by Alan Bennett
The young man nodded ruefully.
‘Otherwise excellent and even in such a routine procedure as this the patient has been left with her dignity intact. Thank you, Mrs Donaldson.’
‘Conceited fart,’ said Delia in the canteen. ‘But face it, we’re all of us curling at the edges. They never like my varicose veins.’
‘I thought I’d got used to it,’ said Mrs Donaldson.
‘Does one ever?’
Once upon a time, i.e. before she had her secret, she would have let a setback like this depress her. Now it made her what Ballantyne would have called feisty and rekindled her animosity towards the young.
PRENTICE TOOK HIS SEAT at the table on the dais. She knocked at the door.
‘Come in,’ said Prentice.
Having come in she waited and Prentice got up.
‘My name is Backhouse. I’m here to see my husband. He had a little fall this morning and they brought him in as a precaution.’
Prentice stood back from the table, looking at his clipboard.
‘I know already Mr Backhouse is dead,’ said Ballantyne. ‘Or thereabouts. Why, anybody?’
A hand went up. ‘When she came in he didn’t look at her.’
‘Quite so,’ said Ballantyne.
‘But does that mean…’ this was another student, ‘that he should have looked at her? Isn’t not looking at her a way of preparing her for the fact that there is going to be bad news?’
‘That depends’, said Ballantyne, ‘on whether Mrs Backhouse picked it up. Let’s see.’
‘The nurse told me he wasn’t here.’ Mrs Backhouse looked at the young man. ‘Where is he?’
‘I’ll just go and get a nurse,’ said Prentice.
‘No nurses available,’ said Ballantyne. ‘Nurses’ outing. They’ve all gone to The Sound of Music.’
‘Would you sit down,’ said Prentice.
‘I thought you’d never ask,’ said Ballantyne.
‘Mrs Blackhouse –’ said Prentice.
‘Backhouse,’ said Mrs Donaldson. ‘Not Blackhouse.’
‘Mrs Backhouse. When your husband had his fall –’
‘Look at her,’ said Ballantyne. ‘You know what’s happened. Don’t hide in your papers.’
‘When your husband had his fall…Do you know anything about the brain?’
‘Mrs Backhouse doesn’t know about the brain,’ said Ballantyne. ‘She wants to know about her husband.’
‘Actually I do know a bit about the brain,’ said Mrs Backhouse. ‘I was in the St John Ambulance Brigade.’
‘I stand corrected,’ said Ballantyne.
‘Has he had a stroke?’
‘Not exactly,’ said Prentice, ‘though there was some bleeding.’
‘I know. I saw the blood. That’s why I rang the ambulance.’
‘We took him into intensive care but he went into a coma…’
‘He’s dead.’
Prentice looked at Ballantyne.
‘You see, this is where a nurse would help.’
‘Nurses still not back,’ said Ballantyne. ‘Gone for a fish and chip supper. Tea and bread and butter. You’re on your own.’
‘Could I get you a cup of tea?’
‘Never mind tea. You haven’t told her her hubby’s gone.’
‘He is dead I’m afraid. Would you like a cup of tea?’
Ballantyne groaned. ‘There is no tea. There’s been a power cut. The canteen is closed. Don’t run away from her. Tea, a nurse, your clipboard…why are you hiding from this woman. She’s your responsibility.’
‘Is there anybody you’d like to ring,’ said Prentice. ‘You could use my mobile.’
‘She’s got one of her own,’ said Ballantyne.
‘Have you been married long?’ said Prentice.
‘A quibble,’ said Ballantyne, ‘but since he’s dead it’s, “Had you been married long?”’
There was a giggle from the class.
Prentice took Mrs Backhouse’s hand and someone guffawed. ‘I don’t know why you’re laughing,’ said Ballantyne. ‘And why are you oafs nudging each other?’ A grinning student at the back shook his head and did his best to look serious.
‘Go on Prentice.’
‘I think I’d just sit here holding her hand. Let her do the talking, you know,’ said Prentice, ‘only…’
‘What?’
‘What if it’s a man?’ said Prentice, ‘and you can’t hold his hand?’
‘Arm round the shoulder? Christ, you’re the tactile generation. Only no hugs, for God’s sake. Just feel the situation. You’re human beings, the majority of you anyway. There’s no drill to sympathy.’
So Prentice sat for a while holding Mrs Backhouse’s hand.
‘He was a bastard,’ said Mrs Backhouse.
‘Come again,’ said the young man.
‘My husband. Mr Backhouse. A swine.’
There was a small whoop from the class.
‘You’re upset,’ said Prentice.
‘No, I’m not,’ said Mrs Backhouse. ‘I’m bereaved but I’m not upset.’
‘It’ll take time to sink in.’
‘He’s dead,’ said Mrs Backhouse. ‘It’s sunk in. Twenty-five years of marriage is over. He’s dead.’
Consolation no longer a requirement Prentice let go her hand.
‘Can’t help you, Prentice,’ said Ballantyne. ‘You’re on your own.’
‘Do you have any children?’ said Prentice.
‘A daughter. She’ll want to know, I expect.’
‘Will she be upset?’
‘Oh yes. No more handouts. No more little lunches with her daddy. Oh yes, she’ll be heart broken.’
‘Well,’ said Prentice, ‘I’m sure you will cope.’
He got up to bring this now rather distasteful episode to a close. He shook her hand in what was meant to be a consoling way though consolation had turned out to be redundant.
‘If you stay here someone will be along with the necessary forms.’
As he was going Prentice turned back.
‘I wonder…it’s just a formality but what was Mr Backhouse doing when he fell?’
Mrs Backhouse looked at him.
‘He wasn’t doing anything.’
‘Did he slip?’
‘I don’t know. I was upstairs. I heard a bump, came down and there he was on the floor.’
‘The ambulance men say that they think he must have fallen off a stool.’
‘He’d been trying to get something off the top shelf…it’s where he kept one of his bottles.’
‘Well,’ said Prentice suddenly in command of the situation, ‘there’ll have to be a post-mortem. The coroner will have to go into all that.’
‘Coroner?’ said Mrs Backhouse. ‘You mean an inquest? What for? I thought 90 per cent of all accidents occurred in the home.’
‘So they do.’
She sat down again. ‘I was upstairs. It wasn’t my fault.’ Prentice said nothing. ‘Could I have that cup of tea?’
The performance concluded, there was unusually some mild applause and with a few hollow-handed claps even Ballantyne joined in.
‘Very good, Prentice, and very intriguing, Mrs Donaldson. I’m not sure how much it taught us about breaking bad news still less offering comfort to the bereaved but at least it reminded us that death and grief don’t always go together: sympathy needs to be on offer but it’s not necessarily welcome and can sometimes be thought presumptuous. The bereaved know the deceased whereas the doctor doesn’t, and not knowing him or her is the doctor even entitled to offer his or her condolences? And of course it’s just a formality but the genuinely upset may believe that formality is out of place and anything but heartfelt grief is hypocrisy. People are peculiar. I think’ – and he looked at his watch – ‘that that is the real lesson.’
The class disperses, some of them smiling at Mrs Donaldson as they go.
‘The children like you,’ said Ballantyne. ‘They think you’re a bit of a card.’
>
‘I like you too,’ he wants to say but doesn’t.
‘You so regularly come up with the unexpected it’s almost what one has come to expect. Here am I trying to teach them how to counterfeit compassion and you’re teaching them something else.’
‘What?’
‘Honesty sounds too pretentious. Candour perhaps. Nothing to do with caring anyway.’
And he went off, ruefully nodding his head.
The truth was Mrs Donaldson hadn’t given much thought to the scene they’d played. She wasn’t in the mood to play the grief-stricken widow or to draw however crudely on the experience of her own bereavement. Her daughter’s mourning had been extravagant and her own, she felt, a bit perfunctory and even brisk so that in some sense the unfeeling response of Mrs Backhouse had a basis in fact. But she had never hated her husband, just got bored by him; a bottle on the top shelf might have added interest.
Then too, Delia had said Mrs Donaldson looked tired which, in view of her nightly sessions at the bedroom wall, was hardly surprising. So having a bit of fun with Prentice’s fumbling attempts at caring was a way of proving Delia wrong. It was unexpected, she could see that and imagined this must be why some of the students had laughed. What did surprise her was how adroitly Ballantyne managed to extract some sort of lesson from what on her part had just been silliness and she saw again how, unprepossessing though he was, Ballantyne might still be a good teacher and she wished she could tell him so though without any of the complications (‘Perhaps we could do lunch?’) that would inevitably follow.
RENT DAY HAD COME AND GONE with Andy paying so promptly and in such haste it seemed designed to avoid even the thought of a possible repetition. Disappointed though she was Mrs Donaldson found the money welcome and was also happy to be in a more settled frame of mind. True she still took up her station nightly but at the same time assuming that whatever transpired was now unlikely to include her.
The following week Andy had exams and tonight he was sitting downstairs revising while Laura was ironing. Mrs Donaldson was taking advantage of their blameless occupations to read up on the next day’s assignment before the stake-out that she would have to mount once they came upstairs. Frustrating though the circumstances might be it was still nice to have a routine.
She woke with a start finding herself slipping off her chair. It was well past midnight and she was cold. It was only when she’d got into bed that she realised that what must have wakened her was some sort of commotion going on. Now there was shouting on the stairs and suddenly her door burst open and the girl ran into the room trying at first to lock the door behind her. But she could hear the boy pounding up the stairs and terrified she ran to the other side of Mrs Donaldson. She was in one of his shirts which she pulled round herself crouching down as if to hide.
Mrs Donaldson was appalled. ‘It’s all right,’ said Mrs Donaldson, getting out of bed to help her. ‘What have you done?’
‘Nothing,’ the girl sobbed. ‘Worn his shirt,’ at which point Andy burst through the door just in his jeans saying ‘Come out of there, you little cow.’
‘This is my room,’ said Mrs Donaldson weakly. ‘Can’t we talk this over?’
‘No we fucking can’t. And stay where you are. I want you to see this. Come here you – other way round. Do it.’
He got on the bed in the process kicking Mrs Donaldson on her bad knee as the girl crouched whimpering on the bed on her hands and knees.
‘There’s no need for this,’ said Mrs Donaldson.
‘There fucking is, isn’t there,’ said Andy and slapped the girl hard across her bum. She screamed loudly.
‘And shut the noise.’
The girl screamed louder and the boy reached forward to put his hand over her mouth.
Mrs Donaldson felt that she ought to get help, her first inclination to run out into the street and try next door or ring the police. Fetch someone, stop someone, anyone, to say come quick there’s a girl being raped.
She got to the bedroom door.
‘Where do you think you’re going? Watch.’
The girl began to wail and Mrs Donaldson hid her face in her hands, and when she dared to look again the boy was having her on the bed. In the middle of it all the telephone rang and Mrs Donaldson thought she was saved except without stopping Andy leaned over and ripped the phone out of its socket, the vandalism causing Laura’s screams to redouble and for Mrs Donaldson to wonder if rape was only the beginning of it.
It was blessedly short, ending with more shouting from him and loud cries of pain from her.
Then he lay down on his back on the bed, the girl whimpering beside him.
Wondering what the correct thing to say was after witnessing an assault, Mrs Donaldson said nothing. She was trembling.
‘Well,’ said Andy, clasping his hands behind his head, ‘I think that puts us well into credit.’
‘You hurt me,’ said Laura.
‘You hurt me. And I liked that shirt. I didn’t catch you with my foot did I?’
‘No,’ lied Mrs Donaldson who was longing for a cup of tea and would have offered to make some except that she was frightened that while she was downstairs they might make it up and begin again like they did the last time.
‘I think you might have told me,’ said Mrs Donaldson.
‘Told you what?’
‘That you were just pretending.’
‘I wasn’t pretending,’ said Andy. ‘Were you pretending?’
‘No. I was frightened,’ said Laura. ‘You hurt me.’
‘I’d had a sniff of something but nothing much. She deserved it. She’d fucked up my best shirt.’
‘I can wash it,’ said Mrs Donaldson.
‘Oh, that’s nice, isn’t it,’ said Andy. ‘Isn’t that nice?’ And he put his arm round Laura and nuzzled her neck.
Mrs Donaldson didn’t move.
The next day a neighbour came round saying they’d heard shouting in the night and was she all right?
‘We nearly knocked on the door but it was one in the morning.’
‘It was the students,’ said Mrs Donaldson. ‘Something and nothing. At least they don’t play their music loud. They have these things in their ears now.’
‘But you’re all right?’
‘Yes of course.’
‘You must miss Mr Donaldson.’
Mrs Donaldson smiled bravely.
Gwen got wind of it, too, having run into a (different) neighbour in Waitrose, making Mrs Donaldson wonder if they had woken the whole street.
‘Mrs Truman said she rang and got no reply.’
‘The phone was off.’
‘What were they doing in the middle of the night?’
‘What do people do in the middle of the night?’
‘Sex?’
‘I imagine that came into it. I banged on the door and they soon quietened down. They’re young.’
‘That’s what you always say. He’s not violent is he, the boy?’
‘Don’t be silly. Anyway,’ Mrs Donaldson cut her short, ‘they’re going soon.’
It was true. They had told her that morning. Andy had got the promise of a place at the architecture school in Edinburgh and Laura was taking a year out in Malawi.
‘I hope you won’t be getting any more.’
‘Any more what?’
‘Lodgers.’
‘I don’t know,’ said Mrs Donaldson. ‘I haven’t decided.’
‘I shall miss them,’ she said to Delia, though she could hardly specify why.
‘They kept me on my toes.’
‘Get some more,’ said Delia. ‘You never know.’
They were waiting for a session to start, sisters whose mother was in a coma.
‘Never know what?’
‘They might be nice.’
‘I’m thinking about it. It will be good having the place to myself for a change.’
Good, too (though she did not say this), getting a proper night’s sleep and having unfettered acces
s to the bathroom. Not good was the absence of expectation and that she was back in her box again.
‘Here we go,’ said Delia as Partridge came in. ‘Commence grieving.’
Partridge had called them in to ask their permission to turn off their mother’s life-support machine. She had been run over and was now in a coma.
‘I’d castrate them,’ said Delia, whose name was Jackie.
‘Who?’
‘Hit-and-run drivers.’
‘That wouldn’t help,’ said Mrs Donaldson’s Cora.
‘It would help me.’
‘She was always stepping off the pavement.’
‘Nobody is disputing that, Cora, only he didn’t stop. I’d castrate him.’
‘Castration isn’t the issue,’ said Partridge flatly. ‘It’s whether we switch Mother off or not.’
‘Who are you calling Mother?’ said Jackie. ‘She’s not your mother. She’s Mrs Henderson to you. How do you know she’s not going to come round? You’re only about fourteen and you’re not even wearing a tie. If you’re going to condemn someone to death you might at least dress the part.’
Partridge looked unhappy.
‘Besides,’ said Jackie, ‘look at these people you read about who’ve been unconscious for years then they suddenly come round?’
‘Sometimes you have to take these decisions,’ said Partridge.
‘Why can’t we just leave things as they are?’ said Jackie. ‘Wait and see?’
‘There’s nothing there,’ said Partridge. ‘She’s brain-dead.’
‘But she’s alive,’ said Jackie. ‘And while there’s life…’
‘I’d let her go,’ said Cora.
‘You would,’ said Jackie.
The sisters sat in silence.
‘You see,’ said Partridge to the back of the class, ‘this is where a nurse would help.’
‘You all of you keep asking for nurses,’ said Ballantyne. ‘Why?’
‘A woman’s touch?’ said Culley.
‘What if the nurse is a man?’
‘It’s still a shoulder to cry on.’
‘Have you been on a ward recently?’ said Ballantyne. ‘Nobody will say this to you, but the truth is that at compassion, consolation and general humanity most nurses nowadays are crap. They can do the clinical stuff because that’s what they’ve been taught, but when it comes to holding someone’s hand, comforting the dying or a grieving relative, all the stuff that life should have taught them, nurses are useless.’
