by Mavis Cheek
As I drove out of the parking bay I saw my husband, Poor Robert, look over his shoulder at me with an expression of both gratitude and – almost certainly – triumph. White-lipped triumph. He not only thought he had made me tell a lie, he was delighted by it. The bastard. I was beginning to see a side of this man I had no idea existed. Perhaps this was why he was so successful? It was an uncomfortable thought. You think you know someone and then … Well, you needn’t be quite so triumphant about my lapse into lying, I thought, because I really am going to go to the doctor’s. It was the day of our doctor’s first come, first served Well Woman Clinic at the surgery. It was about time someone probed my female parts again and so – quite truthfully – to the doctor’s I would go.
I waved at the trio one more time and they waved back. I hoped I’d put a certain air of Brave Little Woman into the gesture, just to add authenticity. I watched them until they were out of sight, and then I thought, when Robert got home I would kill him. If he didn’t kill me first. If he ever came home. And who cared if he did or he didn’t? How dare he lie on my behalf? I suppose he dared because he was, in fact, lying on his own. How dare he look so pleased with himself? An ear infection, indeed. But it was clever. Very clever. The perfect lie. What could be more irretrievable than an ear infection for an eight-hour-plus flight? I wished him to hell. But mostly I really loved him. Not that he deserved it. I loathed him. I loved him. Well, one or the other.
Four
Jejuneness: barrenness, particularly want of interesting matter, a deficiency of matter that can engage the attention.
Noah Webster’s American Dictionary of the English Language, 1828
I HAVE ALWAYS found our doctor’s waiting room a haven. Almost certainly this is because I have never been seriously ill. The worst that has befallen me is raised blood pressure in pregnancy and the occasional need for antibiotics. The waiting room is a place into which you can take a newspaper, leave plenty time for waiting, and just get on with it. No mobile telephones to disturb, no yelling yobs, just warmth and peace and quiet. Reading the newspaper there is a perfectly justifiable pastime no matter what time of day. At home I am always aware of the million things that need doing domestically in the garden or house, or in my office I am always aware of what needs doing for Brando. Cafes are bustling, noisy places with people hunched over their laptops or shouting into their BlackBerries. But in the doctor’s waiting room all is serene. There are no distractions … None at all … Especially no mobiles. Just the occasional ring of a telephone that will be answered, the laughter of a child, and the sporadic calling of a patient’s name. That is all. Unless – well – you find yourself the victim of people who wish to confide. Or compare symptoms. Or just chat about the colour of nothing. Or even the colour of something. Like skin.
Oh, it begins in a friendly enough manner, with a little smile, and a little suggestion that if the seat next to you is unoccupied they may as well take it – and then it progresses. Given the location, you are not entirely unlikely to sit next to, or opposite, someone who needs to talk about their ailment. You know them before they utter. You feel their twitchiness as they arrive, you sense their hungry searching of the vacant chairs to find the one nearest to someone of weak and sympathetic sinew, and you can almost inhale their desire to get your eyes off the Guardian and on to their face. They may bump you and then apologise and then, in that split second of eye engagement, when you say, ‘Oh no – really – that’s fine,’ they will pounce. ‘Clumsy of me,’ they’ll say. ‘Don’t know what’s got into me today,’ they’ll say. ‘It’s only since I got this . . .’ And they’ll be off. Pretty soon they will start talking about how very ill they are or they were – or they might be or they have never been – and after that you will be fair game for whatever they wish to say. It will range from illness to the weather and will, almost certainly, end up pottering around the margins of immigration.
It is so difficult to decide whether to go with the devil you know and sit between two people who appear – at the time of your arrival anyway – to be reasonably sane and without either serious illness or racist intent, or to strike out for emptier shores and sit away from the throng. The danger of this latter is that it actually leaves room for the verbose fascist to sit next to you, and then there is always room for communication.
Today I chose to sit slightly away from everyone. I owed it to my bruised and battered self to spread my newspaper wide and get a good arm’s width without having to apologise. I wanted to immerse myself in the news, however depressing, rather than think about Robert and that expression on his face. So I did and there it was, page after page of it: financial meltdown, honour’s meltdown, greedy bankers, greedy politicians, greedy all of us, lying yobs, lying police, lying all of us – the death by a thousand cuts of our collective, civilised humanity. But I was right, the world’s iniquities certainly took my mind off my own paltry difficulties. Given the number of women waiting I would be a good hour before being seen – and likely to get through most of the paper. And I could always ask the doctor for Valium if the effect became too depressing. Think positive. It was going to be a better day than it seemed when it began. Including the victory of undermining Robert’s lie. Here I was, I thought happily, at the doctor’s. Honour intact. I would never be able to tell him, of course, for it just wouldn’t be wise to meet him off the plane in a week’s time in triumphalist mode, but at least I knew. And then the chilling thought returned. I might never meet him off the plane, triumphalist or not. He might not want me to. It might all be over. I buried my nose back into the relentlessly awful news and thought, with cheering savagery, that if anyone tried it on with me today they’d get very short shrift.
All was serene in the vacant chairs either side of me. And then – about twenty minutes into the delights of silent, public reading – it happened. A man and a woman, both in well-worn, drab-coloured mackintoshes which had certainly never even hung close to a Burberry, sat on either side of me. They were together – I separated them by my presence – and they would be denied nothing. They proceeded to have a conversation around the back of my newspaper. I stood up and turned to the man and said, ‘I’ll move for you.’ He smiled up at me like a grateful – if hungry – puppy and they were off.
If he’d had a pound for every time someone had been kind and thoughtful in this place, he wouldn’t, it seemed, be a very rich man. ‘She’s the ill one,’ he said. ‘My wife.’ I looked at his wife. She had a porridge-coloured face and a smile of determined satisfaction which she now bestowed upon me. ‘She’s been back and forth I don’t know how many times.’ Ranulph Fiennes’s mother could not have sounded prouder. It was not too late, I told myself silently. I slid into my new place with just the slightest of smiles at him as he shuffled into my old one and I proceeded to flick my newspaper as my father used to flick his so dismissively all those years ago. It had worked for him. It did not work for me.
‘We’re waiting for the test results.’
I turned the page with firm intent and said, not looking away from World News and the death of banking, ‘Yes.’ It was the best I could manage and should have warned anyone with half a brain that this person was not for inclusion. And if I were to follow my new-found integrity, I would sooner or later have to say, at the very least, ‘Leave me alone.’
He began to speak again. ‘Test results,’ he said with satisfaction. ‘Dr Granger. Nice young lady. You can understand everything she’s saying – if you know what I mean.’ I did know. And we had got there without benefit of even a nod at the warm weather for the time of year. And then he stopped. A voice from behind our chairs said to his wife, ‘Mrs Foster? Do you want to slip in now? I’ve got a bit of a space.’ It was that nice young Dr Granger and her perfect enunciation, smiling and extending a hand of invitation. I nearly hugged her. With ease of conscience, as the two of them creaked up off their chairs and proceeded to follow her into the surgery, I said with a big, beaming smile, ‘Good luck!’ And they smiled with equa
l warmth and said, ‘Thank you.’ Dr Granger smiled at me too. It was going to be all right. They had gone. I’d been saved. And even though I could not forget Robert’s pale and angry face or Brando’s smug and cynical one, I had found a little sunshiny ray of justice. I had not compromised truth. So far so good. Had they not moved away I was poised to ask them – politely – to allow me to continue reading and not to talk. But Fate had taken the cup from me.
When the elderly couple came out of the surgery they caught my eye as if seeking me out. I quickly looked away. She looked bright about the eyes and the porridge was now slightly pink at the edges. He looked brave. To my horror, they came towards me and sat down. Oh please, no, I said to myself and resolutely went on reading the article about global warming. But the gods of veracity were not disposed to be kind.
‘It’s the worst scenario,’ he said. ‘An operation. We’re waiting for our son to collect us.’
‘Oh,’ I said, thinking that truth had to take a back seat over the worst scenario.
‘Groin area,’ he whispered.
‘I’m so sorry,’ I said, which was truthful. Oh God, I thought, something serious in the groin area. ‘But you’re in good hands here.’ I didn’t stop to think.
‘Well – you say that – but –’ he said, looking about him, his gaze settling on one of the practice nurses who was at the desk checking notes. It was Louise whose parents came from Gujarat. Louise herself, she once told me when she was taking my blood, was born in East Sheen.
The elderly man opened his mouth to say more and I was ready for him. Or was I? I mean – what right did I have to champion Just Cause with someone whose wife might possibly be dying from her groin area? ‘Oh well,’ I said, lamely, feeling my good self dissolve in a mist of cowardice.
‘I only hope the surgeon’s white,’ said his wife loudly, and she gave the unknowing Louise a significant stare.
There it was. Right out there. Several elephants sitting around in a very confined space at our feet.
‘Or I won’t understand a thing he’s saying.’
‘Might be a she,’ I said gaily. ‘The surgeon.’
Mrs Foster blinked. Do not play games with her, I admonished myself, that is not kind.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘I wouldn’t mind so much if it was a she … probably.’ She was obviously weighing this up against the other, even more dastardly possibility.
‘Why would it make a difference?’ I asked timidly. ‘I mean – as long as they’re good surgeons it really doesn’t matter what colour or sex they are –’
‘You say that,’ said the man, ‘You say that but one slip and –’ He looked over at Louise again, who saw, and smiled. He quickly averted his eyes.
I added, bravely but lamely, ‘And anyway – you’ll be under anaesthetic so you won’t need to have a conversation. They’ll know exactly what they’re doing no matter how they speak or where they come from.’ That told them. I flicked my newspaper very firmly. There – it was over.
But then his wife said, ‘I’m having local anaesthetic. So I’ll be awake.’
Dwelling momentarily on the cheering thought that it was amazing what they could do nowadays, I mean, full-blown surgery with just a local anaesthetic, I smiled. ‘Much better for you,’ I said. ‘I had no idea they could use locals for major surgery.’
She nodded and looked very proud. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It is amazing. Femoral hernia they call it.’ She nodded in a satisfied way. ‘Femoral.’ She gave a little pointing jab with her finger in the direction of her groin area before slipping on her gloves. And then they both stood up. ‘There’s Alan,’ they said. ‘Nice talking to you. Not often you meet someone like-minded.’ And off they went.
A hernia, femoral. I had slewed my truthfulness for a hernia. I should have stood up and defended the very tenets of my political being, I should have waved the flag for social decency, I should have – I should have – and I didn’t. I took a vow. Never again. Never would I be compromised by social mores again. In the name of honour I would henceforth do battle. It had increased my resolve. And, unfortunately, my rage.
‘Good heavens,’ said Dr Crewe, looking up. ‘Are you all right?’
Which I thought was a bit rum coming from a doctor.
Well, the whole exercise was pointless. We began by taking my blood pressure which was so high that the doctor looked suspiciously at her instrument. ‘Hmm,’ she said, peering at the reading. ‘You’re usually spot on. Anything out of the ordinary happened?’
‘It’s been a pretty difficult day so far,’ I said.
‘So I see. Care to talk about it?’ She’s a good doctor, one of the best. How many doctors would volunteer to hear their patient’s emotional woes with a busy surgery out front?
‘No,’ I said, perfectly truthfully. ‘But thank you for asking. I think I’ll just go home and have a cup of tea and come to the next clinic. Shall I?’
‘Good idea,’ she said. ‘I’d like to take another reading just to be sure.’
I left the surgery feeling very limp and very stupid. The femoral hernia and her husband were gone but the others all stared as I walked past. They were like a sea of souls who wanted something from me. I kept my eyes focused straight ahead and left the building feeling a complete failure. I had been nice for God’s sake. To a pair of racists. And all because of a hernia. I needed something to take away the heavy feeling that hung around my heart. It was not an auspicious start. First my husband and now this. Being an honest person is not as easy as you think, I told myself. Maybe at home there would be a message from Robert. Lunchtime flight. He’d have boarded by now. But he might – just – have rung beforehand. He might – just – have been overwhelmed with a flood of marital warmth and want to put things right. He might have been on his knees with husbandly regret. He might.
Five
Swacker: something huge; figuratively a great lie.
Reverend Robert Forby’s Vocabulary of East Anglia, 1830
I DROVE HOME thinking about Gandhi – which was quite a surprise but probably sparked by Louise’s family origins. Gujarat was where the blessed Mahatma was born. She had told me that, too. When she was a teenager her parents took her back to meet her family there and she said she felt touched by the place, that it was all Peace and Love and flowers. She went out a stroppy teenager and came back a thoughtful young woman with her mind made up to become a nurse. I remembered university days when we sat around drinking cheap beer in pubs and discussing things like Truth and citing everyone from Confucius to Camus and Huxley to Hesse in the last dregs of the years when we students really thought we could change the world. Before Baader–Meinhof poisoned the well and made us all feel far less solid and right-thinking. Gandhi had a maxim that might bring me a little comfort now. He reckoned that it was the little things you did to chip away at the one big lie that moved the mountain of the world’s deceit; although enraging one’s husband and showing cowardice in the face of racism didn’t exactly feel like I was making great philosophical progress, I would continue to try. It was my personal path and I could not, would not, shake it off. If I could get through this first week, I thought, I might manage to be truthful for the rest of my life. And if not, well, nothing is wasted. Even one week of honesty might bring down a pebble or two from the big mountain. Cars are great things for making you feel in charge of your bit of the world. Cars are territorial. The question was, would I feel quite so in control of my life once I’d parked and got out?
Comforting as it was to drive home with Gandhi’s words shoring up my virtue, I was also reminded that the chipping away to bring down a mountain model was the same one we used for gender equality once. Keep chipping away and the foundations of male dominance will crumble. But had it happened? On the board of Robert’s international company there were three women out of hundreds of board members worldwide. And the Guardian that very day had told me that young married or partnered women, mostly but not exclusively with children, were becoming the highest growth
area for stress and mental problems. They’d made it to the job market but hadn’t found anyone to take on the other jobs attaching to them as women. They therefore remained the mainstays of the home and children – with the result that more women between the ages of twenty-five and forty registered with depression, and were on sick benefit for same, than at any other time in our history.
Contemplating this lot I felt even worse about Robert. He was a good partner and a man of integrity who had never raised barriers to anything I wanted to do – not even those subconscious little put-you-downs. As much as a man in his kind of business and at the level he was could be liberated, he was. If I wanted any more it was there for the taking. True, paternity leave was more difficult the higher you climbed up the employment ladder but when the children were born he had managed to be at home for a week – which was quite unusual then – and my mother has had stars in her eyes about him ever since. If I believed her, my father never so much as changed a nappy. Yet I would not have given up my time at home with the children for anything on earth, that was the truth. Yes I was a feminist, but what that meant to me was that we should live in a world where we both had the same choices, where nothing was forbidden or compromised by being female, not that I should want to be a man. Robert, and men like him, I reminded myself, were working in the real world and dealing with it how it is, not how we would like it to be. I – with my enjoyably useless research and jolly lunches with Brando – was not. Gandhi’s chipping away was as true for a change of balance as for anything else. At least our children had grown up seeing their father iron a shirt and rinse out milk bottles as well as leave the house in suit and tie with a briefcase under his arm. He could also be infuriatingly bossy when I was driving the car, of course, but no amount of shared feminist principle would get rid of that behaviour. It was as integral to masculine life as pretty lace on underwear was to the feminine. It’d take removal of the entire Alps to sort that one out.