help thinking of Catherine, all those beautiful girls who spend days in the hairdresser’s, hours putting their faces on.”

  He laughed again.

  “Don’t pretend you like us au naturel. Most of us look ghastly.”

  “You all look the same in the dark.”

  “Don’t tease.”

  In the dark. I wondered if Dobbie liked to make love with the light on. Of course it was the middle of the afternoon so there wasn’t much choice. Not unless you deliberately drew the curtains. The question wouldn’t arise.

  In the flat I thought this is it. No turning back now. Dobbie took my coat which was damp and put it on a hanger to dry. I put my gloves and the mink tie on the table folding them with unnecessary precision.

  “Like a drink?” True to film prototype he held the bottle questioningly.

  “Please.” Perhaps I’d feel less nervous.

  He poured one each.

  “Cheers.”

  “Cheers.”

  I made mine last. Dobbie finished his and looked at me.

  “What time have you to be back?”

  “For the children at four.”

  He looked at his watch. “Plenty of time.”

  I wished he hadn’t said that, it seemed so calculating, five minutes for drinks, five minutes’ chat, etc., etc.

  He took the glass from my hand. “You don’t really want that.”

  “No.”

  He put his arms round me. I felt all the tension slipping away. Thoughts of home and the children and Martha and the rain and being late for Dobbie. He kissed me and I responded as if it wasn’t me, Liz Westbury, at all but Cleopatra and Madame de Pompadour and Lady Hamilton and all women through the ages become one; living only for the gratification of self and man. I no longer knew who or where or when only that for the first time in my life nothing mattered. Nothing was important. I was amoeba flowing in all directions, formless without purpose. I was meaningless except as I concerned my mate, part of a living, striving thing, seeking together something which was reality and which was not. I did not know whether the light was on or off nor where my clothes went to and how, nor the duration, nor the attitude struck. Only that the climax of the encounter was a sinking into a dark chasm, a floating ball of fire, a consummation. Only slowly, a drifting to the surface through quiet seas, did reality return.

  “I thought you were Jean,” a voice said.

  With a shock I realised where I was and that the woman in the bed was talking to me.

  I was angry with her for disturbing my moments with Dobbie.

  “It’s not having my glasses. I suppose you don’t know what they’ve done with my glasses.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t.”

  “Silly anyway. Jean’s dead. You get confused.”

  I willed her to go back to sleep or whatever it was. As if in obedience she closed her eyes.

  I was in Dobbie’s bed. Dobbie was smoking. There were clothes all over the floor. I had done it. Committed adultery. I did not feel part
icularly wicked.

  “I have to make a phone call,” Dobbie said and dialled a number with the hand that held the cigarette. I wondered whether I had been all right and thought that I must have been.

  He spoke to his secretary and gave her various instructions about whom she should phone. He said he’d be at the flat for another half an hour if she wanted him. Half an hour. Suppose I refused to go.

  “What is the time?”

  “Four.”

  “What?”

  “Four o’clock.”

  “You’re joking.”

  He showed me his watch. There were black hairs on his wrist.

  I struggled up. “The children.”

  “Take it easy. I’ll run you back to the car park. I envy Tim.”

  I wasn’t like that with Tim. Not often these days anyway. There was too much intervening, children, plans, money. I didn’t disillusion him.

  “You know something, Liz?”

  “ M m?”

  “Suppose you didn’t go home.”

  I stretched out again. “That would be nice.”

  He stubbed out his cigarette and rolled on to me. Twice in one afternoon. It hadn’t happened since my honeymoon.

  Ellen Potter’s eyes were on me.

  “You wouldn’t happen to know what I’m doing here?”

  I forced my mind back. “There was an accident, in Orchard Street. You were waiting to cross the road.”

  “Did I hurt myself?”

  “I don’t think so. Just bumped your head. The car didn’t actually hit you.”

  She put a hand to her head and sat up.

  “Well if I’m all right I suppose I can go home. There’s no point in lying here.”

  “I’ll call somebody. I was staying with you until you felt better. I believe they want to X-ray your skull.”

  “What for?”

  “To see if there’s any damage.”

  “I don’t believe in X-rays. They’re radioactive.”

  “I’ll tell Sister you’re feeling better anyway.”

  I beckoned Sister from the cubicle. She came, smiling sweetly, and said: “Feeling better, Mrs Potter? That’s right. You’re going up to X-ray now just to make certain there’s no damage done.”

  “It’s only a bump,” the old lady said. “I’d better be getting home. I don’t like being out in the dark.”

  “We shan’t keep you very long.”

  “Sister!” a voice called.

  “I’m coming, Doctor Macintosh.”

  Two porters, spotty youths in hospital caps and gowns came to carry her away. She was still protesting about the X-ray and that she was perfectly all right, no bones broken. I was left alone with the navy raincoat, two handbags, and the red umbrella.

  I went to phone Dobbie again but still there was no reply. It was a quarter-past three and unlikely that he would have waited at the car park for so long. If he hadn’t gone back to the flat where was he? Moved on perhaps to his next engagement. I let it ring a little longer. He was coming now, his key already in the door. Even if he was it was too late. I had to get back for the children. Too late. I hung up, shutting off the monotonous sound. I could turn my attentions to Ellen Potter. Ellen Potter. If I went now, just left, they would send her home by ambulance presuming she was all right, no bones broken. I was no longer in any rush, and decided to act like a lady. Like a lady, ha! That was funny. The afternoon had turned out to be quite different to expectation. I wondered where Dobbie was and if he was disappointed.

  Back in the cubicle, which was still empty, I sat down once more to wait and thought how easily, another moment, snuff, Ellen Potter might have died, splashed by the rain, in Orchard Street.

  I was afraid of death and was glad I hadn’t had to look at it. It wasn’t the actual dying, of course, that was easy enough requiring no effort on one’s behalf like being born. It was the thought of obliteration that was difficult to stomach. A world without one’s own presence; the unsavoury thought that life could go on callously unchanged, whether you were there or not. You wanted to be there, if only as a fly on the wall, to hear them say poor Liz, watch their tears as they attempted pathetically to fill the gap you had left.

  How must it be to be Ellen Potter? To look in the mirror, see the muscles sagging that once had been so firm, the hair, no pigment left of youth, teeth no longer your own. Could life be bearable when you knew it could not be for long? Did anyone leave willingly, without protest? Whichever way you turned, surely there was death. You watched the leaves curl and drop in autumn, the flower-decked hearse as you crossed the street, the back page of the newspaper, and knew there was no escape. I wondered, when it came to my turn, whether I could go about my daily business, waiting philosophically for death, or if I would scream like a child protesting at the dark, go mad, rebel. No-one ever did. Tim said people who were afraid to die were afraid to live. I’m sure he was right. Those who lived life to the full, climbed mountains, explored the deep, tested jets, shrugged their shoulders at disaster; if they thought of it at all.

  Reflecting on Tim I thought what a joke really. I will come home to you faithful after all. It would only be a question of time because I would arrange to meet Dobbie again, perhaps tomorrow. Tomorrow was my committee afternoon. I had been talked into the Vice Presidency because no-one else would accept the office. I was expected to be there, at the top table, at every meeting. If Dobbie was free, they would just have to do without me. “Where’s Liz today?” they’d say. I pictured the expressions on their faces if they knew, sitting there in their best hats for the most part expensive but not chic. None of us were really chic. In our brave attempts to be we envied the slim hips or hiplessness of the eighteen-year-olds, and quarrelled about the organisation of the organisation. We became so involved sometimes with internal strife, conflict over who should run the tombola for our dance, whose teenage daughter sell programmes at the theatre we had hired, we were apt to lose sight of the various needs which from our general purposes committee we supported. Often I sat doodling on the paper the committee was supplied with, or taking sips from the glass of water, and listened to Olga, or one of the others, arguing about which one of us should approach to a certain big business firm for gifts for our Christmas bazaar, and wondered what it really had to do with the limbless children for whom we were collecting. The really stupid part about it all, us losing sight of our cause, I mean, came when a benefactor with friends on two committees gave a donation to a society other than our own. We were up in arms. We had our target to reach. Feuds arose in which we almost but not quite reached for each other’s tinted hair. We forgot that the fund would benefit through whichever channel the donation reached it. We did our best. We were neither Doctor Schweitzers nor Edith Cavells. If our Coffee Mornings, our Bridge Afternoons which turned into cake-making contests, the eaters protesting, all on diets, were so much time wasted, they were time wasted in a good cause. We tried to help. Ultimately we did; just went about it in rather a roundabout way. From our hotbeds of gossip sprang clothing and money for earthquake victims. From an evening of dining and dancing in which our own bellies, true, were filled too full, a morsel of food for the starving half of the world. Tomorrow they would manage without me. The meeting was at Martha’s and concerned the Ball we were holding after Christmas. Exactly as much would be achieved without me and could be achieved without half the people there. There was a handful who really did the work and a dozen others who drifted along not raising their voices except parrot-like to agree or disagree. Where’s Liz? Committing adultery. Really? How nice. Yes perhaps I will have another teeny-weeny piece of that cheese cake.

  Four

  It was quiet now in the green-curtained cubicle; impersonal. Patients would come and go, leaving nothing, no evidence that they had been. The chair was hard. I wondered how much of the afternoon Dobbie had spent waiting for me in the rain; how much of his time I was worth. Conjuring him up into almost flesh and blood, the cynical blue eyes which ‘sent me’ as Diana wou
ld say, I tried to analyse my motives for wanting him. It wasn’t as if I had an unsatisfactory love-life with Tim. No that wasn’t strictly honest, how rarely one was with oneself. So stupid, there was no-one else around yet you duped, prevaricated, until you measured up to your own standards. I came to my marriage a virgin. Most of us did, not like today. It was the rule, not the exception.

  When I got engaged to Tim in the village in the rain I was seventeen. I was eighteen and the war over before I saw him again. After he’d left for his unknown destination there were three letters. I had them still in a locked drawer together with Diana’s first blonde curl and some poetry I wrote when they sent the telegram to say Tim was missing. Our marriage was to be the marriage of them all. The three letters were Tim’s ideas of how it was going to be. They spoke for the most part of sensual pleasures. Neither of us visualised the long night ending; that afterwards would come the hard part of living near each other, for each other. It was like an examination in which you were confident of your success yet had no idea of the syllabus. Perhaps it was just as well.

  When Tim came back from the prisoner-of-war camp they took him straight to hospital. I didn’t recognise him. The love I had been fostering was not for this wreck of a human being. I tried not to let him see.

  I had scrounged clothing coupons from everyone for this moment and had on a new dress with a matching coat. I put on a bright smile.

  “You look wonderful, Liz.”

  “What was it like?”

  “A piece of cake.” The grin consumed his face without disturbing the eyes.

  “No, really.”

  “Lonely. That was the worst part.”

  He couldn’t have weighed more than six stone. It did not look like the worst.

  “Some days I really thought the war would end and we’d be married. Those were the good ones.”