How to Be Good

by Nick Hornby

  When we get home, Molly plays us the Lauryn Hill song, and David disappears off upstairs and comes down with a box full of bits and pieces from our wedding day, a box that I don’t think I knew we owned.

  ‘Where did that come from?’

  ‘The old suitcase under our bed.’

  ‘Did my mother give it to us?’

  ‘No.’

  He starts to rummage through the box.

  ‘Who did, then?’

  ‘Nobody.’

  ‘What, it just appeared on its own?’

  ‘You can’t think of any other explanation?’

  ‘Don’t be stupid, David. It’s a very simple question. There’s no need for all this mystery.’

  ‘It’s a very simple answer.’

  And still I cannot think of it, so I make a frustrated, impatient growling noise and start to walk away.

  ‘It’s mine,’ he says quietly.

  ‘Why is it yours all of a sudden?’ I say aggressively. ‘Why isn’t it ours? I was there, too, you know.’

  ‘No, I mean, of course it’s yours as well, if you want it. I just mean . . . I bought the box. I got the stuff together. That’s how it came into the house.’

  ‘When?’ And still I can hear a snort in my voice, as if I don’t believe him, as if he is somehow trying to put one over on me.

  ‘I don’t know. When we came back from our honeymoon. It was a fantastic day. I was so happy. I just didn’t want to forget it.’

  I burst into tears, and I cry and cry until it feels as though it is not salt and water being squeezed from my eyes, but blood.

  13

  ‘ “Without love I am nothing at all,” ’ Lauryn Hill sings for the twelfth and seventeenth and twenty-fifth time on Janet’s CD player, and each time I think, yes, that is me, that is what I have become, nothing at all, and I either cry again, or merely feel like crying. That’s why David’s box devastated me, I realize now – not just because I had no idea that my husband still felt anything at all about our wedding day, but because the part of me that should feel things is sick, or dying, or dead, and I never even noticed until tonight.

  I’m not too sure when this happened, but I know that it was a long time ago – before Stephen (otherwise there wouldn’t have been a Stephen), long before GoodNews (otherwise there wouldn’t have been a GoodNews); but after Tom and Molly were born, because I was something and someone then, the most important person in the whole world. Maybe if I kept a diary I could date it precisely. I could read an entry and think, oh, right, it was on 23 November 1994, when David said this or did that. But what could David have possibly said or done to make me close down in this way? No, I suspect that I closed myself down, that something in me just got infarcted, or dried up, or sclerotic, and I let it happen because it suited me. And there is just enough for Molly and Tom, but it doesn’t really count, because it’s a reflex, and my occasional flashes of warmth are like my occasional desire to wee.

  Maybe that’s what’s wrong with all of us. Maybe Mark thought he was going to find that warmth in church, and all those people in our street who took the street kids in thought they could find it in their spare bedrooms, and David found it in GoodNews’s fingertips – went looking for it because he wanted to feel it once more before he died. As do I.

  Oh, I’m not talking about romantic love, the mad hunger for someone you don’t know very well. And the feelings that constitute my working week – guilt, of course, and fear, and irritation, and a few other ignoble distractions that simply serve to make me unwell half the time – are not enough for me, nor for anybody. I’m talking about that love which used to feel something like optimism, benignity . . . Where did that go? I just seemed to run out of steam somewhere along the line. I ended up disappointed with my work, and my marriage, and myself, and I turned into someone who didn’t know what to hope for.

  The trick, it seems to me, is to stave off regret. That’s what the whole thing is about. And we can’t stave it off for ever, because it is impossible not to make the mistakes that let regret in, but the best of us manage to limp on into our sixties or seventies before we succumb. Me, I made it to about thirty-seven, and David made it to the same age, and my brother gave up the ghost even before that. And I’m not sure that there is a cure for regret. I suspect not.

  The new patient seems vaguely familiar, but I’m not feeling very sharp: the little Turkish girl I have just seen probably has something seriously wrong with her, and I have been attempting to explain to her mother, through the Turkish-speaking health visitor, why I am sending her for a brain scan. So my nerves are jangling a little, and initially I don’t have as much interest in the new patient’s skin complaint as I would wish.

  I ask her to take her top off, and she says something jovial about how she hates showing disgustingly slim doctors her fat stomach, and at the very moment the jumper covers her face, I recognize the voice. It belongs to the nice lady from the church.

  She stands up so that I can see the rash on her back.

  ‘Have you had this before?’

  ‘Not for a long time. It’s stress-related.’

  ‘What makes you say that?’

  ‘Because the last time I got it was when my mother died. And now I’ve got a lot of work problems.’

  ‘What kind of work problems?’

  This is an unprofessional question. I am always hearing that people have work problems, and I have never before shown the slightest interest, although if I am feeling especially sympathetic I might cluck a little. The nice lady, though . . . Of course I want to know about what is wrong with her job.

  ‘It’s utterly pointless, and I hate my . . . I hate the people I work for. Especially . . . Well, especially the boss.’

  ‘You can put your top back on.’

  I start to write a prescription.

  ‘I was in your church last week.’

  She flushes.

  ‘Oh. I shouldn’t have said anything.’

  ‘It’s fine. Patient–doctor confidentiality and all that.’

  ‘Well, anyway, you know what my problems are, then.’

  ‘Do I?’

  ‘Isn’t it obvious?’

  I decide that it is best to say nothing, on the grounds that what was obvious to me – her rendition of ‘Getting to Know You’ was excruciating, all reference to the current rap hits is misguided to the point of lunacy – might not be obvious to her, and I will only succeed in making the angry red marks on her back positively furious. I write her a prescription and hand it to her.

  ‘I enjoyed it,’ I tell her.

  ‘Thank you. But basically I no longer believe in what I’m doing, and I think it’s all a waste of time, and my body knows it. So I feel ill every day.’

  ‘Well, that’s hopefully something I can help with.’

  ‘Why did you come to my church? You haven’t been before, have you?’

  ‘No. I’m not a Christian. But I’m having a spiritual crisis, so . . .’

  ‘Do doctors have spiritual crises?’

  ‘Apparently they do, yes. My marriage is in big trouble and I’m very sad and I’m trying to decide what to do about it. What do you recommend?’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘What should I do?’

  She smiles nervously; she’s not sure whether I’m joking. I’m not. I’m suddenly consumed with the desire to hear what she has to say.

  ‘I’ve told you what to do about your rash. That’s what I’m here for. You tell me what to do about my marriage. That’s what you’re there for.’

  ‘I’m not sure you understand what the role of the church is.’

  ‘What is it, then?’

  ‘I’m not the one to ask, am I? Because I haven’t got a clue.’

  ‘Who has, then?’

  ‘Have you tried counselling?’

  ‘I’m not talking about counselling. I’m talking about what’s right and wrong. You know about that, surely?’

  ‘Do you want to know what the Bible
says about marriage?’

  ‘No!’ I’m shouting now, I can hear myself, but I don’t seem to be able to do anything about it. ‘I want to know what YOU say. Just tell me. I’ll do whatever it is you recommend. Stay or go. Come on.’ And I mean it. I’m sick of not knowing. Someone else can sort it out.

  The nice lady looks a little afraid, as she has every right to do, I suppose. I am seriously contemplating holding her hostage until she comes out with an answer, any answer, although I will not fill her in on this plan of action for the moment.

  ‘Dr Carr, I can’t tell you what to do.’

  ‘I’m sorry, that’s not good enough.’

  ‘Do you want to come and see me in my office?’

  ‘No. No need. Waste of time. It’s a yes/no question. I don’t want to spend hours talking about it with you. I’ve already spent months thinking about it. It’s gone on long enough.’

  ‘Do you have children?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Is your husband cruel to you?’

  ‘No. Not any more. He used to be, but he saw the light. Not your sort of light. Another one.’

  ‘Well. . .’ She is on the verge of saying something, but then she stands up. ‘This is ridiculous. I can’t . . .’

  I snatch the prescription out of her hand. ‘In which case, I can’t help you. You do your job and I’ll do mine.’

  ‘It’s not my job. Please give me my prescription.’

  ‘No. It’s not much to ask. Stay or go, that’s all I want. God, why are you people so timid? It’s no wonder the churches are empty, when you can’t answer even the simplest questions. Don’t you get it? That’s what we want. Answers. If we wanted woolly minded nonsense we’d stay at home. In our own heads.’

  ‘I think you’ll do what you want to do anyway, so it won’t make any difference what I say.’

  ‘Wrong. Wrong. Because I haven’t got a clue any more. Do you remember The Dice Man, that book everyone read at college? Maybe not at theological college they didn’t, but at normal college they did. Well, I am the Vicar Woman. Anything you say, I will do.’

  She looks at me and holds up her hands, indicating defeat. ‘Stay.’

  I feel suddenly hopeless, the way one always does when two alternatives become one chosen course of action. I want to go back to the time just seconds ago when I didn’t know what to do. Because here’s the thing: when you get into a mess like mine, your marriage is like a knife in your stomach, and you know that you’re in big trouble whatever you decide. You don’t ask people with knives in their stomachs what would make them happy; happiness is no longer the point. It’s all about survival; it’s all about whether you pull the knife out and bleed to death or keep it in, in the hope that you might be lucky, and the knife has actually been staunching the blood. You want to know the conventional medical wisdom? The conventional medical wisdom is that you keep the knife in. Really.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes. I’m a vicar. I can’t go around telling people to break up families on a whim.’

  ‘Ha! You think it’s whimsical?’

  ‘I’m sorry, but you can’t start arguing with the decision. You wanted me to say something and I’ve said it. You’re staying. Can I have my prescription now?’

  I hand it to her. I’m starting to feel a little embarrassed, as perhaps is only appropriate.

  ‘I won’t say anything to anyone,’ she says. ‘I’m going to work on the assumption that you’re having a bad day.’

  ‘And I won’t say anything about The King and I,’ I say – somewhat gracelessly, given the circumstances. Our professional misconduct trials, should it come to that, are almost certain to have different outcomes, given the relative gravity of our crimes. She could argue that it is part of her brief to illuminate her sermons with highlights from the great musicals; I, on the other hand, would be hard pushed to make a case for the violent witholding of treatment until I had received inappropriate marital advice.

  ‘Good luck.’

  ‘Thank you.’ I don’t feel so graceless now, and I pat her on the back on her way out. I will miss her.

  ‘Have you ever . . . Have you ever threatened a patient?’ I ask Becca before I leave for the day. Becca has done many, many bad things, some of them during working hours.

  ‘God, no,’ she says, appalled. ‘Is that what you think of me?’

  So rehearsed is our good doc/bad doc routine that she never for a moment suspects that I am confessing, rather than accusing. That is why Becca is so good to talk to: she doesn’t listen.

  I want to speak to my husband when I get home, but his relationship is with GoodNews now. The two of them have become inseparable – joined, not at the hip, but at the temple, because whenever I see them they are hunched over their piece of paper, head joining head in a way that is presumably conducive to the mutual flow of psychic energy. In the old days, it would have been reasonable to ask David what was on the piece of paper; indeed, it would have been deemed both rude and unsupportive to show no interest. These days, however, everyone accepts that Molly and Tom and I are the footsoldiers and they are the generals, and any curiosity on our part would be regarded as impertinent, possibly even actionable.

  I knock on the invisible office door.

  ‘David, could I speak to you?’

  He looks up, momentarily irritated.

  ‘Now?’

  ‘If possible.’

  ‘Fire away.’

  ‘Can we have dinner tonight?’

  ‘We have dinner every night.’

  ‘You and me. Out. GoodNews babysitting. If that’s OK with him.’

  ‘Tonight?’ GoodNews consults his mental Psion Organiser and finds that, as it happens, he is indeed free tonight.

  ‘OK, then. Do you think we need to talk?’

  ‘Well, yes.’

  ‘About . . . ?’

  ‘There are a couple of things. Maybe we should talk about last night, for example. My reaction.’

  ‘Oh, don’t worry about that. We all get upset from time to time.’

  ‘Yeah,’ says GoodNews. ‘Can’t be helped. Like I said to your brother, sadness can be a right sod for keeping itself hidden away and then popping out.’ He waves a magnanimous hand. ‘Forget about it. It never happened.’

  They smile beatifically and return to their piece of paper. I have been dismissed. I do not wish to be dismissed.

  ‘I’m not looking for forgiveness. I want to talk about it. I want to explain. I want you and I to go out and attempt to communicate. As husband and wife.’

  ‘Oh. Right. Sorry. That would be nice, yes. And you’re sure you don’t want GoodNews to come with us? He’s very good at that kind of stuff.’

  ‘I’m going through a really intuitive time at the moment, I have to say,’ says GoodNews. ‘And I know what you’re saying about husband and wife and that whole intimacy thing, but you’d be amazed at the stuff I can pick up that’s kind of zapping about between you.’ And he makes a zigzaggy gesture, the exact meaning of which is lost on me, but which I presume is intended to indicate wonky marital communication.

  ‘Thanks, but it’s fine,’ I tell him. ‘We’ll call you if we have trouble.’

  He smiles patiently. ‘That’s not going to work, is it? I’m babysitting, remember? I can’t just leave them here on their own.’

  ‘We’ll ask for a doggy-bag and come home immediately.’

  He points a hey-you’re-sharp finger at me. I have hit on the solution, and we are allowed out.

  ‘So.’

  ‘So.’

  It’s such a familiar routine. Two spicy poppadoms for him, one plain one for me, mango chutney and those onion pieces on a side plate placed between us for easy dunking . . . We’ve been doing this for fifteen years, ever since we could afford it, although before you get the impression that the variety and spontaneity have gone from our lives, I should point out that we’ve only been coming to this particular restaurant for a decade. Our previous favourite got taken over, and they
changed the menu slightly, so we moved to find a closer approximation of what we were used to.

  We need things like the Curry Queen, though. Not just David and I, but all of us. What does a marriage look like? Ours looks like this, a side plate smeared with mango chutney. That’s how we can tell it apart from all the others. That mango chutney is the white smudge on the cheek of your black cat, or the registration number of a new car, or the name-tag in a child’s school sweatshirt; without it we’d be lost. Without that side plate and its orange smear, I might one day come back from the toilet and sit down at a completely different marriage. (And who’s to say that this completely different marriage would be any better or worse than the one I already have? I am suddenly struck by the absurdity of my decision – not the one handed to me by the vicar in the surgery, which still seems as good or as bad as any, but the one I made all those years ago.)

  ‘You wanted to talk,’ David says.

  ‘Don’t you?’

  ‘Well, yes. I suppose so. If you do.’

  ‘I do, yes.’

  ‘Right.’ Silence. ‘Off you go, then.’

  ‘I’m going to stop sleeping at Janet’s.’

  ‘Oh. OK, then.’ He sips his lager, apparently unsure whether this news has any relevance to his life.

  ‘Are you moving back home? Or have you found somewhere else?’

  ‘No, no, I’m moving back home.’ I suddenly feel a little sorry for him: it was not, after all, an unreasonable question. Most relationships in crisis probably provide some sort of clue to their eventual success or failure: the couples concerned start sleeping together again, for example, or attacking each other with kitchen knives, and from those symptoms one can make some kind of prognosis. We haven’t had anything like that, however. I moved out without really explaining why, and then a nice lady vicar who doesn’t know anything about me told me to move back in because I bullied her. No wonder David felt that his enquiry had several possible answers. He must have felt as though he were asking me who I thought would win the Grand National.

  ‘Oh, right. Well, fine. Good. Good. I’m pleased.’